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Climate Change Could Wipe Out a Third of Parasite Species, Study Finds (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled, alternative source): Recently, scientists carried out the first large-scale study of what climate change may do to the world's much-loathed parasites. The team came to a startling conclusion: as many as one in three parasite species may face extinction in the next century. As global warming raises the planet's temperature, the researchers found, many species will lose territory in which to survive. Some of their hosts will be lost, too. Researchers have begun carefully studying the roles that parasites play. They make up the majority of the biomass in some ecosystems, outweighing predators sharing their environments by a factor of 20 to 1. For decades, scientists who studied food webs drew lines between species -- between wildebeest and the grass they grazed on, for example, and between the wildebeest and the lions that ate them. In a major oversight, they didn't factor in the extent to which parasites feed on hosts. As it turns out, as much as 80 percent of the lines in a given food web are links to parasites. They are big players in the food supply.
Some researchers had already investigated the fate of a few parasite species, but Colin J. Carlson, lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues wanted to get a global view of the impact of climate change. Some kinds won't lose much in a warming world, the study found. For instance, thorny-headed worms are likely to be protected because their hosts, fish and birds, are common and widespread. But other types, such as fleas and tapeworms, may not be able to tolerate much change in temperature; many others infect only hosts that are facing extinction, as well. In all, roughly 30 percent of parasitic species could disappear, Mr. Carlson concluded. The impact of climate change will be as great or greater for these species as for any others studied so far. The study has been published in Science Advances.
Some researchers had already investigated the fate of a few parasite species, but Colin J. Carlson, lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues wanted to get a global view of the impact of climate change. Some kinds won't lose much in a warming world, the study found. For instance, thorny-headed worms are likely to be protected because their hosts, fish and birds, are common and widespread. But other types, such as fleas and tapeworms, may not be able to tolerate much change in temperature; many others infect only hosts that are facing extinction, as well. In all, roughly 30 percent of parasitic species could disappear, Mr. Carlson concluded. The impact of climate change will be as great or greater for these species as for any others studied so far. The study has been published in Science Advances.
"Fully admitting the models are wrong" is curious - no, make that furious - way to spin that study.
Models are made, data is gathered and compared with the model, models get refined. Welcome to science. That doesn't "admit the models are wrong", merely that there are variables - many of them, in this case - that we don't know with accuracy.
This particular paper suggests - rather tentatively - that "model overestimation of tropospheric warming in the early twenty-first century is partly due to systematic deficiencies in some of the post-2000 external forcings used in the model simulations." That may or may not be correct, but it suggests one way in which the models could be refined.
This is one of the basic tactics of disinformation: misrepresent a legitimate study, secure in the knowledge that everyone who agrees with your point of view will just believe you and not even click on your links (the first of which directs straight back to this page, by the way).
"It's reasonable to assume that the worst predictions from AGW are not going to happen" - now, that is indeed arguable, because "the worst predictions" are made by, frankly, lunatics. Remember "The Day After Tomorrow"? Movie published by Fox (yes, that Fox)? That's not going to happen. There you go, you're vindicated. But still spreading disinformation.
"Fully admitting the models are wrong" is curious - no, make that furious - way to spin that study.
Well, we can actually put a number on it, and in fact the paper does (if you'd actually read it, which you didn't), here is a quote from the paper:
"The probability that multi-decadal internal variability fully explains the asymmetry between the late twentieth and early twenty- first century results is low (between zero and about 9%)."
So there it is. Fully quantified at 9% for your enjoyment.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sure. Tapeworms make great pets - they go where you go, eat what you eat, they're quiet, not messy, etc.
They can also help you lose weight. Some types of parasitic worms suppress the immune system, and can be used to treat autoimmune disorders, including Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, and asthma.
None other than the Father of AGW's name is one that paper, Michael Mann.
Sorry, but not even Michael Mann gets to skip peer review.
Why are you in such a hurry? The truth will come out. In the meantime, just relax, calm down, and have a cup of cocoa.
So there it is. Fully quantified at 9% for your enjoyment.
And ribbed for her pleasure?
Sorry, couldn't resist such a wide-open straight-line. :D
I've been saying the models have been unable to even relatively accurately recreate *past* climate changes with all the data available. What the hell makes anyone think using those models' predictions on future climate as the basis for making massive changes to society that *will* cost many, many lives is even sane, never mind being a 'good idea'?
Humans do not yet have even a significant fraction of the computing power required to model the Earth's climate. It's a massively-chaotic system with more significant variables than we even know about to attempt to measure and include in said models. It would be a much simpler problem to predict the future individual movements of every single fish in the Great Lakes over the next century.
This is all about ideologies, politics, agendas, money, and power. Science takes a distant back seat.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Yes and no. First, modeling a chaotic system is damned hard and is never going to give 100% accurate results. Second, if I am understanding properly, it may mean that it is going to be worse. Probably not, but maybe. Rember the first point, it's damned hard.
I think it reasonable to assume they are good for broad predictions of trends and any very specific estimations are stupid. Yeah, climate is changing. No, we're probably not going to die as a direct result. We can crawl faster than the oceans will rise. We will adapt. It's what we do.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Good joke, of course, but more seriously, we shouldn't be too dismissive of the role played by any major part of the ecosystems, when we don't fully understand the situation. Just as a rather well reported example, there are several indications that the rise in allergies may have a lot to do with the elimination of internal parasites.
Unless you've been saying that in a peer-reviewed paper in a journal of good standing, it matters naught. As your last sentence demonstrates your respect for the scientific method, you might want to apply it to your own criticism of the findings. To not do so is incredibly hypocritical, and only serves to make you look like someone wishing their conclusions are correct, which I'm sure you're not.
Then I'm sure you can cite the climate models that accurately track past climate change without massive adjustments to the raw data.
[crickets]
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The same? What the fuck man? Are you living in a basement? I'm 27 years old living in southern Finland, and the climate most definitely is not 'the same' as it used to be when I was a kid. Winters start a lot later in general. It's normal to have a winter here or there that's warmer and gets less snow, but in since the weather is more unstable now and each year tends to be on average hotter than the last, with nearly every year in the 2000s breaking records, the snow doesn't stay on the ground but melts, which obviously in the long term is doing damage to plants and wildlife whose natural cycle has evolved to deal with proper winter. Looking at meteorological data for Helsinki in the 2000s 13 years have been warmer than the average, while the remaining 3 have been extremely cold, several times colder than the average. Because of those 3 extremely cold winters the average temp has 'only' gone up by 0,5 celsius here in Helsinki but that's an absurdly high figure for less than 2 decades. This essentially means there are no 'normal' winters anymore, where we get a steady amount of snow throughout the winter, It's either bleakishly warm moist and dark, with little or no snow, or extremely fucking cold with 10s of centimeters of snow fucking up all transit and traffic.
This is what climate science has predicted all along: increase in extreme weather on both ends of the scale, and it is most certainly seen - and felt. here. The meteorologists predict that if this keeps going, by the time I'm in my 50s southern Finland may see very little if any snowfall at all during the winter months, which is a dramatic shift for the environment as well as for the mental well being of people (snow coverage reflects light which offsets the darkness of the northern wintertime when we get nearly no sunlight. Without any snow, most of the daytime is essentially black as night during winter months, which leads to increased fatigue and depression).
At the same time globally there are more storms, more flooding and in certain regions increased droughts.
Like damn, it really takes a record amount of stupidity to look at the climate data now and proclaim the climate 'is the same', when people my age can already spot the difference with their own eyes.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead