"Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals 696
An anonymous reader writes "Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming have hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said. Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at the oldest monitoring station in Hawaii, which sets the global benchmark. More than half of plants and a third of animal species are likely to see their living space halved by 2080 if current trends continue."
Re:350ppm (Score:5, Informative)
Try reading the article (Score:5, Informative)
"so I dont see how more co2 will harm plants". Yes you do, you just wanted to do a quick denial thing. From the article:
"An international team of researchers looked at the impacts of rising temperatures on nearly 50,000 common species of plants and animals."
"They looked at both temperature and rainfall records for the habitats that these species now live in and mapped the areas that would remain suitable for them under a number of different climate change scenarios."
"The scientists projected that if no significant efforts were made to limit greenhouse gas emissions, 2100 global temperatures would be 4C above pre-industrial levels."
"In this model, some 34% of animal species and 57% of plants would lose more than half of their current habitat ranges. "
So the models very much in line with the UN one at 4 degrees, it will expand the dessert along the equators and push species north into a smaller area presumably. But hey, if you deny it, it won't happen right?
More FUD. It was much higher 450 million years ago (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mularkey (Score:5, Informative)
You missed three very important points that the global warming denialists have made over the last decade or two:
* Global warming isn't real.
* Global warming *is* real, but it's completely natural and not at all man-made.
* Global warming is real and man-made, but it's good.
Re:More FUD. It was much higher 450 million years (Score:5, Informative)
TFS:
[...]reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said.
There weren't any humans around 450 million years ago.
Furthermore, you copy-and-pasted directly but left out the rest of the paragraph
CO2 levels of more than 4000 parts per million (ppm) occurred during the Ordovician-Silurian (450 million years ago). There is also evidence of a glacial event occurring during this period. This has been used by some to attempt to disprove the link between temperature and CO2. Royer et al. (2006) considered the CO2 forced climate thresholds over the Phanerozoic eon (the last 545 million years). It was found that there is insufficient proxy data to determine that a high CO2 event coincided with the Ordovician-Silurian glacial event. The only proxy CO2 data near this glacial event could be up to five million years younger than the event. Further, the Earth was a very different place during this period including differences in solar luminosity, albedo, distribution of continents and vegetation, orbital parameters and other greenhouse gases.
You should try to think more, brah. It can actually save you from embarrasment.
Re:Climate change? (Score:2, Informative)
there's not one D thing that we can do about it anyway. Stop burning fossil fuel? Sure, if you want to kill millions of humans
This is just simply wrong. A carbon tax would (in part) account for the cost of pollution, and encourage the search of alternatives. Works overseas. Works in the USA. Don't be so glum. The only thing stopping change is the stranglehold of big carbon on republican politics.
Re:Global Warming is true, and deadly .. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I think it would be prudent to widen the field of research to other factors in climate change than only CO2.
You'll find information about solar, methane, cosmic rays, and the full gamut of what *science* knows about climate change in the, wait for it, IPCC 2013 report [www.ipcc.ch].
FUDery indeed (Score:5, Informative)
For those who are interested, you can read about Beck 2008 here [blogspot.com], here [blogspot.com], and here [realclimate.org].
For the full effect, make sure you actually read through Beck 2008.
Proof that you only need a few bits of junk our there, and that's enough for politics.
Re:350ppm (Score:5, Informative)
But I'm sure that's a *spectacular* fiscal abuse, and just forking $4 billion a year over to big carbon, because otherwise the the most profitable industry in history wouldn't have enough money to line the pockets of conservative think-tanks and politicians.
Do you see the double-standard there?
Re:I already refusted you (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Global Warming is true, and deadly .. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Global Warming is true, and deadly .. (Score:3, Informative)
Gee... an IPCC report will tell you the pretty-exact accounting.
But will it try to tell the truth? People forget that there are massive conflicts of interest present among the sponsors of the IPCC and its reports. And these have resulted in deceptions which exaggerated the extent and impact of AGW in the past.
Consider this: CO2 lasts 1000s of years in the atmosphere
That hasn't been demonstrated.
Re:Global Warming is true, and deadly .. (Score:2, Informative)
This argument of "all scientists will not tell the truth" has about as much credibility as a conspiracy theory as 9/11 being an inside job.
That hasn't been demonstrated.
Riiiggghhttt. Do you even know how the carbon life cycle is studied? Have you ever read an academic article on the matter? I suppose you don't have to, since it is all lies.
And what is being protected? It is the political influence of big carbon. The actual economic impact of doing something about climate change is negligible at most. There is empirical data for that as well, but I suppose all the economists are lying to, right?
Re:Global Warming is true, and deadly .. (Score:3, Informative)
No, they weren't [wikipedia.org].
Re:Hysteria! (Score:4, Informative)
The "greenhouse effect" of CO2 is dwarfed by the effect of water vapor
Yes, yes it is. It's what's called a Feedback Loop. Take a balanced seesaw with 1 lb on one side and 10 lbs on the other at distances that make the forces equal.
Now move the 1lb weight outward a bit or add a some weight. Once the 10lb ball starts rolling it's going to be 10x harder to stop.
Now multiply by the scale of an atmosphere and it's *really* a bad idea to play chicken with that type of situation.
If we nudge water vapor to increase more heat, it keeps getting stronger as more water evaporates due to the higher temps...