In the news:
By IBTimes Staff Reporter | August 19, 2011 6:07 AM EDT
In response to rising temperatures, many species of plants and animals are migrating to higher altitudes and latitudes, according to a new study by the Department of Biology at the University of York.
* (Photo: Reuters / Elvira Veksler)<br>Polar bears became the first species to be classified by the U.S. as threatened due to global warming.
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(Photo: Reuters / Elvira Veksler)
Polar bears became the first species to be classified by the U.S. as threatened due to global warming.
Along with migration, researchers have also identified a new phenomenon called reshuffling as shifting species comes in contact with other species in a new pattern. The consequences for the health of ecosystems are unknown.
The study reveals that species have moved towards the poles where the conditions are cooler at almost three times the normal rate and also towards higher altitudes at twice the previous known rate.
An analysis of more than 200 different species of animals and plants by the research team has shown a specific trend of movement. On an average, species have shifted to higher elevations at 12.2 meters per decade and, more dramatically, to higher latitudes at 17.6 kilometers per decade.
"These changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the equator at around 20 cm per hour, for every hour of the day, for every day of the year. This has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue for at least the rest of this century," stated project leader Chris Thomas, professor of conservation biology at York.
While for some species, global warming made them shift to new, cooler locales, some others moved to new zones to colonize.
"We were able to calculate how far species might have been expected to move so that the temperatures they experience today are the same as the ones they used to experience, before global warming kicked in. Remarkably, species have on average moved towards the poles as rapidly as expected," stated co-author Dr Ralf Ohlemüller, from Durham University.
There are many underlying implications of this study related to global warming and species extinction.
"Realization of how fast species are moving because of climate change indicates that many species may indeed be heading rapidly towards extinction, where climatic conditions are deteriorating. On the other hand, other species are moving to new areas where the climate has become suitable; so there will be some winners as well as many losers," said Thomas.
Animals migrating due to Global Warming
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Re: Animals migrating due to Global Warming
My mom doesn't beleive in global warming!
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Re: Animals migrating due to Global Warming
Here is a my take on it.
Fact: Global Temperatures are rising and have been for thousands of years (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming). The planet was in an ice age 12,500 years ago and now we are not.
Those challenging the question of mankind's impact on global warming often state that temperatures are rising but that this is all part of a natural cycle. So the question raised here is: What is man's impact on Global warming?
Fact: The effect known as "The Greenhouse Effect" is real (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse). If you don't think so sit in your car on a sunny summer day with your windows rolled up and try to explain why the temperature in your car is 40-60 deg F higher than the outside temperature. The reason of course is the greenhouse effect.
Fact: The gas Carbon Dioxide (chemical symbol is CO2 which stands for one carbon and two oxygen) is a greenhouse causing gas. In other words the presence of this gas causes the greenhouse effect. Simple high school experiments have proven this. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas)
Fact: Ice in the Antarctic builds up in layers like rings in a tree where each layer is 1 year of time. Scientist have drilled out ice cores and measured the air trapped bubbles in these layers. So we know by measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in these trapped air bubbles on average how much carbon dioxide has been in the air going back almost 650,000 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm
This article http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... ntrations/ shows a graphs of Carbon Dioxide going back about 650000 years. The important part of this is that the Carbon Dioxide levels never went above 300 parts per million (ppm) for all this time (650,000 years) well establishing what normal cycles are. See the graph below taken from this article.
