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.
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.
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.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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.
sad robot making broken music
Evolution will fill in the gaps that are opened when those animals are extinct
Only over evolutionary timescales -- that is, millions of years. Over shorter timescales, the decline in biodiversity on Earth can only spell trouble for those species (like ours) which manage temporarily to stave off extinction.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
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?
It's too often global warming comes up, things are getting bad, but really whats a few species becoming extinct? at the same time many more will come about due to evolution. If anything I think the earth needs a good worldwide devestation caused by humans, all these reports mean nothing, we'll still build nukes, we'll still drive our cars, when most of our major cities (most major cities are on coastlines) are pretty much abandoned/sunken/destroyed after ice melts people will say "aww crap we sould be more careful" and then NOT drive our cars as much. No one cared about using nukes in japan, after they where used people had that "aww crap" attidude, they saw how horrible it was. We need to see how horrible pollution can be firsthand before we really give an effort. (I live in Queens, NY I'm not too exited about the idea of sea levels rising but sometimes a kick in the ass is what we need)
~50 years is a remarkably small time span to lose that many species, even in theory. It takes many, many generations for enough reproductive barriers to stabilize to make one recognizeable species... for this much genetic diversity to be lost would be a true catastrophe. If these theories are even remotely true, this is not something that should be brushed off with a "Life is just adjusting to new conditions"... this much "adjustment" to one life condition leaves what life that survives afterward vulnerable in their new monogenetic state.
It will be good for some species of reptiles and fish though. Though algea blooms might kill off even those fish that live, and a lack of prey may hurt the reptiles.
Ryan Fenton
Is Global Warming a scientific concern or a political objective? I often ask that question because whenever the global warming scenario is painted, I only hear the bad effects, never the good. That makes me wonder about those doing the painting. A scientific discourse would show good and bad, and be objective.
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?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Geologicaly we are in a cold phase. Some authorities even concider the modern era a mild ice age or the tail end or interglacial of the last series. This study apperantly ignors all the geological evidence of the last 1 million years. I grew up in a sonoran biotype. Two hundred kilometers from my home was an alpine enviroment. Animals that have trouble with the new enviroment will simply migrate. 15 to 30 % extintion is pretty silly.
"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.
"Derp de derp."
Goddamnit. Now we have to stuff more corks in the asses of cows. Goddamn farts are gonna kill us all...
we'll all be dead from nuclear war long before these plants and animals become extinct, so we won't even notice.
...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.
We barely have a catalog of the various plant and animal species present on this planet, yet we can estimate that 15-37% will be extinct because they won't be able to relocate within a few decades?
While I'm all for protecting the environment and not doing things to dirty it or pollute it more than necessary, some credit has to be given to the shear will of life to continue living. It's worked for millenia, it's not gonna stop wholesale just yet unless it was going to stop without our interference.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
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.
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!
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
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
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.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
The dinosaurs didn't evelove to reach equilibrium with their surroundings? Strange, I coulda sworn I heard a few of them chirping outside my window this morning.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
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?
Nope. Evolution requires an evolutionary timeframe, which boils down to punctuated equilibrium.
What this scale of climate change will foster is a "weed planet" where aggressive and opportunistic species will hold sway until things stabilize somewhat. After that point, if there isn't a complete thermal runaway, adaptive radiation will take place. Old World species will have an advantage, because more of the dry tropical and subtropical ecosystems lie in Africa and Asia.
So look for kudzu to take over the whole eastern US, with rats and pigeons swarming the countrysides, and African savanna grasses to supplant most low- to mid-elevation habitats in western North America. Biodiversity will plummet and many webs of interdependency will unravel.
Whatever happens, it's bound to be ugly.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
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?
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.
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?
There are already many scientists quickly refuting this studies numbers. Climate over time gradual shifts in temperature between ice ages. As we can see by the history of many of our planet's animals, life is quite resiliant and this is something the study doesn't take into account. What we should really be concerned with and talking more about is the destruction of natural habitats such as the rain forests. This issue is constantly becoming more serious and will surely cause more animal extinctions then the slow rate of global warming we are experiencing.
