Warming Updates – 2 Week
Uniqueness
Not Past Tipping Point
Tipping Point hasn’t happened but will if we don’t change
Sanders 13 (Robert Sanders, Manager of Science Communications at UC Berkeley Office of Media Relations “Report warns of climate
change ‘tipping points’ within our lifetime” http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/12/03/report-warns-of-climate-change-tipping-pointswithin-our-lifetime/)
UC Berkeley’s Tony Barnosky joined climate scientists this morning at a press conference at the National
Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., to summarize a new report issued today focusing on the
short-term effects of climate change and the need to monitor them closely.¶ National Research Council
report issued Dec. 3, 2013¶ National Research Council report issued Dec. 3, 2013¶ “Our report focuses on
abrupt change, that is, things that happen within a few years to decades: basically, over short enough
time scales that young people living today would see the societal impacts brought on by faster-thannormal planetary changes,” said Barnosky in an email. Barnosky is professor of integrative biology and a
member of the Berkeley Initiative in Global Change Biology (BIGCB).¶ The report, “Abrupt Impacts of
Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises,” is available from the National Research Council, part of the
National Academies.¶ Abrupt changes are already apparent, the authors noted: the number of serious
wildfires has increased dramatically over the past decade, farmers are noticing hotter average
temperatures that affect their crop yields, animals and plants are moving up mountainsides to reach
cooler temperatures, and the Artic sea ice is melting back more and more each summer.¶ “A key
charge to the committee was to try to identify the parts of the climate system where we would expect
to see tipping points – major changes in ocean currents or atmospheric circulation – but also trying to
determine how even gradual climate change might trigger tipping points in systems that are affected by
climate change,” he wrote.¶ Changes in ocean temperatures and acidity, for example, could reach a
threshold that would precipitate a crash in coral reef ecosystems, he said. But global change could
also lead to economic and social impacts, much of this centered around food and water resources and
the likelihood of international conflict to secure them.¶ The report emphasizes the need to monitor
Earth’s ecosystems for early signs of serious change so that we can act to avoid them. For example,
scientists don’t fully understand how Antarctica’s glaciers will react to warming temperatures: slow
melting might take centuries, yet calving of icebergs could lead to their disappearance much sooner,
causing sea level rise beyond the already predicted 3 feet by 2200. Ocean temperatures should be
monitored closely near the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the report urges.¶ “We hope to limit the number of
blindsides,” said report coauthor Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University during the briefing.¶
Tipping points¶ Barnosky was the lead author of a 2012 paper that warned of a global tipping point at
which Earth’s systems would irreversibly change as a result of changing climate.¶ “We probably have
been underestimating the potential effects of ongoing climate change in exacerbating the extinction
crisis we already find ourselves in, so far due to non-climatic causes like human-caused habitat loss,
overexploitation of economically valuable species, and pollution,” he wrote. “Even on its own, the
committee found climate change to pose a very real extinction threat. Added to all the other stressors, it
really could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back.”¶ ship crossing open sea where once
there was sea ice¶ A ship crossing the Northern Sea Route that is now open because of sea ice
disappearance, one of the abrupt consequences of climate change. Photo by Nordic Bulk Carriers.¶ The
good news is that some climate change impacts will stretch out over a century or more, allowing more
time to adapt. Most climate models show that big changes in the North Atlantic that would affect ocean
currents are unlikely in the short term, while the release of methane from the sea floor is unlikely to
happen in huge belches that would alter the climate overnight, according to the report. Yet these are
going to happen eventually if greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, are not reduced. Currently,
the world needs to reduce these emissions about 5 percent each year for the next 38 years to limit the
average global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).¶ “Luckily, there is still
time to slow climate change if we start dramatic cutbacks to greenhouse gas emissions now,” Barnosky
wrote. “That will allow us to avoid the worst-case tipping point scenarios, but that window of
opportunity will only be open for another few years, if we continue to change climate at the rate we
have been.Ӧ The study was sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
National Science Foundation, U.S. intelligence community and the National Academies.¶
Tipping Point– climate experts estimate 2036 as timeframe for when tipping point is
reached
Mann, ‘14
Michael E. Mann, March 18th, 2014, “Earth will Cross the Climate Danger Threshold by 2036,”, Scientific
American, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-will-cross-the-climate-danger-threshold-by2036/
“Temperatures have been flat for 15 years—nobody can properly explain it,” the Wall Street
Journal says. “Global warming ‘pause’ may last for 20 more years, and Arctic sea ice has already started to recover,” the Daily
Mail says. Such reassuring claims about climate abound in the popular media, but they are
misleading at best. Global warming continues unabated, and it remains an urgent problem. The misunderstanding stems
from data showing that during the past decade there was a slowing in the rate at which the
earth's average surface temperature had been increasing. The event is commonly referred to
as “the pause,” but that is a misnomer: temperatures still rose, just not as fast as during the
prior decade. The important question is, What does the short-term slowdown portend for how the world may warm in the future? The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is charged with answering such questions. In response to the data, the IPCC in its September 2013 report
lowered one aspect of its prediction for future warming. Its forecasts, released every five to seven years, drive climate policy worldwide, so even the small
change raised debate over how fast the planet is warming and how much time we have to stop it. The IPCC has not yet weighed in on the impacts of the
warming or how to mitigate it, which it will do in reports that were due this March and April. Yet I have done some calculations that I think can answer those
If the world keeps burning fossil fuels at the current rate, it will cross a threshold
into environmental ruin by 2036. The “faux pause” could buy the planet a few extra years beyond that date to reduce greenhouse gas
questions now:
emissions and avoid the crossover—but only a few.
A2 Recent Climate Slow Down – Slowing down of temperature heralds the tipping
point
Dakos et al., ‘08
Vasilis Dakos, Martin Scheffer, Egbert H. VanNes, Victor Brovkin, Vladimir Petouknov, Hermann Held,
March 11th, 2008, “Slowing down as an early warning signal for abrupt climate change,” Proceeds of the
National Academy of Science of the United States of America,
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/38/14308.full
Our results have profound implications for climate science. So far, support for the idea that
tipping points can be the explanation for dramatic climatic shifts in the past has been based
on models of specific mechanisms. Although compelling cases have been built, there is
always considerable uncertainty because it is simply very difficult to prove what had been
the mechanism behind such events in the far past. The slowing down that our analysis
suggests does not point to any specific mechanism. Rather, it is a universal property of
systems approaching a tipping point. Therefore, it represents an independent line of evidence, complementing model-based
approaches, suggesting that tipping points exist in the climate system. Clearly, this is an important insight because it implies that, in principle, internal
feedback can propel the climate system through an episode of rapid change once a critical threshold is reached.
Obviously, detection of critical slowing down has two faces. In hindsight it may help to tease out whether past dynamics may be explained by the existence of
critical thresholds. With respect to predicting future climate change, it may give us an indication of whether we are entering a situation in which the parts of
the earth system may amplify rather than buffer human-induced climate change. Clearly, there are challenges and limitations. Long time series of sufficient
quality are needed, and resolution needs to be sufficient to capture the characteristic time scale of the internal dynamics of the system. Similarly, good
detrending is challenging but critically important, because unfiltered trends may lead to patterns in autocorrelation that are not related to the system's
An important fundamental limitation we should keep in
mind is that slowing down will only occur if the system is moving gradually toward a
threshold. Therefore, transitions caused by a sudden large disturbance without a preceding
gradual loss of resilience will not be announced by slowing down. Certainly, current trends
in atmospheric carbon are rather fast compared with the dynamics of ice caps and ocean
heat contents, and fluctuations of such variables may therefore not show detectable slowing
down on century scales. By contrast, slowing down could possibly be detected in faster subsystems that might have tipping points such as
dynamical response to perturbations we wish to probe.
regional atmospheric circulation patterns. In view of our current inability to predict potential abrupt climate shifts (1), having slowing down as a clue for
detecting whether such parts of the climate system may be approaching a threshold is a marked step forward in projecting future climatic changes.
Putting our results in an even wider perspective, it is important that slowing down is a
universal property of systems approaching a tipping point. This implies that our techniques might in principle be
used to construct operational early warning systems for critical transitions in a wider range of complex systems where tipping points are suspected to exist,
ranging from disease dynamics and physiology to social and ecological systems.
Synergies of warming drive the planet to extinction quicker than originally
thought
Barry W. Brook1, ,Navjot S. Sodhi2, Corey J.A. BradshawDOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2008.03.011
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016953470800195X
In a famous synopsis of the sources of human-caused extinction, Diamond [14] defined the evil
quartet of drivers: overkill,
habitat destruction, introduced species and chains of extinctions. Later work underscored the point that most
extinctions involved a synergy of these factors 10, 39, 64 and 65, with individual causes being difficult or impossible to isolate
4 and 64. We must now add severe anthropogenic interference with the global climate system to this list. The response of biodiversity to past
global climate change characteristically unfolded over thousands to millions of years 18, 22 and 66, whereas anthropogenic
global
warming is now occurring at a greatly accelerated rate. If carbon emissions are not reduced rapidly,
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report 2007 (http://www.ipcc.ch)
projects a rate and magnitude of 21st century planetary heating that is 5–9 times greater than that of
the past century. This is comparable to the difference between now and the height of the last glacial maximum. A clear lesson
from the past is that the faster and more severe the rate of global change, the more devastating the
biological consequences 2, 3, 15 and 66.
Compounding the problems associated with the rate of recent climate change is that species trying to shift distribution to keep pace
must now contend with heavily modified landscapes dominated by agriculture, roads and urban development [47]. Even in cases where global
warming might allow species to expand their range, these benefits can be outweighed by other local threats such as habitat modification [67].
Range sizes are likely to contract along warmer or drier margins (latitudinal or elevational), or even within core areas [23], but will fail to
expand in the other direction 17 and 52. The new bioclimatic conditions and altered composition of ecological communities might also facilitate
invasions by non-indigenous species that act as novel competitors or predators to stress resident species further [1]. Harvest, habitat
modification and altered fire regimes will also interact with, and probably enhance, the direct impacts of climate change 1 and 10 (Figure 1 and
Figure 2).
Many questions remain. What can biotic adaptations and extinction in the face of past climate change tell us about likely future
responses? Current knowledge suggests some possibility for adaptation via adjustment of the physiological tolerance or range of species 67 and
68, but even optimistic scenarios predict rates of change that will outpace the adaptation capacity of many species 17, 52 and 69. Furthermore,
is it possible to generalise about which clades and environments will be most vulnerable to climate change, given that it is occurring at
unprecedented rates? How much biodiversity will be lost, and will the ecosystem functions of most value to humanity be maintained? Such
urgent questions sit squarely within the purview of extinction dynamics, but require greater attention and development 51 and 65 by focussing
on community rather than species-level responses, by coupling physical and biological models and by dedicating more attention to the
quantification of ecosystem functions such as nutrient cycling, pollination patterns, decomposition rates and carbon sequestration potential in
the face of climate change.
Climate change is already beginning to exacerbate other extrinsic threats (Box 2). In an experimental
context, habitat fragmentation and overharvesting combined with environmental warming in rotifer
zooplankton resulted in populations declining up to 50 times more rapidly when combined than when
acting singularly [10] (i.e. a nonadditive effect; Figure 1). An excellent real-world example comes from the
highland forests of Costa Rica, where 40% of 50 endemic frog and toad species disappeared following
synchronous population crashes during the late 1980s [56]. Recent work has linked these extinctions to
an interaction between global warming and disease [57], whereby a retreat of moisture-laden clouds led to a prolonged
drying of the montane forest. In a chain of adverse events, this increased the prevalence of pathogenic chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium
dendrobatidis, which invaded from lower altitudes 58 and 59. Yet perversely, a wetting of the lowland Costa Rican forests (more rainy days,
although no change in mean rainfall) caused population declines in some species due to an enhanced decomposition rate of leaf litter habitat
[60].
Recent research has highlighted the relative strengths and limitations of alternative approaches used to identify and infer cause and
effect of extinctions. For example, although it is difficult to extrapolate microcosm experiments 29, 30, 31, 32 and 33 to broad-scale, real-world
processes, when combined with observations of local extinctions 20 and 26, meta-analyses 11 and 16 and statistical inference from correlates
and simulation models 5, 13, 23 and 28, the mechanisms revealed by experimental extinctions offer powerful explanations for patterns
spanning time periods and spatial scales that are problematic for laboratory or field manipulation.
This review shows that extinction research has shifted substantially over the last decade, from studies that focussed primarily on the
impact of single drivers to those which have demonstrated a positive interaction (synergies, or reinforcing feedbacks) of more than one threat
via a combination of approaches. This view explicitly emphasises how positive
feedbacks corrode ecosystem function and
of this recent body of work is that only by treating extinction as a
synergistic process will predictions of risk for most species approximate reality, and conservation
efforts therefore be effective 6, 9, 45, 52 and 57. However challenging it is, policy to mitigate biodiversity loss must accept the need
energy flow 10, 11 and 39. The implication
to manage multiple threatening processes simultaneously over longer terms. Habitat preservation, restoring degraded landscapes, maintaining
or creating connectivity, avoiding overharvest, reducing fire risk and cutting carbon emissions have to be planned in unison. Otherwise,
conservation actions which only tackle individual threats risk becoming half-measures which end in
failure, due to uncontrolled cascading effects.
Past Tipping Point - Inevitable
Too late to solve Global warming, plan not good enough
Why it's probably too late to roll back global warming Melting ice caps and widespread drought are virtual inevitabilities By Ryu
December 5, 20
Spaeth |
12 http://theweek.com/article/index/237392/why-its-probably-too-late-to-roll-back-global-warming, CM
Two degrees Celsius. According to scientists, that's the rise in global temperature, measured against pre-industrial times, that could spark some of the most
catastrophic effects of global warming. Preventing the two-degree bump has been the goal of every international treaty designed to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions, including a new one currently being hammered out at a United Nations summit in Doha, Qatar. But a new study published by the journal Nature Climate
Change shows that it's
incredibly unlikely that global warming can be limited to two degrees. According to the study, the
world in 2011 "pumped nearly 38.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air from the burning of
fossil fuels such as coal and oil," says Seth Borenstein at The Associated Press: The total amounts to more than 2.4 million pounds (1.1 million kilograms) of
carbon dioxide released into the air every second. Because emissions of the key greenhouse gas have been rising steadily and most carbon stays in the air for a
century, it is not just unlikely but "rather optimistic" to think that the world can limit future temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit),
said the study's lead author, Glen Peters at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway. What happens when the two-degree
threshold is crossed? Most notably, that's when the
polar ice caps will begin to melt, leading to a dangerous rise in sea
levels. Furthermore, the world's hottest regions will be unable to grow food, setting the stage for mass hunger and
global food inflation. The rise in temperature would also likely exacerbate or cause extreme weather events, such as
hurricanes and droughts. There is a very small chance that the world could pull back from the brink. The U.N. could still limit
warming to two degrees if it adopts a "radical plan," says Peters' group. According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers study, such a
plan would entail cutting carbon emissions "by 5.1 percent every year from now to 2050, essentially
slamming the breaks on growth starting right now," says Coral Davenport at The National Journal, "and keeping the
freeze on for 37 years." However, the U.N. has set a deadline of ratifying a new treaty by 2015, and implementing it by 2020, which means the
world is already eight years behind that pace. There are still major disagreements between the U.S. and China over whether the
developed world, which industrialized first, should bear the bulk of the cost of reducing carbon emissions. And there is, of course, a large contingent of Americans
who don't even believe climate change exists, putting any treaty's ratification at risk. Climate
change is so politically toxic in America
that Congress has prioritized the fiscal cliff over — no exaggeration — untold suffering and the end of the world
as we know it. In other words, it isn't happening. And if that's not bad enough, keep in mind that the two-degree mark is just the
beginning, says Davenport: Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University and a member of the Nobel
Prize-winning U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says that a 2-degree rise is not itself that point, but rather the
beginning of irreversible changes. "It starts to speed you toward a tipping point," he said. "It's driving toward a cliff
at night with the headlights off. We don't know when we'll hit that cliff, but after 2 degrees, we're going faster, we have less control.
After 3, 4, 5 degrees, you spiral out of control, you have even more irreversible change." Indeed, at the current
emissions rate, the world is expected to broach the four-degree mark by 2100 — at which point, we can expect even worse environmental catastrophes. Some
analysts say that the best possible scenario is preventing the Earth from warming up by three or four degrees. That means instead of focusing solely on preventing
global warming, governments around the world should begin preparing for the major environmental upheavals, starting with protections for coastal cities.
Too late to solve Warming Natural cycle or not extinction is coming
Alison van Diggelen January 27, 2010 01:49 PM Global Warming: It's Too Late Alison van Diggelen is a Silicon Valley based journalist and
commentator who's been described as "one of the most respected interviewers on the web." She's host of the Fresh Dialogues interview series
and contributes to the BBC World Service, Public Radio International's The World; and National Public Radio's KQED. Her notable interviews of
business leaders and celebrities include Elon Musk, Meryl Streep and Martin Sheen. Alison has been a guest on BBC's Business Matters and
NBC's Tech Show Press:Here; and moderates events for the Commonwealth Club and the Churchill Club. California State Senator Elaine Alquist
nominated Alison for a Woman of Achievement Award in communication; and she has also been honored by U.S. Congressman, Mike Honda. A
native of Scotland, Alison has a Master's from Cambridge University and enjoys indulging her passion for tech and sustainability in the Valley of
Heart's Delight. , CM
In an exclusive Fresh Dialogues interview, Robert Ballard, ocean explorer of Titanic fame says, "If you want to know the truth: it's
too late. All the ice
is going to melt. There's a lag and it's already in the system." Ballard, a respected scientist, professor of oceanography and founder of the Inner Space
Center says he is worried about the future of mankind, "Sometimes I see this tombstone that says, 'the human race came and went but it was politically correct.' As
a scientist I am not politically correct. My job is not to be politically correct. My job is to call it as I see it." Ballard was in Silicon Valley as part of the Foothill College
Celebrity Forum Series to talk about his educational outreach programs and his recent expeditions to the Black Sea. He sat down with me for an interview in the
Green Room of the Flint Center before his lecture on January 22 and we discussed global warming, alternative energy, funding his expeditions, and how he sees his
role in educating children in science. Although some scientists argue that global warming is part of a natural cycle in the earth's climate, and humans have no part to
play, Ballard clarifies the debate. Yes, we're in a natural cycle, he says, but the real argument is this: how
much of this is a natural cycle and
how much is it human additive? Ballard says it's both, and explains, "Whenever you have a tremendous controversy both sides tend to be right
and wrong." He says we are experiencing natural interglacial warming, but we're increasing the severity of it
with our heavy human footprint and if we steepen it too much, evolution can't keep up and extinction
will happen. He says we can do a lot to impact our human carbon footprint and suggests population control is vital. On the subject of alternative energy,
Ballard says he's proud of the investment being made in wind energy, but is also an enthusiastic supporter of nuclear power. Finally, for all Ballard's youthful fans
(he received over 16,000 letters from children when he discovered the Titanic), and in tribute to the infamous query by Barbara Walters I asked him, "If you were a
sea creature, what sea creature would you be?" Check out the Fresh Dialogues transcript to find out.
Global Warming is already catastrophic
David Biello Feb 27, 2009 Risks of Global Warming Rising: Is It Too Late to Reverse Course?
The negative impacts of climate change are beginning to appear--and we may soon cross a threshold of significant damage
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/risks-of-global-warming-rising/, CM
The risk of catastrophic climate change is getting worse, according to a new study from scientists involved with the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Threats—ranging from the destruction of coral reefs to more
extreme weather events like hurricanes, droughts and floods—are becoming more likely at the
temperature change already underway: as little as 1.8 degree Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) of warming in global average temperatures.
"Most people thought that the risks were going to be for certain species and poor people. But all of a
sudden the European heat wave of 2003 comes along and kills 50,000, [Hurricane] Katrina comes
along and there's a lot of data about the increased intensity of droughts and floods. Plus, the dramatic melting of
Greenland that nobody can explain certainly has to increase your concern," says climatologist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, who co-authored the
research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as well as in several IPCC reports. "Everywhere we looked, there was evidence
that what was believed to be likely has happened. Nature has been cooperating with [climate change] theory unfortunately." Schneider and his colleagues updated
a graph, dubbed the "burning embers," that is designed to map the risks of damage from global warming. The initial version of the graph [left] drawn in 2001 had
the risks of climate change beginning to appear after 3.6 or 5.4 degrees F (2 to 3 degrees C) of warming, but the years since have shown that climate risks kick in
with less warming. According to the new graph,
risks to "unique and threatened systems" such as coral reefs and risks
of extreme weather events become likely when temperatures rise by as little as 1.8 degrees F from
1990 levels, which is on course to occur by mid-century given the current concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases. In addition, risks of negative
consequences such as increased droughts and the complete melting of ice caps in Greenland and Antarctica definitively outweigh any potential positives, such as
longer growing seasons in countries such as Canada and Russia. "We're definitely going to overshoot some of these temperatures where we see these very large
vulnerabilities manifest," says economist Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., another co-author. "We're going to have to learn how to adapt."
Adaptation notwithstanding, Yohe and Schneider say that scientists must also figure out a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to reverse the heating trend to
prevent further damage. Several bills pending in Congress would set a so-called cap-and-trade policy under which an overall limit on pollution would be set—and
companies with low output could sell their allowances to those that fail to cut emissions as long as the total stays within the total pollution cap. Any such federal
policy would put a price on carbon dioxide pollution, which is currently free to vent into the atmosphere, Yohe note. He, however, favors a so-called carbon tax that
would set a fixed price for such climate-changing pollution rather than the cap-and-trade proposals favored by the Obama administration. "It's a predictable price,
not a thing that bounces around." But even with such policies in place—not only in the U.S. but across the globe—climate
change is a foregone
conclusion; global average temperatures have already risen by at least 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit (0.6
degree C) and further warming of at least 0.7 degree F (0.4 degree C) is virtually certain, according to
the IPCC. And a host of studies, including a recent one from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have shown that global warming is
already worse than predicted even a few years ago. The question is: Will it be catastrophic or not? "We've dawdled, and if we dawdle
more it will get even worse," Schneider says. "It's time to move."
Global Warming has passed the tipping point – Siberia has begun to melt, releasing
methane form within the permafrost
The Guardian, ‘05
The Guardian, August 11th, 2005, “Warming hits ‘tipping point’,” written by Ian Sample
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/aug/11/science.climatechange1
A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could
dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today. Researchers who
have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear
that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more
potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. It is a scenario climate scientists have feared
since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's
temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far
greater increase in global temperatures. The discovery was made by Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in western
Siberia and Judith Marquand at Oxford University and is reported in New Scientist today. The researchers found that what was until recently a barren
expanse of frozen peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a kilometre across. Dr Kirpotin told the magazine the situation
was an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He added that the thaw had probably begun in
the past three or four years. Climate
scientists yesterday reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned
that predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards. "When you start
messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it's unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply," said David Viner, a
senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. "This
is a big deal because you can't put the
permafrost back once it's gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are
doing." In its last major report in 2001, the intergovernmental panel on climate change predicted a rise in global temperatures of 1.4C-5.8C between 1990
and 2100, but the estimate only takes account of global warming driven by known greenhouse gas emissions. "These positive feedbacks with landmasses
weren't known about then. They had no idea how much they would add to global warming," said Dr Viner. Western
Siberia is heating up
faster than anywhere else in the world, having experienced a rise of some 3C in the past 40
years. Scientists are particularly concerned about the permafrost, because as it thaws, it
reveals bare ground which warms up more quickly than ice and snow, and so accelerates the
rate at which the permafrost thaws. Siberia's peat bogs have been producing methane since they formed at the end of the last ice
age, but most of the gas had been trapped in the permafrost. According to Larry Smith, a hydrologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, the
west Siberian peat bog could hold some 70bn tonnes of methane, a quarter of all of the methane stored in the
ground around the world. The permafrost is likely to take many decades at least to thaw, so the methane locked within it will not be released into the
atmosphere in one burst, said Stephen Sitch, a climate scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter. But calculations by Dr Sitch and his colleagues
show that even if methane seeped from the permafrost over the next 100 years, it would add around 700m tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each year,
roughly the same amount that is released annually from the world's wetlands and agriculture. It would effectively double atmospheric levels of the gas,
leading to a 10% to 25% increase in global warming, he said. Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said the finding was a stark message to
politicians to take concerted action on climate change. "We knew at some point we'd get these feedbacks happening that exacerbate global warming, but this
could lead to a massive injection of greenhouse gases. "If we don't take action very soon, we could unleash runaway global warming that will be beyond our
control and it will lead to social, economic and environmental devastation worldwide," he said. "There's still time to take action, but not much. "The
assumption has been that we wouldn't see these kinds of changes until the world is a little warmer, but this suggests we're running out of time." In May this
year, another group of researchers reported signs that global warming was damaging the permafrost. Katey Walter of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks,
told a meeting of the Arctic Research Consortium of the US that her team had found methane hotspots in eastern Siberia. At
the hotspots,
methane was bubbling to the surface of the permafrost so quickly that it was preventing the
surface from freezing over.
