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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.
I think this same prediction was made in 1981 by Paul Ehrlich when he predicted half the earth's species gone by 2000 and all of them gone by 2010-25. Maybe these predictions should be treated the same as claims of working perpertual motion machines.
Color me unconvinced.
Dog is my co-pilot.
...is that there will be population explosions of other animals and plants. For example, the deer population in the United States is much higher now than it was 200 years ago. Eradication of predators by the colonists.
. . . has an opportunity to show leadership on global warming by leading the US away from fossil fuels. Since Bush is a lifelong oilman, he would have added moral authority on the issue.
I'm laughing at clouds.
Unfortunately, coral will be one of the first things to go due to global warming. Warm temperatures cause the coral to eject the algae that grows within them. This gives this a distinctive bleached look... Better enjoy your tropical diving while you can!
Ew... that's a horrible typo of the word "evolve."
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
There seems to be an unstated assumption in the article that dooming 15-37 percent of species to extinction is in itself a negative thing, which means that we have somehow accepted as true the idea that a species should exist perpetually. The historical record suggests that species tend to have their time and then disappear; either in some form of mass extinction event or by slowly
fading away.
Our understanding of bio-history suggests that the cycle of evolution and extinction is the way things work and has always worked. This cycle is partly in response to events like global warming or cooling or cataclysms like, as a recent slashdot article suggests, when a supernova rips off the ozone layer andlets the sun barbecue a whole bunch of species.
However, in spite of this, looking at the life surrounding the volcanic heat vents on the ocean floor, the return of life to devastated area like Mt. St. Helens, it seems that life itself seem to be rather stubborn, versatile and adaptable. The planet as a biosystem seems to be able to recover from massive damage which can eliminate most of the life on earth.
Yet as a caveat, I wonder if we as a species have thrown a destabilizing factor into that robust bio-system by stressing it past its ability to recover. After all, who knows how the various forms of pollution and destruction of natural
resources will impact the ability of the planet to rebound from this bout ofglobal warming or ice age, whether or not it is natural or man made.
I think it odd for us to thik this chage should lead to an ever stable temperature and perfectly preserved artic ice shelves..
So if I'm understanding the gibbon right, we shouldn't do anything about global warming because there's a chance it might not be caused by man. We should watch our cities be submerged and species by the thousands go extinct rather than lift a finger to stop it.
Thankfully, most people don't see it that way.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
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.
No, the only people actually feeling the effects of the environmentalists' crusade are those of us living in "progressive" countries where gas has been $5/gallon for a long time already and where every conceivable form of energy is taxed through the roof "in order to save the environment".
Nevermind that we need that energy to go about our daily business whatever the cost so demand isn't reduced anyway, nevermind that those same progressive governments put exactly zilch of that tax revenue back into alternative energy research and nevermind that it doesn't make any difference anyway because the rest of the world is still polluting at least as much as they ever did, so....
You get the drift. It's enough to make a poor sod wonder if this global warming panic isn't a huge scam cooked up by politicians to allow them to tax the populace with impunity.
Not that I doubt that the climate is changing, but wouldn't it be a good idea to get everyone to agree on the scientific basis for claiming man is (at least partly) behind the change, what measures to implement and then to implement them globally? Reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases 1% globally must be better than reducing them by 10% in a just couple of medium/small countries.
Also, it wouldn't leave those of us living in those countries feeling like we're having to do all the lifestyle adjusting in a massive and costly gesture of futility while the rest of the world doesn't really give a rat's ass.
Note that I'm not saying that the claims that the climate is changing are a scam, but I do think it's prudent to wonder out loud about the global warming panic that, as far as I can see, has only ever resulted in raised taxes in some countries. Where is the reduction in emissions of greenhouse gasses? Where is the reduction of the ozone holes? In short, where did our money go?
So, my dear Americans. Be prepared for the day when you too have to pay $5/gallon for gas, only make sure that when that day comes your money will actually be used for something that makes a difference.
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
Actually, it is my understanding that there is (or was) one tribe of pigmies in south america who were genetically not compatible with 'standard' humans, but only barely.
:;opens up a tab and googles::
Of course, it's possible they were on of those tribes that got wiped out by the diseases brought to america. Or I could have my facts messed up completly. Or maybe they were just to small to be physiclaly compatible. I do not have hard data.. hmmm,
gah.. to much data.. to tired to filter it. Maybe if some on ehas ever heard of what i mentioned, they can pull up a relavent link?