How many of you jumping on the global warming bandwagon don't believe the weather predictions on the local news?
How come you're willing to believe weather prediction of 50 to 100 years into the future?
-- Will program for bandwidth
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.
... before putting too much stock in tree-hugger predictions. :)
h es _quote05.html
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speec
Yes, yes, it's just an opinion, but it's very interesting and thought provoking. It helped me understand (somewhat) the motivation behind the truly wacko environmentalists.
I think it's mostly likely that 50 years into the future we'll have 15-30% fewer spotted owls and white tigers and 15-30% more Velcro Sheep and Mice That Piss Vodka.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I bet you have a bumper sticker on your SUV that says Shit Happens don't ya?
Things change and something we must all remeber is that we don't totally understand the Earth's cycles or how fast changes like the Ice Age kick in.
h es _quote04.html
Sudden warm spurts in the mid North America climate occurred during the last half of the Younger Dryas, a 1,600-year-long global deep freeze that suddenly developed about 13,200 years ago just as the Earth was warming and ice sheets were starting to melt. For years scientists have speculated on what could have caused average winter temperatures in northern Europe to plunge by up to 10 degrees Celsius within 10 to 50 years at the start of the Younger Dryas and then soar again just as abruptly 1,600 years later.
For the last 30 years people have been making wildly inaccurate guesses about extinction and climate change.
I'm living in Portland OR right now, and since Midnight on Monday they've been telling us a high from the Pacific is going to push in in 4-6 hours and melt the ice and snow we have on the ground. If they can't forcast the weather 6 in advance, how the hell can they tell us what's going to happen in 2050?
Scientists have been making crazy predictions based on "good science" for decades.
"In 1960, Paul Ehrlich said, "The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergoe famines-hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Ten years later, he predicted four billion people would die during the 1980s, including 65 million Americans. The mass starvation that was predicted never occurred, and it now seems it isn't ever going to happen. Nor is the population explosion going to reach the numbers predicted even ten years ago. In 1990, climate modelers anticipated a world population of 11 billion by 2100. Today, some people think the correct number will be 7 billion and falling. But nobody knows for sure."
"...in 1991, when Carl Sagan predicted on Nightline that Kuwaiti oil fires would produce a nuclear winter effect, causing a "year without a summer," and endangering crops around the world. Sagan stressed this outcome was so likely that "it should affect the war plans." None of it happened."
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speec
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.
Letter To Iran
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.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
i wish global warming would hurry up. im getting sick of these new-england winters.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
> Back in the 1970's the same global warming scaremongers were telling us that a new global ice age was coming.
The very same people? Really?
> There is some evidence for the earth's warming, but the evidence is far from clean and many observations (such as (corrected) satellite data and weather balloons) show no warming. Most of the climate change predictions are based on computer models. Given our inability to forecast weather accurately at any interval, I doubt very much the computers can handle the much greater complexities of climate change. Certainly more research is warranted and we may yet find some links to human activity that need to be addressed.
So, do you dispute the physics of greenhouse gasses, or the fact that we've been dumping them into the atmosphere at an astonishing rate since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution?
> But "Global warming" as such as is a political program not science. 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 primary effect of global warming is more thermal energy in the atmosphere. That doesn't equate to a uniform temperature increase in all places at all times. Climate is a wonderfully complex phenomenon. For example, if global warming melts the Greenland ice sheets, the flux of cold water into the North Atlantic might shut down the Gulf Stream and send northwestern Europe into a local ice age. (It's warmer than it has any right to expect, due to the Gulf Stream.) The inconvenient freeze would still be global warming, and still catastrophic to the well-being of millions of humans and animals.
> But the use of hysteria and scaremongering to sell a political agenda is wrong IMO.
Who says it's a political agenda? What if it's a sober warning rather than scaremongering?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> 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?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
A lot of people seem to complain that we shouldn't do anything since we don't know what the problem is.