Global Warming has passed the Tipping Point – Siberian permafrost has begun to melt
McCarthy, ‘06
Michael McCarthy, February 11th, 2006, “Global Warming: passing the ‘Tipping point’,” The
Independent, Michael McCarthy is the environment editor,
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/global-warming-passing-the-tipping-point-466187.html
A crucial global warming "tipping point" for the Earth, highlighted only last week by the
British Government, has already been passed, with devastating consequences. Research commissioned by
The Independent reveals that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has
now crossed a threshold, set down by scientists from around the world at a conference in Britain last year, beyond which
really dangerous climate change is likely to be unstoppable. The implication is that some of
global warming's worst predicted effects, from destruction of ecosystems to increased
hunger and water shortages for billions of people, cannot now be avoided, whatever we do. It gives
considerable force to the contention by the green guru Professor James Lovelock, put forward last month in The Independent, that climate change is now
past the point of no return. The
danger point we are now firmly on course for is a rise in global mean
temperatures to 2 degrees above the level before the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th
century. At the moment, global mean temperatures have risen to about 0.6 degrees above the pre-industrial era - and worrying signs of climate change,
such as the rapid melting of the Arctic ice in summer, are already increasingly evident. But a rise to 2 degrees would be far more serious. By that
point it is likely that the Greenland ice sheet will already have begun irreversible melting,
threatening the world with a sea-level rise of several metres. Agricultural yields will have
started to fall, not only in Africa but also in Europe, the US and Russia, putting up to 200
million more people at risk from hunger, and up to 2.8 billion additional people at risk of
water shortages for both drinking and irrigation. The Government's conference on Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change,
held at the UK Met Office in Exeter a year ago, highlighted a clear threshold in the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) in the
atmosphere, which should not be surpassed if the 2 degree point was to be avoided with "relatively high certainty". This was for the concentration of CO2
and other gases such as methane and nitrous oxide, taken together in their global warming effect, to stay below 400ppm (parts per million) in CO2 terms - or
in the jargon, the "equivalent concentration" of CO2 should remain below that level. The warning was highlighted in the official report of the Exeter
conference, published last week. However, an investigation by The Independent has established that the CO2 equivalent concentration, largely unnoticed by
the scientific and political communities, has now risen beyond this threshold.
This number is not a familiar one even among climate researchers, and is not readily available. For example, when we put the question to a very senior
climate scientist, he said: "I would think it's definitely over 400 - probably about 420." So we asked one of the world's leading experts on the effects of
greenhouse gases on climate, Professor Keith Shine, head of the meteorology department at the University of Reading, to calculate it precisely. Using the
latest available figures (for 2004), his calculations show the equivalent concentration of C02, taking in the effects of methane and nitrous oxide at 2004
levels, is now 425ppm. This is made up of CO2 itself, at 379ppm; the global warming effect of the methane in the atmosphere, equivalent to another 40ppm
of CO2; and the effect of nitrous oxide, equivalent to another 6ppm of CO2. The tipping point warned about last week by the Government is already behind
us. "The passing of this threshold is of the most enormous significance," said Tom Burke, a former government adviser on the green issues, now visiting
professor at Imperial College London. "It means we have actually entered a new era - the era of dangerous climate change. We have passed the point where
we can be confident of staying below the 2 degree rise set as the threshold for danger. What this tells us is that we have already reached the point where our
children can no longer count on a safe climate."
Too late to curb climate change
LEE DYE Oct. 26, 2012 via GOOD MORNING AMERICA It May Be Too Late to Stop Global Warming
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/late-stop-global-warming/story?id=17557814, CM
Here's a dark secret about the earth's changing climate that many scientists believe, but few seem eager to discuss :
It's too late to stop global
warming. Greenhouse gasses pumped into the planet's atmosphere will continue to grow even if the
industrialized nations cut their emissions down to the bone. Furthermore, the severe measures that would
have to be taken to make those reductions stand about the same chance as that proverbial snowball
in hell. Two scientists who believe we are on the wrong track argue in the current issue of the journal Nature Climate Change that global warming is
inevitable and it's time to switch our focus from trying to stop it to figuring out how we are going to
deal with its consequences. "At present, governments' attempts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions through carbon cap-and-trade schemes and to
promote renewable and sustainable energy sources are probably too late to arrest the inevitable trend of global warming," Jasper Knight of Wits University in
Johannesburg, South Africa, and Stephan Harrison of the University of Exeter in England argue in their study. Those efforts, they continue, "have little relationship to
the real world." What
is clear, they contend, is a profound lack of understanding about how we are going to
deal with the loss of huge land areas, including some entire island nations, and massive migrations as
humans flee areas no longer suitable for sustaining life, the inundation of coastal properties around
the world, and so on ... and on ... and on. That doesn't mean nations should stop trying to reduce their carbon emissions, because any reduction could
lessen the consequences. But the cold fact is no matter what Europe and the United States and other "developed"
nations do, it's not going to curb global climate change, according to one scientist who was once highly skeptical of the entire issue
of global warming. "Call me a converted skeptic," physicist Richard A. Muller says in an op-ed piece published in the New York Times last July. Muller's latest book,
"Energy for Future Presidents," attempts to poke holes in nearly everything we've been told about energy and climate change, except the fact that "humans are
almost entirely the cause" of global warming. Those of us who live in the "developed" world initiated it. Those who live in the "developing" world will sustain it as
they strive for a standard of living equal to ours. "As far as global warming is concerned, the developed world is becoming irrelevant," Muller insists in his book. We
could set an example by curbing our emissions, and thus claim in the future that "it wasn't our fault," but about the only thing that could stop it would be a
complete economic collapse in China and the rest of the world's developing countries. As they race forward, their industrial growth -- and their greenhouse gas
emissions -- will outpace any efforts by the West to reduce their carbon footprints, Muller contends. "China has been installing a new gigawatt of coal power each
week," he says in his Times piece, and each plant pumps an additional ton of gases into the atmosphere "every second." "By the time you read this, China's yearly
greenhouse gas emissions will be double those of the United States, perhaps higher," he contends. And that's not likely to change.
Attempts to solve global warmings are vain attempts to help a lost cause
By Sarah Knapton, Science Correspondent3:54PM BST 08 Apr 2014 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10752606/Weshould-give-up-trying-to-save-the-world-from-climate-change-says-James-Lovelock.html, CM
Saving the planet from climate change is ‘beyond our ability’ and we should stop wasting time trying
to tackle global warming, a leading scientist has claimed James Lovelock, who first detected CFCs in the atmosphere and proposed the Gaia
hypotheses, claims society should retreat to ‘climate-controlled cities’ and give up on large expanses of land which will become uninhabitable. Lovelock, who has
just published his latest book A Rough Ride To The Future, claims we should be ‘strengthening our defences and making a sustainable retreat.’ “We’re reaching an
age in history where you can no longer predict the future with any hope of success. “We
should give up vainglorious attempts to save
the world. Related Articles Unlocking James Lovelock, science's greatest maverick 01 Apr 2014 Could climate change have no link to human behaviour? 03 Apr
2014 Renewables are a waste of time, says James Lovelock 14 Jul 2009 Obsession with health and safety is killing science, claims James Lovelock 08 Apr 2014
“Britain is no longer a world power and we need to leave such schemes to the USA, Japan or China. We should spend out efforts adapting Britain to fight climate
change.” The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to say the
world will need a ‘Plan B’ because it
is unlikely countries will reduce carbon emissions in time. In March the IPCC said that global warming
would increase flooding, storm surges, droughts and heatwaves. Violent conflicts and food shortages
were also forecast to increase over coming decades due to rising temperatures, while a growing
number of animal and marine species will face increased risk of extinction. Scientists said that by taking immediate
steps to reduce carbon emissions over the coming decades, there could be a reduction in potential consequences by the end of the century. In his new book
Lovelock writes: “We may have wasted valuable time, energy and resources by trying to grapple with climate change on a global scale. “ It
sounds good to
try to save the planet, but in reality we are not thinking of saving Gaia, we are thinking of saving Earth
for us, or for our nation. “The idea of ‘saving the planet’ is a foolish extravagance of romantic
Northern ideologues and probably much beyond our ability. “In a changing climate cities are most less vulnerable to external
heat than our individuals. If most of us lived in cities, as it seems we soon will do, the regulation of the climate of these cities might be far easier, more economic
and safer option in a hot climate than the regulation by geoengineering of the whole planet. “ He also claimed that life on Earth could move away from organic
creatures towards computerised life-forms “I think like all organisms on Earth our species has a limited lifespan,” he said. “If we can somehow merge with our
electronic creations in a larger scale endosymbiosis, it may provide a better next step in the evolution of humanity and Gaia.” However Lovelock adds a cautionary
warning. “I must admit an empathetic dread for some unfortunately future person whose body becomes connected to one of more of the ubiquitous social
networks. “I can imagine no punishment more severe than having my still comparatively clear mind overtaken by the spam of hucksters and the never-ceasing
gossip of the Internet.”
Real/Anthropogenic
Yes Real/Anthropogenic
Global warming is real and anthropogenic
Liberty Voice, 2014, (“Global Warming: Top Evidence That It Is Real”, March 29, 2014
accessed on 7/19/2014 at http://guardianlv.com/2014/03/global-warming-topevidence-that-it-is-real/)
Climate fluctuated in temperature throughout Earth’s history due to geological upheavals, a slight change in the planet’s orbit, or when the sun’s energy production
varied. However, in
the last 200 years, human activity is the primary cause of the of rising global temperature,
raising it by about 1.4°F since the early 20th century, according to NCDC. By taking samples from the
Antarctic ice cores, scientists have also measured the amount of carbon dioxide and methane and
found that they have increased by about 38 percent and 148 percent, respectively, since the dawn of
the Industrial Revolution in the 1750s.
Over the past 100 years, sea levels rose at an average rate of 1.7 millimeters per year based on tide
gauge observations. Since 1993, however, the rate of rising sea levels has increased to about 3.5
millimeters per year. Recent satellite imaging also revealed that worldwide sea levels have risen between 4 to 8
inches. When climate temperature increases, water absorbs some of that heat which causes the
oceans to expand. It also causes ice to melt, particularly from Greenland, polar caps, and mountain
glaciers, which contributes to greater amounts of liquid water. Higher temperature also causes large
chunks of Antarctica’s ice to break off, such as the one that broke off from Pine Island Glacier on July 2013. At this rate, it is very
likely that, by 2100, major coastal cities will be swamped or partially submerged, such as New York
City, Miami, and London.
Global warming had
happened several times during the last 10 to 15 million years, but never at rate that is
happening recently. Scientists examined trapped air bubbles in the Antarctic ice core that recorded
about 800,000 years of Earth’s atmospheric history. Within this time frame, the Earth had a fluctuation of 170 to 300 parts per million
(ppm) of carbon dioxide. This equates to about 35 percent of the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. With the
burning of fossil fuel contributing to about 80 percent of the rise in carbon dioxide gas and with deforestation
and modern agriculture contributing to about 20 percent of the remaining amount, current levels are nearly 400 ppm, according to NOAA.
This sharp jump in carbon dioxide level is the highest ever in the last 800,000 years.
Global warming is anthropogenic and c02 emissions are primary driver
Ekwurzel, 2009 (Brenda, Ekwurzel, Senior climate scientist, “How Do We Know that Humans Are the
Major Cause of Global
Warming?”,http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/humancontribution-to-gw-faq.html)
The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states: it is a greater than a 90
percent certainty that emissions of heat-trapping gases from human activities have caused “most of the
observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century.” We all know that warming—and
cooling—has happened in the past, and long before humans were around. Many factors (called “climate drivers”) can influence Earth’s climate—such as changes in
the sun’s intensity and volcanic eruptions, as well as heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.¶ So how do scientists know that today’s warming is primarily caused by
humans putting too much carbon in the atmosphere when we burn coal, oil, and gas or cut down forests? ¶ There are human fingerprints on carbon overload.
When humans burn coal, oil and gas (fossil fuels) to generate electricity or drive our cars, carbon dioxide
is released into the atmosphere, where it traps heat. A carbon molecule that comes from fossil fuels and
deforestation is “lighter” than the combined signal of those from other sources. As scientists measure
the “weight” of carbon in the atmosphere over time they see a clear increase in the lighter molecules
from fossil fuel and deforestation sources that correspond closely to the known trend in emissions.¶
Natural changes alone can’t explain the temperature changes we’ve seen. For a computer model to accurately project the
future climate, scientists must first ensure that it accurately reproduces observed temperature changes. When the models include only recorded natural climate
drivers—such as the sun’s intensity—the models cannot accurately reproduce the observed warming of the past half century. When human-induced climate drivers
are also included in the models, then they accurately capture recent temperature increases in the atmosphere and in the oceans.[4,5,6] When all the natural and
human-induced climate drivers are compared to one another, the dramatic accumulation of carbon from human sources is by far the largest climate change driver
over the past half century.¶ Lower-level atmosphere—which contains the carbon load—is expanding. The boundary between the lower atmosphere (troposphere)
and the higher atmosphere (stratosphere) has shifted upward in recent decades. See the ozone FAQ for a figure illustrating the layers of the atmosphere.[6,7,8] This
boundary has likely changed because heat-trapping gases accumulate in the lower atmosphere and that atmospheric layer expands as it heats up (much like
warming the air in a balloon). And because less heat is escaping into the higher atmosphere, it is likely cooling. This differential would not occur if the sun was the
sole climate driver, as solar changes would warm both atmospheric layers, and certainly would not have warmed one while cooling the other.¶ Direct evidence of
human contribution to atmospheric CO2¶ Carbon dioxide (CO2)
is the main heat-trapping gas largely responsible for most of the
over the past several decades. To compare how CO2 stacks up in influence to the many other important heat-trapping
gases contributing to climate change see the CO2 FAQ. There is a way that scientists can tease apart the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to see how
much of the CO2 is from natural sources and how much is from combusted fossil fuel sources.¶ The
atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial era (AD 1000 – 1750) concentration of
approximately 280 parts per million (ppm) to around 383 ppm, as measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii in 2007. The carbon
in the atmospheric CO2 contains information about its source, so that scientists can tell that fossil fuel
emissions comprise the largest source of the increase since the pre-industrial era.¶ Here’s how scientists know. The same elements
average warming
(i.e. same number of protons in the nucleus) with different mass numbers (arising from the different numbers of neutrons in the nucleus) are called isotopes. Each
carbon molecule has six protons in the nucleus, but there are many different isotopes with varying numbers of neutrons in the nucleus. Carbon
isotopes
from different sources are “lighter” (high negative value) or heavier (lower negative value). For example,
carbon from ocean is the standard with a value of “0” while carbon from fossil fuels ranges from -20 to 32. While atmospheric carbon has an average value of -5 to -9, it is becoming “lighter” over time as
carbon from fossil fuels become more abundant in the atmosphere
Not Real/Anthropogenic
The IPCC uses judgment as evidence.
Dr. May, Donald R, PhD, 2014
[“There is No Scientific Evidence That Humans are Causing Global Warming”, March 15th, accessed on 7/19/2014 at
http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/may/2014-03-15/there-no-scientific-evidence-humans-are-causing-globalwarming#.U8rBpLFjPpw]
There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor
warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years. If there were such a proof it would be written down for all to see. No
actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states: “It is extremely
likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th
century .” (My emphasis) “Extremely likely” is not a scientific term but rather a judgment, as in a court of law. The
IPCC defines “extremely likely” as a “95-100% probability ”. But upon further examination it is clear that
these numbers are not the result of any mathematical calculation or statistical analysis.
Global Warming is phony science.
Friend 13
[Climate Change Hoax Exposed, October 13, http://americanfreepress.net/?p=13240 accessed on 7/19/14]
Dr. Karlstrom, who also manages a website, went on to explain the “global warming” hysteria, and its ultimate agenda: “Global warming
is phony science that was concocted to justify implementation of an international political agenda. The idea of using
‘man-caused global warming’ as a ‘surrogate for war’ and as a way to ‘destroy excess wealth’ originated in
American and UN-related think tanks such as the Club of Rome back in the 60′s and 70′s. This pseudo-science is the centerpiece of a phony
environmental movement by which the UN hopes to redistribute wealth in the world (toward the super-rich and away from the people) to deindustrialize the industrialized countries (via the UN Kyoto Protocol-type carbon taxes, cap and trade schemes, etc.), and radically reduce the
human population.”
Global Warming real but not anthropogenic
Friend 13
[“Climate Change Hoax Exposed”, October 13, http://americanfreepress.net/?p=13240 accessed on 7/19/14]
“The IPCC is essentially operating with pre-determined
conclusions, namely that human activity and carbon
emissions cause ‘global warming’ and other environmental and climate problems, even though there is
little objective scientific evidence to demonstrate ‘global warming’ is in fact a real phenomenon,” Dr.
Karlstrom says. Climate scientists working with the IPCC and other international bodies have been known to not only spin
scientific data to fit their pre-determined conclusions, but also to outright fabricate “evidence” to support their idea of
“man-made climate change.”
Global Warming is just a quarter of what we have been told
Rose, 13
[“World's top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just QUARTER what we thought - and computers got the effects of greenhouse
gases wrong”, September 14, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420783/Worlds-climate-scientists-confess-Global-warming-justQUARTER-thought--computers-got-effects-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html Accessed on 7/19/14]
The Mail on Sunday has obtained the final draft of a report to be published later this month by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), the ultimate watchdog whose massive, six-yearly ‘assessments’ are accepted by environmentalists, politicians and experts as the
gospel of climate science. They are cited worldwide to justify singeing fossil fuel taxes and subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy. Yet the leaked
report makes the extraordinary concession that over the
past 15 years, recorded world temperatures have increased
at only a quarter of the rate of IPCC claimed when it published its last assessment in 2007. Back then, it said observed
warming over the 15 years from 1990-2005 had taken place at a rate of 0.2C per decade, and it predicted
this would continue for the following 20 years, on the basis of forecasts made by computer climate models. But the new
report says the observed warming over the more recent 15 years to 2012 was just 0.05C per decade below almost all computer predictions.
Warming Bad
Warming Bad – Marine Biodiversity/Biodiversity
Warming Bad for marine diversity – specifically krill
National Geographic, 2014, (National Geographic, “Sea Temperature Rise”, 2014, Accessed on
7/20/2014 at http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-temperature-rise/)
As climate change has warmed the Earth, oceans have responded more slowly than land environments. But scientific
research is
finding that marine ecosystems can be far more sensitive to even the most modest temperature change.
¶ Global warming caused by human activities that emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide has raised the average global
temperature by about 1°F (0.6°C) over the past century. In the oceans, this change has only been about 0.18°F (0.1°C). This
warming has occurred from the surface to a depth of about 2,300 feet (700 meters), where most marine life
thrives. ¶ Perhaps the ocean organism most vulnerable to temperature change is coral. There is evidence that reefs will bleach (eject their
symbiotic algae) at even a slight persistent temperature rise. Bleaching slows coral growth, makes them susceptible to disease, and can lead to
large-scale reef die-off. ¶ Other
organisms affected by temperature change include krill, an extremely important link at
the base of the food chain. Research has shown that krill reproduce in significantly smaller numbers when ocean temperatures rise. This can
have a cascading effect by disrupting the life cycle of krill eaters, such as penguins and seals—which in
turn causes food shortages for higher predators.¶ When water heats up, it expands. Thus, the most readily apparent
consequence of higher sea temperatures is a rapid rise in sea level. Sea level rise causes inundation of coastal
habitats for humans as well as plants and animals, shoreline erosion, and more powerful storm surges that can
devastate low-lying areas. ¶ Many weather experts say we are already seeing the effects of higher ocean
temperatures in the form of stronger and more frequent tropical storms and hurricanes/cyclones.
Warmer surface water dissipates more readily into vapor, making it easier for small ocean storms to
escalate into larger, more powerful systems. ¶ These stronger storms can increase damage to human structures when they
make landfall. They can also harm marine ecosystems like coral reefs and kelp forests. And an increase in storm frequency means less time for
these sensitive habitats to recover. ¶ Warmer
sea temperatures are also associated with the spread of invasive
species and marine diseases. The evolution of a stable marine habitat is dependent upon myriad factors, including water
temperature. If an ecosystem becomes warmer, it can create an opportunity where outside species or
bacteria can suddenly thrive where they were once excluded. This can lead to forced migrations and
even species extinctions. ¶ Warmer seas also lead to melting from below of polar ice shelves, compromising their structural integrity
and leading to spectacular shelf collapses. Scientists also worry that warmer water could interrupt the so-called ocean
conveyor belt, the system of global currents that is largely responsible for regulating Earth's
temperature. Its collapse could trigger catastrophically rapid climate changes.
RISING CO2 LEVELS THREATEN MARINE LIFE
James E. Kloeppel, 3/8/2007http://news.illinois.edu/news/07/0308oceans.html Physical Sciences Editor 217-244-1073;
kloeppel@illinois.edu
Like a piece of chalk dissolving in vinegar, marine
life with hard shells is in danger of being dissolved by
increasing acidity in the oceans. Ocean acidity is rising as sea water absorbs more carbon
dioxide released into the atmosphere from power plants and automobiles. The higher acidity threatens
marine life, including corals and shellfish, which may become extinct later this century from the chemical
effects of carbon dioxide, even if the planet warms less than expected. A new study by University of
Illinois atmospheric scientist Atul Jain, graduate student Long Cao and Carnegie Institution scientist Ken Caldeira suggests that future changes in
ocean acidification are largely independent of climate change. The researchers report their findings in a paper accepted for publication in the
journal Geophysical Research Letters, and posted on its Web site. “Before our study, there was speculation in the academic community that
climate change would have a big impact on ocean acidity,” Jain said. “We found no such impact.” In previous studies, increasing levels of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere led to a reduction in ocean pH and carbonate ions, both of which damage marine ecosystems. What had not been
studied before was how climate change, in concert with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, would affect ocean chemistry and biology. To
investigate changes in ocean chemistry that could result from higher temperatures and carbon-dioxide concentrations, the researchers used an
Earth-system model called the Integrated Science Assessment Model. Developed by Jain and his graduate students, the model includes complex
physical and chemical interactions among carbon-dioxide emissions, climate change, and carbon-dioxide uptake by oceans and terrestrial
ecosystems. The ocean-surface pH has been reduced by about 0.1 during the past two centuries. Using ISAM, the researchers found ocean pH
would decline a total of 0.31 by the end of this century, if carbon-dioxide emissions continue on a trajectory to ultimately stabilize at 1,000 parts
per million. During
the last 200 years, the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide
increased from about 275 parts per million to about 380 parts per million. Unchecked, it
could surpass 550 parts per million by mid-century. “As the concentration of carbon
dioxide increases, ocean water will become more acidic; which is bad news for marine life,”
Cao said. “Fortunately, the effects of climate change will not further increase this acidity.” There are a number of effects and feedback
mechanisms built into the ocean-climate system, Jain said. “Warmer water, for example, directly reduces the ocean pH due to temperature effect
on the reaction rate in the carbonate system. At the same time, warmer water also absorbs less carbon dioxide, which makes the ocean less acidic.
These two climate effects balance each other, which results in negligible net climate effect on ocean pH.” The
addition of carbon
dioxide into the oceans also affects the carbonate mineral system by decreasing the
availability of carbonate ions. Calcium carbonate is used in forming shells. With less
carbonate ions available, the growth of corals and shellfish could be significantly reduced.