Notice that the blue line never goes above 300 parts per million (ppm). In the past 100 years or so we have sky rocketed to a current level of 395 parts per million (ppm). For current Carbon Dioxide levels see http://co2now.org/ This shows without question that the world Carbon Dioxide levels are way outside of normal cycles. Therefore this is not a natural cycle that is part of a continuing progression occurring for thousands of years. It is an abnormal cycle way outside of normal bounds linked to Carbon Dioxide sources introduced by mankind.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ) came to a conclusion which is considered best consensus thinking on the science of climate change. Who is the IPCC? It is a scientific intergovernmental body tasked with reviewing the most recent scientific data on this topic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergover ... ate_Change
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body[1][2] tasked with reviewing and assessing the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It provides the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, notably the risk of climate change caused by human activity. The panel was first established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), two organizations of the United Nations—an action confirmed on 6 December 1988 by the United Nations General Assembly through Resolution 43/53. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore.[3] "
Here are the results of their most recent conclusions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific ... ate_change
"Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007
Main article: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
In February 2007, the IPCC released a summary of the forthcoming Fourth Assessment Report. According to this summary, the Fourth Assessment Report finds that human actions are "very likely" the cause of global warming, meaning a 90% or greater probability. Global warming in this case is indicated by an increase of 0.75 degrees in average global temperatures over the last 100 years.[6]
The New York Times reported that “the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is 'unequivocal' and that human activity is the main driver, very likely' causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950”.[7]
A retired journalist for The New York Times, William K. Stevens wrote: “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the likelihood was 90 percent to 99 percent that emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, spewed from tailpipes and smokestacks, were the dominant cause of the observed warming of the last 50 years. In the panel’s parlance, this level of certainty is labeled 'very likely'. Only rarely does scientific odds-making provide a more definite answer than that, at least in this branch of science, and it describes the endpoint, so far, of a progression.”. "[8]
So why is there controversy? Why is it that people "don't believe"? The reason for this in my opinion is that this is in fact "An Inconvenient Truth". There are some very large businesses that stand to lose profits if we begin acting on this in any way. These businesses are just protecting their vested interest by creating confusion and controversy on this topic. It is the same approach as was used by the tobacco companies when it was realized that cigarettes were not good for health.
From a Rolling Stone article interviewing Al Gore on the topic,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... l-20110622
This script, of course, is not entirely new: A half-century ago, when Science and Reason established the linkage between cigarettes and lung diseases, the tobacco industry hired actors, dressed them up as doctors, and paid them to look into television cameras and tell people that the linkage revealed in the Surgeon General's Report was not real at all. The show went on for decades, with more Americans killed each year by cigarettes than all of the U.S. soldiers killed in all of World War II.
This time, the scientific consensus is even stronger. It has been endorsed by every National Academy of science of every major country on the planet, every major professional scientific society related to the study of global warming and 98 percent of climate scientists throughout the world. In the latest and most authoritative study by 3,000 of the very best scientific experts in the world, the evidence was judged "unequivocal."
...
Part of the script for this show was leaked to The New York Times as early as 1991. In an internal document, a consortium of the largest global-warming polluters spelled out their principal strategy: "Reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact." Ever since, they have been sowing doubt even more effectively than the tobacco companies before them.
To sell their false narrative, the Polluters and Ideologues have found it essential to undermine the public's respect for Science and Reason by attacking the integrity of the climate scientists. That is why the scientists are regularly accused of falsifying evidence and exaggerating its implications in a greedy effort to win more research grants, or secretly pursuing a hidden political agenda to expand the power of government. Such slanderous insults are deeply ironic: extremist ideologues — many financed or employed by carbon polluters — accusing scientists of being greedy extremist ideologues.
After World War II, a philosopher studying the impact of organized propaganda on the quality of democratic debate wrote, "The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false."
I guess one final comment on all this might be this, since global warming is real, and since mankind is contributing to it (we are creating carbon dioxide gases and other green house gases and very importantly we are cutting down trees which are natural consumers of CO2), what is the impact of all this? and what is our responsibility? I think this part gets a little more speculative and is the hard part to predict. One thought on this would be that since a 2 deg C change in average world temperatures is the difference between Cleveland being warm and sunny or Cleveland being under a mile of ice then why would we want to take a chance with our health and safety by performing this sort of experimental change on our environment on such a large global scale?
Fact: Global Temperatures are rising and have been for thousands of years (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming). The planet was in an ice age 12,500 years ago and now we are not.
Those challenging the question of mankind's impact on global warming often state that temperatures are rising but that this is all part of a natural cycle. So the question raised here is: What is man's impact on Global warming?
Fact: The effect known as "The Greenhouse Effect" is real (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse). If you don't think so sit in your car on a sunny summer day with your windows rolled up and try to explain why the temperature in your car is 40-60 deg F higher than the outside temperature. The reason of course is the greenhouse effect.
Fact: The gas Carbon Dioxide (chemical symbol is CO2 which stands for one carbon and two oxygen) is a greenhouse causing gas. In other words the presence of this gas causes the greenhouse effect. Simple high school experiments have proven this. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas)
Fact: Ice in the Antarctic builds up in layers like rings in a tree where each layer is 1 year of time. Scientist have drilled out ice cores and measured the air trapped bubbles in these layers. So we know by measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in these trapped air bubbles on average how much carbon dioxide has been in the air going back almost 650,000 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm
This article http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... ntrations/ shows a graphs of Carbon Dioxide going back about 650000 years. The important part of this is that the Carbon Dioxide levels never went above 300 parts per million (ppm) for all this time (650,000 years) well establishing what normal cycles are. See the graph below taken from this article.