This is the usual strawman that the "global warming proponents" trot out. It's not true. Most anybody who doesn't buy into the whole global warming thing still believes in protecting the environment. There are lots of good reasons to reduce pollution and cut carbon dioxide emissions. There are very few people who would argue that reducing pollution is a bad thing.
However, that doesn't make it right for so-called environmentalists to go running around screaming that the sky is falling without proof. Right now, all we can say is that humans might be increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that the amounts might be enough to have a significant effect on the climate, that the effect might be to cause the average temperature of the earth to increase, and that overall global warming might be a bad thing to happen. Personally, I think that those are a few too many mights to warrant turning global warming into the biggest environmental concern of today. However, since global warming plays well into a nice doomsday scenario for the media, that's what everybody focuses on.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
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
Yea.... yea we are...
Frankly, most humans don't care about what animals are dieing. All you have to do is appeal to the rich people by saying "hey, with global warming, you won't be able to go skiing in the alps anymore! now give me money and i'll see what I can do to fix that"
Evolution takes place every day. There are consistent reports of scientists being "surprised" at how fast individual species seem to adapt.
I'm also curious, how many extinctions would there be if there weren't humans around? I'd be willing to put my neck out and say that number is a lot more than we might think otherwise.
And does anyone remember (not from personal experience obviously) that during the Middle Ages, the average temp around the earth was 3-4 degrees (F, I believe) warmer than it is now?
I get tired of the doom & gloom predictions that always come out...and for some reason never seem to come true! How long have they been saying that we will run out of fossil fuels in 20 years? (It's a lot longer than 20 years, to be sure.)
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.
2 1337 4 u!
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.
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!
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.
That sounds like a challenge!
Styrophoam cups here I come...
You can't take the sky from me...
Right, so all we can hope for now is that 36 of those 37 species are dirty, oxygen breathing mammals so we'll have fewer CO2 emissions . . .
The 'decrease in biodiversity' has been going on for as long as man has walked on two feet.
Not at the current rate, it hasn't. You offer some anecdotal evidence about horses being wiped out in North America by Native Americans (which I don't find inconceivable), but this has scant relevance to the present debate. What has far more relevance is the mounting evidence that Earth may be experiencing one of the largest mass extinctions of all time. This has not been going on since Man first walked on two feet.
A thread of anti-modernism runs deep within many intellectual circles
Judging from the quality of your rhetoric, I'm amazed at your familiarity with these "intellectual circles".
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
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.
Not according to these guys.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
According to New Scientist, Americans live at a rate that requires 5 earths. Europeans live at a rate (IIRC) around 4 - 4.5 earths. The people who are living at a 1 - 1 ration of consumption and global resources are in the scarier regions of africa.
FWIW, I scored in the low european range, even though I live in the USA - we are avid recyclers, we have one econo car, but usually walk or take public transport (parkings a nightmare anyway), etc.
People who deny global warming are just a bunch of dopes who don't get it. HOWEVER:
The big problem is population. And EVERYONE (left, right, center, black, white and in between) needs to recognise that the destruction we wreak is proprotional to our numbers. We need to reduce our population, and do so soon.
However, rapid population declines (from disease or nuclear war) would cause incredible and unnecessary suffering. So we have to figure out a way to decrease our numbers rationally and gradually and globally. And we need to start that ASAP.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
A proposal to implement a planned economy directed by government.
Well, that's not what I'm arguing for.
I do however like the idea of taxing it (it's one of the few kinds of taxes that make sense to me.) Tax it through the roof, and tell people that next year, the taxes will be even higher.
That's the way to encourage conservation and the creation of alternative energy sources. Make it clear that oil's days are numbered.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Additionally the reporting within the article, does not seem unduly unbiased. Maybe its just me, but any reporter who calls a report "cockamamie galimatias", should have evidence for why it is "cockamamie galimatias". As a computer simulation it is agreed, that the information may be inaccurate. However, it may be accurate.
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.
This doesn't really suggest that the information is inaccurate, it suggests that he falsified the information or rules of the simulation to give a different outlook. Mistakes are one thing, that is something else altogether.