“In our study, the increase in ocean acidity and decrease in carbonate ions occurred regardless of the degree of temperature change associated
with global warming,” Jain said. “This indicates that future changes in ocean acidity caused by atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations are
largely independent of climate change.” That’s good news. The researchers’ findings, however, call into question a number of engineering
schemes proposed as mitigation strategies for global warming, such as lofting reflective balloons into the stratosphere or erecting huge parasols in
orbit. By blocking some of the sunlight, these devices would create a cooling effect to offset the warming caused by increasing levels of
greenhouse gases. “Even if we could engineer our way out of the climate problem, we will be stuck with the ocean acidification problem,”
Caldeira said. “Coral
reefs will go the way of the dodo unless we quickly cut carbon-dioxide
emissions.” Over the next few decades, we may make the oceans more acidic than they have
been for tens of millions of years, Caldeira said. And that’s bad news.
Warmer Oceans Have Far-Reaching Effects
National Geographic http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-temperature-rise/
Global warming caused by human activities that emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide has raised the average
global temperature by about 1°F (0.6°C) over the past century. In the oceans, this change has only been about 0.18°F (0.1°C). This
warming has occurred from the surface to a depth of about 2,300 feet (700 meters), where
most marine life thrives. Perhaps the ocean organism most vulnerable to temperature change is
coral. There is evidence that reefs will bleach (eject their symbiotic algae) at even a slight persistent temperature rise.
Bleaching slows coral growth, makes them susceptible to disease, and can lead to largescale reef die-off. Other organisms affected by temperature change include krill, an extremely
important link at the base of the food chain. Research has shown that krill reproduce in significantly
smaller numbers when ocean temperatures rise. This can have a cascading effect by
disrupting the life cycle of krill eaters, such as penguins and seals—which in turn causes food shortages for higher
predators.
Impacts of Climate Change on Marine Organisms and Ecosystems
Andrew S. Brierley 09
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982209011816
Human activities are releasing gigatonnes of carbon to the Earth's atmosphere annually. Direct
consequences of cumulative post-industrial emissions include increasing global temperature,
perturbed regional weather patterns, rising sea levels, acidifying oceans, changed nutrient
loads and altered ocean circulation. These and other physical consequences are affecting marine biological processes from
genes to ecosystems, over scales from rock pools to ocean basins, impacting
ecosystem services and threatening
human food security. The rates of physical change are unprecedented in some cases. Biological
change is likely to be commensurately quick, although the resistance and resilience of organisms and ecosystems is highly variable.
Biological changes founded in physiological response manifest as species range-changes,
invasions and extinctions, and ecosystem regime shifts.
Global Warming Impact on Sea Turtles
CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research 2009
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19895975
The present-day rates of increase of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, and
associated temperature changes, are very rapid; the capacity of marine turtles to adapt to
this rapid change may be compromised by their relatively long generation times. We consider the
evidence and likely consequences of present-day trends of climate change on marine turtles. Impacts are likely to be complex and may be positive
as well as negative. For example, rising sea levels and increased storm intensity will negatively impact turtle nesting beaches; however, extreme
storms can also lead to coastal accretion. Alteration of wind patterns and ocean currents will have implications for juveniles and adults in the
open ocean. Warming
temperatures are likely to impact directly all turtle life stages, such as the
sex determination of embryos in the nest and growth rates. Warming of 2 degrees C could
potentially result in a large shift in sex ratios towards females at many rookeries, although some
populations may be resilient to warming if female biases remain within levels where population success is not impaired . Indirectly,
climate change is likely to impact turtles through changes in food availability.
Climate change will cause extinction in up to 35% of species by 2100
Daniel Bailey, 22 December 2011, Can animals and plants adapt to global warming? http://www.skepticalscience.com/Can-animals-andplants-adapt-to-global-warming.htm
Humans are transforming the global environment. Great swathes of temperate forest in Europe, Asia and North America have been cleared
over the past few centuries for agriculture, timber and urban development. Tropical forests are now on the front line. Human-assisted species
invasions of pests, competitors and predators are rising exponentially, and over-exploitation of fisheries, and forest animals for bush meat, to
the point of collapse, continues to be the rule rather than the exception. Driving this has been a six-fold expansion of the human population
since 1800 and a 50-fold increase in the size of the global economy. The great modern human enterprise was built on exploitation of the natural
environment. Today, up to 83% of the Earth’s land area is under direct human influence and we entirely dominate 36% of the bioproductive
surface. Up to half the world’s freshwater runoff is now captured for human use. More nitrogen is now converted into reactive forms by
industry than all by all the planet’s natural processes and our industrial and agricultural processes are causing a continual build-up of long-lived
greenhouse gases to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years and possibly much longer. Clearly, this planet-wide
domination by human society will have implications for biological diversity . Indeed, a recent review on
the topic, the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report (an environmental report of similar scale to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports), drew some bleak conclusions – 60% of the world’s
ecosystems are now degraded and the extinction rate is now 100 to 1000 times higher than
the “background” rate of long spans of geological time. For instance, a study I conducted in 2003 showed that up to 42% of
species in the Southeast Asian region could be consigned to extinction by the year 2100 due to
deforestation and habitat fragmentation alone. Given these existing pressures and upheavals, it is a reasonable question to ask whether global
warming will make any further meaningful contribution to this mess. Some, such as the sceptics S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, see no danger
at all, maintaining that a warmer planet will be beneficial for mankind and other species on the planet and that “corals, trees, birds, mammals,
and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate”. Also, although climate change is a concern for conservation
biologists, it is not the focus for most researchers (at present), largely I think because of the severity and immediacy of the damage caused by
other threats. Global
warming to date has certainly affected species’ geographical distributional
ranges and the timing of breeding, migration, flowering, and so on. But extrapolating these observed
impacts to predictions of future extinction risk is challenging. The most well known study to date, by a team from the UK, estimated that 18
and 35% of plant and animal species will be committed to extinction by 2050 due to climate
change. This study, which used a simple approach of estimating changes in species geographical ranges after fitting to current bioclimatic
conditions, caused a flurry of debate. Some argued that it was overly optimistic or too uncertain because it left out most ecological detail, while
others said it was possibly overly pessimistic, based on what we know from species responses and apparent resilience to previous climate
change in the fossil record – see below. A
large number of ancient mass extinction events have indeed been
strongly linked to global climate change, including the most sweeping die-off that ended the Palaeozoic Era, 250 million
years ago and the somewhat less cataclysmic, but still damaging, Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, 55 million years ago. Yet in the more
recent past, during the Quaternary glacial cycles spanning the last million years, there were apparently few climate-related extinctions. This
curious paradox of few ice age extinctions even has a name – it is called ‘the Quaternary Conundrum’. Over that time, the globally averaged
temperature difference between the depth of an ice age and a warm interglacial period was 4 to 6°C – comparable to that predicted for the
coming century due to anthropogenic global warming under the fossil-fuel-intensive, business-as-usual scenario. Most species appear to have
persisted across these multiple glacial–interglacial cycles. This can be inferred from the fossil record, and from genetic evidence in modern
species. In Europe and North America, populations shifted ranges southwards as the great northern hemisphere ice sheets advanced, and
reinvaded northern realms when the glaciers retreated. Some species may have also persisted in locally favourable regions that were otherwise
isolated within the tundra and ice-strewn landscapes. In Australia, a recently discovered cave site has shown that large-bodied mammals
(‘megafauna’) were able to persist even in the arid landscape of the Nullarbor in conditions similar to now.
Threat to Marine Life
Jon Quelly Oct 3 2013 Global Research Organization
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/threat-to-marine-life-and-the-worldsoceans/5352768)
Driven by accumulations of carbon, the scientists found, the rate of acidification in the oceans is the
highest its been in over 300 million years. Additionally, de-oxygenation–caused by both warming and
industrial runoff–is stripping the ocean of its ability to support the plants and animals that
live in it. The combined stressors, according to the report, are “unprecedented in the Earth’s known history. We are entering an unknown
territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure. The next mass extinction may have already
begun.” Professor Alex Rogers of Somerville College, Oxford, and Scientific Director of IPSO said: “The
health of the ocean is
spiraling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought. We are seeing greater change,
happening faster, and the effects are more imminent than previously anticipated. The situation
should be of the gravest
Global warming harms ocean ecosystems
Carrington, Damien 2013 (the Head of Environment at the Guardian and the Observer.
worked at New Scientist, BBC News Online and the Financial Times. PhD in geology
from the University of Edinburgh, and a degree in Earth science from the University of
Cambridge. Accessed on 7/20/14
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/10/carbon-dioxide-highest-levelgreenhouse-gas)
Coral is particularly at risk. Increased acidity dissolves the calcium carbonate skeletons that form the structure of reefs, and increasing temperatures
lead to bleaching where the corals lose symbiotic algae they rely on. The report says that world governments' current pledges to curb carbon emissions
would not go far enough or fast enough to save many of the world's reefs. There is a time lag of several decades between the carbon being emitted
and the effects on seas, meaning that further acidification and further warming of the oceans are inevitable, even if we drastically reduce emissions
very quickly. There is as yet little sign of that, with global greenhouse gas output still rising. Corals are vital to the health of fisheries, because they act
as nurseries to young fish and smaller species that provide food for bigger ones. Carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed
by the seas – at least a third of the carbon that humans have released has been dissolved in this way,
according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and makes them more acidic. But IPSO
found the situation was even more dire than that laid out by the world's top climate scientists in their landmark report last week.
In absorbing carbon and heat from the atmosphere, the world's oceans have shielded humans from the worst effects of global warming, the marine
scientists said. This has slowed the rate of climate change on land, but its profound effects on marine life are only now being understood. Acidification
harms marine creatures that rely on calcium carbonate to build coral reefs and shells, as well as plankton, and the fish that rely on them. Jane
Lubchenco, former director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a marine
biologist, said the effects were already being felt in some oyster fisheries, where young larvae were
failing to develop properly in areas where the acid rates are higher, such as on the west coast of the
US. "You can actually see this happening," she said. "It's not something a long way into the future. It is
a very big problem."But the chemical changes in the ocean go further, said Rogers. Marine animals
use chemical signals to perceive their environment and locate prey and predators, and there is
evidence that their ability to do so is being impaired in some species.
Trevor Manuel, a South African government minister and co-chair of the Global Ocean Commission,
called the report "a deafening alarm bell on humanity's wider impacts on the global oceans". "Unless
we restore the ocean's health, we will experience the consequences on prosperity, wellbeing and
development. Governments must respond as urgently as they do to national security threats – in the
long run, the impacts are just as important," he said. Current rates of carbon release into the oceans are 10 times
faster than those before the last major species extinction, which was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum extinction, about
55m years ago. The IPSO scientists can tell that the current ocean acidification is the highest for 300m years from geological
records. They called for strong action by governments to limit carbon concentrations in the atmosphere to no more than 450 parts
per million of carbon dioxide equivalent. That would require urgent and deep reductions in fossil fuel use.
Climate change negatively affects fish
Agrawal 11 (Anju, Ph. D. from the University of Delhi, Effects of global warming on climate
change, flora and fauna, http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=5cb9dad051b3-4a35-84ad-db582a84769c%40sessionmgr4003&vid=2&hid=4211//LK)
Climate change can compound the impact of natural variation and fishing activity and make marine life
management more complex. For example scientists have observed that elevated temperature have
increased mortality of winter flounder eggs and larvae and later lead to spawning migrations.
Climate change represents a threat to sustainability to capture fisheries and aquaculture
development. The consequences of gradual warming on a global scale and associated physical
changes will become increasingly evident, as will be the more frequent extreme weather conditions.
The effects of increased pressure on fisheries, environmental pollution, environmental degradation.
A small increase in water temperature among sensitive fish like the South American pejerry can
result in a population that is 98% males.
Warming increases invasive species, disease, and harmful insects
Di Silvestro 14, Roger. "Global Warming: Coming To Your Backyard?." National Wildlife (World
Edition) 45.2 (2007): 14. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 19 July 2014.
If you're accustomed to thinking of global warming as something happening out there--say, in the
Arctic or the Antarctic or high in the atmosphere--you may be in for a shock. Recent scientific studies
indicate that global warming is likely soon to sneak into your backyard in the guise of burgeoning
numbers of disease-carrying insects, escalating amounts of hay-fever-inducing pollen and faster
growing and more toxic poison ivy. And it's not just your backyard that will be affected. You're likely to find that your
dinner table feels the heat, too.¶ Global warming is caused by a buildup of atmospheric gases increasingly emitted by human
activities--mostly the burning of fossil fuels. Most prominent among these gases is carbon dioxide (CO 2), used by plants in
photosynthesis, the process by which they turn sunlight into vegetable energy. Given the critical link between plants and CO2, it
makes sense that scientists would study how higher levels of the gas will affect plants. What they are finding is a warning to us all.¶
Consider woody vines, such as Japanese honeysuckle, kudzu, English ivy and other invasive plants
that climb backyard fences and trees throughout the nation. In a recent study done in North Carolina, Duke
University biologists used pipes to pump carbon dioxide into circular areas of forest, each about 100 feet in diameter. The biologists
raised the CO2 in the air to the level anticipated for our atmosphere by 2050 if CO2 emissions continue unchanged--about 585 parts
per million, "a level never before reached in all of human history," says William Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School of the
Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University. Presently, atmospheric CO2 is at about 372 parts per million, the highest
concentration in at least 420,000 years, as indicated by studies of gases trapped in ancient ice. ¶ After five years of experimenting,
biologists found that one woody vine--poison ivy--under increased CO2 grew at two and a half times its
normal rate. More ominously, the ivy produced a more powerful version of urushiol, the chemical that
causes a rash in some 80 percent of people who come in contact with the plant, producing more than
350,000 reported U.S. cases of blistered skin yearly.¶ The researchers also concluded that other woody vines would enjoy the same
rampant growth. Consequently, climbing vines such as honeysuckle may strangle and even topple tree s,
Increased plant growth suggests
increased pollen production, unwelcome news to hay fever victims, because that pollen will lead to
an "appreciable increase in hay fever and asthma, which should alarm us all," Schlesinger says. A Harvard study
changing the face of the nation's forests and woody backyards, Schlesinger says. ¶
released last year found that ragweed pollen production increased 55 percent under increased levels of CO 2. Another study,
conducted by the University of Oklahoma between 1999 and 2001, found that in tall-grass prairie plots in which temperature was
artificially raised, ragweed pollen production grew 84 percent. Considering that a single ragweed plant under current conditions can
release up to a billion pollen grains in one season, for a nationwide annual ragweed pollen production of an estimated 100 million
tons, these increases are formidable. In the Duke CO 2 studies, Schlesinger says, pines increased pollen production up
to threefold, another escalating threat to hay fever victims.¶ Insects, too, are likely to be invigorated
by warmer climates. "Long, cold winters have the potential to smack back insect populations,"
Schlesinger says. The shorter, warmer winters resulting from global warming could lead to more
insects, he says, including disease-carrying mosquitoes. A warmer world is also likely to produce
more robust tick populations, compounding the threat ticks pose as carriers of Lyme disease.
Warming kills wildflowers—key to ecosystems
Tangley 08 , Laura. "Lessons Of The Flowers." National Wildlife (World Edition) 46.3 (2008):
24. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 19 July 2014.
Sadly, within a century, scientists warn that such iconic landscapes may vanish--not just from the Rockies, but on mountain slopes
everywhere from the Sierra Nevada to the Swiss Alps to the Tibetan plateau. The evidence can be found eight miles up the road
from Crested Butte at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), where biologist John Harte leads a pioneering
experiment on the effects of global warming on subalpine meadows. To simulate the temperature increase
predicted for these habitats, Harte and his colleagues have used overhead heat lamps to warm a mountain meadow continuously
for the past 18 years. They've discovered that higher temperatures spawn a major shift in vegetation--
away from the grasses and colorful flowering plants that characterize subalpine meadows today
toward drought-adapted shrubs such as sagebrush. "In the future, we may be known as the sagebrush capital rather
than the wildflower capital of Colorado," laments Harte, a professor of energy and resources at the University of California--
The change would be more than aesthetic. While sagebrush provides wildlife food and
shelter in its native lower-elevation range, scores of subalpine insects, birds and mammals in the
Rockies depend completely on the seeds, leaves, pollen and nectar of non-woody flowering plants.
More significantly, as sagebrush crowds out wildflowers, Harte and his colleagues have found that
the shift spurs a number of "positive feedbacks" that accelerate warming. Like the melting of the polar ice
Berkeley.¶
caps, "it's a case where warming begets warming," explains Harte. And because most climate models fail to factor in the impact of
such ecosystem transformations, he believes it also is a worrisome sign that their projections, bad as they are, may underestimate
how fast the planet is heating up.¶ When Harte began planning his project in the mid-1980s, there had been few, if any, attempts to
study the effects of warming on a natural ecosystem.
Warming leads to increase of invasive species
Lu 13, Xinmin, et al. "Climate Warming Affects Biological Invasions By Shifting Interactions Of Plants
And Herbivores." Global Change Biology 19.8 (2013): 2339-2347. MEDLINE. Web. 19 July 2014.
Global change may significantly affect invasive¶ plants through its impact on the population growth¶
rates of biocontrol agents. Elevated temperature can¶ increase population size of insects (Currano et
al., 2008;¶ Mitton & Ferrenberg, 2012) and consequently increase¶ efficacy of biocontrol. In our
experiment, elevated¶ temperature increased the total number of beetles that¶ occurred in
experimental plots in both 2010 and 2011¶ (Fig. 1). Although nitrogen deposition has been¶ reported to
increase insect population growth by¶ elevating resource availability (Room & Thomas, 1985;¶ Throop &
Lerdau, 2004; Center & Dray, 2010), we¶ found N addition only increased insect populations in¶ the first
year. It is possible that, in our experiment, the¶ insect populations were more constrained by food¶
quantity rather than food quality in the second year.
Warming Bad – Dolphins
Health Challenges for Dolphin approaching a tipping point
Wells 10
[“ Potential climate change effects on dolphins” January 6th http://sarasotadolphin.org/2010/01/06/potential-climate-change-effects-ondolphins/, accessed on 7/20/14]
Sea surface temperature increase is likely to be one of the first climate change experiences for small cetaceans in shallow, coastal, non-polar waters. The resident
dolphins have remained in the Sarasota Bay area for decades, at least, and through large scale environmental perturbations such as severe red tides and hurricanes.
Existing data suggest that as these animals remain in warming waters, they may face increasing health
problems, through increases in harmful algal bloom exposure or thermoregulatory issues. High summer
metabolic rates and mortality rates suggest current thermal challenges, as water temperature approaches body temperature; this
situation may be exacerbate d through climate change. Thermal stresses may combine with toxicological
stresses to increase mortality under warm water conditions. Lipids released from thinning blubber as waters warm
can transport associated toxic environmental contaminants (e.g., PCBs, DDT and metabolites) to target organs or to organs where
biotransformation can modify toxicity, leading to compromised immune function. Warmer waters are likely to support a variety of old and new
pathogens, reduce dolphin host resistance, and/or increase the duration of exposure. Transfer of contaminants via lactation
has been suggested as one cause of the increased mortality documented for first-born calves in the area. Taken together, these factors suggest that seasonal
warming appears to lead to health challenges for Sarasota Bay bottlenose dolphins, perhaps approaching a tipping point,
potentially leading to cascading declines in individual health. Information is needed to identify and detect signals of climate change,
predict where and how impacts on dolphins and their habitat are likely to occur, and prioritize pre-emptive management actions for providing these animals with as
much capacity as possible to respond to climate change.
Warming Bad – Whales
Warming hurts whale habitat
Dan 14, Joling. "In Hot Water - Fears Of Global Warming As Whales Stray In Arctic Home." Courier Mail,
The (Brisbane) (n.d.):Newspaper Source. Web. 20 July 2014.
ENDANGERED humpback and fin whales swam hundreds of kilometres north of their usual habitat
this summer in what environmentalists say is a shift in the Arctic ecosystem and another sign of global
warming. Humpbacks were seen during the summer in the Beaufort Sea and east of Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost community in the
US, the US Minerals Management Service said. Last year they were seen in the Chukchi Sea, west of the Beaufort, and north of the Bering
Strait. Robin Cacy, a spokeswoman for the agency, which oversees offshore drilling lease sales, said fin whales had been detected by acoustic
monitoring in the Chukchi Sea, almost 500km north of their normal range.
Both humpback and fin whales normally stay
south of the Bering Strait in Alaskan waters.
Environmental groups are calling for further study of the endangered animals'
habits before industrial activity is allowed to expand off Alaska's northern shores. Gary Strasburg, another spokesman for the minerals
service, said that a sighting of an endangered whale species in a new area would not prompt an immediate change in how the agency
regulates exploration for petroleum. Brendan Cummings, ocean programs director for the environmental group Centre for Biological
Diversity, said the
humpback sightings might indicate a recovering population expanding its range -- or a desperate
search for food. Deborah Williams, a former Interior Department special assistant for Alaska, emphasised the significance of the
presence of the whales so far north. ``We now have even more compelling reasons to protect the Arctic Ocean
and the species dramatically affected by climate change,'' she said. Other species active in the Chukchi Sea were
behaving differently because of climate change, Mr Cummings said. He cited grey whales seeking new feeding areas and walrus congregating
on Alaska's northwest shore this (northern) summer instead of on pack ice that had receded far beyond the continental shelf. `` It looks
like the populations are suffering from it,'' he said. ``All signs point to global warming. That would be
the first suspect of why the whales are there.'' Pack ice is also at a record low. In September 4.3 million square kilometres
of sea ice was recorded - a 39 per cent reduction from the long-term average from 1979 to 2000.
Warming hurts whale birth rate
National Geographic 10 (10/28/10) “Whale birth decline tied to Global Warming, Study
says” National Geographic.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0118_060118_right_whales_2.htm
l
In their study, scientists compared sea-surface temperatures in the southwest Atlantic to their index of the yearly calving success of
Researchers found a strong correlation between the number of
right whale calves born and changes in sea-surface temperature in the autumn of the preceding
year. Other experts say the study results are convincing. Charles H. Greene, professor of earth and atmospheric science at
whales that breed off the Argentine coast.
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said: "The authors provide compelling evidence that South Atlantic right whale calving rates
are correlated with climate variability, once one takes into account the appropriate time lags." The study authors were able to chart
As the water
temperatures rise from the norm, calf output declines. According to the scientists, it doesn't take
much warming to affect the species. Even small changes in the oceanographic conditions in the
Southern Ocean, the circumpolar sea around Antarctica, could affect southern right whale
population dynamics. While the authors concede that there is limited data on the diet of southern right whales, it is highly
the sea-surface temperature against whale calf output for the years 1983-2000, and the results were clear:
probable that their main food is krill. But sufficient data probably don't exist to tie krill concentrations in the southwest Atlantic firmly
to whale reproductive success, the authors say. Greene agrees. "The
key missing link is still prey abundance," the
factor that will link ocean temperature changes and calving rates, he said. "The
role of krill in this story," he continued,
"must be worked out to develop a truly predictive understanding of climate impacts on predator populations in the South Atlantic."
The authors strongly suspect, however, that there is
an inverse relationship between krill density and sea
surface temperature. The warmer the water gets, the less krill there are. Species other than right
whales may also be affected.
Ice melt hurts whales
Nowacek 13(Douglas P. Nowacek, the Repass-Rodgers chair of marine conservation technology in the
Nicholas School of the Environment and the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. 1/11/13)
“Global Warming affects whales in the short and long term” The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/01/10/did-we-save-the-whales-19/global-warmingaffects-whales-in-the-short-and-long-terms
One of the most complex changes facing whales right now is global warming. WE are only just beginning to see
how climate change may be linked to the health of whales. As part of our research program along the Western Antarctic Peninsula, in 2009 my
colleagues and I found a super-aggregation of humpback whales and krill: two million tons of krill and about 500 whales! As the ice recedes in
this area, which is warming faster than anywhere else on the planet, huge amounts of krill are exposed. This would appear to be good news for
the humpbacks, which do not venture under the ice. But the benefit may be only in the short term. These whales
rely almost
completely on krill, whose life cycle is dependent on the sea ice. Assuming the warming trends
continue and the krill keep losing habitat, the humpbacks’ years of feasting could be followed by
dwindling supplies of krill. Another example of warming’s effects on whales comes from the opposite side of the globe, where
bowhead whales feed in the open waters of the Arctic Ocean. Again, the melting ice might appear to benefit the whales in the immediate
future, but the shrinking
ice cover is altering the Arctic ecosystem, from phytoplankton right up the food
chain. It also invites a greater human presence, like oil exploration and shipping. The result is unclear, but it
won’t be the status quo. One worldwide change that will affect marine mammals is ocean acidification, a
product of carbon emissions. This chemical change directly affects the way sound behaves in the
ocean, and whales and dolphins use sound as a primary sense. Again, we don’t know the ultimate effects on marine
life. Although whales may be safer from whaling now than they were when the “save the whales”
campaign began, climate changes are altering their ecosystems. We don’t know yet whether those threats will be
more dangerous than a harpoon.
