Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
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?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
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?
"Simple statistics shows that it's hardly unusual"
/ ann/ann03.html ). There is reasonable (though disputed) evidence to show the 20th century as the warmest of the millenium (Mann study).
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
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...
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
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts