Quote:Climate change is rapidly becoming a crisis that defies hyperbole.
For all the sound and fury of climate change denialists, self-deluding politicians and a very bewildered global public, the science behind climate change is rock solid while the impacts – observed on every ecosystem on the planet – are occurring faster in many parts of the world than even the most gloomy scientists predicted.
Given all this, it’s logical to assume life on Earth – the millions of species that cohabitate our little ball of rock in space – would be impacted. But it still feels unnerving to discover that this is no longer about just polar bears; it’s not only coral reefs and sea turtles or pikas and penguins; it about practically everything – including us.
Including us.
Quote:There has been a massive under-reporting of these impacts.
“It is reasonable to suggest that most species on Earth have been impacted by climate change in some way or another,” said Bret Scheffers with the University of Florida. “Some species are negatively impacted and some species positively impacted.”
Scheffers is the lead author of a landmark Science
study from last year that found that current warming (just one degree Celisus) has already left a discernible mark on 77 of 94 different ecological processes, including species’ genetics, seasonal responses, overall distribution, and even morphology – i.e. physical traits including body size and shape.
Just digest that for a minute. AGW has even affected genomes.
Quote:But the fact that so many species are undergoing genetic changes doesn’t mean they are successfully adapting to our warmer world.
“In many instances genetic diversity is being lost due to climate change, not just in nature but also in resources that humans depend on such as crops and timber,” Scheffers said. “It is important to not confuse species responses and adaptation as an indicator that everything will be okay.”
More studies:
Quote:a
study in Nature Climate Change this February that found that 47 percent of land mammals and 23 percent of birds have already suffered negative impacts from climate change. In all, nearly 700 species in just these two groups are flagging under climate change, according to this research.
We now have evidence that entire ecosystems, some the size of entire states within the USA, are changing.
Brett Scheffers
“There has been a massive under-reporting of these impacts,” co-author James Watson with the University of Queensland said in a press release, pointing out that the IUCN Red List only considers seven percent of mammals and four percent of birds as threatened by climate change and severe weather. The IUCN often drags behind the latest science – many species wait decades for an update while most species on Earth have never been evaluated.
So AGW is impacting life and we don’t know in detail how threatened many species are.
Quote:A
third study – this one in PLOS Biology – found that more than 450 plants and animals have undergone local extinctions due to climate change. Local extinction, as its name implies, doesn’t mean the species are gone for good, but that they vanish from a portion of their range. For example, the barren ground shrew has seen its range constrict aggressively as its tundra home warms.
“If global warming continues, species that cannot change or move quickly enough may go globally extinct,” the study’s author, John Wiens with the University of Arizona, said.
Such global extinctions have already happened.
Good that concern about AGW is “so last century” according to Rider, we won’t have to worry about the wide damage to ecology and genomes is happening.
Bulldust! AGW is a first order issue and we can stop emitting GHGs.
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The impact of AGW (Read 1522 times)