- 2011-08-22_063019.jpg (51.79 KiB) Viewed 4462 times
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ) came to a conclusion which is considered best consensus thinking on the science of climate change. Who is the IPCC? It is a scientific intergovernmental body tasked with reviewing the most recent scientific data on this topic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergover ... ate_Change
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body[1][2] tasked with reviewing and assessing the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change. It provides the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences, notably the risk of climate change caused by human activity. The panel was first established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), two organizations of the United Nations—an action confirmed on 6 December 1988 by the United Nations General Assembly through Resolution 43/53. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President of the United States Al Gore.[3] "
Here are the results of their most recent conclusions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific ... ate_change
"Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007
Main article: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
In February 2007, the IPCC released a summary of the forthcoming Fourth Assessment Report. According to this summary, the Fourth Assessment Report finds that human actions are "very likely" the cause of global warming, meaning a 90% or greater probability. Global warming in this case is indicated by an increase of 0.75 degrees in average global temperatures over the last 100 years.[6]
The New York Times reported that “the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is 'unequivocal' and that human activity is the main driver, very likely' causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950”.[7]
A retired journalist for The New York Times, William K. Stevens wrote: “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the likelihood was 90 percent to 99 percent that emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, spewed from tailpipes and smokestacks, were the dominant cause of the observed warming of the last 50 years. In the panel’s parlance, this level of certainty is labeled 'very likely'. Only rarely does scientific odds-making provide a more definite answer than that, at least in this branch of science, and it describes the endpoint, so far, of a progression.”. "[8]
So why is there controversy? Why is it that people "don't believe"? The reason for this in my opinion is that this is in fact "An Inconvenient Truth". There are some very large businesses that stand to lose profits if we begin acting on this in any way. These businesses are just protecting their vested interest by creating confusion and controversy on this topic. It is the same approach as was used by the tobacco companies when it was realized that cigarettes were not good for health.
From a Rolling Stone article interviewing Al Gore on the topic,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... l-20110622
This script, of course, is not entirely new: A half-century ago, when Science and Reason established the linkage between cigarettes and lung diseases, the tobacco industry hired actors, dressed them up as doctors, and paid them to look into television cameras and tell people that the linkage revealed in the Surgeon General's Report was not real at all. The show went on for decades, with more Americans killed each year by cigarettes than all of the U.S. soldiers killed in all of World War II.
This time, the scientific consensus is even stronger. It has been endorsed by every National Academy of science of every major country on the planet, every major professional scientific society related to the study of global warming and 98 percent of climate scientists throughout the world. In the latest and most authoritative study by 3,000 of the very best scientific experts in the world, the evidence was judged "unequivocal."
...
Part of the script for this show was leaked to The New York Times as early as 1991. In an internal document, a consortium of the largest global-warming polluters spelled out their principal strategy: "Reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact." Ever since, they have been sowing doubt even more effectively than the tobacco companies before them.
To sell their false narrative, the Polluters and Ideologues have found it essential to undermine the public's respect for Science and Reason by attacking the integrity of the climate scientists. That is why the scientists are regularly accused of falsifying evidence and exaggerating its implications in a greedy effort to win more research grants, or secretly pursuing a hidden political agenda to expand the power of government. Such slanderous insults are deeply ironic: extremist ideologues — many financed or employed by carbon polluters — accusing scientists of being greedy extremist ideologues.
After World War II, a philosopher studying the impact of organized propaganda on the quality of democratic debate wrote, "The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false."
I guess one final comment on all this might be this, since global warming is real, and since mankind is contributing to it (we are creating carbon dioxide gases and other green house gases and very importantly we are cutting down trees which are natural consumers of CO2), what is the impact of all this? and what is our responsibility? I think this part gets a little more speculative and is the hard part to predict. One thought on this would be that since a 2 deg C change in average world temperatures is the difference between Cleveland being warm and sunny or Cleveland being under a mile of ice then why would we want to take a chance with our health and safety by performing this sort of experimental change on our environment on such a large global scale?
weo
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SouthernStar
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Re: Animals migrating due to Global Warming
webearthonline wrote:stuff
Forgive me if I missed something in the massive spam of science you just posted.(Because I didn't read it.) But I have something to ask.