1st Problem, Computer Simulation and no relations found between a Greenhouse Effect and Species Extinction. Well I think it is a given, the article accepts "most aspects of global warming theory", I imagine that means the guy actually accepts that the earth warms up. Some animals are not as adaptable as others when it comes to temperature change. The article at this point kind of infers that since none of the evidence is proved, that the possibility does not exist. Well, the report was a projection. Not a highlight of the links.
2nd Problem Over a length of time projects a 15 percent to 37 percent extinction, the main problem with the New Republic article is that it uses the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a figure for dismissing the figures out of hand, yet the figures obtained form the are not over a 50 year period, additionally I could find no records of any attempt to project these figures. As such, I can see that the figures were of the redlist, showing a yearly risk percentage, of which not all were evaluated and even the category mammals showed a 6% risk for last year.
3rd Problem namely, that past episodes of global warming have not produced the mass-extinction that the Thomas computer models project. As mentioned in the article, this has happened over the past century, a significant change, but possibly not quite the change needed to curtail the lives of some. It is likely however that further changes will exacerbate the problem. Additionally, it is significantly hard to determine whether a species is extinct, unless we are aware of its existance. That however is pure speculation as is much of this article. It also mentions that the temperature change speculated in 2100 is 3-6 degrees (while complaining that the projections are not exact enough, it seems the article writer forgot his previous statement about projections). This allowing for division by two, works out to be either 1.5 or 3 degrees adding on the previous change of 1 degree, well thats over the figures he uses to compare with European temperatures rose naturally by one or two degrees at the end of the "Little Ice Age" in Europe. At that time however, IUCN was not really available to provide figures about mass extinctions. People were more concerned with their own survival.
There are further points but I'm too tired and this has turned out longer than I expected.
I do accept that computer simulations can be dodgy, however you do really need compare like with like figures. A comparison of 50 years against 1 is not a good comparison.
The article does state "The IUCN's 12,259 estimate is plenty worrying in itself, and habitat loss is plenty worrying in itself.".
However the IUCN's projection is based on existing figures, these could rise or lower due to external factors, they are simply based on previous records. Additionally they are due to a threat by other organisms, maybe the
If it's not caused by man, then there's not much we could do to stop it anyway.
WTF? Lots of things that are caused by things other than man can stopped (or adapted to, or modified) by man.
example: Dog bites man. This was not caused by man. But, clever tool-using ape that he is, man can devise a muzzle to stop it.
example: The river floods the village every spring. Not caused by man. But, clever tool-using ape that he is, man can build a dam or construct a levee so that the river does not flood the village every spring.
Why should global warming be any different? Humans have been messing with their environment since before they were humans. Some of the results have been good. Some have been bad. Most have been both, depending on where you sit. If global warming is destroying us or things important to us (whether they be our livelihoods, our health, or fuzzy little animals) then it makes sense to at least try to do something about it. Even if we didn't start the problem (and there's a heap of indicators say we did).
A friend of mine frequently uses the old adage "It doesn't matter whose fault it is. It only matters whose problem it is." Never has it been more true.
"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...
Strange that a science fiction author seems to understand the scientific method better than most scientists. Michael Crichton's lecture Aliens Cause Global Warming shows the potenital source of all these massive death and doom predictions, historically. Like Mr Crichton, I do not claim to say that man has no impact on the environment. But rushing to fix a problem that may only be caused by numerical modeling and financial politics is something we should think twice about.
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
Why aren't we fighting tooth and nail to try and save our planet, our resources and ultimately our way of life?
Simple. How do you fight an unknown enemy? There is some evidience that suggests that the world was much warmer 200 years ago. Mostly from sparce scientific data and anecdotal evidience. Maybe humanity has lived in a cyclic world of heat and cold, and just never noticed until they started keeping records of it.
If we run around like chickens with their heads cut off, we'll never accomplish anything. We DO have time to study the issues and come up with a solution rather than going on an environmental witch hunt.
~~~
Click here, you know you wanna!