"It takes a very long time to count to 2 in binary." ~'Fourlegged'
Global warming, for whatever reason, is undeniably real.
Prove it. PROVE IT! (shouting from the rooftops) PROVE IT!
That's all I'm asking here.
Look, I don't dispute that the average temperature on the planet in the last 100 years has gone up 0.8 degrees. Oh, didn't you know that? POINT EIGHT DEGREES. That's it. That's your "global warming". This is an undisputed FACT. We have records going back that far.
Global warming is a political agenda, it is not scientific fact. The science behind global warming has be shown to be bad in nearly all cases. People trying to prove something and then coming up with data to support what they're trying to prove while ignoring data that contradicts it.
20 years ago the big watch word was "global cooling". Hell, man, don't you remember the 80's? I may not be 44 years old yet, but hell, even I remember Leonard Nimoy on an educational TV special warning the world about the effects of global cooling.
Look, the fact of the matter is that study of the climate is relatively *new* and anything you see in any study of the climate must be taken with a grain of salt. You simply can't take 50 to 100 years of data and predict what will happen in the next 50 or 100 years. You can't take a couple of the unusual weather phenomena that happen every year somewhere and realistically blame it on the climatic scare tactic of the decade.
We don't have the baseline to make any predictions with any kind of accuracy. We don't have the understanding necessary to predict with any kind of accuracy.
There may be global warming, but there's absolutely no reason to think that there is.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I find it astounding that so many, presumably intelligent, people are suggesting here that the global warming is some plot hatched by leftie commie greenies. Wake up. Global warming is occurring, and yes we were heading towards the next ice-age, doesn't that show how big a deal this warming is? CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than at any point in modern geolical times, global mean temperature is above any in modern geological times. Both these things have oscillated over the last few hundred thousand years on a fairly regular cycle but are now above the highest point of that oscillation and have acheived this in 150 years or so - not 50,000. The IPCC third assessment report is the work of THOUSANDS of scientists, who roughly agree. The reports denying these events are by a few scientists outside the mainstream of science. If you don't believe in mainstream science have a think what led to the development of the computer you are now reading this with.
However, the various models used in reports such as this one in Nature rarely take sufficient acount of the ability of species to adapt, at least not plants (I am a plant physiologist) and assign temperature responses that are based on simple maths rather than facts. I doubt the situation will be anywhere near as bad as this report makes out.
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Unfortunately, fighting tooth and nail will likely do very little. There have been several mass, and I mean MASS, extinctions, according to the fossil record.
Somehow, life has won out.
So, even if 200 years from now there are no humans left alive, or if there are but all of our descendents are scratching away at the dust bowls we leave scarring the surface of the earth, the rest of the world will keep on trucking. Humanity isn't that special, and fighting tooth and nail isn't going to change that.
The 'decrease in biodiversity' has been going on for as long as man has walked on two feet.
Unfortunately, the word often doesn't get out. Instead of children being taught, for instance, that there is a fossil record of horses on the North American continent that went extinct simultaneous with the arrival of the 'Native Americans,' they are exposed to 'Noble Savages Who Worked Within Nature' propaganda. A thread of anti-modernism runs deep within many intellectual circles.
Unfortunately, false nostalgia has more appeal to a lot of people than common sense.
A Good Intro to NetBS
I've said this before, but I still think we give ourselves too much credit. I think we are seeing the results of much larger cycles in the sun that we do not fully understand.
Why?
Because Mars is experiencing global warming too.
Don't get me wrong, I think we are trashing the environment, and that if we don't do something about it, it will come back and bite us in the ass as a species, but I don't think it is a given fact that global warming is a direct result of our actions. There is simply too much we don't understand.
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
You said: "Balance will be achieved. It is the way of things."
Balance may be achieved with 95% of all species extinct.
As far as it concerns global warming, there are many positive and negative feedback loops, but there are only two that really concern me.
The first is solubility of CO2 in seawater. As ocean temperatures rises, the equilibrium in the oceans will change such that the oceans become a source of atmospheric CO2 rather than a sink. This rate will increase as seawater temperature rises.
The second is the rising of the zone of methane hydrate stability. As seawater floor temperatures rise, this zone of stability rises and allows increased methane releases to the ocean. If sea floor temperature increases to some critical point (where the zone of methane hydrate stability has a depth of zero from the ocean floor), massive releases could occur. Considering that methane is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2 and that there are considerable deposits of methane hydrates under the ocean floors, this is probably the larger concern.
