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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.
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
~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
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?
"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."
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.
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.
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..
About 100% of living organisms die off every few hundred years. From the Zoology course I just finished (I'm no expert), it takes a whole lot for a new species to develop. Just from your own experience - for wildly-reproducing fast-dying species, like say the common cold, you get one new noticeable strain every few years - and that's actually from a lot of sources, so the mutation rate there is actually much less often for a new true species to develop. A couple hundred years would not create 15-30% more species there.
For insects, the process would be slower - they only reproduce one to a few times a year, with an order of magnitude less reproduction, because they tend to live more successfully than bacteria. If you have ever studies fruit flies in a science class, it's not rare to see mutation - but to see a beneficial mutation is rare, and to have those build up to the point where groups grow so different they cannot reproduce together would take a long time. We don't tend to see completely new species of insects pop up in areas that have been observed... only shifts in populations. A couple hundred years does not create 15-30% more species there.
Mammals take MUCH longer to reproduce and live. In our own recorded history, we've never found groups of humans that could not inter-breed. In our history of dog breeding, it takes dozens of generations of carefully controlled breeding to even intelligently select one trait in one species of dog, often at cost. A couple hundred years would not even come close to 1% more species there.
I didn't study plants, but I don't believe they multiply or mutate at a higher rate than those animals.
Perhaps the study is wrong - but it's warnings ARE more dire than is gong to be fixed with natural diversification, from what little I know.
Ryan Fenton
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?
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.
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?
> 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
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!
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.
BTW, my field is ichthyology, specificly the ichthyology of fluvial desert enviroments. The *main* limiting factor to a species distribution is not directly enviromental ( that is the organism can live in far greater range then it is found in), but competition from organisms more suited to the marginal enviroments. The study is flawed ( at least from cursory reading) because it does not take this into account. The other thing that the artical does not take into account is the introduction of organisms into new areas attributable to human activity. This is normaly concidered detrimental, but it can have positive aspects. An example is Ameca splendens, a fish well established in florida ( and the aquarium trade) but concidered extinct in its native waters.
The final problem is that the authors are relying on a meterological model that is not conciderd very likely by meterologists. In fact, most models show a wide variety of changes, most related to more dynamic weather. This makes sence as most of the extra energy will be goining into driving weather and not just increasing average global temerature. The earths climatic systems have a huge amount of negative feed back. I happen to be aware of this sort of thing becaus my last area of study was the effects of micro-weather on fish distributions.
I, for one, am much more concerned about the direct effects of human activity on animal populations. City heat island effect, ground water depleation, irrigation, river daming, deforestation, and deliberate non-native organisim introductions ( though the later is benificial to the introduced species, it can be hell on natives, especialy in areas severly modified by human activity) will do more damage in the next 50 years then incresed atmospheric CO2.
One more thing; Most of the models I have looked at indicate that the enviroment of the part of the world I am from, will actualy return to more historicaly normal conditions. This could include the expansion of a very special subtype of the sonoran that is rare in the US, though was not so 10K years ago. This would include the expansion of the range of some realy cool species.
"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...
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 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):
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.
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.