Whales help the ecosystem
Brown 2014 [Joshua- staff writer at the University of Vermont natural and physical
sciences, astronomy, zoology.] (Whales as Ecosystem Engineershttp://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=news&storyID=18797&category=ucommfeature)
“The continued recovery of great whales may help to buffer marine ecosystems from
destabilizing stresses,” the team of scientists writes. This recovered role may be especially important as
climate change threatens ocean ecosystems with rising temperatures and acidification. “As long-lived
species, they enhance the predictability and stability of marine ecosystems,” Roman said.
Baleen and sperm whales, known collectively as the “great whales,” include the largest animals to have
ever lived on Earth. With huge metabolic demands — and large populations before humans started
hunting them — great whales are the ocean’s ecosystem engineers: they eat many fish and
invertebrates, are themselves prey to other predators like killer whales, and distribute nutrients through
the water. Even their carcasses, dropping to the seafloor, provide habitat for many species that only
exist on these "whale falls." Commercial whaling dramatically reduced the biomass and abundance of
great whales.
“As humpbacks, gray whales, sperm whales and other cetaceans recover from centuries of overhunting,
we are beginning to see that they also play an important role in the ocean,” Roman said. “Among their
many ecological roles, whales recycle nutrients and enhance primary productivity in areas where they
feed." They do this by feeding at depth and releasing fecal plumes near the surface — which supports
plankton growth — a remarkable process described as a “whale pump.” Whales also move nutrients
thousands of miles from productive feeding areas at high latitudes to calving areas at lower latitudes.
Warming Bad – Coral Reefs
Warming threatens coral reefs
Pearson, Helen 2004 (degree in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge, a
PhD in genetics, “global warming harms coral reefs” accessed 7/20/14
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040216/full/news040216-3.html)
The world's coral reefs could be badly damaged by global warming unless drastic intervention measures are introduced, marine
Tens of millions of people rely on reefs to protect their homes from erosion and to
support the fish that they eat. The underwater landscapes harbour about 25% of marine species and
generate some $30 billion each year through fishing and tourism. The experts' warning comes in a report,
published by the non-profit Pew Center on Global Climate Change, that sums up the potential impact of global
experts have warned.
warming on coral reefs over the next century. It was released at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting
Almost 15% of the world's reefs are already beyond repair thanks to global warming, the report
Another 30% may be lost over the next 30 years, estimates Richard Aronson of Dauphin Island
Sea Lab in Alabama, one of the report's authors. Experts at the meeting urged governments and
conservationists to act now to stem the tide of damage. As well as curbing greenhouse gas emissions, the authors
in Seattle.
says.
recommend introducing ecosystem management plans that will cut the impact of fishing and pollution. Some countries are already
implementing reef conservation programs.
In Australia, for example, a law banning fishing on 30% of the Great
Barrier Reef is expected to come into effect this year. The government has also backed a measure to
compensate fishermen for lost revenues. Experts at the meeting explained how tiny sea anemone-like polyps build
coral reefs by secreting brittle, limestone skeletons. Algae support the polyps by converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into sugars
that feed them; the polyps, in turn, ooze waste products that nurture the algae. The report says that global warming is harming
Spiraling levels of carbon
dioxide, a greenhouse gas, dissolve in sea water, creating an acidic cocktail that stops polyps oozing
their skeleton. And warmer water makes the reef more vulnerable to other threats, such as
overfishing, diseases and pollutants that drain into coastal waters. "Global warming is tearing the
heart out of coral reefs," says Terry Done of the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville.
Marine biologists first noticed the widespread death of coral during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1997-98,
global warming intensified higher ocean temperatures caused by El Niño and wiped out some 16% of the
world's reefs. Dying coral loses the healthy green-brown glow conferred by algae and pales to become white, a process called
bleaching. Warming waters are also nudging coral reefs north and south into previously cool waters,
such as the shorelines of Florida and Texas. But because reefs take years to build up, this 'coral creep'
cannot compensate for larger losses in the tropics, experts say.
coral reefs in at least three ways. Changes of just 1 or 2 °C can stifle the life-giving algae.
Threats caused by global warming on coral reefs
(accessed on 7/20/14 http://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Threats-to-Wildlife/GlobalWarming/Effects-on-Wildlife-and-Habitat/Coral-Reefs.aspx)
Higher sea temperatures from global warming have already caused major coral bleaching events. Bleaching occurs
when corals respond to the stress of warmer temperatures by expelling the colorful algae that live within them.
Some coral are able to recover, but too often the coral dies, and the entire ecosystem for which it
forms the base, virtually disappears. Longer-lasting and more extensive bleaching events are already
on the rise, with further increases expected in the decades ahead as ocean temperatures continue to
rise. Warmer waters are also expected to increase the incidence of other coral diseases such as black
band disease, white band disease, white plague, and white pox, all of which can lead to mass mortality of coral,
and subsequently the entire ecosystem it supports. Ocean acidification--which occurs when oceans absorb carbon
As the oceans become more acidic, the corals' ability
to form skeletons through calcification is inhibited, causing their growth to slow. A doubling of
atmospheric carbon dioxide will reduce calcification in some corals by as much as 50 percent. Sea
level rise caused by melting sea ice and thermal expansion of the oceans could also cause problems
for some reefs by making them too deep to receive adequate sunlight, another factor important for
survival.
dioxide from the atmosphere--is also a threat to coral.
Warming Bad – Fisheries
Warming hurts fisheries
EPA 13 (Environmental Protection Agency 9/9/13) “Agriculture and Food Supply”
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/agriculture.html
American fisheries catch or harvest five million metric tons of fish and shellfish each year. [2] These fisheries contribute more than $1.4 billion
to the economy annually (as of 2007). [5] Many fisheries already face multiple stresses, including overfishing and water pollution. Climate
change may worsen these stresses. In particular, temperature changes could lead to significant impacts.¶ Bar graph that
shows the geographic distribution shift of marine species. On average, families of species shifted approximately 20 miles northward. Only a
portion of the species shifted southward, with the largest shift approximately 50 miles southward. The majority of species shifted northward,
with the largest shift almost 150 miles northward. The graph also points to pollock, halibut, rock sole, and snow crab as examples of species
that have shifted between approximately 30 and 50 miles northward. View enlarged image¶ The ranges of marine species have shifted
northward as waters have warmed.¶ Source: USGCRP (2009)¶ The ranges of many fish and shellfish species may change. Many
marine
species have certain temperature ranges at which they can survive. For example, cod in the North Atlantic require
water temperatures below 54°F. Even sea-bottom temperatures above 47°F can reduce their ability to
reproduce and for young cod to survive. In this century, temperatures in the region will likely exceed
both thresholds. [1]¶ Many aquatic species can find colder areas of streams and lakes or move northward along the coast or in the ocean.
However, moving into new areas may put these species into competition with other species over food and other resources, as explained on the
Ecosystems Impacts page.¶ Some
diseases that affect aquatic life may become more prevalent in warm water.
For example, in southern New England, lobster catches have declined dramatically. A temperaturesensitive bacterial shell disease likely caused the large die-off events that led to the decline. [1]¶
Changes in temperature and seasons could affect the timing of reproduction and migration. Many
steps within an aquatic animal's lifecycle are controlled by temperature and the changing of the
seasons. For example, in the Northwest warmer water temperatures may affect the lifecycle of
salmon and increase the likelihood of disease. Combined with other climate impacts, these effects are projected to lead to
large declines in salmon populations. [6] [7] [8]¶ In addition to warming, the world's oceans are gradually becoming more
acidic due to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). Increasing acidity could harm shellfish by
weakening their shells, which are created from calcium and are vulnerable to increasing acidity. [1]
Acidification may also threaten the structures of sensitive ecosystems upon which some fish and
shellfish rely. [3]
Warming Bad – Agriculture
Crop yield decline because of warming (the Neg is wrong)
Wolfram Schlenkera Department of Economics and School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York,
NY 10027; and Michael J. Roberts Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, North Carolina State University,
Raleigh, NC 27695 Communicated by V. Kerry Smith, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, July 1, 20 09 (received for review
October 13, 2008) http://www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15594.full?tab=author-info
The United States produces 41% of the world's corn and 38% of the world's soybeans. These
crops comprise two of the four largest sources of caloric energy produced and are thus critical for world
food supply. We pair a panel of county-level yields for these two crops, plus cotton (a warmer- weather crop), with a new fine-scale
weather dataset that incorporates the whole distribution of temperatures within each day and across all days in the growing season. We find
that yields increase with temperature up to 29° C for corn, 30° C for soybeans, and 32° C for cotton but
that temperatures above these thresholds are very harmful. The slope of the decline above the optimum
is significantly steeper than the incline below it. The same nonlinear and asymmetric relationship is found when we isolate
either time-series or cross-sectional variations in temperatures and yields. This suggests limited historical adaptation of seed varieties or
management practices to warmer temperatures because the cross-section includes farmers' adaptations to warmer climates and the timeseries does not. Holding
current growing regions fixed, area-weighted average yields are predicted to
decrease by 30–46% before the end of the century under the slowest (B1) warming scenario and
decrease by 63–82% under the most rapid warming scenario (A1FI) under the Hadley III model.
CO2 only increases yields of weeds—grains die
EPA 13 (Environmental Protection Agency 9/9/13) “Agriculture and Food Supply”
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/agriculture.html PS
Crops grown in the United States are critical for the food supply here and around the world. U.S. exports supply more than 30% of all wheat,
corn, and rice on the global market. [2] Changes in
temperature, amount of carbon dioxide (CO2), and the
frequency and intensity of extreme weather could have significant impacts on crop yields.¶ Warmer
temperatures may make many crops grow more quickly, but warmer temperatures could also reduce
yields. Crops tend to grow faster in warmer conditions. However, for some crops (such as grains),
faster growth reduces the amount of time that seeds have to grow and mature. [1] This can reduce
yields (i.e., the amount of crop produced from a given amount of land).¶ For any particular crop, the effect of increased temperature will
depend on the crop's optimal temperature for growth and reproduction. [1] In some areas, warming may benefit the types of crops that are
typically planted there. However, if warming exceeds a crop's optimum temperature, yields can decline. ¶ Higher
CO2 levels can increase yields. The yields for some crops, like wheat and soybeans, could increase by 30% or more under a doubling of CO2
concentrations. The yields for other crops, such as corn, exhibit a much smaller response (less than 10% increase). [3]
However, some
factors may counteract these potential increases in yield. For example, if temperature exceeds a
crop's optimal level or if sufficient water and nutrients are not available, yield increases may be
reduced or reversed.¶ More extreme temperature and precipitation can prevent crops from growing.
Extreme events, especially floods and droughts, can harm crops and reduce yields. For example, in 2008, the
Mississippi River flooded just before the harvest period for many crops, causing an estimated loss of $8 billion for farmers. [1]¶ Dealing
with drought could become a challenge in areas where summer temperatures are projected to
increase and precipitation is projected to decrease. As water supplies are reduced, it may be more
difficult to meet water demands.¶ Many weeds, pests and fungi thrive under warmer temperatures,
wetter climates, and increased CO2 levels. Currently, farmers spend more than $11 billion per year to fight weeds in the
United States. [1] The ranges of weeds and pests are likely to expand northward. This would cause new
problems for farmers' crops previously unexposed to these species. Moreover, increased use of pesticides and
fungicides may negatively affect human
Warming hurts livestock
EPA 13 (Environmental Protection Agency 9/9/13) “Agriculture and Food Supply”
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptation/agriculture.html
Americans consume more than 37 million tons of meat annually. [2] The U.S. livestock industry
produced $100 billion worth of goods in 2002. [4] Changes in climate could affect animals both directly
and indirectly.¶ Heat waves, which are projected to increase under climate change, could directly
threaten livestock. A number of states have each reported losses of more than 5,000 animals from just
one heat wave. [1] Heat stress affects animals both directly and indirectly. Over time, heat stress can
increase vulnerability to disease, reduce fertility, and reduce milk production.¶ Drought may threaten
pasture and feed supplies. Drought reduces the amount of quality forage available to grazing livestock.
Some areas could experience longer, more intense droughts, resulting from higher summer
temperatures and reduced precipitation. For animals that rely on grain, changes in crop production due
to drought could also become a problem.¶ Climate change may increase the prevalence of parasites
and diseases that affect livestock.The earlier onset of spring and warmer winters could allow some
parasites and pathogens to survive more easily. In areas with increased rainfall, moisture-reliant
pathogens could thrive. [3]¶ Increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) may increase the productivity of pastures,
but may also decrease their quality. Increases in atmospheric CO2 can increase the productivity of plants
on which livestock feed. However, studies indicate that the quality of some of the forage found in
pasturelands decreases with higher CO2. As a result, cattle would need to eat more to get the same
nutritional benefits.
Human caused GHG emotions are responsible for drought conditions
Aiguo Dai Ph.D. Atmospheric Science, Columbia University, New York City , A. (2011), Drought under global warming: a review.
WIREs Clim Change, 2: 45–65. doi: 10.1002/wcc.81 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.81/full
Since the middle 20th century, global aridity and drought areas have increased substantially,
mainly due to widespread drying since the 1970s over Africa, southern Europe, East and South Asia,
eastern Australia, and many parts of the northern mid-high latitudes. Although natural variations in
ENSO, tropical Atlantic SSTs, and Asian monsoons have played a large role in the recent drying, the rapid
warming since the late 1970s has increased atmospheric demand for moisture and likely altered
atmospheric circulation patterns (e.g., over Africa and East Asia), both contributing to the recent drying
over land. Since a large part of the recent warming is attributed to human-induced GHG increases,90 it
can be concluded that human activities have contributed significantly to the recent drying trend.
Warmer temperatures hurt crop yield
Field et al 2007 (Field, C.B., L.D. Mortsch, M. Brklacich, D.L. Forbes, P. Kovacs, J.A. Patz, S.W.
Running and M.J. Scott (2007). North America. In: Climate Change 2007): Impacts, Adaptation
and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Parry, M.L., O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J. van der
Linden and C.E. Hanson (eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Over the last century, yields of major commodity crops in the U.S. have increased consistently, typically at rates of 1 to 2%/yr
(Troyer, 2004), but there are significant variations across regions and between years. These yield trends are a result of cumulative
changes in multiple factors, including technology, fertiliser use, seed stocks, and management techniques, plus any changes due to
climate; the specific impact from any one factor may be positive or negative. In the Midwestern U.S. from 1970 to 2000, corn yield
increased 58% and soybean yields increased 20%, with annual weather fluctuations resulting in year-to-year variability (Hicke and
Lobell, 2004). Heavy rainfalls reduced the value of the U.S. corn crop by an average of US$3 billion/yr between 1951 and 1998
(Rosenzweig et al., 2002). In the
Corn and Wheat Belt of the U.S., yields of corn and soybeans from 1982 to
1998 were negatively impacted by warm temperatures, decreasing 17% for each 1°C of warmtemperature anomaly (Lobell and Asner, 2003). In California, warmer nights have enhanced the production of high-quality
wine grapes (Nemani et al., 2001), but additional warming may not result in similar increases. For twelve major crops in
California, climate fluctuations over the last 20 years have not had large effects on yield, though they have been a
positive factor for oranges and walnuts and a negative for avocados and cotton (Lobell et al., 2006).¶ North American
agriculture has been exposed to many severe weather events during the past decade. More variable weather, coupled
with out-migration from rural areas and economic stresses, has increased the vulnerability of the
agricultural sector overall, raising concerns about its future capacity to cope with a more variable
climate (Senate of Canada, 2003; Wheaton et al., 2005). North American agriculture is, however, dynamic. Adaptation to multiple
stresses and opportunities, including changes in markets and weather, is a normal process for the sector. Crop and enterprise
diversification, as well as soil and water conservation, are often used to reduce weather-related risks (Wall and Smit, 2005). Recent
adaptations by the agricultural sector in North America, including improved water conservation and conservation tillage, are not
typically undertaken as single discrete actions, but evolve as a set of decisions that can span several years in a dynamic and
changing environment (Smit and Skinner, 2002) that includes changes in public policy (Goodwin, 2003). While there have been
understanding of
agriculture’s current sensitivity to climate variability and its capacity to cope with climate change
remains limited (Tol, 2002).
attempts to realistically model the dynamics of adaptation to climate change (Easterling et al., 2003),
Warming destroys crops
Garber 08 (Kent Garber, 5-28-08, staff writer for US News) “How Global Warming will
Hurt Crops” US News. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/05/28/how-globalwarming-will-hurt-crops
Historically, the damage to food supplies by bad weather has been regarded as fleeting: catastrophic
in the short term but ultimately remitting. Droughts ease, floodwaters recede, and farmers replant
their crops. But as a new government report indicates, such views are increasingly narrow and
outdated, in that they fail to acknowledge the creeping reach of global climate change.¶ The report,
released Tuesday, offers one of the most comprehensive looks yet at the impact that climate change
is expected to have on U.S. agriculture over the next several decades. Not surprisingly, the
prognosis is grim. Temperatures in the United States, scientists say, will rise on average by about
1.2 degrees Celsius by 2040, with carbon dioxide levels up more than 15 percent. The consequences
for American-grown food, the report finds, will most likely be far-reaching: Some crop yields are
predicted to drop; growing seasons will get longer and use more water; weeds and shrubs will grow
faster and spread into new territory, some of it arable farmland; and insect and crop disease
outbreaks will become more frequent.¶ The new report, which was produced by more than a dozen
agencies over multiple years and reflects the findings of more than 1,000 scientific studies, offers
only predictions, but the predictions reflect a high degree of confidence. In a sense, there is a vein of
fatalism among most scientists about what will happen in the next few decades. Government
actions, they say, may alter the trajectory of climate change 50 to 100 years from now, but the fate of
climate change in the short term has been largely shaped by past behavior, by carbon already
released into the atmosphere. The question now is the extent of its impact.¶ Some agricultural
changes are already observable. In the central Great Plains, in states known for their grassy
prairies and sprawling row crops, there are new neighbors: trees and large shrubs, often clustering
in islands in the middle of fields. In the Southwest, perennial grasses have been largely pushed out
by mesquite bushes, those long-rooted staples of the desert. And the invasive kudzu vine, formerly a
nuisance only to the South, has advanced steadily northward, forming a staggered line stretching
from Connecticut to Illinois. Human practices in all three cases have abetted the turnover, but
climate change, scientists say, has been a primary driver, as invasive species reproduce more
quickly and expand into areas once deemed too cold for their survival. In turn, high-quality
pastureland, once ideal for livestock grazing, has become poor-quality brush, and farmland faces
competitors for space.¶ In the next 30 years these problems will very likely expand and multiply, as
an already taxed food system faces threats on multiple fronts. A rise in temperature—even as little
as 1 degree Celsius—could cause many plantings to fail, the report indicates, since pollen and seeds
are sensitive to slight temperature changes. Yields of corn and rice are expected to decline slightly.
Heat-sensitive fruits and vegetables, such as tomatoes, will most likely suffer. Some of the potential
damage will be blunted by higher carbon dioxide levels; soybean yields, for instance, will probably
improve, because soybeans (and several other crops) thrive from higher carbon inputs. But if
temperatures keep rising, the balance will ultimately tip: At some extreme temperature, cells stop
dividing, and pollen dies.¶ High ozone levels, which have risen sixfold in the United States in the past
century and are expected to rise further, will suppress yields as well. In fact, ozone levels are
already extremely high in the eastern and midwestern regions of the country, rivaled globally only by
eastern China (no model of air quality, to be sure) and parts of western Europe. One recent study,
for instance, found that high ozone levels significantly suppress yields of soybean, wheat, and
peanuts in the Midwest.
Warming Bad – Food Prices
Warming causes food price increase
Vastag and Eilperin 11 (Brian Vastag and Juliet Eilperin, staff writers at the Huffington Post, May 5,
2011). “Report: Global Warming hurting crop production, pushing prices higher” The Huffington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/report-global-warming-already-crimping-crop-productionpushing-prices-higher/2011/05/04/AFdsMSzF_story.html.
The warming of the Earth has cooled the yields of corn and wheat in much of the world, a new study
finds.¶ Although agricultural advances have pushed global production of staple crops skyward, hotter
temperatures in Russia,
China, Mexico and elsewhere have stunted that growth and contributed to the long-term rise in
food prices, says the analysis published Thursday in the journal Science.¶ “This is tens of billions of dollars a year in lost
[agricultural] productivity because of warming,” said David Lobell, an Earth scientist at Stanford University and an author on
the report.¶ Three
decades of global warming crimped worldwide yields of corn by about 5.5 percent
and wheat by about 3.8 percent compared with what would have been produced had world
temperatures remained stable, the report says.¶ A burgeoning global population also needs more crops — and more grain-fed
beef — which contributes to rising food prices much more than climate change, Lobell said. This week, the United Nations also projected that the global
population will hit 7 billion in October and 10.6 billion by 2050. Such a huge increase will continue to push food prices higher. ¶ For now, the bread
basket of America bucked the trend, as agricultural regions of the United States have not warmed much during their growing seasons since 1980.
Climate scientists debate the reasons, with some pointing to particulate pollution over the middle of the United States as a possible cooling
counterbalance. This
climate hit adds about 6 percent to the cost of wheat and corn, staples whose prices
have skyrocketed in recent years. Although global warming is “a small part of the overall story of why prices are going up,” Lobell said,
“it’s not negligible.” Global
corn prices doubled between April 2010 and April 2011, the United
Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization reported Thursday. Wheat prices are up 60 to 80 percent
depending on the strain, said Abdolreza Abbassian, an FAO analyst.
Warming Bad – Polar Melting
! – Glacial Melting leads to Coastal Flooding and abandonment of major economic
centers
Gillis and Chang, ‘14
Justin Gillis and Kenneth Chang, May 12th, 2014, “Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans from Polar Melt”,
NYTimes journalists, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/science/earth/collapse-of-parts-of-westantarctica-ice-sheet-has-begun-scientists-say.html?_r=0
But the melting from both Greenland and Antarctica is expected to be far more important in
the future. A United Nations scientific committee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has warned that the global sea level could rise as
much as three feet by the end of this century if stronger efforts are not made to control greenhouse gases. The new findings suggest the
situation is likely to get far worse in subsequent centuries. The effects will depend in part on how much money
future governments spend to protect shorelines from a rising sea. Research published in 2012 found that a rise of less than four feet would inundate land on
Richard B. Alley, a
climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the new research
but has studied the polar ice sheets for decades, said he found the new papers compelling.
Though he had long feared the possibility of ice-sheet collapse, when he learned of the new findings, “it shook me
a little bit,” Dr. Alley said. He added that while a large rise of the sea may now be inevitable from West
Antarctica, continued release of greenhouse gases will almost certainly make the situation
worse. The heat-trapping gases could destabilize other parts of Antarctica as well as the
Greenland ice sheet, potentially causing enough sea-level rise that many of the world’s
coastal cities would eventually have to be abandoned. “If we have indeed lit the fuse on West Antarctica, it’s very hard
which some 3.7 million Americans live today. Miami, New Orleans, New York and Boston are all highly vulnerable.
to imagine putting the fuse out,” Dr. Alley said. “But there’s a bunch more fuses, and there’s a bunch more matches, and we have a decision now: Do we light
those?”
Polar Ice Melt leads to increase in pathogens
NPR interview, ‘14
NPR interview between science writer Chris Solomon and Arun Rath, July 20th 2014, “As Polar Icebox
Shrinks, Infectious Pathogens Move North”, http://www.npr.org/2014/07/20/333173754/as-polaricebox-shrinks-infectious-pathogens-move-north
ARUN RATH, HOST:
Infectious diseases may be spreading more quickly, thanks to global warming. Viruses that were kept in check by the polar ice box are being released. And as
some animals move north to keep cool, they're bringing all sorts of parasites with them, from microbes to ticks. Christopher Solomon has written about this
in the August issue of "Scientific American." And he joins me now from Montana Public Radio in Missoula. Welcome.