Since methane and CO2 take time to heat the atmosphere there will be a considerable delay time. By the time that significant results are seen, the global warming effect will have achieved enough power that cutting all human added greenhouse gases to zero will not be able to reverse the spiral of destruction that global warming will bring.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Look at the world situation with HIV. Is it any different? Most people in the world until they see someone die -- in front of them -- and the autopsy confirms it was HIV... they don't believe it exists.
We see today that HIV is once again on the rise in America... because young people don't believe it's real. And in the rest of the world, HIV is a global epidemic because their education isn't sufficient for them to understand reality.
It's no surprise that ignorant young Americans (and other young people) scoff at global warming. The education of the average young person is insufficient to understand reality, including the vast amount of black and white data that shows indisputable global warming.
I know it's a tough thing to accept, but most young people, even the geeks, are severely undereducated. And what they have been taught is mostly brainwashing designed to make them a good worker focused on the small picture. The literacy of young people is almost zero.
If you have the motivation to look into the matter, I would recommend reading "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Friere --
The methodology of the late Paulo Freire, once considered such a threat to the established order that he was "invited" to leave his native Brazil, has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm.
Excerpted from The Catalyst Centre, a Canadian organization that promotes cultures of learning for positive social change.
Obviously things are going to get a lot lot worse before they get better.
This is based on the (incorrect) assumption that we actually know what is best. We can't even conclusively conclude that global warming is being caused by humans. Regardless of whether or not it is natural, some predict that global warming will help, some say that it will hurt, and others say that it will help some areas and hurt othrs.
So, what you're saying is that we should take action on something we don't know we're effecting to achieve effects that we aren't sure will help or hurt. Seems silly to me.
It is silly to take action before we a) Know there is a problem, b) Know the effects of the problem, and c) Know how our changes will impact the situation. If we have any doubts about the answers to any of the above, taking any action could be just as easily destructive as helpful.
Take a fucking science class.
Hey, go fuck yourself. You assume I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about when I damn well do. I know about atmospheric science, I know about the theories and the data and the measurements. The fact of the matter is that atmospheric science isn't at the point where everybody, or even the majority, agree on the predictions. For every real atmospheric scientist you'll find who says GW exists, you'll find another who says it doesn't. It's simply not at the stage where there's enough evidence to prove anything at all.
You misread the fucking evidence, and took some people's word too seriously. Why don't *you* go read the fucking papers again, huh?
The issue is the *rate* of change
I don't deny that the rate has increased. I do deny that there's any solid evidence that a) it's caused by mankind, or b) there's anything we can do about it in any case.
Ever heard of El Nino?
Yes. So? Weather is a very complex system. And they can't prove El Nino is the cause of any particular thing any more than they can prove GW. Yet that doesn't stop idiot weathermen saying that this or that storm is due to El Nino.
We know it's a complex system. In fact, it's so complex, that we can only understand it so far in a very, very, very general way. We do not possess the capability to make medium term predictions about the climate with anything even approaching any kind of accuracy, and yet that doesn't stop people from spouting off statements like "Everybody will be dead in 50 years because of Global Warming!", now does it?
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.
Agreed, but that doesn't help in making a medium range prediction, now does it? We can see that the rate of change has increased in the last 50 years, but we can also see from these proxy records that the rate of change over long periods of time is slow and steady. Now, doesn't that suggest that medium term spikes don't really mean a damn thing? It should. Because those proxy records don't show year by year data, they show huge chunks of time all at once.
It's like an audio file.. You zoom in and the thing becomes chaotic, going up and down and such. You zoom out and you can clearly see larger trends and patterns at work. 50 years is nothing on the scale that these proxy measurements indicate.
Current global warming theory is not based on "temperature is rising so it will continue rising"; it's based on actually looking at the physics of what is happening in the atmosphere and working out models of how those physics change as we change the chemical makeup of the atmosphere by pumping junk into it.
Bullshit. If what you say was in fact true, then the theory is even more worthless than I suspected. First off, we don't *know* the composition of the atmosphere in great enough detail to be able to make any reasonable conclusions based on it. Secondly, physics is a rough approximation, a model, of reality and almost never works correctly when you try to model a complex system. A complex system being one which behaves chaotically and has the "butterfly effect" inherent in it, as the atmosphere certainly does.
Global warming theory is based on superstition for the most part, and bad science at best. It's not something any reasonable person would look at and think was true. The data doesn't support the conclusions given. More data may support it, but at best, it's a theory, not a fact.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The problem is, 30 years ago we were told we had 30 years of oil reserves left--now, we have >50 years of reserves, and yet we use much more oil now than then.