Part of the problem is that we're like a blind person at the controls of a motor vehicle. We know the vehicles moving, and that's a pretty bad thing as the outcome can only be messy. But there is one control which will fix the problem and many that will either not improve the situation appreciably or possibly make the situation much worse. God forbid we should find the accelerator rather than the brake!
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
This is not true. You can look at the atmospheric CO2 concentrations before and after any major eruption in the last 50 years (the time during which CO2 has been continually monitored around the world) and see that the amount of CO2 you are talking about was not released into the atmosphere.
Over the past 100 years, fossil fuel burning has released somewhere around 170 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere. If a volcanic eruption released this much carbon, it would increase the CO2 concentration from 360 parts per million to 440 parts per million. That didn't happen.
You can also go back 500,000 years using glacial ice cores and see that the CO2 concentration never approached its current value during that time, even though there were many portions of that time span during which volcanic activity was much greater than it is today.
Also, water vapor is a more effective greenhouse substance than CO2
But the concentration of water vapor is limited by the saturation vapor pressure. If I dump a whole lot of water vapor into the atmosphere, the excess will precipitate out. The residence time of a water vapor molecule is quite short.
On the other hand, CO2 is not a vapor at room temperature, it's a gas. Its atmospheric residence time is much longer, so CO2 emitted today will be around for 50-100 years.
Finally, becauee small warming caused by increased CO2 causes the saturation vapor pressure of water vapor to rise, the water vapor effect amplifies the effect of CO2, causing approximately double the warming we would see with CO2 alone. This has been experimentally verified in studies of the troposphere following the Mt. Pinatubo eruption.
Finally, I would point out that chemical analysis of glacial ice cores demonstrates that over the past 500,000 years, whenever CO2 concentrations were high, temperatures were high. Whenever CO2 concentrations were low, temperatures were low. During ice ages, CO2 concentrations were exceptionally low. During interglacial periods, CO2 concentrations were high.
Today, CO2 concentrations are about 30% higher than they were during any time in that 500,000 year record. Because the oceans take a long time to heat up, we will not see the full warming due to the current CO2 concentration for many decades, but it is a great stretch to assume that the mechanisms that regulated the ice ages will suddenly stop working and fail to deliver substantial warming over the next century.
the most diversity of species are the hot ones. So I hereby call baloney-sausage on this psuedo-science! And as always, I must conclude by pointing out the earth has been much hotter in the past, and much colder than it is now. Don't like the climate on earth, just wait, it'll change.
... and I wish to moderate this news "-1 Flamebait" or "-1 Troll" or even better - "-1 Moronic".
:D Only reason why I am a computer scientist: it's more profitable and I am also good at it.
Making predictions about extincts based off temperature fluctuations that we don't understand the root cause of but chicken-little it and say it's "global warming" and it's "our fault" is a lot like saying Dubya's a good president.
I have a nice chart of the global temperature over the last 4.3 billion years - it goes up and it goes down, sometimes at rates much higher than it's fluctuating right now. Furthermore 30 years ago we were on a slight down trend IIRC. More likely than not withing 20 years this trent will have leveled off and maybe even by back on the down.
Oh - btw the "we add so much carbon-dioxide.. yada yada yada" to the atmosphere is more alarmism - the average volcanic eruption is more than 40 years worth of everything we put into the atmosphere. Sure we're deforesting to - but last i check cyanobacter [blue-green algae] and plant-like planktons do most of the photosynthesis on the planet. [now before you go off on the oil spills tangent our 'oil spills' contribute less than 10% of total oil-into-ocean leakage each year, and there are even specialized organisms that live off natural oil seepage such as in the Gulf of Mexico).
Who wants to listen to the person who's been chasing for as long as he can remember, and grew up reading as many meteorology books as he can
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
stop lying to us when sufficiently rational reasons exist to bring about change.
Screw the global warming angle. We haven't been keeping accurate measurments of temperature for very long. We don't know how temperature fluctuates with time or how it affects life. It's all hypothetical BS. And it's irrelavent.