CHRISTOPHER SOLOMON: Good to be here, Arun. RATH: So, Christopher, you wrote about sea otters off the coast of Alaska's Aleutian Islands that are now
There is something called phocine
distemper virus, and it's a relative of canine distemper. Phocine distemper has killed 50,000
seals over the last 25 years in the North Atlantic. And as scientists were trying to figure out
why sea otters splashing in the Aleutian Islands were not doing so well, they found evidence
of phocine distemper in them, and it became a detective story. And they said, well, what's it doing in the North
Pacific? And their theory is that it has made its way through the fabled Northwest passage
via a seal or its feces and met animals on the other side due to the dramatic level of sea ice
reduction. RATH: So in addition to opening up lanes for shipping, warming has opened up a
highway for viruses? SOLOMON: Yes. In essence, disease is finding new lanes of travel. Existing disease up there is becoming invigorated. And
infected with a virus from halfway around the world. What happened? SOLOMON:
new disease is hitchhiking on all sorts of wildlife, whether it's fish or wild boars or ticks that are moving north in search of new habitat that's cooler. RATH:
Wow. And in terms of land animals, I know with your article there is a photo of a big herd of very serious looking musk oxen. And they've been affected as
Musk oxen - people may be able to visualize from a Disney or Pixar movie - they're those
had his relationship with this parasitical lung
worm. It gave them a bit of a smoker's cough. But the lung worm was always kept in check
because it never was able to thrive in the brutal Arctic environment too well. And now, with
essentially longer, warmer summers, the lung worm can complete its life cycle in one
summer instead of two. And it has proliferated and has expanded it's range up to where 30 percent of the world population of musk oxen
well? SOLOMON: Yeah. So this is another interesting case.
smelly, kind of shaggy, horned relics of the Ice Age. And they've, for eons,
live. And this is not good for the declining number of musk oxen in the far north. RATH: Now, diseases can sometimes jump from animals to humans. How
much is there for people to worry about, beyond animal populations?
Since 1940, 60 percent of the new infectious diseases
we've discovered in humans have come from animals. We've knocked down the borders between the natural world and
SOLOMON: Well, that's the interesting point in all of this.
the man-made world. Or, in these cases, the borders are simply melting away.
Warming Bad – Ocean Acidification
Warming causes ocean acidification
Doney, 2007, Senior Scientist of Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry Department Woods at the Hole
Oceanographic Institution . (Scott Doney, “Effects of Climate Change and Ocean Acidification on Living
Marine Resources”, Accessed on 7/19/2014 at
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=8916&tid=282&cid=27206)
More than 80% of the added heat resides in the ocean. Clear alterations to the ocean have already been detected from
observations. The magnitude and patterns of these changes are consistent with an attribution to human activities and not explained by natural
variability alone. Global
average land and ocean surface temperatures increased at a rate of about
0.2°C/decade over the last few decades (Hansen et al., 2006), and ocean temperatures down to 3000 m
(10,000 feet) depth are also on the rise. Averages rates of sea-level rise over the last several decades were
1.8±0.5 mm/y, with an even larger rate (3.1±0.7 mm/y) over the most recent decade.
(http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/ice-seaice.shtml, and some models predict near ice-free conditions by 2040. Recent studies of the
Greenland ice sheet highlight an alarming increase in surface melting over the summer, and percolation of that melt water to the base of the
ice sheet where the melt-water could lubricate ice flow and potentially greatly accelerate ice loss and sea-level rise. These new findings have
not been full incorporated into projected sea-level rise estimates, which thus may be underestimated.¶ Over
half of human carbon
dioxide emissions to the atmosphere are absorbed by the ocean and land biospheres (Sarmiento and Gruber,
2002), and the excess carbon absorbed by the ocean results in increased ocean acidity. The physical and
chemical mechanisms by which this occurs are well understood. Once carbon dioxide enters the ocean, it combines with water to form carbonic
acid and a series of acid-base products, resulting in a lowering of pH values. The amount and distribution of human-generated carbon in the
oceans are well determined from an international ocean survey conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Sabine et al., 2004). The rate of
ocean carbon uptake is controlled by ocean circulation. Most of the excess carbon is found in the upper few hundred meters of the ocean
(upper 1200 feet) and in high-latitude regions, where cold dense waters sink into the deep ocean. Surface water pH values have already
dropped by about 0.1 pH units from preindustrial levels and are expected to drop by an additional 0.14-0.35 units by the end of the 21st
century (Orr et al., 2005).
Co2 emissions cause Ocean Acidification
Kolbert, 2014 Elizabeth Kolbert has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1999,
when she graduated from Yale University. She has written a 3-part book about global
warming, which proceeded to gain national renown as well as being presented 8
awards. 2014 (Elizabeth, “Ocean Acidification”, Accessed on 7/19/2014 at
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/04/ocean-acidification/kolbert-text/1)
Since the start of the industrial revolution, enough fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—have been burned and
enough forests cut down to emit more than 500 billion tons of CO2. As is well known, the atmosphere has a
higher concentration of CO2 today than at any point in the past 800,000 years and probably a lot longer.¶ What is
less well known is how carbon emissions are changing the oceans too. The air and the water constantly exchange gases, so a
portion of anything emitted into the atmosphere eventually ends up in the sea. Winds quickly mix it into the top few
hundred feet, and over centuries currents spread it through the ocean depths. In the 1990s an international team of scientists
undertook a massive research project that involved collecting and analyzing more than 77,000
seawater samples from different depths and locations around the world. The work took 15 years. It
showed that the oceans have absorbed 30 percent of the CO2 released by humans over the past two
centuries. They continue to absorb roughly a million tons every hour.¶ Bubbles of CO2 dissolve to form
carbonic acid. Carbonic acid is relatively weak; people drink it all the time in carbonated beverages.
But if enough of it forms, it makes seawater corrosive. "When you get to the extremely high CO2, almost nothing can tolerate
that," Jason Hall-Spencer, a marine biologist from Britain's University of Plymouth, explains. Castello Aragonese offers a natural analogue for an unnatural process:
The acidification that has taken place off its shore is occurring more gradually across the world's oceans, as they absorb more and more of the carbon dioxide that's
coming from tailpipes and smokestacks.¶ Acidification
has myriad effects. By favoring some marine microbes over
others, it is likely to alter the availability of key nutrients like iron and nitrogen. For similar reasons it may let
more sunlight penetrate the sea surface. By changing the basic chemistry of seawater, acidification is
also expected to reduce the water's ability to absorb and muffle low-frequency sound by up to 40
percent, making some parts of the ocean noisier. Finally, acidification interferes with reproduction in
some species and with the ability of others—the so-called calcifiers—to form shells and stony
skeletons of calcium carbonate. These last effects are the best documented ones, but whether they will prove the most significant in the long
run is unclear.
Climate Change and Ocean Acidification Impacts on Marine Ecosystems¶
Doney, 2007, Senior Scientist of Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry Department Woods at the Hole
Oceanographic Institution . (Scott Doney, “Effects of Climate Change and Ocean Acidification on Living
Marine Resources”, Accessed on 7/19/2014 at
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=8916&tid=282&cid=27206)
Climate change and ocean acidification will exacerbate other human influences on fisheries and
marine ecosystems such as over-fishing, habitat destruction, pollution, excess nutrients, and invasive
species. Thermal effects arise both directly, via effects of elevated temperature and lower pH on
individual organisms, and indirectly via changes to the ecosystems on which they depend for food and
habitat. Acidification harms shell-forming plants and animals including surface and deep-water corals,
many plankton, pteropods (marine snails), mollusks (clams, oysters), and lobsters (Orr et al., 2005). Many of
these organisms provide critical habitat and/or food sources for other organisms. Emerging evidence
suggests that larval and juvenile fish may also be susceptible to pH changes. Marine life has survived
large climate and acidification variations in the past, but the projected rates of climate change and
ocean acidification over the next century are much faster than experienced by the planet in the past
except for rare, catastrophic events in the geological record.¶ One concern is that climate change will
alter the rates and patterns of ocean productivity. Small, photosynthetic phytoplankton grow in the well-illuminated upper ocean, forming the base of the marine food
web, supporting the fish stocks we harvest, and underlying the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and many other key elements in the sea. Phytoplankton growth depends upon temperature and the availability of light and
Most of the nutrient supply to the surface ocean comes from the mixing
and upwelling of cold, nutrient rich water from below. An exception is iron, which has an important additional source from mineral dust swept off the desert
nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon and iron.
regions of the continents and transported off-shore from coastal ocean sediments. The geographic distribution of phytoplankton and biological productivity is determined largely by ocean circulation and upwelling, with the highest
levels found along the Equator, in temperate and polar latitudes and along the western boundaries of continents. ¶ Key climate-plankton linkages arise through changes in nutrient supply and ocean mixed layer depths, which affect
the light availability to surface phytoplankton. In the tropics and mid-latitudes, there is limited vertical mixing because the water column is stabilized by thermal stratification; i.e., light, warm waters overlie dense, cold waters. In
Climate warming will likely further inhibit mixing, reducing the
upward nutrient supply and thus lowering biological productivity. The nutrient-driven productivity
declines even with warmer temperatures, which promote faster growth. At higher latitudes, phytoplankton often have access to abundant
these areas, surface nutrients are typically low, which directly limits phytoplankton growth.
nutrients but are limited by a lack of sunlight. In these areas, warming and reduced mixed layer depths can increase productivity.¶ A synthesis of climate-change simulations shows broad patterns with declining low-latitude
productivity, somewhat elevated high-latitude productivity, and pole-ward migration of marine ecosystem boundaries as the oceans warm; simulated global productivity increased by up to 8.0% (Sarmiento et al., 2004). While not
definitive proof of future trends, similar relationships of ocean stratification and productivity have been observed in year to year variability of satellite ocean color data, a proxy for surface phytoplankton (Beherenfeld et al., 2006);
satellite data for 1997-2005 from GeoEYE and NASA’s Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) show that phytoplankton declined in the tropics and subtropics during warm phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation
(ENSO) marked by higher sea surface temperatures and ocean stratification. Ecosystem dynamics are complex and non-linear, however, and new and unexpected phenomena may arise as the planet enters a new warmer and
unexplored climate state. Ocean nitrogen fixation, for example, is concentrated in warm, nutrient poor surface waters, and it may increase under future more stratified conditions, enhancing overall productivity. ¶ Changes in total
biological productivity are only part of the story, as most human fisheries exploit particular marine species, not overall productivity. The distributions and population sizes of individual species are more sensitive to warming and
Warming and shifts in
seasonal temperature patterns will disrupt predator-prey interactions; this is especially important for
survival of juvenile fish, which often hatch at a particular time of year and depend up on immediate,
abundant source of prey. Temperature changes will also alter the spread of diseases and parasites in
both natural ecosystems and marine aquaculture. Warming impacts will interact and perhaps
exacerbate other problems including over-fishing and habitat destruction. ¶ Food-web interactions are
often complicated, and we should expect that some species will suffer under climate change while
others will benefit. Broadly speaking though, warm-water species are expected to shift poleward, which already
altered ocean circulation than total productivity. Temperature effects arise through altered organism physiology and ecological changes in food supplies and predators.
appears to be occurring in some fisheries (Brander, 2006). Biological transitions, however, may be abrupt rather than smooth. Large-scale regime shifts have been observed in
response to past natural variability. Regime shifts involve wholesale reorganizations of biological food-webs and can have large consequences from plankton to fish, marine mammals and sea-birds. Thus, rather
subtle climate changes or ocean acidification may have the potential to disrupt commercially
important species for either fisheries or tourism. Decadal time-scale regime shifts have been documented in the North Pacific, and in the Southern Ocean observations
show a large-scale replacement of krill, a food source for mammals and penguin, by gelatinous zooplankton called salps.¶ A number of other factors also need to be considered. Species that spend part
of their life-cycle in coastal waters will be impacted by degradation of near-shore nursery
environments, such as mangrove forests, marshes and estuaries, because of sea-level rise, pollution
and habitat destruction. Rainfall and river flow perturbations will alter coastal freshwater currents,
affecting the transport of eggs and larvae. Some of the largest fisheries around the world, for example
off Peru and west coast of Africa, occur because of wind-driven coastal upwelling, which may be
sensitive to climate change. Warming will reduce gas solubility and thus increases the likelihood of
low oxygen or anoxia events already seen in some estuaries and coastal regions, such as off the
Mississippi river in the Gulf of Mexico.¶
Oceans are acidifying 10 times faster than the last extreme acidification event.
Iacurci, BS in Allied Health Sciences @ Uconn 14 (Jenna, 6/3/14, Nature World News, “Ocean Acidification Rate
10 Times Faster than Ancient Upheaval”, http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/7379/20140603/ocean-acidification-rate-10-times-fasterthan-ancient-upheaval.htm, 6/25/14, KM)
These days the ocean is acidifying at a rate 10 times faster than it did during a similar upheaval 56
million years ago. ¶ During those ancient days, researchers estimate that ocean acidity increased by
about 100 percent in a few thousand years or more, and levels didn't bounce back to normal for
another 70,000 years. Some species were able to adapt and evolve to such radical environmental changes, while others perished and
died off. Also during this time, a wave of carbon dioxide (CO2) surged into the atmosphere, raising global temperatures, and scientists have
long suspected that ocean acidification caused the crisis. ¶ For the first time, researchers are using the chemical composition of fossils to
reconstruct surface ocean acidity at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of intense warming on land and throughout the
oceans due to high CO2. ¶ "This could be the closest geological analog to modern ocean acidification," study co-author Bärbel Hönisch, a
paleoceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in a statement. "As
massive as it was, it still
happened about 10 times more slowly than what we are doing today." ¶ Since the Industrial Revolution, oceans
have absorbed about a third of the carbon humans have pumped into the air, helping to cool the Earth. Consequentially, chemical reactions
caused by that excess CO2 have made seawater grow more acidic, depleting it of the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and calcifying
plankton need to build their shells and skeletons. ¶ "We are dumping carbon in the atmosphere and ocean at a much higher rate today - within
centuries," said study co-author Richard Zeebe, a paleoceanographer at the University of Hawaii. "If
we continue on the emissions
path we are on right now, acidification of the surface ocean will be way more dramatic than during
the PETM." ¶ The studied fossils - ancient plankton taken from Japanese waters - reveal that the ocean pH has indeed dropped, and will
continue to do so. ¶ Researchers still aren't sure what caused the upheaval of CO2 into the atmosphere so long ago. They speculate that the
Earth's warming may have sent methane from the seafloor into the air, triggering the aforementioned events
Warming Bad - Economy
Warming hurts the economy – alters coastal development and shipping practices
The Ocean Foundation, 2008, (The Ocean Foundation, “Resources - Oceans and Climate Change”,
2008, Accessed on 7/20/2014 at http://www.oceanfdn.org/newsroom/oceans-and-climate-change)
Human induced climate change threatens coastal and marine ecosystems through sea-level rise,
acidification, and changes in weather patterns and water temperatures. These changes will also
seriously alter coastal development, the reliability of ocean shipping, coastal recreation and marine
activities such as oil platforms and aquaculture, thus adding economic risks. Oceans and climate are inextricably
linked and oceans play a fundamental role in mitigating climate change by serving as a major heat and carbon sink. Oceans also bear
the brunt of climate change, as evidenced by growing acidification, sea level increase, and changes in
temperature and currents, all of which in turn impact the health of marine species, ecosystems, and
our coastal communities. As concerns about climate change increase, the interrelationship between oceans and climate change must
by recognized, understood, and incorporated into climate change policies. Our oceans are especially vulnerable to the adverse
impacts from human emissions of greenhouse gases. These impacts, which are already being
experienced, include: air and water temperature changes, seasonal shifts, ocean acidification, coral
bleaching, sea level rise, coastal inundation, coastal erosion, dead zones, new diseases, loss of marine
mammals, changes in levels of precipitation, and fishery declines. In addition we can expect more
extreme weather events (droughts, floods, storm surges) both in intensity and frequency. To protect our
valuable marine ecosystems, coastal aesthetics and coastal communities, we must act.
Warming Bad – African Civil War
Warming increases tribal wars as early as 2030
Marshall B. Burke October 14, 2009 a Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Department of Economics, University of
California Berkeley, Berkeley CA 94720; Department of Politics, New York University, New York, NY 10012; School of Engineering and Applied
Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138;and program on Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford CA
94305 http://www.gechs.org/will-global-warming-cause-more-wars/
An article presented to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2009 determined that more
wars will occur in Africa if
global temperatures continue to rise. The article was a collaboration between Marshall B. Burke and several other researchers.
The presentation included results from the University of California Berkeley, New York University, Harvard University and Stanford University.
It brought together expertise in the fields of economics, politics, applied sciences, and the environment. Burke claims that the effort was the
His team
came to the alarming conclusion that almost 400,000 more people would die as a result of armed
conflict in Africa by 2030 if global warming continues. Burke arrived at this conclusion by analyzing how
frequently civil war occurred in Africa during periods where global temperatures increased. He
compared this with how often armed conflict arose during periods where temperatures were more
stable. Assuming that everything else was constant, he found that there were more civil wars during periods where
global warming occurred. This seems to makes sense given that resources that are critical for survival will
become scarcer if the temperatures in Africa increase. The result would be that those resources would
become more valuable and the people that need them would be far more willing to fight for them. it’s
first comprehensive attempt to examine what impact climate change could have on armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa (Africa).
hard to know if Burke’s findings will hold up over time. The data we have available for changes in global temperatures spans a limited period of
history and there are many other potential factors that could have led to more wars in Africa during the times he analyzed. At the very least,
the report is a great attempt to quantify the impact of climate change. It makes it far easier for people to understand. Hopefully, that
understanding will cause more people to want to stop global warming.
Warming Bad – Extinction
Humans will not survive a warming environment
by Chris Clarke a natural history writer and environmental journalistAugust 27, 20 13 5:53 PM http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/climatechange/will-climate-change-drive-humans-extinct.html
In the last few days an alarming article making the rounds on social media has revived the idea that our
species might be doing
itself in by changing the global climate. The article, by vice.com's Nathan Curry, minces no words in its title: "Humanity Is Getting
Verrrrrrry Close to Extinction," with the extra rs in the original. Curry cites sources ranging from climatologist James Hansen to admitted
doomsayer Guy McPherson to advance a startling notion: human society has triggered enough irrevocable climate change mechanisms that
we're locked in to warming temperatures sufficient to kill us off. It's alarming, but is it alarmist? Could we really heat ourselves to extinction?
Maybe, but that's asking the wrong question. Story Continues Below Support KCET All species eventually go extinct, and things can always go
badly wrong when you're futzing with your life support system. But if a few things happen that aren't accounted for in climate forecasts -- like a
wholesale release of methane from permafrost and seabed deposits, there's
a significantly larger chance that most of what
we humans currently think of as good places to live will become literally uninhabitable for at least part
of the year. Doomsday scenarios have their fans, the aforementioned McPherson among them. In a January post from his blog Nature Bats
Last, McPherson suggested that Obama had turned his back on a 2009 global climate conference because he had inside information that it was
all pointless: In other words, Obama and others in his administration knew near-term extinction of humans was already guaranteed. Even
before the dire feedbacks were reported by the scientific community, the Obama administration abandoned climate change as a significant
issue because it knew we were done as early as 2009. Rather than shoulder the unenviable task of truth-teller, Obama did as his imperial
higher-ups demanded: He lied about collapse, and he lied about climate change. And he still does. To be fair, McPherson does allow in that
same post that a colleague's prediction that all life on Earth will die before mid-century "appears premature." But running through articles like
Curry's and websites like McPherson's is a startling scientific claim that has merit: there's
a chance that large parts of the world
will get hot enough to kill humans outright. Climate change threatens to alter the way we live our lives
in a whole lot of ways, from changing the frequency and severity of storms and droughts to causing crop
failures to promoting increases in pest animals and diseases. Clever animals like us may well be able to come up with
ways to mitigate such horrors. But as global temperature warms, some reserachers have said that some places
run the risk of getting too hot and humid for humans to survive in for more than a few days. Humans, like
other mammals, generate heat just by being alive, and we rely on our surroundings as sinks for that heat. Even if the air is considerably hotter
than our body temperature, we can cool ourselves by sweating: water evaporating from our bodies takes a lot of heat with it. At
100
percent humidity, a temperature of 35°C -- 95°F -- proves fatal within days or hours to people in good
health in ideal theoretical conditions -- as James Hansen puts it in a passage quoted by Curry, "even a person lying quietly naked
in hurricane force winds would be unable to survive" such temperatures. If we can't shed our waste heat, our organs fail and death results. And
that's for a healthy person tring to get as cool as possible while relaxing. People who aren't in top physical condition or who must continue to
work can drop dead from less extreme conditions. That "temperature at 100 percent relative humidity" is referred to as a "wet bulb
temperature," a slightly confusing mathematical concept named for the easiest way to measure it: draping a thermometer bulb with a wet,
non-insulating cloth. As almost everyone reading this will know from personal experience, temperatures of 35°C by themselves aren't uniformly
deadly: it is, as they say, not so much the heat as the humidity. That world record air temperature set a century ago in Death Valley of 132°F
would have needed an accompanying atmospheric humidity of 26 percent to work out to that fatal 35° wet bulb level. As I write this in Joshua
Tree on August 27, in the days after a series of tropical storms dumped water into the desert, the relative humidity is 52 percent, it's 86°F,
which works out to a slightly muggy but still comfortable wet bulb temperature of 22.5°C. Los Angeles, at 83° and 44 percent humidity, is a
comfortable 19.7°C wet bulb. Very few places on the planet ever exceed a wet bulb temperature of 30° or 31°C.
But a study released in 2010 by researchers Steven C. Sherwood and Matthew Huber of the University of New South Wales and Purdue
University suggests that if the global climate increases by an average of about 10°C, which is not completely implausible by
the year
2200, vast areas of the planet could regularly exceed that deadly 35°C wet bulb temperature, making
them essentially uninhabitable, at least for part of the year for anyone without abundant resources. Increases in wet bulb
temperature don't track directly to increases in air temperature for a couple reasons.
Warming Good
Warming Good - Agriculture
CO2 enhances crop yields by increasing concentration of solute in the leaves
Nasser Sionit et al. H. Hellmers and B. R. Strain Published: Nov, 1980 Growth and Yield of Wheat under CO2 Enrichment and Water
Stresshttps://dl.sciencesocieties.org/publications/cs/abstracts/20/6/CS0200060687, CM
Abstract Growth and yield responses of a semi-dwarf spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.; cv. GWO 1809) to two CO2 concentrations and two
water stress regimes were studied in controlled environment chambers of the Duke Univ. Phytotron. Groups of plants in low (350 ppm), or high
(1,000 ppm) CO2 environments were subjected to water stress By withholding irrigation starting at the 10th day after the beginning of anthesis.
A second drying cycle beginning 5 days after termination of the first cycle was also given to some of the plants. Water potential of the flag
leaves of the main stem of the plants in each CO2 environment reached a minimum of −13 bars at the end of the first drying cycle and −17 bars
at the end of the second cycle. Under
well-watered conditions high CO2 enhanced the rate of tiller production
by 43% and significantly increased grain yield, total dry matter, and number and size of the grains. As
water stress developed, the osmotic potentials of the high CO2. plants decreased at a faster rate and resulted in maintenance of higher turgor
pressures at the end of each stress cycle compared to the low CO2 plants. Osmotic potentials of the leaves of both high and low 2 plants
decreased faster in the second drying cycle than in the first. Significantly fewer and smaller grains were produced on the plants grown under
water stress in both CO2 concentrations compared to unstressed plants. In general, high CO2 plants under water stress conditions had a grain
yield and total dry matter production equal to the unstressed, low CO2 plants. Thus, CO2 enrichment increased
the yield
potential of the water limited wheat plants due probably to osmotic adjustment by an increased
concentration of solutes in their leaves.