Certainly oil will run out eventually, but at it gets more scarce, prices will rise, and demand will fall, mostly due to alternative sources of energy being used. Let the market work.
This is all Paul Erlich vs. Julian Simon-type stuff (from nationalcenter.org):
It is front-page news; I'm seeing news of this study everywhere. By the way... our way of life is ultimately what the poster is trying to save, and what environmentalists are trying to change. The poster warned about far-reaching policies and legislation to try and 'save the planet', which will have a considerable impact on our way of life.
As for trust... trust no one! It seems that everyone these days, industrialists, politicians, climatologists, even 'well-meaning' activists such as Greenpeace, are all pushing a hidden agenda that has nothing to do with the environment.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
What a naive argument you make. You think that your anecdotal experience of the last 17 years means ANYTHING in the grand scope of global climate change? Do you REALLY think that you can make such a confident statement about environmental dynamics with only 17 years of merely anecdotal data? You are very brave.
17 Years is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Even 200 or 2000 years would not be enough data to express any kind of reliable trend. Silly... just plain silly..
And here's another thing for you to consider. The climate does change. OH MY GOD! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! The weather patterns on this little speck of a planet we live on have varied WILDLY over the past thousands and millions of years. 12000 years ago, you could walk from Florida to France by way of the Bering Strait. Since then, the Earth has warmed dramatically, WITHOUT THE HELP OF HUMANS.
To think that we are solely responsible for every little climatic change is not only arrogant, but completely ludicrous. This has become the battle cry of various political groups who succeed only by misinforming their supporters and followers.
The cries from the left about global warming would be no different that the cries of a whale keeper about a kid dripping red food coloring into an 80-million gallon whale tank. Any effect we have on climate is probably NOTHING compared to the changes made by the natural process. Think logically for a second..
Look at how many tons of CO2 we put in the atmosphere annually... then look at how much mass the atmosphere has. I would be very surprised if the ratio were any larger than about 0.001%.
Here's a little exercise in critical thinking for you:
According to this page, fossil fuel consumption, which has been the meterstick of the left for human damage to the environment, has been 283 billion tons since 1751. In contrast, think of the CO2 emitted by 6 BILLION people. At an average lung capacity of 600cc per person, and an approximate %/v of 12% in exhaled air, that's 72cc of CO2 per breath. If everyone breathes an average of 10 times per minute, that's 14400 times per day, and 5256000 times per year. That gives us 378432000 cc CO2 per human per year, or 2.271E18 cc CO2 for all of humanity. At standard temperature and pressure, using PV=nRT, n = PV/RT or 2.271E18/(0.0821 * 273.15 * 1000) = 1.012E14 mols. CO2 weighs 44 grams per mol, which gives us 4.456E15 grams of CO2 annually, which is the same thing as 4.912E9 TONS of CO2, JUST FROM HUMANS.
4.9 BILLION TONS of CO2 just from people breathing.
Here's some more, think of it in terms of energy. If the average person needs to eat 1600 calories per day (which is 1.6 million energy calories), and the average lifespan of a human is about 50 years world wide (a conservative estimate, I believe), that's 29 BILLION calories of energy over the lifespan, which is 122 billion joules. Thought of differently, 6 billion people burning 1600 calories per day is 4E16 joules PER DAY, just for humans. In contrast, in one gallon of refined gasoline contains about 132 megajoules of energy, so the energy output from humans every day is equivalent to the burning of 300 MILLION GALLONS of gasoline.
And this is just HUMAN energy dissipation. Think, McFly, THINK...
I am constantly and consistently amazed at how frightened people can become over global warming. To me, there are two ways to look at it. You can look at it either from the environments perspective and ours.
From the environments perspective, humans are a brief hiccup. The earth has seen drastically more damaging environmental disasters, and simply put, disasters are how nature changes and evolution is produced. Disasters are in fact a fine things to happen if biodiversity is your concern as they give rise to new and more exotic creatures with each passing. Even the most terrible of disasters, such as the comet that killed the dinosaurs, are not enough to put nature down and out. In fact, that disaster is what led to our rise in the first place. Humanity could probably rape and pillage this world with all of its might, and in the long term things would be okay. I am not suggesting that we do so, but I am not going to sweat much if biodiversity takes a short term fall.
So some animals die? New animals will replace them. Granted, it isn't going to happen on a time scale we can appreciate, but I think that is the problem. Environmentalist look at the world on their time scale which has the attention span of 50 years, when evolution and natural selection is far more concerned with a much broader picture in which sudden mass extinctions are not the end of life.