One main aspect of global warming is the melting of the ice capes and the rising of the sea levels. Firstly when water freezes it expands so if the Arctic Ice caps melt the sea level would be more likely to go down! (If you wish to test this you can put some ice cubes in a glass of water (The ice cannot touch the bottom of the glass) Mark the water) level and then wait for the ice to melt, the water should not have risen.
How is this any different? ._. (I know theres an answer, but dunno what it is >.>)
For science!
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Re: Animals migrating due to Global Warming
SouthernStar wrote:webearthonline wrote:stuff
Forgive me if I missed something in the massive spam of science you just posted.(Because I didn't read it.) But I have something to ask.
One main aspect of global warming is the melting of the ice capes and the rising of the sea levels. Firstly when water freezes it expands so if the Arctic Ice caps melt the sea level would be more likely to go down! (If you wish to test this you can put some ice cubes in a glass of water (The ice cannot touch the bottom of the glass) Mark the water) level and then wait for the ice to melt, the water should not have risen.
How is this any different? ._. (I know theres an answer, but dunno what it is >.>)
Right, the volume of water frozen or in liquid state is roughly the same. However, when the fresh water melts (polar ice caps melting are mostly fresh water) then enough of this could change the salinity of the ocean (the saltiness of it) Why would this matter? One thought is that it could cause the heat pumps which run in the Atlantic Ocean to shutdown which could impact the Gulf Stream current. If this were to happen we could perhaps snap back into a mini or full ice age.
Now the second part of this answer addresses ice which is already above sea level and which is totally fresh water. That would be the ice on Greenland and the Antartic and the like. If that ice melts it will travel from the above sea level location down to the ocean and it WILL cause the sea levels to rise.
So as you can see there are many interesting side effects from all of this.
PS - Regarding reading my post above, I just got an email from someone I respect which included the following comment about the post, "That is one of the most concise, readable and rational reports for understanding the fundamentals of global warming I have ever read. Great footnotes supporting your report, as well."
weo
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Re: Animals migrating due to Global Warming
Quote tornado..... hm? Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense xDwebearthonline wrote:SouthernStar wrote:webearthonline wrote:stuff
Forgive me if I missed something in the massive spam of science you just posted.(Because I didn't read it.) But I have something to ask.
One main aspect of global warming is the melting of the ice capes and the rising of the sea levels. Firstly when water freezes it expands so if the Arctic Ice caps melt the sea level would be more likely to go down! (If you wish to test this you can put some ice cubes in a glass of water (The ice cannot touch the bottom of the glass) Mark the water) level and then wait for the ice to melt, the water should not have risen.
How is this any different? ._. (I know theres an answer, but dunno what it is >.>)
Right, the volume of water frozen or in liquid state is roughly the same. However, when the fresh water melts (polar ice caps melting are mostly fresh water) then enough of this could change the salinity of the ocean (the saltiness of it) Why would this matter? One thought is that it could cause the heat pumps which run in the Atlantic Ocean to shutdown which could impact the Gulf Stream current. If this were to happen we could perhaps snap back into a mini or full ice age.
Now the second part of this answer addresses ice which is already above sea level and which is totally fresh water. That would be the ice on Greenland and the Antartic and the like. If that ice melts it will travel from the above sea level location down to the ocean and it WILL cause the sea levels to rise.
So as you can see there are many interesting side effects from all of this.
PS - Regarding reading my post above, I just got an email from someone I respect which included the following comment about the post, "That is one of the most concise, readable and rational reports for understanding the fundamentals of global warming I have ever read. Great footnotes supporting your report, as well."
I agree with the ice thing, but otherwise I have a nuetral view about the situation, but earlier I found this. (No offense, I just want to argu- err discuss, heheh.)
Some more stuff I found.
Most of you who read this probably did this:
For science!
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webearthonline
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Re: Animals migrating due to Global Warming
How about this, since the last post was propaganda of the type I referred to in my post and since you just copied it from another site, I just deleted it.
If someone wants to post junk like that, fine let them do it on their own sites, but not here.
If you want to discuss, then how about this.
You are aware that the Greenhouse effect is a real effect?
If someone wants to post junk like that, fine let them do it on their own sites, but not here.
If you want to discuss, then how about this.
You are aware that the Greenhouse effect is a real effect?
weo