Consenus proves increased fertilization from CO2 benefits agriculture
James Taylor 7/10/2013 @ 10:49AM senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment
& Climate News. writes about energy and environment issues, frequently focusing on global warming. presented environmental analysis on
CNN, CNN Headline News, CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and several national radio programs. environmental analysis has
been published in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. studied atmospheric science and majored in government at Dartmouth
College. Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University. Global Warming? No, Satellites Show Carbon Dioxide Is Causing 'Global
Greening'http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/07/10/global-warming-no-satellites-show-carbon-dioxide-is-causing-globalgreening/, CM
A team
of scientists led by environmental physicist Randall Donohue, a research scientist at the
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, analyzed satellite data
from 1982 through 2010. The scientists documented a carbon dioxide “fertilization effect” that has
caused a gradual greening of the Earth, and particularly the Earth’s arid regions, since 1982. The
satellite data showed rising carbon dioxide levels caused a remarkable 11 percent increase in foliage
in arid regions since 1982, versus what would be the case if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels had
remained at 1982 levels. “Lots of papers have shown an average increase in vegetation across the globe, and there is a lot of
speculation about what’s causing that,” said Donohue in a press release accompanying the study. “Up until this point, they’ve linked the
greening to fairly obvious climatic variables, such as a rise in temperature where it is normally cold or a rise in rainfall where it is normally dry.
Lots of those papers speculated about the
CO2 effect, but it has been very difficult to prove.” The study noted that foliage
in warm, wet regions such as tropical rainforests are near their maximum capacity. In warm, arid
regions there is room for greater increases in foliage and rising carbon dioxide levels are prevalent
plant growth. Carbon dioxide acts as aerial fertilizer and also helps plants thrive under arid conditions.
Although global precipitation has increased during the past century as the Earth has warmed, elevated carbon dioxide levels are assisting plant
life in warm, dry regions independent of – and in addition to – increases in global precipitation. “The effect of higher carbon dioxide levels on
plant function is an important process that needs greater consideration,” said Donohue. “Even if nothing else in the climate changes as
global CO2 levels rise, we will still see significant environmental changes because of the CO2
fertilization effect.” Donohue focused special attention on Australia in an additional press release. Although global drought is becoming
less frequent and less severe as the Earth modestly warms, activists claim global warming is causing harmful drought in Australia. “In Australia,
our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments and it consequently uses water every efficiently,” said Donohue.
“Australian vegetation seems quite sensitive to CO2 fertilization.” “On the face of it,
elevated CO2 boosting the foliage in dry
country is good news and could assist forestry and agriculture in such areas,” Donohue reported, while adding
that scientists should still monitor secondary effects. The satellite data show plant life in the United States has especially benefited from rising
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and gradually warming temperatures. Satellite data show foliage has increased in the vast majority of the
United States since 1982, with the western U.S. benefiting the most. Indeed, many western regions experienced a greater than 30 percent
increase in foliage since 1982. Other regions showing particularly strong increases in foliage include the Sahel region of Africa, the Horn of
Africa, southern Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and nearly all of Europe.
Increasing CO2 benefits the plants responsible for producing Oxygen
Tim Worstall, 8 Jul 2012 Global warming: It's GOOD for the environment
Don't forget: CO2 is PLANT FOOD http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/08/global_warming_good_for_the_environment/, CM
Climate change, this global warming thing, it's going to mean that the tropical forests frazzle up and then we all die, right? It will mena the
death of the "lungs of the planet" – such as the miles upon miles of Amazon jungle – which turn CO2 into the O2 that we inhale. It's titsup for
humanity, basically. Except, according to one new paper in Nature, that's not the way it will work.
CO2 is indeed plant food and
more plant food means more plants, more forests and thus we're all saved: or perhaps not quite as screwed as some seem to
think at least. The point is this: Experimental studies have generally shown that plants do not show a large
response to CO2 fertilisation. “However, most of these studies were conducted in northern
ecosystems or on commercially important species” explains Steven Higgins, lead author of the study from the
Biodiodversity and Climate Reseach Centre and Goethe-University. “In fact, only one experimental study has investigated
how savanna plants will respond to changing CO2 concentrations and this study showed that savanna
trees were essentially CO2-starved under pre-industrial CO2 concentrations, and that their growth
really starts taking off at the CO2 concentrations we are currently experiencing.“ Purists will cavil at this
description, but grasslands and forests compete with each other. Forest cover kills off the grass and thus grasslands only thrive where trees
don't. Savannas are, to a useful level of truth, the front line where the battle is taking place. As the paper points out, the
trees on these
savannas are finding their growth limited by the amount of food they can get: the CO2 from the
atmosphere. As we burn more fossils that will go up, the trees will get more food and forests will
advance across those grasslands. These burgeoning forests will then rather neatly lock up in the biosphere all that extra carbon
that we have been releasing into the atmosphere. Or some of it. But the major point of this paper is that far from climate
change being a threat to the tropical forests, it looks as if it will be the cause of more of them growing .
Good news for those of us who like our unsustainable tropical hardwood furniture: it looks like there's going to be a lot more of it to go around
soon enough. Now all we have to hope for is that the upcoming IPCC report, the fifth, will report honestly and openly upon all the effects of
rising CO2 levels so we can work out whether it's worth ditching industrial civilisation or not. Yes, I live in hope too. For this is actually the most
important question in the entire subject. We
know very well what the direct effect of a doubling of atmospheric
CO2 is: a 0.7 degree rise in temperature – that's just straight physics. The idea that we might get 2 or 4
or 5 degrees of temperature change comes from the interaction of positive and negative feedback
mechanisms. And we don't know what all of those mechanisms are, don't know the direction of some
of them and are really very unsure indeed what the total value is. Which is a pity because it's really the only thing
we're interested in.
Emissions from coal-fired plants have prompted substantial increases in plants science
proves
Robert Zubrin APRIL 3, 2012 4:00 AM Carbon Emissions Are Good It is erroneous to think that humans cannot change the environment
for good. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295098/carbon-emissions-are-good-robert-zubrin, CM
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its intention to enforce regulations that would effectively ban new coal-fired
power plants in the United States. As coal
is by far America’s cheapest and most plentiful fossil fuel, and coalfired power stations account for 45 percent of all electricity generated in the U.S., the destructive
economic effects of this edict can hardly be overstated. It is therefore imperative to subject the EPA’s logic to a searching
examination. According to the EPA, despite their disastrous economic effects, regulations to prevent the U.S. from making use of its coal
resources are necessary, because coal
combustion produces carbon dioxide, which allegedly will cause global
warming, which would allegedly be harmful to the Earth’s biosphere and human society. Others, wishing to
avoid an environmentalist-created economic catastrophe, have challenged this argument’s first premise, to wit, that global warming is really
occurring. Since there is no actual global temperature, but only an average of many different constantly changing local temperatures, this
approach has led to convoluted debates revolving around data sets that can easily be based upon an unrepresentative mix of measurements.
This has left the EPA’s second premise — that global warming would be a harmful development — largely unchallenged. This is unfortunate,
because while it is entirely possible that the earth may be warming — as it has done so many times in the past — there
is no rational
basis whatsoever to support the contention that carbon-dioxide-driven global warming would be on
the whole harmful to life and civilization. Quite the contrary: All available evidence supports the contention that human CO2
emissions offer great benefits to the earth’s community of life. Putting aside for the moment the question of whether
human industrial CO2 emissions are having an effect on climate, it is quite clear that they are raising
atmospheric CO2 levels. As a result, they are having a strong and markedly positive effect on plant
growth worldwide. There is no doubt about this. NASA satellite observations taken from orbit since 1958 show that, concurrent
with the 19 percent increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past half century, the rate of plant growth
in the continental United States has increased by 14 percent. Studies done at Oak Ridge National Lab on forest trees
have shown that increasing the carbon dioxide level 50 percent, to the 550 parts per million level projected to prevail at the end of the 21
This is readily reproducible laboratory
science. If CO2 levels are increased, the rate of plant growth will accelerate. Now let us consider the question of warming: If it is occurring —
century, will likely increase photosynthetic productivity by a further 24 percent.
and I believe it is, based not on disputable temperature measurements but on sea levels, which have risen two inches in two decades — is it a
good thing or a bad thing? Answer: It is a very good thing. Global
warming would increase the rate of evaporation from
the oceans. This would increase rainfall worldwide. In addition, global warming would lengthen the
growing season, thereby increasing still further the bounty of both agriculture and nature.
Warming and CO2 boost plant growth, conserve water in vegetation, and allowing for
longer growing season, offsetting any crop loss due to temperature rises
Olive
Heffernan 10/12/2013 New Scientist., Vol. 220 Issue 2938, p40-43. 4p.THE GREAT GREENING, CM
The planet is getting greener, says Olive Heffernan, but don't crack open the champagne just yet IN 1957, geologist
Edward Sable photographed the Jago river in Alaska's north-east corner. His snap shows a typical
Arctic vista, devoid of trees, with low-lying grass growing among glacial debris. Half a century later, an
ecologist by the name of Ken Tape visited the very same site to retake the shot. "It was hardly
recognisable," says Tape. Ground-hugging plants had given way to tall bushy shrubs. Even the shape of
the land had changed in places, as long-frozen soil had thawed (see overleaf). This flourishing of
vegetation is no isolated phenomenon -- it is happening across vast swathes of the planet. And while it is
most pronounced in cold northern regions, it is also happening in more surprising places. From the Middle East to the Australian
outback and the African savannah, many of Earth's driest regions are getting greener. A greener planet
sounds wonderful, and in some ways it could be. But with climate change, nothing is ever simple -- and more plant growth is not always good.
Among other things, it will accelerate global warming. What's more, in places the plants that thrive most could be weedy pests, overrunning
more desirable plants. So what's going on? Why
is the planet getting greener, is it going to keep getting greener and what effect
The first question is fairly easy to answer. Most of the greening has taken place on the land north of 45 degrees
latitude, a vast area that includes Canada, northern Europe and Russia. The greatest change is in the Arctic tundra and in
the coniferous, or boreal, forests, where a whopping 41 per cent of the land surface became greener
between the 1980s and late 2000s. "What we're seeing in the northern hemisphere is unprecedented in the 20th century and
will this have?
over the last millennium," says Jonathan Barichivich at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. In these areas, the cause is clear. Growth is
limited by the cold, and the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. Winters
are warming faster than summers,
bringing a more gradual transition between seasons. The most notable upshot of this -- clearly visible in
satellite imagery -- is that spring comes earlier and growth happens over more of the year. In August,
Barichivich reported that, compared with just 30 years ago, the Arctic growing season is now more than six days longer in North America and
almost 13 days longer in Eurasia (Global Change Biology, vol 19, p 3167). Given all the concern about overgrazing and desertification, a more
unexpected finding is that dry regions have also become somewhat greener over the past three decades. There are, however, big variations
from place to place -- while growth has increased in the Sahel in Africa, the northern Great Plains in North America, Western Australia and parts
of the Indian drylands, it has fallen in central Asia, central Australia and Patagonia. Why there is more growth overall has been much debated,
with explanations ranging from increased rainfall to changes in land use. Earlier this year, though, a study led by Randall Donohue of CSIRO,
Australia's national research agency, suggested that in warm, dry regions, rising carbon dioxide levels are the main cause of the greening. Plants
use the carbon in CO2 to build the molecules of which life is made, from protein to DNA. So CO2 is essential for plants, and many experiments
over the past century have shown that higher levels promote growth. The fertiliser effect Most have been carried out in greenhouses or growth
chambers, but in the last 20 years biologists have also released CO2 into large plots of forest and crops to assess plant responses in a more
realistic environment. These "free air CO2 enrichment" studies show that many plant species photosynthesise faster -- by as much as 40 per
cent -- at concentrations of CO2 ranging from 475 to 600 parts per million. (The typical level today is just under 400 ppm, up from around 280
ppm in 1850.) They also show that some trees exposed
to CO2 levels of around 550 ppm grow faster, and can end
up 74 per cent heavier in just six years. But as any gardener or farmer knows, pouring fertiliser onto plants does not boost
growth unless you are meeting all their other needs. If plants are not getting enough light, water, nitrogen and other nutrients, or if conditions
are not suitable, they cannot grow. In many parts of the world growth is already limited by factors other than CO2. For example, in the boreal
forests, nitrogen is often in short supply. "In some locations, limiting factors prevent CO2 fertilisation from being fully expressed," says
Donohue. In dry areas, lack of water is the main limiting factor. So
why should higher CO2 levels boost growth in these
regions? The reason is that leaves are covered by a waxy, airtight layer to reduce water loss. To get
the CO2 they need, plants have to open pores on their leaves, but as long as the pores remain open,
water is lost through them. When CO2 levels rise, plants do not need to open their leaf pores as wide
or for as long, so they lose less water. That means more growth for the same amount of water used.
Global Warming Benefits Artic Species
Taylor 13 (James, Writer for the Forbes Magazine, News Alert To Climate Alarmists: Most Artic Species
Will Benefit From Global Warming, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/01/02/news-alert-toclimate-alarmists-most-arctic-species-will-benefit-from-global-warming///LK)
Global warming will benefit most Arctic species, a team of scientists report in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One.
According to the scientists, global warming will allow most Arctic species to expand their ranges, and
no species are expected to go extinct. The findings deliver a sharp jab to global warming activists arguing Arctic warming
justifies costly, government imposed economic restrictions. Ecological and environmental scientists at Sweden’s Umea University began their
study assuming Arctic and subarctic species would be particularly susceptible to present and future global warming.¶ “The area of tundra is
expected to decrease and temperate climates will extend further north, affecting species inhabiting northern environments. Consequently, species
at high latitudes should be especially susceptible to climate change, likely experiencing significant range contractions,” the scientists explained at
the beginning of their study.¶ Moreover, global warming activists have raised particular concern about species in Arctic and subarctic Europe.¶ “It
is supposed that the large expected climate change at high northern latitudes therefore makes species in (sub)arctic regions particularly
susceptible, especially the European part of the (Sub)arctics, since this region is the most geographically complex with the most infrastructure and
great cultural, social, and political heterogeneity,” the scientists noted. ¶ After modeling the effects of global warming in European high latitudes,
however, the scientists reported that global warming alarmists are entirely wrong about the impact of global warming on Arctic and subarctic
species. In reality, global warming is likely to benefit most Arctic and subarctic species. ¶ “Contrary to these expectations, our modeling of species
distributions suggests that predicted climate change up to 2080 will favor most mammals presently inhabiting (sub)arctic Europe,” the scientists
reported.¶ According to the scientists, “most species will benefit from climate change, except for a few cold-climate specialists.” Of the relatively
few Arctic and subarctic species that will not benefit from global warming, most are alpine species. ¶ Importantly, no species will go extinct, the
scientists report.“Our results indicate that, irrespective of the scenario, most
species (43 out of 61) will expand and shift
their ranges, mostly in a north-easterly direction, in response to expected climate change if
we assume that species are able to colonize all areas that become climatically suitable,” the scientists observed. Most species will dramatically
expand their ranges as the climate warms, the scientists discovered. Accordingly, global warming will enhance rather than restrict biodiversity.
“The average range expansion [is] predicted to be 12068% under the A2 scenario and 8355% under the B2 scenario,” the scientists reported. “We
further predict that, irrespective of the scenario, the climate in (sub)arctic
Europe will become suitable to ten more
mammalian species. …Thus, mammalian species richness in (sub)arctic Europe is likely to
increase substantially when full dispersal ability is assumed.” Even if human alterations to
the landscape preclude species from expanding their ranges to newly suitable lands, no
animals will go extinct.
“When we assumed that species will not be able to disperse beyond areas that are currently suitable for them, we found that the vast majority of
species will likely lose part of their geographic range, but none is predicted to go extinct. Global warming activists frequently point to Arctic
mammals as being particularly susceptible to global warming, but the scientists reported
Arctic mammals will be among the
greatest beneficiaries of Arctic warming. “The reason for the relative stability of mammalian
presence might be that arctic regions have experienced large climatic shifts in the past,
filtering out sensitive and range-restricted taxa,” the scientists reported. “We also provide evidence that for most
(sub)arctic mammals it is not climate change per se that will threaten them, but possible constraints on their dispersal ability and changes in
community composition.”
“In contrast to the general belief that species inhabiting the (sub)arctics will face increased levels of stress due to climate change, our work
the climate in sub(arctic) Europe will ameliorate the future conditions for most of
its mammalian species. Warmer and wetter conditions favor more species,” the scientists concluded.
suggests that
Warming Good – Biodiversity
Warming increases biodiversity as a whole
Michael Bastach, 5-15-2014, The Daily Caller, Global Warming Is Increasing Biodiversity Around The World
http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/15/global-warming-is-increasing-biodiversity-around-the-world/
A new study published in the journal Science has astounded biologists: global warming is not harming
biodiversity, but instead is increasing the range and diversity of species in various ecosystems.
Environmentalists have long warned that global warming could lead to mass extinctions as fragile ecosystems
around the world are made unlivable as temperatures increase. But a team of biologists from the United States, United Kingdom
and Japan found that global warming has not led to a decrease in biodiversity. Instead, biodiversity
has increased in many areas on land and in the ocean. “Although the rate of species extinction has increased markedly as
a result of human activity across the biosphere, conservation has focused on endangered species rather than on shifts in assemblages,” reads
the editor’s abstract of the report. The
study says “species turnover” was “above expected but do not find evidence of
systematic biodiversity loss.” The editor’s abstract adds that the result “could be caused by homogenization of
species assemblages by invasive species, shifting distributions induced by climate change, and asynchronous change
across the planet.” Researchers reviewed 100 long-term species monitoring studies from around the world and found increasing biodiversity in
59 out of 100 studies and decreasing biodiversity in 41 studies. The rate of change in biodiversity was modest in all of the studies, biologists
said. But one thing in particular that shocked the study’s authors was that there were major shifts in the types of species living in ecosystems.
About 80 percent of the ecosystems analyzed showed species changes of an average of 10 percent per
decade — much greater than anyone has previously predicted. This, however, doesn’t mean that individual species
aren’t being harmed by changing climates. The study noted that, for example, coral reefs in many areas of the world are being replaced by a
type of algae. “In the oceans we no longer have many anchovies, but we seem to have an awful lot of jellyfish,” Nick Gotelli, a biologist at the
University of Vermont and one of the study’s authors, told RedOrbit.com. “Those kinds of changes are not going to be seen by just counting the
number of species that are present.” “We move species around,” Gotelli added. “There is a huge ant diversity in Florida, and about 30 percent
of the ant species are non-natives. They have been accidentally introduced, mostly from the Old World tropics, and they are now a part of the
local assemblage. So you can have increased diversity in local communities because of global homogenization.” The study comes with huge
implications for current species preservation strategies, as most operate under the assumption that biodiversity will decrease in a warming
world. But if biodiversity is increasing, then conservationists may need a new way to monitor the effects of global warming on ecosystems.
Warming is not a threat to biodiversity, but focus on warming steals funds from real
methods to curb biodiversity loss,
Daniel B. Botkin, 2010, f0cb4566ae3c34fa1c3ae77a3d11c6d8president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and professor
emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of Discordant
Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century
http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?displayGroupName=Viewpoints&prodId=OVIC&action=e&w
indowstate=normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010602210&mode=view&userGroupName=bhs&jsid=.
Evidence does not support claims that global warming poses a serious threat to biodiversity . In fact, the
opposite is true. During similar warming periods over the last 2.5 million years, few species became extinct.
Moreover, studies show that global warming does not increase disease. In fact, some species, including humans,
thrived during historical warming periods. Unfortunately, focusing conservation efforts on reducing global warming
does put biodiversity at risk, by diverting funds that would be better spent reducing habitat loss, one
of the gravest threats to biodiversity. Global warming doesn't matter except to the extent that it will affect life—ours and that of
all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on
life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary. Case in point: This year's United Nations report on climate change and other documents
say that 20% to 30% of plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction in this century due to global warming—a truly terrifying
thought. Yet, during
the past 2.5 million years, a period that scientists now know experienced climatic
changes as rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us, almost none of the
millions of species on Earth went extinct. The exceptions were about 20 species of large mammals (the famous megafauna of
the last ice age—saber-tooth tigers, hairy mammoths and the like), which went extinct about 10,000 to 5,000 years ago at the end of the last
ice age, and many dominant trees and shrubs of northwestern Europe. But elsewhere, including North America, few plant species went extinct,
and few mammals. We're also warned that tropical diseases are going to spread, and that we can expect malaria and encephalitis epidemics.
But scientific papers by Prof. Sarah Randolph of Oxford University show that temperature changes do not correlate well with changes in the
distribution or frequency of these diseases; warming has not broadened their distribution and is highly unlikely to do so in the future, global
warming or not. The
key point here is that living things respond to many factors in addition to temperature
In most cases, however, climate-modeling-based forecasts look primarily at temperature
alone, or temperature and precipitation only. The climate modelers who developed the computer programs that
are being used to forecast climate change used to readily admit that the models were crude and not
very realistic, but were the best that could be done with available computers and programming methods. They said our options
were to either believe those crude models or believe the opinions of experienced, data-focused
scientists. Having done a great deal of computer modeling myself, I appreciated their acknowledgment of the limits of their methods. But
I hear no such statements today. Oddly, the forecasts of computer models have become our new
reality, while facts such as the few extinctions of the past 2.5 million years are pushed aside, as if they were not our reality. A recent article
and rainfall.
in the well-respected journal American Scientist explained why the glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro could not be melting from global warming. Simply
from an intellectual point of view it was fascinating—especially the author's Sherlock Holmes approach to figuring out what was causing the
glacier to melt. That it couldn't be global warming directly (i.e., the result of air around the glacier warming) was made clear by the fact that the
air temperature at the altitude of the glacier is below freezing. This means that only direct radiant heat from sunlight could be warming and
melting the glacier. The author also studied the shape of the glacier and deduced that its melting pattern was consistent with radiant heat but
not air temperature. Although acknowledged by many scientists, the paper is scorned by the true believers in global warming. Not everything
due to a climatic warming is bad, nor is everything that is bad due to a climatic warming. We are told that the melting of the arctic ice will be a
disaster. But during the famous medieval warming period—A.D. 750 to 1230 or so—the Vikings found the warmer northern climate to their
advantage. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie addressed this in his book Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000,
perhaps the greatest book about climate change before the onset of modern concerns with global warming. He wrote that Erik the Red "took
advantage of a sea relatively free of ice to sail due west from Iceland to reach Greenland.... Two and a half centuries later, at the height of the
climatic and demographic fortunes of the northern settlers, a bishopric of Greenland was founded at Gardar in 1126." Ladurie pointed out that
"it is reasonable to think of the Vikings as unconsciously taking advantage of this [referring to the warming of the Middle Ages] to colonize the
most northern and inclement of their conquests, Iceland and Greenland." Good thing that Erik the Red didn't have Al Gore or his climatologists
as his advisers. Should we therefore dismiss global warming? Of course not. But we should make a realistic assessment, as rationally as
possible, about its cultural, economic and environmental effects. As Erik the Red might have told you, not everything due to a climatic warming
is bad, nor is everything that is bad due to a climatic warming. We should approach the problem the way we decide whether to buy insurance
and take precautions against other catastrophes—wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes. And as I have written elsewhere, many of the actions we
would take to reduce greenhouse-gas production and mitigate global-warming effects are beneficial anyway, most particularly a movement
away from fossil fuels to alternative solar and wind energy. My concern is that we may be moving away from an irrational lack of concern about
climate change to an equally irrational panic about it. Many of my colleagues ask, "What's the problem? Hasn't it been a good thing to raise
public concern?" The problem is that in this panic we are going to spend our money unwisely, we will take actions that are counterproductive,
and we will fail to do many of those things that will benefit the environment and ourselves. For example, right now the clearest threat to many
species is habitat destruction. Take the orangutans, for instance, one of those charismatic species that people are often fascinated by and
concerned about. They are endangered because of deforestation. In our fear of global warming, it would be sad if we fail to find funds to
purchase those forests before they are destroyed, and thus let this species go extinct. At
the heart of the matter is how much
faith we decide to put in science—even how much faith scientists put in science. Our times have
benefited from clear-thinking, science-based rationality. I hope this prevails as we try to deal with our
changing climate.
Studies prove warming good for marine life, acidification not real
James Delingpole, April 4, 2014, 'WORLD DOING JUST FINE; GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD; CO2 IS OUR FRIEND' SAY SCIENTISTS,
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/04/World-doing-just-fine-Global-Warming-is-Good-CO2-is-our-friend-say-Scientists
Multiple studies from multiple oceanic regions confirm that productivity - from phytoplankton and
microalgae to corals, crustaceans and fish - tends to increase with temperature. Some experts predict coral
calcification will increase by about 35 per cent beyond pre-industrial levels by 2100, with no extinction of coral reefs. Laboratory studies
predicting lower PH levels - "ocean acidification" - fail to capture the complexities of the real world and often
contradict observations in nature.
