OK, just a few comments. C40, your link is BS. Not your fault, it is a chart of crap, from a presentation of crap, presented to crap eaters. The whole document can be found here:
http://scholar.law.colorado.edu/do/sear ... xt=5543161
"When everyone's thinking alike, no one is thinking." Unfortunately, this is the case with environmentalists. This allows for crap charts like this to be presented, unquestioned.
Let me back up. Extinction is definined in the common lexicon as the end of a species. None left. Now, biologists have confused that issue, species used to mean a population that bred true. the classic example: Horses are a species, horse plus horse equals horse. Donkey plus donkey equals donkey. Donkey plus horse equals mule. Mules can't be bred, so are not a species.
This isn't as well defined anymore. No complaints, there seems to be some good reasons for expanding the definition and I will admit to not being too interested in the details, so I haven't read into it extensively.
However, expanding this gray area allows for some serious funny business when accounting for extinction of species. Now, it is an extinction when a species isn't where we want it to be,or behave the way we want it to.
Example, Coho Salmon. Endangered, threatened, extinct, and in your grocery store, and there's no contradiction there... Every river and stream the Coho used to be in, and is not anymore is listed as a separate extinction. They are so rare and endangered that a angler who kills one faces felony charges in WA state, but common enough that WA state allows the commercial harvesting of coho.
In WA state, steelhead are endangered. Rainbow trout are not. A steelhead is a rainbow trout that has gone into saltwater. Some fry from the same batch of eggs will go into saltwater, and some stay freshwater. We.now use the endangered species act to endanger behaviors. We spit up orcas into separate species, based on behavior, coincidentally driving down the numbers of each species, now they are each more endangered. We have a subspecies of deer that is just an inbred population on an island in the Columbia river.
So, from a technical standpoint, if you count every population that isn't where you want it to be, doing want you want it to do, as an extinction, then I'm sure you can find 50,000 discrepancies between your fantasy world and the real one. But if you mean extinction in the common lexicon, this chart is at best, fan fiction by a devoted reader of silent spring.
I'll be back later to pick apart the DU/cancer link on page 1.
In the meantime, steveo, you argue like a child. Baseless assertation followed by links to someone else's opinion, followed by a change of stance, and repeat. Define your position, and defend it. This isn't Reddit.