Extinctions Due to Global Warming Predicted

PizzaFace writes "A study being published today in Nature predicts that global warming will doom 15 to 37 percent of plants and animals to extinction by 2050, according to various news sources. The study looked at how predicted warming would affect the suitability of the areas that particular species inhabit, and whether displaced species would be able to migrate to suitable habitat. Many of the unlucky species are being caught between the hammer of global warming and the anvil of habitation destruction." The BBC has a story about climate engineering: long-range planning on making major changes in order to reduce the effects of global warming.

Comments

SHOULD we try to prevent it?

[moosesocks]

This raises the question of weather or not we should even fool with the weather.

Many recent studies have shown that humans may not be a significant cause of global warming.

If this isn't our fault do we have the right or the responsibility to alter the course of nature?

If we screw this up, the consequenses will be chatastrophic.

Of course

[blinder]

they can't predict the weather over 24 hours with any degree of accuracy, but of course we are supposed to just believe them when they tell us how things will be in 50 years.

Maybe a Normal Occurance

[tonyr60]

From the WP article... "The researchers concede there are many uncertainties in both climate forecasts and the computer models they used to forecast future extinctions."

Some certainties...

- the earth has been warmer in the last few hundred years than it is now,
- the earth goes through cyclic temp changes with a period of about 300 years
- it appears that we are now coming out of a minor ice age

Google if you want references.

So maybe every few hundred years 15% to 30% of living organisms die out. And likely 15% to 30% of new organisms develop.

So all normal, maybe?

Re:Yeah sure

[corebreech]

WHen the New York Times famously said "Blame global warming for the blizzard" (notwithstanding the huge number of major weather events throughtout human history) it has to make you wonder.

The New York Times says a lot of stupid things and engages in a lot of deception but in this case they're quite right I think.

You're making the mistake of thinking that global warming must mean that temperatures everywhere must necessarily increase. But that isn't necessarily the case. When temperatures rise, the equilibrium the planet previously experienced is disturbed, periods of hotter temperatures are compensated for by periods of colder temperatures, but what is important is that, overall, temperatures are on the rise.

Perhaps the best evidence we've seen today, evidence that even a layperson should be able to understand, is when we watch Antartica give up huge chunks of the ice shelf that have taken millenia to form, and for which there can only be one reasonable explanation: the planet is getting warmer. And the consequences are dire.

Even the merest possibility of such a future should cause us to worry. Shouldn't it?

Clarification

[NanoGator]

"A study being published today in Nature predicts that global warming will doom 15 to 37 percent of plants and animals to extinction by 2050..." -- As published by Slashdot.

"A sweeping new analysis enlisting scientists from 14 laboratories around the globe found that more than one-third of 1,103 native species they studied could vanish or plunge to near extinction by 2050... Earth is home to an estimated 14 million plant and animal species" -- As published by CNN.

Very dramatic difference here.

Re:Evolution will take over

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem, in terms of its impact on Life as a whole, is a non-problem. Life will continue. Life will go on. However, in terms of its impact upon us, humans, it is a serious one.

Humanity is trying to solve the problems we've caused for selfish reasons: if we don't, we'll be taken down by them. It has nothing to do with keeping life going, and everything to do with the perpetuation of the species.

That fact is probably the only reason I'm able to look at the problem without passing out in terror: the knowledge that we can't fuck things up enough to destroy all life on the planet.

So far, the high rated comments are astonishing

[Thagg]

I am one of the older members of the Slashdot community, about to turn 44. One of the fun things about the community is the boundless enthusiasm, drive, and accomplishment of the mostly younger people who frequent the site.

I'm stunned, though, by the response of the younger people here to the real threat posed by global warming. After all, it really isn't going to affect me too badly, I won't be here in 2050 -- but you will. Global warming, for whatever reason, is undeniably real. Especially in the higher latitudes, temperatures are many degrees higher in the winter than they have been even thirty years ago. Talk to anybody in Alaska or northern Canada about it -- there's absolutely no question about the fact of climate change.

The relexive denial that anything is wrong shocks me. I don't understand it.

thad

Re:So far, the high rated comments are astonishing

[LMariachi]

The alleged "science" used to back up this gigantic steaming bowl of crappola has been thoroughly torn to shreds.