We don't need to stop polluting because some animal has a 1 in a million chance of dying out if we don't. We need to stop polluting because it grosses up the planet. Whinning about poor little cute animals dying is like whinning that somebody should stop hording garbage in their house because the cat might die.
You should stop hording trash in your house because it's disgusting and one of the side effects of cleaning up besides not living in filth is that the cat will be more likely to live longer.
"You know, what really perturbs me is that now we're hearing that all the oil is going to be running out soon."
They make oil in labs. And it doesn't take millions of years to do. They used to claim diamonds take millions of years to make as well but by simulating the way diamonds are made, we find out they're created in weeks. We only think oil and diamonds are scare is because of companies like De Beers and because we have the idiotic notion that everything takes millions of years to occur naturally.
It's recently come to light that we may not be fueling our cars with grandma. It may be the result of bacterial waste or something. In other words: an unlimited resource. Diamonds are certainly in no short supply. Nobody even knows how much oil the earth contains. We only know how much is left of the oil we know about and even that's questionable. We're like little children fighting over the "last" brownie when there's a whole other batch cooking in the oven and another one waiting to go in.
But so what if it's unlimited? It's dirtying up our house. It's time to grow up and start picking up our trash and looking for cleaner more efficient ways to get things done.
Lying to us to about running out of things and animals going extinct is just ruining any chance to get people to change. It's all a lie and we're not fooled by it. Animals go extinct often. It's part of natural selection. I find it ironic that people who believe in evolution have such a hard time accepting that the world changes and not always for what we consider the better. Maybe you're not better off without the DooDoo bird but nature voted it off the island. Get over it.
If you'd shut up with the speculation and lies and just shove our noses in our shit, I think there's a good chance we might get house broken.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
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.
heh, it's funny how we always hear about the greatest biomass per acre per 90-120 day period being from hemp from the people who'd like to roll a J while they're powering the turbines. Well, I've seen some other studies which claim impressive numbers for other plants too depending on climate (you can google for them) - so if we make a good way to plants into energy, there's plenty of ways we can get at least 75% of the claimed values of hemp, and plenty of other plants that will grow where hemp won't. So let's go ahead and do it with boring grasses and weeds and sunflowers first, and then someday some country somewhere will do it with hemp with miles and miles of glorious doobage.
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):
Who cares what motivates wackos, environmentalists or coal merchants? Global warming is happening all around us. And so is the science that shows we can at least take the edge off, buy time, to adapt or even keep equilibrium, by quitting some of our worst abuses. Unless *you* are some kind of wacko, getting a check from some carbon pusher, your motivation to survive in a recognizable environment will get you to read more about how you can help us survive, rather than deny our suicidal tendencies.
--
make install -not war
No one credible has said there's 20 years of fossil fuels left, ever. In fact, anyone credible knows there's enough coal to choke us all for generations, if we spend $50:barrell to convert it to petroleum, and kill the sky with all the pollution. But the truth in your fantasy is that a very credible person, Dr. M. King Hubbard has the consensus of the oil economists. In the early 1970s, he predicted that the global peak oil production would come in 2012, after which it will only decline (eventually to zero). As demand increases, the decline will accelerate rapidly. Among other achievements, the economist had previously predicted (in the 1950s) that US production would peak in (I believe) 1973, a 100% accurate prediction.
--
make install -not war
Is there any evidence of mass extinctions in the Climatic Optimum of the early middle ages when temperatures werre warmer by 3 to 6 degrees and Vikings established their flourishing colonies in Greenland?
Is there any evidence of mass extinctions in the Little Ice Age of 1645-1715 where temperatures were 2 to 4 degrees colder?
Not to mention that many scientists doubt the fact that there is any significant warming and claim that when the samples tainted by local city hot spots are removed there is nothing that registers above the noise.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
The study looked at a defined population of species, and then extrapolated the results. This isn't unusual and is one of the reasons for the tolerance in the headline figures.
