Time Magazine: How climate change is causing a new age of extinction

[RedEarth]

In 2007, the IPCC warned that as global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5°C , model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe. That is a temperature rise over pre-industrial levels of a bit more than 4.0°C. Since we are facing a much greater warming than that (see “M.I.T. joins climate realists, doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C” and “Hadley Center: “Catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path“), we are presumably facing extinctions beyond the high end of that range.

Time focuses on what is happening right now. Here are some notable, quotable excerpts:


There have been five extinction waves in the planet’s history — including the Permian extinction 250 million years ago, when an estimated 70% of all terrestrial animals and 96% of all marine creatures vanished, and, most recently, the Cretaceous event 65 million years ago, which ended the reign of the dinosaurs. Though scientists have directly assessed the viability of fewer than 3% of the world’s described species, the sample polling of animal populations so far suggests that we may have entered what will be the planet’s sixth great extinction wave. And this time the cause isn’t an errant asteroid or megavolcanoes. It’s us.

Forests razed can grow back, polluted air and water can be cleaned — but extinction is forever. And we’re not talking about losing just a few species. In fact, conservationists quietly acknowledge that we’ve entered an age of triage, when we might have to decide which species can truly be saved. The worst-case scenarios of habitat loss and climate change — and that’s the pathway we seem to be on — show the planet losing hundreds of thousands to millions of species, many of which we haven’t even discovered yet. The result could be a virtual genocide of much of the animal world and an irreversible impoverishment of our planet. Humans would survive, but we would have doomed ourselves to what naturalist E.O. Wilson calls the Eremozoic Era — the Age of Loneliness.

http://climateprogress.org/2009/04/09/time-magazine-how-climate-change-is-causing-a-new-age-of-extinction/

[Teaser]

1. so these other species aren't willing to tough it out, eh?

more earth for me, then. cool.

[glowing]

2. I would have to say that monitoring species and extinction is a much better

measure of our human impact on the earth.. from pollutants to roads to deforestation to temperature changes.. I'm glad there are a couple of seed caches around the globe.. we really may need them to replenish one day.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

3. Just a question, what will nuclear winter do to the world?

It would happen quick also.

[jody]

4. IMO Time is no longer the credible source that I grew up with a few decades ago. n/t

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. And what is not credible in this story? nt

[Pastiche423]

6. K&R!