So how come there are still articles about it being published in peer-reviewed scientific journals like the one cited? I don't see them printing articles about astrology or the healing power of crystals.

Certainty regarding the unknown is anathema to science. Environmentalists say "x and y may occur in the event of z." Critics of global warming theory say "x y and z will never ever happen." Which one sounds like a good scientist?

Re:So far, the high rated comments are astonishing

[mcc]

Take a fucking science class.

Seriously. The proofs are there. The proofs are messy, and require actually learning things to understand, and aren't anything that can fit neatly and succinctly into a newsweek article or a slashdot comment. But the fact that you aren't willing to go out and *read* something so you know what the proof is doesn't mean you automatially the right to say that none exists.

There isn't some big smoking gun they found in the FBI basement or something. The "proof" is that information from a number of different disciplines of science, but mostly from atmospheric science, points in a consistent manner toward a certain conclusion. You want me to tell you what the specific evidence is? No. Either pay for your education like everyone else or go to a library. In the meanwhile I would like to respond to some specific misconceptions in what you have said.

First off, the issue isn't "it's raised 0.8 in the last 100 years". The issue is the *rate* of change. The issue is that if you look at a long-term graph, you find a lot of tiny, slow wobbles followed by a very sudden and sharp increase that begins at the beginning of the industrial revolution and continues steadily until now. We see the temperature fluctuating a LOT, and it's wobbled back and forth this point of warmth before. But it doesn't *seem* to have changed this quickly. This doesn't prove anything, but it should be the first indication something might be going on.

Second off, it doesn't have to be a large change to have radical and very unpleasant effects. Ever heard of El Nino? El Nino is a very, very, very small change in the temperature of the ocean out by California. Despite how small this is, though, it has incredibly dramatic effects on a huge variety of things, including the entire way in which rain systems move across North America. This is because the weather over North America is a very complex, touchy system where if you change one cause-- like the temperature of the pacific ocean-- just a little, you get drastically different behavior. The world is full of complex systems like this, and this is why global warming is worrying. It isn't like we're going to get suddenly up to 300 degrees and bake to death. But what we might get is something like the drought and fertile areas of the world rearranging themselves. Or, far more likely, a very small increase in world overall temperature would move the freezeline further north, allowing, say, malaria mosquitos to live in areas they never could before.

Third off, we do not *need* recorded records. We have recorded records going back 100 years, yeah. However, we have acceptably accurate proxy records from all over the world going WAY back from a variety of sources, and we have well enough to establish a solid baseline from. Now, given, the further back in this record you go the bigger the possible error gets, but it's still good enough for a number of things. This proxy data includes a wide variety of things from tree rings, to oxygen isotopes in fossils, to air trapped in glaciers. Each of these has a totally different and solid scientific reason why it can be trusted. And these different proxies are overwhelmingly in agreement about what the climate record looks like going back FAR, FAR further back than 100 years. You can say "oh, well how do we know the proxy data works". Well, we have different reasons to believe each proxy works, and if you want to say it doesn't you need to find some way to explain (1) why the scientific basis for that proxy is wrong and (2) if the proxies are wrong, for what reason do they agree?

Lastly, the ice age thing was based on an unreasonable methodology. It was basically certain people looking at a graph of the last really long block of time and seeing that the temperature of the earth got into a cycle of slowly rising, then falling abruptly, then slowly rising, then falling abruptly. They then said, hey, if it did this in the past, it will probably do it in the future. They then rea

Before Drawing Hysterical Conclusions, Read This

[Pave Low]

Gregg Easterbrook, a man who knows his environmental policy and science masterfully skewers this study point by point.

Excerpt:
The study is entirely a computer simulation, and as anyone familiar with this art knows, computer models can be trained to produce any desired result.

And:
The case for species preservation should be made on hard ground, not on computer-generated squish.

Re:Yeah sure (okay, I'll bite)

[Skwirl]

The author of the above post has shown zero scientific credentials. The author of the above post has referred to zero peer reviewed studies. The author of the above post has not once considered the posibility of the other side's views, let alone the ramifications.