Climate change helps evolution, species will adapt
Philippe Goulletquer et all, 2014, Philippe Gros, Gilles Boeuf, And Jacques Weber, Biodiversity in the Marine Environment,
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-8566-2_6/fulltext.html
climate change can be considered as a driver of evolutionary change. In future
climate scenarios, both an increase in global mean temperatures and greater frequency of
extreme climatic events are predicted. Many marine species will have to be able to adapt to
Furthermore,
such conditions. This will require individuals to possess near ‘perfect’ plasticity, enabling them to tolerate
significant climate variability with no apparent fitness costs (DeWitt et al. 1998). Ongoing distributional changes and reports of climate-related species
diebacks demonstrate that such plastic tolerance to changing climate is not widely shared (Chamaille-Jammes et al. 2006; Lagarde et al. 2008).
Warming Good – Solves Overfishing
Warming increases fish population solves overfishing by increasing numbers
Biello 2009 [David- covering energy and the environment for more than a decade,
associate editor at Scientific American] (How Will Warmer Oceans Affect Sea Life?http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-will-warmer-oceans-affect-sea-life/)
This effect only holds, however, in areas that are rich in nutrients. In the experimental
microcosms where the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus were kept low, those limits defined the
relative abundance of plants and animals. And other factors—ocean acidity or salinity—could also play
large roles. "The ultimate effect of temperature on zooplankton and consumers higher in the food chain
will depend on other ocean conditions that affect resource availability," O'Connor says.
That could mean that nutrient-rich waters in places like the Arctic Ocean will begin to see this food chain
shift as the seas continue to warm—and a consequent rise in the number of fish. "Our experiments and
current theory suggest that warming in nutrient-rich areas should increase [the number of] fish,"
O'Connor says. "I think we can figure out how and where climate change may lead to greater fish
productivity and where it might reduce fish productivity."
But even in the Arctic, there is typically a nutrient limit, says phytoplankton ecologist Michael
Behrenfeld of Oregon State University. "It's a very interesting idea," he says. But an increase in fish
harvests "might be a bridge too far with this. There are other factors that need to be considered."
For example, his own satellite-imagery research on the phytoplankton in the North Atlantic reveals that
bloom starts in wintertime as a result of deep, nutrient-rich water welling up to the surface. Warming is
diminishing that upwelling and therefore the availability of nutrients. "We see a decrease in blooms,"
Behrenfeld says. "How much can we use [four-liter] microcosms to extrapolate to natural systems,
especially natural systems at longer timescales?"
Nevertheless, the experiment provides a glimpse of how the marine food chain might be transformed
by climate change. "Worldwide, ocean waters are warming and will continue to warm by several
degrees," O'Connor says. "By understanding the effects of temperature in these ideal conditions, we can
begin to apply this model to natural systems."
Feedback Debate
Warming Causes Positive Feedback
Methane thaws lakes creating positive feedback
K. M. Walter1, S. A. Zimov2, J. P. Chanton3, D. Verbyla4 and F. S. Chapin, III1 Nature 443, 71-75 (7 September 2006) |
doi:10.1038/nature05040; Received 5 December 2005; Accepted 3 July 2006
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7107/abs/nature05040.html#top
Large uncertainties in the budget of atmospheric methane, an important greenhouse gas, limit the accuracy of climate change projections1, 2.
Thaw lakes in North Siberia are known to emit methane3, but the magnitude of these emissions remains uncertain because most methane is
released through ebullition (bubbling), which is spatially and temporally variable. Here we report a new method of measuring ebullition and use
it to quantify methane emissions from two thaw lakes in North Siberia. We show that ebullition accounts for 95 per cent of methane emissions
from these lakes, and that methane
flux from thaw lakes in our study region may be five times higher than
previously estimated3. Extrapolation of these fluxes indicates that thaw lakes in North Siberia emit 3.8 teragrams of methane per year,
which increases present estimates of methane emissions from northern wetlands (< 6–40 teragrams per year; refs 1, 2, 4–6) by between 10 and
63 per cent. We
find that thawing permafrost along lake margins accounts for most of the methane
released from the lakes, and estimate that an expansion of thaw lakes between 1974 and 2000, which
was concurrent with regional warming, increased methane emissions in our study region by 58 per
cent. Furthermore, the Pleistocene age (35,260–42,900 years) of methane emitted from hotspots along thawing lake
margins indicates that this positive feedback to climate warming has led to the release of old carbon
stocks previously stored in permafrost.
Trees & Vegetation loss = Positive Feedback
Hoffmann, W. A., W. Schroeder,
and R. B. Jackson, Positive feedbacks of fire, climate, and vegetation and the conversion of tropical
savanna, Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(22), 2052, doi:10.1029/2002GL015424, 2002.
At present, fire intervals are commonly 2–3 yr in these moist tropical savannas [Barbosa et al., 1999; Russellongoing savanna clearing, the continuous, climatedriven increase in fire frequency will accelerate further decreases in tree cover. Coupling the GCM results with
projections of tree density we estimate that when 50% of the total land area is cleared (year 41 with a clearing rate
of 1.7% yr−1), the approximate state of the Brazilian cerrado today, this feedback should account for an
additional 28% of loss of tree cover in those areas not actively cleared. With 75% land clearing, the
feedback will account for 60% loss in tree cover of these uncleared areas (Figure 3).
Smith et al., 1997], rates that are already driving reductions in tree density. With
Fire Causes Positive Feedback
Hoffmann, W. A., W. Schroeder,
and R. B. Jackson, Positive feedbacks of fire, climate, and vegetation and the conversion of tropical
savanna, Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(22), 2052, doi:10.1029/2002GL015424, 2002.
Fire plays a dominant ecological role over much of the earth's land surface, influencing ecosystem productivity [Reich et al., 2001],
biogeochemical cycling [Wan et al., 2001] and biome distributions [Kershaw, 1986]. Fire frequency and intensity are highly sensitive to
meteorological conditions and will likely respond quickly to climate change. At
the global scale, greenhouse warming is
predicted to increase fire risk [Flannigan et al., 2000; Williams et al., 2001] and, in consequence, emissions of
greenhouse gases. At the local scale, thinning of tree cover by fire results in warmer and drier
understory microclimate and further fuel drying and increased fire risk [Cochrane et al., 1999]. Understanding such
feedbacks is important for predicting future climates and vegetation properties.
Vegetation Feedback = Fire intensification (read with Fire Causes Positive
Feedback)
Hoffmann, W. A., W. Schroeder,
and R. B. Jackson, Positive feedbacks of fire, climate, and vegetation and the conversion of tropical
savanna, Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(22), 2052, doi:10.1029/2002GL015424, 2002.
[12] In the simulations presented here, the use of climatological sea surface temperatures eliminates an important source of variability in
tropical climates. In many regions of the tropics, extreme fire years are associated with events such as el Niño [Siegert et al., 2001]. Because of
the nonlinearity in the fire response to climate (Figure 2), an increase in the fire danger index should have a larger impact in years with severe
fire weather than in milder years, so the mean effect of climate change on fire frequency may be larger than predicted here.
Furthermore,Recent
observations of summer Arctic sea ice over the satellite era show that record or
near-record lows for the ice extent occurred in the years 2002–05. To determine the physical
processes contributing to these changes in the Arctic pack ice, model results from a regional coupled
ice–ocean model have been analyzed. Since 1988 the thickness of the simulated basinwide ice thinned
by 1.31 m or 43%. The thinning is greatest along the coast in the sector from the Chukchi Sea to the
Beaufort Sea to Greenland.
Ice melt and other things cause Positive Feedback to Warming
Lindsay, R. W. and J. Zhang, 2005: The Thinning of Arctic Sea Ice, 1988–2003: Have We Passed a Tipping Point?. J. Climate, 18, 4879–
4894. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI3587.1
It is hypothesized that the
thinning since 1988 is due to preconditioning, a trigger, and positive feedbacks: 1) the fall,
winter, and spring air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean have gradually increased over the last 50 yr,
leading to reduced thickness of first-year ice at the start of summer; 2) a temporary shift, starting in 1989, of two principal
climate indexes (the Arctic Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation) caused a flushing of some of the older, thicker ice out of the
basin and an increase in the summer open water extent; and 3) the increasing amounts of summer open
water allow for increasing absorption of solar radiation, which melts the ice, warms the water, and
promotes creation of thinner first-year ice, ice that often entirely melts by the end of the subsequent
summer. Internal thermodynamic changes related to the positive ice–albedo feedback, not external forcing, dominate the thinning
processes over the last 16 yr. This feedback continues to drive the thinning after the climate indexes return to near-normal
conditions in the late 1990s. The late 1980s and early 1990s could be considered a tipping point during which the
ice–ocean system began to enter a new era of thinning ice and increasing summer open water because of
positive feedbacks. It remains to be seen if this era will persist or if a sustained cooling period can reverse the processes. vegetation
clearing and greenhouse gases are likely to have additive effects on climate [Costa and Foley, 2000; Zhang et al.,
2001], so the increase in fire risk shown here will be compounded with that expected from greenhouse
warming [Flannigan et al., 2000; Williams et al., 2001]. Likewise, the local micrometeorological effects of reduced
tree cover, such as increased fuel drying and increased grass biomass accumulation, will further
increase fire risk, particularly in dense savanna woodland and seasonal tropical forests [Cochrane et al., 1999]. Though the latter are
distinct from savanna, they lie within and peripheral to the main savanna regions, thus contributing to the same regional vegetation-climate
system. All of these increases in fire risk, including those due to vegetation-climate feedbacks, would also increase fire intensity.
N2O causes Positive Feedback
SMITH, K. (1997), The potential for feedback effects induced by global warming on emissions of nitrous oxide by soils. Global Change
Biology, 3: 327–338. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2486.1997.00100.xhttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2486.1997.00100.x/abstract
About 65% of all emissions of nitrous oxide, N2O, are from soils, and are caused by aerobic
nitrification and anaerobic denitrification. Tropical forest soils are probably the most important single source, followed by
cultivated soils. Emission rates in natural systems are related to the rate of N mineralization from organic matter, and N deposition; in
agricultural systems they are related to the quantities of N used as fertilizers and, where relevant, to recent land use change. The global budget
for N2O is not well balanced, and sources may still be underestimated. Direct
evidence of a positive feedback of global
warming on N2O emissions comes from studies of air in ice cores. One of the projected effects of future global
warming is a lowering of water tables in northern peatlands; experiments suggest that this would lead to increased emissions, but that the
effect on total emissions would be small. The results of many experiments with non-peatland soils indicate that the effect of temperature on
soil emissions is generally positive, and that the rate of increase may be very steep when denitrification is the principal process involved.
Process-level modelling suggests that the reason is increased soil respiration, which causes an
increase in anaerobic volume in which denitrification can take place, in addition to the increased
denitrification rate per unit anaerobic volume brought about directly by the rise in temperature.
These results imply that generally a positive feedback on emissions from soils is likely. However, in some
environments, a large proportion of total annual emissions can occur during freeze–thaw cycles; such cycles may become more or less
frequent, depending on the climatic zone, and this may result in either a positive or negative feedback effect due to global warming. Models of
global and regional trends give very conflicting predictions of the direction and the magnitude of climatic impacts on fluxes, but the prediction
of a positive feedback seems to be the more soundly based.
Defense
Adaptation Key
Adaptation is our last choice too late to reverse climate change
Too late to stop global warming by cutting emissions? Scientists argue for adaption policies
University of the Witwatersrand October 17, 2012 reference source: Journal Reference:
Jasper Knight, Stephan Harrison. The impacts of climate change on terrestrial Earth surface systems. Nature Climate Change, 2012; DOI:
10.1038/nclimate1660
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121017102943.htm, CM
Governments and institutions should focus on developing adaption policies to address and mitigate
against the negative impact of global warming, rather than putting the emphasis on carbon trading
and capping greenhouse-gas emissions, argue Johannesburg-based Wits University geoscientist Dr Jasper Knight and Dr Stephan Harrison
from the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. "At present, governments' attempts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions
through carbon cap-and-trade schemes and to promote renewable and sustainable energy sources are
probably too late to arrest the inevitable trend of global warming," the scientists write in a paper published online in the
scientific journal, Nature Climate Change, on Monday, Oct. 14, 2012. The paper, entitled "The Impacts of climate change on terrestrial Earth surface systems," is
published in the Perspective section of Nature Climate Change and argues that much less attention is paid by policymakers to monitor, model and manage the
impacts of climate change on the dynamics of Earth surface systems, including glaciers, rivers, mountains and coasts. "This is a critical omission, as Earth surface
systems provide water and soil resources, sustain ecosystem services and strongly influence biogeochemical climate feedbacks in ways that are as yet uncertain,"
the scientists write. Knight and Harrison want governments to focus more on adaption policies because future
impacts of global warming on land-surface stability and the sediment fluxes associated with soil
erosion, river down-cutting and coastal erosion are relevant to sustainability, biodiversity and food
security. Monitoring and modelling soil erosion loss, for example, are also means by which to examine problems of carbon and nutrient fluxes, lake
eutrophication, pollutant and coliform dispersal, river siltation and other issues. An Earth-systems approach can actively inform on these cognate areas of
environmental policy and planning. According to the scientists, Earth surface systems' sensitivity to climate forcing is still poorly understood. Measuring this
geomorphological sensitivity will identify those systems and environments that are most vulnerable to climatic disturbance, and will enable policymakers and
managers to prioritise action in these areas. "This
is particularly the case in coastal environments, where rocky and
sandy coastlines will yield very different responses to climate forcing, and where coastal-zone management plans are
usually based on past rather than future climatic patterns," they argue. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report on extreme events
and disasters and the forthcoming fifth assessment report, due 2013, include more explicit statements of the role of Earth surface systems in responding to and
influencing climate forcing. "However, monitoring of the response of these systems to climate forcing requires decadal-scale data sets of instrumented basins and
under different climatic regimes worldwide. This will require a con-siderable international science effort as well as commitment from national governments," Knight
and Harrison urge.
Efforts to save our world from Climate change ought to switch from mitigation to
adaptation – global climate change is inevitable
NBCNews, Roach, ‘13
NBCNews contributing writer, John Roach, November 7th, 2013, “It’s time to adapt to unstoppable global
warming, scientists say”, http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/its-time-adapt-unstoppableglobal-warming-scientists-say-f8C11554338
Even if the world's 7 billion people magically stop burning fossil fuels and chopping down forests
today, the greenhouse gases already emitted to the atmosphere will warm the planet by about 2
degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century, according to scientists who are urging a focused scientific effort to help humanity adapt
to the changing climate. And reality shows no sign of such a magic reduction in emissions. The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached another new
high in 2012, the World Meteorological Association announced Wednesday. In fact, concentrations of carbon dioxide, the most abundant planet warming gas, grew
faster last year than its average growth rate of the past decade. "The
fact is, we are not making a lot of progress in reducing
emissions," Richard Moss, a senior scientist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Joint Global Change Research Institute at the University of
Maryland, told NBC News. "So it seems like we really do need to face up to the fact that there is change that we
can no longer avoid and we have to figure out how to manage." Moss is the lead author of an article in Thursday's issue of
Science calling for the development of a field of climate science that provides relevant, tangible information to decision makers who are tasked to protect people
and cities increasingly battered by extreme weather, flooded by rising seas, and nourished with food grown on drought-prone lands.
Science which
focuses on adapting to climate change — rather than just preventing it — is nothing new. It's the need
for more information that field of science can yield that's increasingly vital. Superstorm Sandy and the
onslaught of similar catastrophic events bear the fingerprint of climate change. Growing evidence that
more of the same is on the way brings a new urgency for information that people can actually use to
prepare, survive, and even thrive on a changing planet, Moss explained.
A2 Warming Bad – Whales
Warming does not kill whales food supply
Taylor 2011 [James- Senior Fellow, the Heartland Institute; Managing Editor,
Environment and Climate News] (Whale Wars: Is Global Warming Threatening Antarctic
Krill, Whales? http://heartland.org/policy-documents/whale-wars-global-warmingthreatening-antarctic-krill-whales)
Marine biologists at Duke University report an unprecedented number of humpback whales off
the coast of the West Antarctic Peninsula, feeding on the largest swarm of krill seen in the region in
more than 20 years. While this may seem like good news to animal lovers, the marine biologists claim
global warming is to blame and the prevalence of both krill and whales is a bad thing.
The Duke team claims a recent decline in regional sea ice is allowing whales to feed in krill breeding
grounds that were previously protected by sea ice. Although the remarkable numbers and concentration
of krill indicate the krill seem to be benefiting from the regional decline in sea ice, the Duke team claims
the whales may soon consume so much krill that it will threaten the krill population.
Taking a bold step outside their marine biology expertise and into the realm of climate science, the team
claims rapid global warming is the cause of the recent decline in sea ice off the West Antarctic Peninsula,
as well as the cause of the recent boom in krill and whale concentrations.
Precise measurements from NASA satellites, however, show Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for at
least the past 30 years. Record Antarctic sea ice extent has been repeatedly measured during the past
four years. The lone portion of Antarctica where sea ice is not expanding is the West Antarctic Peninsula
region, where scientists have documented a number of active undersea volcanoes warming the
water. Even with this small portion of Antarctic sea ice in modest retreat, Antarctic sea ice as a whole
continues to grow. Given the consistent, longstanding growth in overall Antarctic sea ice, it seems a bit
of a stretch for the Duke marine biologists to claim rapid global warming is responsible for the allegedly
undesirable proliferation of krill and whales off the West Antarctic Peninsula.
Ice melting does not kill whales, but allows them to pass through
Marshall 2011 [Michael- journalist and writer for New Scientist as their environment
editor] (Whales make new friends as warmer seas drive migration,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128314.400-whales-make-new-friends-aswarmer-seas-drive-migration.html#.U8xwhca90XG)
The two met because the passage, long blocked by ice, is opening as the climate warms. The
anecdote, which came to light thanks to satellite transmitters on the whales, is part of increasing data
showing how ocean life is being transformed by rising sea temperatures, with some bits of apparently
good news to sweeten the pill.
The two bowheads were tagged by Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen of the Greenland Institute of Natural
Resources in Nuuk and his colleagues. Bowheads entered the passage in 2002 and 2006, but this was the
first time two were seen to cross paths (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0731).
Heide-Jørgensen thinks whales have been sneaking through, undetected, since the ice began to retreat.
The Greenland population, once decimated by whalers, has grown suspiciously fast since 2000, and
Heide-Jørgensen suspects the hand of immigration from Alaska. That's perfectly possible, says Aviad
Scheinin of the University of Haifa in Israel. In May 2010, he spotted a Pacific grey whale in the
Mediterranean Sea, which probably got there via the Arctic. Further evidence of links between Atlantic
and Pacific ecosystems comes from Cambridge bay in Nunavut, Canada, where pods of narwhals
appeared on 15 August. They do not normally venture so far west, but shrinking ice seems to be
changing that.
It's not just whales that are affected by warming seas (see map). Steve Simpson at the University of
Bristol, UK, looked at 25,612 trawls in fisheries around the UK and in the North Sea between 1980 and
2008. There waters have warmed by 0.05 °C a year since 1980.Populations grew for 27 of the 50 most
common fish; nine declined and 14 held steady (Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.08.016). "I
had expected to see many struggling and maybe one or two doing well," he says
A2 Warming Bad – Marine Biodiversity
Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels do not pose a significant threat to
aquatic life.
Nova 2014 [Jo- science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The
Skeptic's Handbook] (Global warming, not so bad at all really: says NIPCC report,
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/04/global-warming-not-so-bad-at-all-really-says-nipccreport-and-thousands-of-references/)
Many aquatic species have shown considerable tolerance to temperatures and CO2 values
predicted for the next few centuries, and many have demonstrated a likelihood of positive responses in
empirical studies. Any projected adverse impacts of rising temperatures or declining seawater and
freshwater pH levels (“acidification”) will be largely mitigated through phenotypic adaptation or
evolution during the many decades to centuries it is expected to take for pH levels to fall.
Warming does not harm aquatic life
DELINGPOLE April 2014 [James- English columnist and novelist who has written for The
Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator. He is executive editor for the London
branch of Breitbart.com] ('WORLD DOING JUST FINE; GLOBAL WARMING IS GOOD; CO2
IS OUR FRIEND' SAY SCIENTISTS’ http://www.breitbart.com/BreitbartLondon/2014/04/04/World-doing-just-fine-Global-Warming-is-Good-CO2-is-our-friendsay-Scientists)
Multiple studies from multiple oceanic regions confirm that productivity - from phytoplankton and
microalgae to corals, crustaceans and fish - tends to increase with temperature. Some experts predict
coral calcification will increase by about 35 per cent beyond pre-industrial levels by 2100, with no
extinction of coral reefs. Laboratory studies predicting lower PH levels - "ocean acidification" - fail to
capture the complexities of the real world and often contradict observations in nature.
Animals such as reptiles and orca whales will benefit from warming
Dvorsky 11/15/2012 [George- Canadian bioethicist, transhumanist, and futurist.
contributing editor at io9 and producer of the Sentient Developments blog and podcast]
(Which species stand to benefit the most from global warming?http://io9.com/5960812/which-species-stand-to-benefit-the-most-from-globalwarming)
As for terrestrial animals, some scientists predict that snakes and other cold blooded reptiles
will do well as warmer temperatures allow them to become more active. Moreover, their populations
do well when previous years were warm. But that said, larger animals like orca whales may also
benefit as it's getting increasingly easier to hunt given fewer patches of sea ice where their prey can
hide. But the longer term impacts could be catastrophic; short term gain could represent long term pain
for a species like this.
Marine animals adapt well to climate change
Evans, Pierce, and Panigada 10 (Peter, Graham, and Simone, Journal of the Marine Biological
Association of the United Kingdom, Climate Change and marine mammals,
http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FMBI%2FMBI90_08%2FS0025315410001
815a.pdf&code=71f795f76ef7caadec9cdaa4de02bcf5//LK)
A number of reviews have been published recently of the possible effects of climate change upon marine mammals (IWC, 1997, 2009; Wu ̈rsig et
al., 2002; Learmonth et al., 2006; Huntington & Moore, 2008; Laidre et al., 2008; MacLeod, 2009; Evans et al., 2010). Marine
mammals,
thermo-regulating vertebrates, might be expected to cope well with most environmental
variation predicted from climate change. They employ complex behavioral adaptations that can
lead to them having strong buffering against environmental variability, including variation in food supply.
These adaptations can extend to life-history processes, some of which are sensitive to temperature, especially with
respect to the thermoregulation of neonates. On the other hand, changes in the availability of their habitat (including food
as warm-blooded
resources) may lead to changes in population size or dis- tribution in particular cases. The most obvious example in this context is the reduction
in ice cover affecting ice-breeding polar seals such as the walrus, bearded, hooded, ribbon, harp or ringed seal, and its consequent effect upon
Arctic pre- dators like the polar bear (Stirling et al., 1999; Derocher et al., 2004; Ferguson et al., 2005; Huntington & Moore, 2008).
A2 Warming Bad – Biodiversity
Attempts to claim warming is the cause of biodiversity loss fall short, studies ignore alt causes
Quirin Schiermeier March 20, 2011, Nature, Biodiversity's ills not all down to climate change,
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110320/full/news.2011.170.html
Climate change is affecting the world in many ways. But attempts
to directly link local changes in species
distribution and biodiversity to climate warming hold little promise, ecologists warn in Nature Climate
Change1. First author Camille Parmesan, a population biologist at the University of Texas in Austin, explains why. You argue that attempts
to attribute the degree of local changes, for example declines in individual plant and animal species, specifically
caused greenhouse warming are misguided. Why? It is important to look at all the different
things that could cause a decline, including climate change. But when it comes to managing and conserving species and
ecosystems, trying to figure out exactly how much of any one particular decline is due to greenhouse gases is not necessarily helpful, and may
actually not be possible. You
can, of course, attribute various individual biological changes to climate
events, and even climate change, provided you have long-term studies. But linking observed
changes to the man-made component of climate change requires a different scale. That level of
attribution is best done for large areas — the size of northern Europe or the western United States. The more local a scale you
look at, the harder it is to link single events to greenhouse-gas-driven global climate change.