Or do you think they'd study everything on planet earth ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
This is a very important point that people always seem to miss. They talk about the human race evolving, or evolution doing this or that as if it will happen in their lifetime. Biological evolution works over millions of years people. Yes, I know there are some limited ways in which evolution takes place on smaller time scales, but I'm talking about changes that could be noticed by someone who is not an expert studying a particular species. For the most part, such evolution is too slow to have made any difference over all of recorded human history. Interference by humans (intentional or not) has taken over, evolution as it has occured since the beginning of life is largely over.
Which is more likely in say, the next 300 years:
a) Natural evolution substantially modifies species or creates new ones.
b) Human technology reaches the point where we re-engineer everything as we see fit and evolution is a moot point.
c) We destroy the whole damn planet.
Of these, I think a) is the least likely. Wipe out those species, and neither you nor your descendants thousands of years in the future will ever see new ones (unless they engineer them).
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.
According to Sir David King, the British governments chief scientific adviser , the number of people in Britain at a high risk of flooding was expected to more than double to nearly 3.5 million by 2080, and damage to properties could run to tens of billions of pounds every year yet the UK is only responsible for only about 2% of the world's emissions. The US, with just 4% of the world's population, produced more than 20%. The UK has asked the world's developed economies to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60% of 1990 levels by about 2050, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate but despite declaring support for the UNFCC's objectives, the US had failed to ratify the Kyoto accord for emission reductions and "refused to countenance any remedial action now or in the future." Sir David also stated that global warming is a far greater threat to the world then global terrorism (and its easy enough to look at the deaths that have occurred in Europe over the last 10 years that are directly attributable to the unusually hot weather and make the case). We Brits (stupidly in my opinion) have supported the American actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and continue to do so. It would be a good thing if you returned the favour.
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...
Virtually Extinct
By Iain Murray Published Tech Central Station
It seems that virtually every news organ in the English language has carried the story of new scientific claims published in Nature magazine that by 2050 over a million species will be doomed to extinction owing to the effects of global warming. Yet few of them realized how flimsy the story actually is. Writing on another claim of mass extinctions almost two years ago, I said, "This area of research is prone to wild exaggerations," and here we have another one.
There are several reasons this claim should be laughed out of the court of public opinion. First, the research doesn't say what the researchers themselves claim. They have extrapolated to all species a model that looked at only 1,103 species in certain areas (243 of those species were South African proteaceae, a family of evergreen shrubs and trees). For one thing, we don't know how many species there are -- estimates vary from 2 million to 80 million -- and have only documented 1.6 million. However, assuming the 14 million figure widely used in the press reports is anywhere near accurate, the sample size is a mere 0.008 percent of the total species population of the planet, with certain species vastly over-represented (there are only 1,000 species of proteaceae on the planet). All the researchers have demonstrated is that, if their model is correct, certain species in certain habitats will run a risk of extinction. Extrapolating to the entire planet from this small, unrepresentative sample is simply invalid. So when the lead researcher told the Washington Post, "We're not talking about the occasional extinction -- we're talking about 1.25 million species. It's a massive number," he was guilty at the very least of over-enthusiasm, if not outright exaggeration.
This problem would be devastating enough for the claims, if it wasn't the case that the model on which the calculations are made is itself suspect. It relies on the 'species-area relationship,' the idea that smaller areas support fewer species. A researcher at the evocatively-titled Golden Toad Laboratory for Conservation in Puentoarenas, Costa Rica, writing a commentary on the study for Nature, called this "one of ecology's few ironclad laws." The trouble is that there are many exceptions to this supposedly ironclad law. The wholesale deforestation of the Eastern United States, for example, seems only to have caused the extinction of one species of bird. While in Puerto Rico, the island's loss of 99 percent of its forest cover caused the loss of 7 out of 60 species, but after the deforestation the number of bird species on the island actually increased to 97. The species-area relationship (plotted as a linear function in 1859) seems to be a poor model on which to base extinction rates.
So the model is suspect and the extrapolation invalid. What about the link to global warming? The researchers assume that global warming will reduce habitat. Yet this isn't the case. The earth is not shrinking. The reduction of one area of habitat does not mean that it is replaced by void. Other habitats expand. And so far, all the evidence we have points not to desertification or other changes to less hospitable climates as a result of global warming. Instead, the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere seems to have led to a six percent increase in the amount of vegetation on the earth. The Amazon rain forests accounted for 42 percent of the growth. To model only reductions in habitats and not expansions accounted for by global warming stacks the deck. The researchers created a model that dictated that global warming will cause extinctions. Surprise, surprise! When they ran the model that's exactly the result they got.
Thank goodness for the New York Times, whose writer John Gorman was careful enough to note the limitations of the study. While others talked about millions of extinctions, he said, "By 2050, the scientists say, if current warming trends continue, 15 to 37 percent of the 1,103 species they studi
'nuff said.
That argument makes no sense to me. You've just described why people play the lottery, too.
The emperor is naked.
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.
Gregg Easterbrook has a good column (The 'EasterBlogg') on why this is nonsense:
http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml
Basically we've had climate change of this type fairly recently, and no mass extinctions besides what we've caused by chopping up various creatures to make our gonads bigger. Actually Easterbrook didn't make that last point, but his article is well worth a read.
Cheers, Paul
If I get to drive my SUV, mini van, or hummer when I could otherwise drive a car.
After all, I am too fat from my supersized meals and 3 quarts a day of soft drinks to comfortably climb climb into a car instead of a truck.
I also have to keep up with fashion. Driving a car is just not fashionable. I know its an inanimate object but it is just not "masculine" the way a hummer is. Who I am as a person has nothing to do with my qualities or accomplishments. Its about how fashionable my vehicale is.
If the planet is turned into a shit hole for my children and grand children then so be it.
</sarcasm>
Steve
The vast majority of scientists agree...
If you have to rely on voting patterns, you're not talking about science, you're talking about politics.
If you're talking about science, then you necessarily must have a falsifiable prediction to discuss, the truth of which can be objectively determined. "Majorities" are not part of the scientific method. Proof is.
Any chance that the human kind is among those 15-37 percent? Because that would solve everything. At least for awhile - until next inteligent parasite would come.
Less is more !
Tell us please, where do al the CO2 we produce (that was not there to start with) go?
Exercise: Take any small scale closed system, like the Biosphere project a few years back.
Pump in lots and lots of C02, as indeed did happen in Biosphere since they underestimated just how much the humans would respirate within.
Result: Bigger greener faster reproducing plants, and pretty much stable C02 levels. As, if you know any plant biology, really oughn't to be a terrible shock.
Contributory evidence that this observable effect does indeed scale up to the larger closed system we generally refer to as "Earth" comes from the demonstrated halts and reversals in desertification over the last four decades, for instance. (Helps to be old enough to remember the '70s when desertification was the EcoDisaster Du Jour for the bunny-hugging crowd, here.) Meanwhile, the Chicken Little global warming models that everybody gets their panties in a bunch over completely ignore this, even though it's the most obvious first-order effect that shows up in an actual experiment.
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.
postmodernsideshow.com
Medium range weather forecasting models (such as ECMWF don't even bother to accurately model those things (such as sea-ice cover and the atmospheric mixing / dispersion of greenhouses gases) which vary on time scales longer than a month -- over short timescales, they're irrelevant. But they do resolve small scale atmospheric eddies, which can cause freak localised weather conditions.
Climate models,such as HadCM3, need to model the slowly varying terms, but individual small scale features can be parameterised as an ensemble average.
The equations are different and most importantly the time scales over which the key parameters vary are different, so the sensitivity to initial conditions comes into play on totally different timescales.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
24 hour weather reports, at their heart, consist of looking 24 hours 'upwind' and seeing what is happening there. They get refined by looking at factors that mogh steer teh weather differently than over the past, and that might change the state of that particualr observed weather. Climate predictis are entirely differnt, and one hell of a lot more reliable. I can pretty absolutely predict that the climate in Death valley is gonna be hot and dry in the summer, that the climate in December in Northern California is gonna consist of periods of cold and dry interspersed with periods of cold and damp, and so on.