I am not a climatologist. You are not a climatologist. The vast majority of the people engaging in this debate are not climatologists. Who am I supposed to trust? This is a big, big deal. Global warming or no global warming, we're in the middle of one of the biggest mass extinctions in Earth's history and people are still bickering about politics. Why isn't this front page news? Why aren't we fighting tooth and nail to try and save our planet, our resources and ultimately our way of life?

Re:WTF

[mudshark]

You're obviously not a biologist. When the animals migrate (that is, when the ones that are able to move hundreds of kilometers as a trivial matter do so, assuming that humans have been kind enough to leave interconnected pathways and contiguous biomes for their safe passage) WTF are they going to eat?

The plants have to be there first. If there is radical climate change, plant communities will not be able to pack up and skip north or even uphill at that kind of rate.

15-30 percent is probably conservative....

Re:Yeah sure

[Brandybuck]

If it's not caused by man, then there's not much we could do to stop it anyway.

Don't mistake our skepticism to mean that we think nothing is wrong. Just because we aren't chicken littles doesn't mean we're ostriches with our heads in the sand instead. Just because we don't want to ban the internal combustion engine means that we approve of inefficient transportation.

To take the example of the recent blizzard, storms have happened since the beginning of the earth. It *may* have been caused by global warming, but it overwhelming odds are that the recent blizzard was caused by the same thing that caused all blizzards in the past.

About a decade ago when global warming started entering the public consciousness, I kept seeing weather reports saying that a record had been broken. I seem to recall a record breaking high or low temperature about once or twice a year. Surely that's evidence of global warming? A lot of people around me were saying it was. But simple statistics shows that it's hardly unusual. The average temperature in a location fluctuates. Since accurate temperatures were not recorded until recently, the probability is rather high that any particular day might break a recorded temperature. 365 days in a year, with temperature records for 100 years. Think about it. For example, a temperature of 98 on June 1st might break a record, but a temperature of 98 on June 2nd might wouldn't.

Basically what I'm saying is that I do not trust anecdotes. Neither do I trust sensationalist reporting. Heck, I can't even trust climatology models when the climatologists are still out looking for data to improve the models!

The average world wide temperature fluctuates. We have had ice ages in the past. We have had warm periods in the past. I'm not talking about ten thousand years ago, but only a few hundred. The temperature is changing, I have no doubt. What I do doubt is that mankind is causing it.

We shouldn't be polluting. We shouldn't be clearcutting rain forests. But we shouldn't be panicking.

Re:Yeah sure

[corebreech]

What amazes me is that as a nation we can spend what will sure to be hundreds of billions of dollars to invade a nation with the flimsy pretext that they're a threat to the world--which turns out to have been a lie by the way--but yet when a much more tangible threat appears on the horizon we hear all these voices demanding absolute proof.

Which as you suggest, isn't possible.

If we're going to run out of oil anyways, and if the combustion engine is such a threat to our environment, then why wait? Why not deal with it now?

Re:Yeah sure

[atomicdragon]

The parent is at least correct in saying that we don't know how much humans have contributed to the warming, but something is definitely happening. A lot of people seem to complain that we shouldn't do anything since we don't know what the problem is. But what if we find out after it is too late? We don't even know what too late is since small changes on a global scale can throw things way out of whack, possibly in ways we don't even know about.

The analogy I have used in the past is what do you do if you notice that you are starting to gain weight? You never know for sure where that weight comes from. You could just note that a few of ancestors were fat, so it is probably genetic so there is no sense in doing anything. Or you could take a few measures like starting to go to the gym, switching to diet soda, cut back on junk food. There is no doubt that these would help, only a question of how much.

We are pretty sure that greenhouse gases cause the planet to get warmer. So we are contributing to the problem, we just do not know to what degree. So we might as well do what we can in case humans are a significant factor to the problem instead of looking back saying we could have done more. Unfortunately fixing the environment fix after a problem is probably not as easy as it is to loose that bit of extra weight.

Predict Extinctions, Blame Global Warming

[DumbSwede]

The global warming camp insists on shooting themselves in the foot. Global warming may exist, but so far the real data hasn't shown a correlation beyond statistical variation on a long enough time scale. The Maunder Minimum was probably as severe or more severe (albeit in the other direction) and I don't see any reports of massive die offs during in it. I have seen studies seeking to prove Global Warming by showing the effect on animal migrations or germinating times. This of course is a completely backward way of going about proving something. There are dozens of confounding variables to factor in with regard to animal based studies. Plus this type of research suffers from the worse type of experimentation bias -- forming an opinion as to what the outcome should be, then scrounge for any and all evidence that would support that bias.

Now don't flame me that Global Warming exists, I'm not disputing there may be evidence that it may exist to some degree. But it almost certainly doesn't exist to the degree Global Warming zealots proclaim. To some degree all science and scientists are seen in a more skeptical light by the general public when Chicken Little prognostications don't come to pass.

We know species are stressed by man's activities on Earth (Global Warming or no). So if one makes predictions that species will become extinct due to Global Warming, and low and behold they become extinct, then perhaps the general public will suddenly get religion about Global Warming. Who cares if Global Warming is really to blame.

Re:Yeah sure

[corebreech]

We shouldn't be polluting. We shouldn't be clearcutting rain forests. But we shouldn't be panicking.

I think you'd find that if we weren't polluting and clearcutting rain forests, there wouldn't be this much controversy, let alone panic.

You know, what really perturbs me is that now we're hearing that all the oil is going to be running out soon. If this is the case, then doesn't it make sense to aggressively pursue alternative forms of energy, and do so now? Global warming isn't the only issue here.

I feel the same way about the trees. Do we stop clear-cutting before we run out of tree, or after? You would think that people would see the wisdom of stopping sooner rather than later, but that doesn't seem to play out as policy.

Re: ECONOMICS

[Black Parrot]

> While environmentalism is not a bad thing by itself, most hard core environmentalists are much more interested in political-economic changes than they are in actually 'saving the earth'.

Did you discover this by reading their minds, or by reading their diaries?

Also, even if we suppose what you say is true, what do the political views of a "hard core" have to do with the reality (or lack thereof) of global warming?

> Once socialism and communism were widely regarded as failures, the leftists needed some other method of advocating their anti capitalist beliefs. What better way to bring down capitalism than through extreme environmentalism. Make it too expensive and too difficult to produce anything or even to go about our daily lives, and industrialized society will crumble.

FYI, neither socialism nor communism have historically been against industrialized society. In fact, communist countries tend to attempt brutal plans for catching up in industrialization. Surely you've heard of the "five year plan"?

> Once again, I'm not saying all environmentalists have this goal in mind, and I for one don't want corporations to be able to legally dump mercury in a river or anything like that, but many hard core enviro-freaks are also die hard socialists.

And many hard-core fuck-the-environment types are Republicans. Did you have a point?

Re:Evolution will take over

[Frymaster]

Frequency, vibration, oscillation, revolution, sense, and being are all derived from this flux

you sound like deepak chopra...

Balance will be achieved. It is the way of things.

really? what makes you think that? there have been several cataclysmic ice ages that wiped out entire ecosystems. planet-wide waves of extinction have occurred before (the K-T is only one of them). large chunks of some ecosystems have been entirely borked by foreign species introduction (the cane toad leaps to mind).

human beings have the power to completely decimate popualations of animals and level entire ecosystems and we use it. environments that took millions of years to evolve can be turned into a walmart parking lot in a week. of all the mammal species in the world nearly a quarter are threatened, endangered or critically endangered (i have a source). did the "flux of nature" just decide to drive all these animals to the brink of extinction? or was it the continued destruction of habitat by human activity that did this? probably the latter.

oh yeah, "balance" and "flux" are kinda contradictory concepts too.

Re:Anti-American? I don't think so

[be-fan]

This is stupid because there is no one (except perhaps /bin/laden and his ilk) who would find any joy in seeing Americans have to adjust their lifestyle a bit. Most of the rest of us either don't care or do our best to emulate it anyway.
----------
That's a stupid thing to say. As an American, I want the rest of my countrymen to moderate a little more. There are some things that are just complete excess. Where I live, half the cars on the road are SUVs, and many people use them for nothing more than driving a few miles to work and dropping their kid off at school! I don't know about other Americans, but I think its sick that we consume 25% of the world's energy, while having only 5% of the world's population.

I think there should be laws to at least provide a monetary incentive to pollute less. In some industries, corporations pay to pollute. If they pollute less than they paid for, they can sell that excess capacity to other companies. That creates a competitive market for pollution credits, which has had dramatic results in driving down pollution. I'd like to see the same thing applied to individuals.

And before anybody bitches at me about liberty, let me tell you that I'm the first one to regret additional government oversight. But we live in a republic, not an anarchy. Our society recognizes that some government restrictions are necessary, and most importantly, our economic system (capitalism) recognizes that certain things are outside the bounds of the free market. These are things like national defense and a clean environment, things that everyone benefits from. A free market will produce less than the efficient quantity of these things because everybody will want to let somebody else pay for it, because they know they can still get the benefits. Government oversight is unfortunately required for such things.

I also think that the Republican party's stance on Kyoto is laughable. They ask: why should we cut more than Thailand? The answer: because we pollute more! Compare this to the answer they give when we ask: why should the rich get larger tax cuts? Because they pay more taxes?

Re:Yeah sure

[2marcus]

"Simple statistics shows that it's hardly unusual"

Do you really think that climate change science is based on a few anecdotes? That there aren't statisticians working in this field?

There is significant work being done looking at global average temperatures, looking at global extreme weather events, looking at el nino/la nina incidence rates, looking at droughts, heat waves, etc. etc.

And certaintly for global average temperature, the evidence from land and ocean based measurements is very strong that the earth has been warming rapidly (oft cited statistic of 10 warmest years on record all coming since 1990 - http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2003/ ann/ann03.html ). There is reasonable (though disputed) evidence to show the 20th century as the warmest of the millenium (Mann study).

El nino/la nina incidence is certainly up (though possibly due to complex causes).

Data on extreme weather events vary: For examples, reported tornadoes are up, but we have better reporting, so who knows if actual tornado incidence is up. I believe that heat waves, hurricanes, droughts, and floods are all supposed to have had measured increases, but I'm not as sure about this as I am about the rest of the post os don't quote me.

And the people who care like insurance agencies (who have really good statisticians) believe in global warming - do a search on Munich Re and climate change...

In any case: we increase the concentration of major greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 50 to 130% (CO2 + CH4), and you don't expect this to have any impact??? Yes, temperature changes naturally, and to a certain extent we have to adapt to it. The worry is that if we apply enough forcing to the system, the temperature will change so rapidly as to cause major disturbances to our way of life.*

*Actually, mostly disturbances to the way of life of the third world. With irrigation, dyke building, air conditioning, etc. the US will probably be able to adapt with only minor disruptions. Though we will probably lose much of southern Florida at some point in the next 150 years...

Re:Yeah sure

[sane?]

By 'reasonable' projection, we are at the 50% point where we have used half the reserves. The rate of oil discoveries is substancially less than the rate at which we use it.

What has increased dramatically is the number of people inflating the reserve numbers so that
a) they can pump more out of the ground, under OPEC rules
b) they can confuse the credulous that there is nothing to worry about - since there's not a damn thing they can do about it

Face facts. Oil supply is about to turn down, and when supply can no longer match the rising demand curve, the US way of life comes crashing to a halt. No amount of ostrich impressions is going to change that.

A message to the more viciously skeptic.

[theolein]

I have just read through a whole load of "damn tree-hugger", "this theory is crappola" and the insanley cliched "statistics can be made to fit any point of view" posts. Nothing unusual for the slashdot crowd who seem to fear the nature and its consequences as much as they love out of this world science fiction.

I have a message for you: There is a difference between a scientific study and a "raving" environmentalist.

I've lived here in Europe for 17 years now, and even here I can that climate is changing. The yearly winter and fall storms are getting worse, the summers are getting much hotter and drier (three of the last four summers have been far hotter than normal accompanied by droughts and flash floods) and the winters are much warmer than they were 12 years ago (When I got here there was snow for months in winter, now if there's snow for weeks you're lucky), and all that repeatedly, so please spare me the comments on sunspot cycles and freak seasons.

Mod this down if you wish, but I firmly believe that this demonising of the warning on climatic change is extremely counter productive.