The other perspective from the human perspective. From the human perspective, this problem is more of a nuisance. There is absolutely nothing humanity could willingly do to the environment that could kill off humanity outside of all out nuclear/biological war (and even then). Humans force evolution upon themselves too damned quick to kill themselves. The entire ozone layer could vanish tomorrow in a single instance and humanity as a whole would go on. We can certainly make our selves struggle a little and rack up a body count in the process, but in the end, humanity will go on, even if it means we have to live inside or protect ourselves from our own environment. That isn't exactly a pretty way to live, but it certainly is not a sigh of the end.
More then the simple fact that we will cling to life and force our own evolution through technology to survive, we also can repair the damage we do in time. Already we have learned some powerful bioremediation techniques to clean up some of the more harmful things we have done. It would come as little shock if in 50 or 100 years we have the capacity to do nature's job and produce new creatures from scratch that can live wherever we please them to live. It might be that 200 years from now biodiversity has shot through the roof far beyond anything nature has ever seen simply because we wanted it that way. It also would come as little surprise if we simply expand our terraforming powers to include the entire earth. Instead of altering the environment to suit our needs immediately surrounding ourselves with clothes, cars, and houses, it is no stretch of the imagination to see humanity setting its goals even broader and altering the entire earth's environment to our needs. It might very well be that there comes a day when we simply decide that we want a thicker ozone layer and build machines to build more ozone and repair the damage we have done.
Our impact on the environment is no threat to humanity or the environment as a whole. Yes, we can shoot ourselves in the foot in the short term and that should certainly be avoided. I don't fancy the idea that I can't go to the beach without SPF 100 on. That said, we need to moderate how much we are willing to sacrifice for the environment and keep it in perspective that this is an issue of comfort and health, not life or death for humanity and the environment as a whole. Take steps to slow wanton destruction, but don't tie humanities hands in the process.
Interesting though that very few scientists in these fields agree that this a steaming bowl of crappola.
The only people that seem to disagree a very small proportion of scientists, the US administration (even though their own scientific advisers agree that global warming is a real threat), some people in big business and a strangley large proportion of Americans who seem to think it is all some communist plot to take away their freedom. I've seen climate change in my lifetime in my country, 9 out of 10 of the hottest summers and winters have been in the last 30 years, with most of those occuring in the last decade. Considering the UK has temperature records dating back a couple of centuries I think this is fairly good empirical evidence, but hey what do I matter, I'm not some fat ignoramous in Ohio who wants to drive a 10 tonne SUV.
Global warming theory is based on superstition for the most part, and bad science at best. It's not something any reasonable person would look at and think was true. The data doesn't support the conclusions given. More data may support it, but at best, it's a theory, not a fact.
This one statement proves you do NOT understand science. Science does not provide reasons that can be called facts - it provides theories. Quantum mechanics is a theory in place until it gets disproved as classical mechanics was by a better model and the "laws" of thermodyanics, gravitational theories, theories on the movements of electrons etc. may all be disproved. They will, however, never be proved - this is not mathematics, there is no test to show that physical and chemical theories work for all instances of the variables.
The whole point that you are missing though is that virtually all accepted climate models show that we are experiencing climatic change due to increased amounts of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere. Why should we risk that until we have absolute proof? Is it not more sensible to mitigate this risk? Why should my home town disapear under water whilst your head disapears up your own arse?
The only politics in this is certain countries (mainly the US) trying to deny the evidence to protect it's own interest.
Hmmm, wonder if threatening the extinction of a large number of species counts as biological warfare...
The Giant Canada Goose was considered extinct decades...until some were found around Rochester, Minnesota. Why were they there? A power plant pond in the city was kept warm all winter, providing a haven which some birds rarely left. The flocks which now clutter suburban grasslands are probably from those Rochester city geese which were willing to live among humans and cars. The birds which stayed away from cities died.
Also remember that we've had several glacial periods recently on this planet. 15,000 years ago the land where I live was frozen. I'm living in an environment which appeared recently -- first after the glacier left. The most recent significant change has been from the grassland prairie to an urban forest. I've heard more complaints about preserving these trees than about burning them and restoring the prairie here as it was a mere hundred years ago.
Then some bozo took that data from the actual study and then in a press release extrapolated the data and marred the information to be 15 to 37 percent of plants and animals all dead and gone by 2050. The actual people who did the study were very upset that their data was manipulated like that, because it winds up coming off as being a very unlikely and unreasonable result.
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