Global warming threatens millions of species
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Global warming threatens millions of species
18:24 07 January 2004
NewScientist.com news service
Shaoni Bhattacharya
Global warming may drive a quarter of land animals and plants to the edge of extinction by 2050, a major international study has warned.
In the worst case scenario, between a third to a half of land animal and plant species will face extermination. The predictions come from extinction models based on over 1100 species covering a fifth of the Earth's land mass.
The bleak scenarios result from a study by Chris Thomas at the University of Leeds, UK, and colleagues, who have evaluated the impact on species of mild, moderate and severe levels of predicted climate change.
"The absolutely best case scenario - which in my opinion is unrealistic - with the minimum expected climate change and all of the species moving completely into new areas which become suitable for them, means we end up with an estimate of nine per cent facing extinction," Thomas told New Scientist.
This would mean about one million species would be doomed, assuming there are 10 million species in existence.
Solid and sound
"The broad conclusions are very solid, and very sound, and very alarming," says Stuart Pimm, an expert in extinctions and biodiversity at Duke University, North Carolina, US. "It's a hugely important paper."
Previous studies have looked at the effects of global warming on individual species. The new study is the most comprehensive analysis to date, bringing together simulation studies of where species may move in a warmer world.
The news is "not very encouraging", Pimm told New Scientist. "It suggests that species' extinctions following on from global change will broadly be in the same order of magnitude as species lost due to habitat destruction." The World Conservation Union's Red Book lists between 10 and 30 per cent of species as endangered under due to habitat loss.
Thomas says the effects of climate change should be considered as great a threat to biodiversity as the "Big Three" - habitat destruction, invasions by alien species and overexploitation by humans.
He says the study overturns the notion that "climate change might simply result in the reassembling of species around the planet, without them dying out".
Representative sample
Thomas and colleagues around the world statistically modelled the climates in which each of the 1103 species considered currently live. Whole groups of plant and animal species confined to a particular region, for example, the Amazon, were evaluated.
Endangered species would have been included among these, as well as more common species, so Thomas says there is no reason to suppose that the organisms selected are unrepresentative of species generally.
The survival of each species was then modelled under the minimum, mid-range and maximum global warming scenarios predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Every species thrives best in certain conditions involving factors such as temperature and rainfall. So, Thomas says, the question was then: "Where are these same conditions going to be found?"
However, not all species would be physically able to migrate to new locations with equivalent conditions as the Earth hots up. And with lots of species, the models predicted that their new environment would be considerably smaller than their old habitats - a basic tenet of ecology is that smaller areas support fewer species.
Using the mid-range climate predictions, the researchers found that by 2050 between 15 and 37 per cent of the species would be on the "slippery slope" to extinction.
Both Thomas and Pimm agree that to curb climate change, serious and immediate action must be implemented at the highest intergovernmental levels. This would include cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, employing new energy efficient technologies and using strategies to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Journal reference: Nature (vol 427, p 145)
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4545&feedId=climate-change_r...
do you seriously think...
....that you, working on your own, know more about the validity of climate models than teams of people who've been working collaboratively (and competitively) full-time on them for years? Their models are subject to the most rigourous scrutiny imaginable from all disciplines of science. They are NOT "opinion".
Are they going to read your (deliberately?) obscure five paragraphs about molecular properties above, which only says that carbon dioxide and water have different properties and doesn't say what relevance this has, and think "oh of course! Hartlod's right!"
No they aren't, because you aren't writing this for a scientific audience. You're writing it for a concerned lay audience who might not be able to see that you're attempting to blind them with science (actually jargon) and make it seem that the science is unclear (it is not) and that there are credible alternative theories for the data we have (there aren't).
And why would you want to do that?
What amount more of 'scare and innuendo' can be made i wonder?
Has anyone looked at the 'extinctions' involved in the last 'Ice Age'?
Next, realise the entire PREMISE of this (and other greenhouse doom related) 'reports' is based on the near fictional output of supposed 'greenhouse models' that are fed numbers (within application of assumptions) so as to produce an output that is supposedly presenting a 'future'.
It is just not a future that is actually possible within the environment this planet actually presents, with the materials actually presents, none of which can produce a 'greenhouse behavior' even (as outlined by the 'theory) let alone a 'greenhouse effect.
There is no need to fear 'millions' of extinctions. 30 years ago we where told to 'paint the poles black', beware 'global cooling'. At some point the 'irrationalists' need to be sat down 'quietened', or have demanded of them more than expressions of 'opinion'.
See also http://www.climateimc.org/?q=node/312 (with slides also),
With relation to outline of the Cascade of Photons within the atmosphere, consider the following as in addition to the above link.
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Realise that CO2 has in close proximity 3 large 'positive polarities' as nodal centres.
The nodal centres of CO2 will prefer to move apart further, it is only the covalent bonding that produces CO2 with any permanence. Energy interaction with an incident photon will trend to make the inter-nodal distance larger in CO2, a 'more preferred' situation, but the double valence (of disassociated electrons, i.e. relative negative) 'bonds' will restrain and return the nodal centres, to the overall equilibrium 'common state'.
Thus, CO2 tends to undergo the so-named "Quantum Vibrational State" alterations which result in the production of a secondary photon which represent the energy placed into the inter-nodal bond that is 'squeezed' out when the molecular conformation (shape) returns to 'normal' after interaction. There is not a 'kinetic vibration' with any 'kinetic considerations' involved in these Quantum events; they are associated with 'dipole moment' alterations.
The energy NOT expressed in the remitted photon has gone into alteration to the kinetic energy/velocity of the overall molecular unit, in this case of the CO2 molecule.
H2O however only has 1 large and 2 small relative positive centres, the 'desire' to move apart is much lesser. Energy involved in interaction with incident photons is less likely to make an impact on the molecular conformation (shape) as more will be needed to alter conformation, and so is instead directed in to alterations of the overall kinetic energy/velocity of the H2O molecule.
Thus, both CO2 and H2O absorb energy (as seen in slide in files section), but CO2 by the physical PROPERTIES of the molecule trends to remit energy as secondary photons, whilst H2O simply gains kinetic velocity (mostly as an addition to its rotation velocity vector) and moves faster through the atmosphere. It is this that is measured as alterations to 'heat' of H20, which does NOT involve the production of secondary photons
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Your's, Peter K. Anderson a.k.a. Hartlod(tm)
From the PC of Peter K Anderson
E-Mail: Hartlod@bigpond.com
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