Take the endangered Quino checkerspot butterfly [Euphydryas editha quino] of Southern California. We do know that climate
change is important: if you dry and warm the butterfly's habitat it will cause increased starvation and extinction. But many
populations are also affected by an invasive geranium from the Mediterranean which is out-competing the butterfly's host plant. This is further
aided by air pollution from Los Angeles and San Diego, as nitrogen fertilization helps the exotic geranium take over. It
just doesn't
make any sense to ask what percentage of the decline is due to anthropogenic climate
change — from a scientific standpoint it doesn't have much value. What you would be better off doing instead is manage for
invasive geranium, lower the nitrogen pollution and set up new reserves that anticipate climate change — that is, placed in areas the butterflies
can colonize as climate shifts.
Loss of BioD won’t cause collapse
Holly Dormeus, 1-1-2000, The Rhetoric and Reality of Nature Protection: Toward a New Discourse, Washington and Lee Law Review,
Professor of Law, University of California at Davis, JD, Univerrsity of California at Berkely, PhD, Cornell University,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1311&context=wlulr
Reluctant to concede such losses, tellers
of the ecological horror story highlight how close a catastrophe
might be, and how little we know about what actions might trigger one. But the apocalyptic vision is less credible
today than it seemed in the 1970s. Nor is human extinction probable any time soon. Homo
sapien is adaptable to nearly any environment. Even if the world of the future includes far
fewer species, it likely will hold people. n215 [*47] One response to this credibility problem tones the story
down a bit, arguing not that humans will go extinct but that ecological disruption will bring
economies, and consequently civilizations, to their knees. n216 But this too may be overstating the case.
Most ecosystem functions are performed by multiple species. This functional redundancy
means that a high proportion of species can be lost without precipitating a collapse . n217
BioD loss is caused by multiple factors, blaming it all on climate change is ignorant
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005, Ecosystems and Human Well-being
http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.354.aspx.pdf
Biodiversity change is caused by a range of drivers. A driver is any natural or human-induced factor that directly or
indirectly causes a change in an ecosystem. A direct driver unequivocally influences ecosystem processes. An indirect driver operates more
diffusely, by altering one or more direct drivers. Important
direct drivers affecting biodiversity are habitat change,
climate change, invasive species, overexploitation, and pollution (CF4, C3, C4.3, S7). No single measure or
indicator represents the totality of the various drivers. Some direct drivers of change have relatively
straightforward indicators, such as fertilizer usage, water consumption, irrigation, and harvests. Indicators for other drivers, including invasion
by non-native species, climate change, land cover conversion, and landscape fragmentation, are not as well developed, and data to measure
them are not as readily available (S7). Changes
in biodiversity and in ecosystems are almost always caused
by multiple, interacting drivers. Changes are driven by combinations of drivers that work over
time (such as population and income growth interacting with technological advances that lead to climate change) or level of organization
(such as local zoning laws versus international environmental treaties) and that happen intermittently (such as droughts, wars,
and economic crises).
Warming is non-unique, we can solve biodiversity issue other ways
PRI, 2006, Global Change Project Paleontological Research Institution, http://www.priweb.org/globalchange/bioloss/bl_06.html
There are several important ways in which humans can slow biodiversity loss, although there is no
way to bring back the species that have already gone extinct. Creating protected areas where human activity is limited is the
best way to prevent deforestation and exploitation of organisms and the resources they need to
survive. In order to truly make a difference, much planning needs to go into the creation of a protected area. It needs to consider all elements
of the ecosystem it is trying to protect, so that it isn’t too small. It needs to include all resources that are utilized by its inhabitants; for example,
leaving out a stream where half of the mammals go to drink would not make a protected area very effective. It
is often much easier
and less expensive to prevent a problem from developing in the first place than to try to fix it
once it occurs. This is the case with invasive species, which can wreak havoc when introduced to ecosystems that
aren’t prepared to deal with them. Many governments prohibit bringing foreign plants and animals into their countries without authorization;
some even go so far as to disinfect landing planes and the shoe-bottoms of people on them. Education
is a powerful tool, and
the more people know about biodiversity loss, the more they will be prepared to help slow it.
Spreading the word about detrimental human effects on plants and animals can encourage people to change their ways and effect changes to
preserve biodiversity. Climate change is the documented cause of several extinctions that we know about, and has likely caused hundreds of
species to go extinct about which we may never know. Any
efforts as individuals, organizations, or governments,
to slow current human-caused global warming is a step towards slowing biodiversity loss.
Sustainable agriculture is much better for the environment than grazing and cropping that
rely on clearing swathes of forest or field.
It is impossible to predict ecosystem collapse, they can’t solve
Philippe Goulletquer et all, 2014, Philippe Gros, Gilles Boeuf, And Jacques Weber, Biodiversity in the Marine Environment,
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-8566-2_6/fulltext.html
Ecosystem shifts are typically impossible to predict (de Young et al. 2008). Although these events are only identified after
the fact, their consequences are known, i.e. general homogenisation of communities and ecosystems due to a reduction in food web
complexity, lower diversity within functional groups and simplified habitat structure. Developing the capacity to anticipate regime shifts (via risk
assessment) would provide a valuable resource for environmental managers. A
major obstacle to forecasting is the
disparity between theory and our ability to empirically investigate the effects of change of
state under ecologically realistic conditions. There is an urgent need to improve methods and tools for the systematic
assessment of marine ecosystem status in order to develop recovery scenarios (similarly to what is done for populations of marine species).
One priority in seeking to understand the scale and dynamics of marine biodiversity is to
integrate population-level processes within ecologically predictive frameworks, for example,
the prediction of extinction risks under climate change by coupling stochastic population models with dynamic
bioclimatic habitat models and the integration of GIS-based environmental data in evolutionary biology (e.g. Keith et al. 2008).
No extinction from warming, populations will evolve to cope
Ary A. Hoffmann & Carla M. Sgrò, 24 February 2011, Nature 470, 479–485, Climate change and evolutionary adaptation,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7335/full/nature09670.html
Natural populations are responding to global climate change by shifting their geographical
distribution and timing of growth and reproduction , and these changes are, in turn, altering the composition of
communities and the nature of species interactions1. However, the responses of many populations are likely to be inadequate to counter the
speed and magnitude of climate change, leaving groups such as lizards vulnerable to decline and extinction2. Extinction
can be
avoided if populations move to favorable habitats, organisms successfully overcome stressful
conditions via plastic changes, or populations undergo evolutionary adaptation. Recent studies have
highlighted that evolutionary change can be rapid in a number of taxa4, including in species that have invaded new
areas5 and in native species responding to biotic invasions6. This indicates that evolutionary adaptation could be
an important way for natural populations to counter rapid climate change, and that predicted
colonization patterns and distribution shifts are markedly affected by the inclusion of evolution7, 8. Evolutionary adaptation
might be the only way that threatened species can persist if they are unable to disperse
naturally or through human-mediated translocation to climatically suitable habitats. This
process might also be essential for the ongoing health of keystone species facing threats
arising from climate change, as in the case of dominant conifers being attacked by bark beetle populations benefiting from
warming conditions9. Adaptive changes are likely to influence the ability of species to take advantage of potentially favourable conditions
arising from climate change, including the effects of CO2 enrichment on growth rate10 and the extension of favourable seasonal conditions11.
However, with few exceptions, the importance of evolution tends to be ignored both in
broader discussions about the effects of climate change on biodiversity and in models for
predicting species responses to climate change.
Animals can evolve and adapt to warm waters
Emma Marris MAY 6, 2014, National Geographic, How a Few Species Are Hacking Climate Change,
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140506-climate-change-adaptation-evolution-coral-science-butterflies/
Another uplifting tale of unexpected resilience appeared in Science on April 24. While surveying the waters of the future National Park of
American Samoa off Ofu Island, researcher Peter Craig noticed
isolated coral pools that were considerably
warmer than the rest. High water temperatures can cause corals to "bleach": They spit out the
photosynthesizing algae that live inside them, thereby losing both their color and their means of
collecting energy. Yet these particular corals didn't seem to be suffering too much from the heat.
Marine ecologist Stephen Palumbi of Stanford University in California tested the heat tolerance of some of the
Acropora hyacinthus corals from unusually hot pools. He plopped them into a container, then cranked up the heat inside to 34 degrees
Celsius (93 degrees Fahrenheit) for three hours. Just 20 percent of the individual coral animals spit out their algae,
whereas 55 percent of coral from an otherwise similar but much cooler pool spit out their algae during the
test. The more revealing test came next. Palumbi took corals from the cool pool and put them in the hot
pool. One year later, he measured their heat tolerance—and found it had greatly improved.
The heat stress test caused only 32.5 percent of the transplanted corals to spit out their algae, instead of 55 percent. Palumbi's experiment
helped tease out the two different mechanisms by which organisms can adapt. Individual
transplanted corals were able
to adapt to the hotter water, without any change in their genes. Biologists call that phenotypic plasticity. But
the transplanted corals were still not as good at taking the heat as corals that were native to the hot pools; 32.5 percent of them bleached
during the stress test, compared with just 20 percent of the hot-pool natives. That gap might reflect the operation of another mechanism of
adaptation: genetic evolution. Over
many generations, natural selection may have changed the genes of
corals in the hot pools by allowing the most heat-tolerant ones to survive and produce more
offspring. For the Samoan corals in a warming ocean, the combination of plastic adaptation and genetic evolution could be "the difference
between dead and more or less unfazed," Palumbi says. The results suggest to him that previous predictions of
extinction for all coral might be a bit too pessimistic. More generally, such individual stories
of adaptive ability suggest that the quality of resilience has been left out of our models and
predictions about how the natural world will respond to climate change. "I do think there is more hidden adaptability out
there," says Palumbi.
Studies show animals can evolve to face climate change
Virginia Tech, December 12, 2013, Environment drives genetics in 'Evolution Canyon': Discovery sheds light on climate change, Virginia
Tech (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)
Interplay between genes and the environment has been pondered at least since the phrase "nature versus nurture" was coined in the mid1800s. But until the arrival of modern genomic sequencing tools, it was hard to measure the extent that the environment had on a species'
genetic makeup. Now, researchers with the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech studying
fruit flies that live on
opposite slopes of a unique natural environment known as "Evolution Canyon" show
that even with migration, cross-breeding, and
sometimes the obliteration of the populations, the driving force in the gene pool is largely the environment.
The discovery in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the animals
genetically adapt depending on whether they live on the drier, hotter side of the canyon, or the more humid, cooler
side. "Despite complicating factors, such as likely gene flow between the two populations and changing demographics, the difference
in the microclimate in this canyon apparently is so pervasive that it is sufficient to drive the
genetic differences," said Pawel Michalak, an associate professor at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute. "We don't have many
examples of rapid environmental adaptation to stressful conditions from the field. We can simulate such conditions in a lab, but it is valuable to
observe this actually happening in a natural system." The two slopes of Evolution Canyon, which is located at Mount Carmel, Israel, are little
more than two football fields apart at their bases, but the south-facing slope is tropical and may receive eight times as much sun, while the
north-facing slope is more like a European forest. Knowledge
that climatic and environmental factors seem to
exert a significant effect on the fruit-fly genome in spite of migration or repopulations adds to
current understanding of the biodiversity, resilience, and ability of a species to adapt to rapid
climate change. The native fruit fly in question -- Drosophila melanogaster -- is a well-studied laboratory animal and the source of the
world's knowledge of how genetic information is packaged in chromosomes. More than 65 percent of disease-causing genes in humans are
believed to have functional counterparts in the fly, including many genes involved in certain cancers, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases,
heart disease, and other medical conditions. Researchers used a technique known as whole genome sequencing to characterize the complete
set of DNA in the total population of the fruit flies, noting differences in the genetic makeup between the populations on the opposing slopes.
The international team, which included scientists from the Institute of Evolution at Haifa University, the University of British Columbia in
Vancouver, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, discovered 572 genes were significantly different in frequency between
the populations, corroborating previous observations of differences in heat tolerance, life history, and mating behavior. In addition, researchers
discovered that genetic changes were accumulating in chromosomal "islands" in the north-facing-slope flies, suggesting adaptive gene
mutations would sweep through the population, given time. Migration of flies between the slopes was confirmed by capturing and marking
them with florescence. "Although we were not correlating genetic change with climate change, we were looking at heat-stress effects, which
gives us an indirect understanding relevant to global climate changes," Michalak said. "We need some good indicators of genomic changes
induced by climate changes. People have ways to cope unlike those of other organisms, but stress-resistance mechanisms are well-conserved in
nature. The basic question of how organisms adapt to stressful environments is going to be more important in the years ahead. It affects us as a
whole." The research confirms that natural selection -- the process in nature where organisms genetically adapt to their surroundings -- is a
powerful influence in the canyon. "It is nice to see the molecular work finally completed, and that the molecular signal confirms the phenotypic
data: There
is divergence between the two slopes," said Marta L. Wayne, a professor of biology at the University of
Florida and a member of the UF Genetics Institute, who was not involved in the research. "This is interesting because the
slopes are close enough that we know animals travel between them, yet selection is so strong
that there are differences between animals on the two slopes. This is really strong natural
selection."
The complexity of ecosystems means predictions for climate change impacts are impossible,
they can’t solve
Philippe Goulletquer et all, 2014, Philippe Gros, Gilles Boeuf, And Jacques Weber, Biodiversity in the Marine Environment,
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-8566-2_6/fulltext.html
It is well established that the effects of such factors as climate change and other global changes like coastal zone
development, overexploitation of marine resources, discharges of pollutants and nutrients, along with other anthropogenic influences, can
result in major disturbances in marine ecosystems (Levin and Lubchenco 2008). Such effects can alter the quality and quantity of ecosystem
services, for instance through lower fisheries yields, poorer water quality, increased incidence of disease and arrival of alien species. While in
many cases these pressures entail a sharp drop in the benefits derived from biodiversity, there are
also cases in which ecosystem changes will lead to a different distribution of costs and
benefits amongst users. An example of the management challenges this can produce is that of fisheries targeting multi-species,
where increased landings of certain species will mean reduced landings of others, or the trade-offs involved in designating Marine Protected
Areas (Boncoeur et al. 2002). Key
to these trade-offs are the uncertainty attached to expected impacts
of alternative exploitation patterns, time required to observe the actual impacts and reversibility of these impacts. The
capacity of a system to sustain changes and remain functional is known as resilience. The key
components of resilience are: (1) the amount of change the system can undergo (and implicitly, therefore, the amount of extrinsic forcing the
system can sustain) and still remain within the same domain of attraction (i.e. retain the same controls on structure and function); (2) the
degree to which the system is capable of self-organisation (versus lack of organisation, or organisation forced by external factors); and (3) the
degree to which the system can build the capacity to learn and adapt (Carpenter et al. 2001). There
is usually a positive
relationship between biodiversity, resilience and capacity for recovery. This means that
attempting to generate precise forecasts is in many cases inaccurate due to the inherent
complexity of interactions across different ecosystem components. Some effects may be predicted with an
acceptable degree of uncertainty when single environmental or human drivers are sufficiently strong to force an ecosystem into an alternative
state. Increased temporal variability can provide a proxy for early-warning signals of an approaching regime shift or disruption to ecosystem
services (Carpenter et al. 2006; Beaugrand et al. 2009). Nevertheless,
there is increasing evidence that
interactions among intrinsic ecological dynamics and numerous chronic, cumulative or
multiple stressor effects can increase the uncertainty in any predictive framework , whatever the
scenario, leading to a loss in resilience and greater risk of regime shift (e.g. far-reaching changes in species composition and function). These
factors are summarised in Table 6.1.
A2 Warming Bad – Polar Melting
The Melting of Antarctic Ice Sheets is Unstoppable – Geologic data proves – Coastal
Flooding Inevitable
Neuman, ‘14
Scott Neuman, May 12th, 2014, NPR, “Melting Of Antarctic Ice Sheet Might Be Unstoppable”, Scott
Neuman is a journalist, http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/05/12/311910526/melting-ofantarctic-ice-sheet-might-be-unstoppable
Scientists have long worried about climate change-induced melting of the huge West
Antarctic Ice Sheet. Now they say that not only is the disintegration of the ice already
underway, but that it's likely unstoppable. That means that in the coming centuries, global
sea levels will rise by anywhere from 4 to 12 feet. As NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports, that's a larger increase than the
United Nations expert panel noted last year. But it would occur over a longer time frame — centuries instead of decades. Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the
University of Washington in Seattle, says people have been speculating that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is unstable since the 1970s. "It's what's called a
marine ice sheet, which means most of it is on the ocean floor instead of on land above sea level," Joughin says. The
ice sheet's weak
points, such as Thwaites Glacier, have been thinning as warm ocean water eats away at it
from underneath, he says. If the glacier were to disintegrate, it would "create a vacuum of ice
to which the rest of the ice sheet would ... flow into and largely destabilize much of the rest of
the ice sheet," Joughin says. "And that has enough ice to raise sea level by about 10 feet." Eric Rignot, a
researcher at the University of California, Irvine who co-authored the study, scheduled for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, looked at four decades
the threshold for a cascading melt has already
been reached. "The system is in sort of a chain reaction that is unstoppable," Rignot says.
He says his team has looked to see if there's anything that would prevent ever more ice from sliding down into the ocean waters. "But we find no
mountains or large hills along the way that could act as a barrier to hold these glaciers back,"
of ground, airplane and satellite data. What Rignot and others found is that
Rignot says. "It's not like a building collapse that would occur over seconds; it's a collapse that's going to occur over centuries," he says.
A2 Warming Bad – Ocean Acidification
Too Late to reverse Ocean Acidification – 3 possible current scenarios for progression
of coral reefs, all result in biodiversity loss
Hoegh-Guldberg, ‘07
O. Hoegh-Guldberg, December 14th, 2007, Science, “Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change And Ocean
Acidification”,
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/318/5857/1737.full
If conditions were stabilized at the present [CO2]atm of 380 ppm, that is, Coral Reef Scenario CRS-A (Figs. 1Band 5A),
coral reefs will continue to change but will remain coral dominated and carbonate accreting
in most areas of their current distribution. Local factors—i.e., those not directly related to global climate change,
such as changes to water quality—affecting levels of sediment, nutrients, toxins, and pathogens, as well as fishing pressure, will be important
determinants of reef state and should demand priority attention in reef-management programs. However, as we move
toward higher [CO2]atm, coral-community compositions will change with some areas
becoming dominated by more thermally tolerant corals like the massive Porites (31) and others
potentially dominated by thermally sensitive but rapidly colonizing genera, such as the tabulate Acropora. Under the current rate of
increase in [CO2]atm (>1 ppm year–1), carbonate-ion concentrations will drop below 200 μmol kg–1 and
reef erosion will exceed calcification at [CO2]atm = 450 to 500 ppm, i.e., Scenario CRS-B (Figs. 1 and 5B). The
density and diversity of corals on reefs are likely to decline, leading to vastly reduced habitat
complexity and loss of biodiversity (31), including losses of coral-associated fish and invertebrates (32).
Coralline algae are a key settlement substrate for corals, but they have metabolically
expensive high-magnesium calcite skeletons that are very sensitive to pH (33). Hence, coral
recruitment may be compromised if coralline algal abundance declines. Coral loss may also
be compounded by an increase in disease incidence (34). Ultimately, the loss of corals
liberates space for the settlement of macroalgae, which in turn tends to inhibit coral
recruitment, fecundity, and growth because they compete for space and light, and also produce antifouling compounds that deter settlement by
potential competitors. Together these factors allow macroalgae to form stable communities that are relatively resistant to a return to coral domination
(Figs. 2 and 3) (22, 23, 35). As a result of weakening of coral growth and competitive ability, reefs within the CRS-B scenario will be more sensitive to the
damaging influence of other local factors, such as declining water quality and the removal of key herbivore fish species.
Increases in [CO2]atm > 500 ppm (11) will push carbonate-ion concentrations well below 200
μmol kg–1(aragonite saturation < 3.3) and sea temperatures above +2°C relative to today's values (Scenario
CRS-C, Fig. 1). These changes will reduce coral reef ecosystems to crumbling frameworks with few calcareous corals (Fig. 5C). The continuously changing
climate, which may not stabilize for hundreds of years, is also likely to impede migration and successful proliferation of alleles from tolerant populations
Under these conditions, reefs will become rapidly eroding
rubble banks such as those seen in some inshore regions of the Great Barrier Reef, where
dense populations of corals have vanished over the past 50 to 100 years. Rapid changes in sea level (+23 to
owing to continuously shifting adaptive pressure.
51 cm by 2100, scenario A2) (8), coupled with slow or nonexistent reef growth, may also lead to “drowned” reefs (36) in which corals and the reefs they
build fail to keep up with rising sea levels.
No Impact to Warming
Global Warming won’t cause extinction – empirics proven
NIPCC 11– the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, an international panel of nongovernment scientists and
scholars, March 8, 2011, “Surviving the Unprecedented Climate Change of the IPCC,” online:
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/mar/8mar2011a5.html
In a paper published in Systematics and Biodiversity, Willis et al. (2010) consider the IPCC (2007)
"predicted climatic changes for the next century" -- i.e., their contentions that "global temperatures will
increase by 2-4°C and possibly beyond, sea levels will rise (~1 m ± 0.5 m), and atmospheric CO2 will
increase by up to 1000 ppm" -- noting that it is "widely suggested that the magnitude and rate of these
changes will result in many plants and animals going extinct," citing studies that suggest that "within the
next century, over 35% of some biota will have gone extinct (Thomas et al., 2004; Solomon et al., 2007)
and there will be extensive die-back of the tropical rainforest due to climate change (e.g. Huntingford et
al., 2008)."¶ On the other hand, they indicate that some biologists and climatologists have pointed out
that "many of the predicted increases in climate have happened before, in terms of both magnitude and
rate of change (e.g. Royer, 2008; Zachos et al., 2008), and yet biotic communities have remained
remarkably resilient (Mayle and Power, 2008) and in some cases thrived (Svenning and Condit, 2008)."
But they report that those who mention these things are often "placed in the 'climate-change denier'
category," although the purpose for pointing out these facts is simply to present "a sound scientific basis
for understanding biotic responses to the magnitudes and rates of climate change predicted for the
future through using the vast data resource that we can exploit in fossil records."¶ Going on to do just
that, Willis et al. focus on "intervals in time in the fossil record when atmospheric CO2 concentrations
increased up to 1200 ppm, temperatures in mid- to high-latitudes increased by greater than 4°C within
60 years, and sea levels rose by up to 3 m higher than present," describing studies of past biotic
responses that indicate "the scale and impact of the magnitude and rate of such climate changes on
biodiversity." And what emerges from those studies, as they describe it, "is evidence for rapid
community turnover, migrations, development of novel ecosystems and thresholds from one stable
ecosystem state to another." And, most importantly in this regard, they report "there is very little
evidence for broad-scale extinctions due to a warming world." In concluding, the Norwegian, Swedish
and UK researchers say that "based on such evidence we urge some caution in assuming broad-scale
extinctions of species will occur due solely to climate changes of the magnitude and rate predicted for
the next century," reiterating that "the fossil record indicates remarkable biotic resilience to wide
amplitude fluctuations in climate."
Warming does not cause extinction – their models are flawed
Stockwell 11 – David Stockwell 11, Researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, Ph.D. in Ecosystem Dynamics from the
Australian National University, developed the Genetic Algorithm for Rule-set Production system making contributions modeling of invasive
species, epidemiology of human diseases, the discovery of new species, and effects on species of climate change, April 21, 2011, “Errors of
Global Warming Effects Modeling,” online: http://landshape.org/enm/errors-of-global-warming-effects-modeling/
Predictions of massive species extinctions due to AGW came into prominence with a January 2004 paper
in Nature called Extinction Risk from Climate Change by Chris Thomas et al.. They made the following
predictions: ¶ “we predict, on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that
15–37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be ‘committed to extinction’.¶
Subsequently, three communications appeared in Nature in July 2004. Two raised technical problems,
including one by the eminent ecologist Joan Roughgarden. Opinions raged from “Dangers of Crying Wolf
over Risk of Extinctions” concerned with damage to conservationism by alarmism, through poorly
written press releases by the scientists themselves, and Extinction risk [press] coverage is worth the
inaccuracies stating “we believe the benefits of the wide release greatly outweighed the negative effects
of errors in reporting”.¶ Among those believing gross scientific inaccuracies are not justified, and such
attitudes diminish the standing of scientists, I was invited to a meeting of a multidisciplinary group of 19
scientists, including Dan Bodkin from UC Santa Barbara, mathematician Matt Sobel, Craig Loehle and
others at the Copenhagen base of Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. This
resulted in Forecasting the Effects of Global Warming on Biodiversity published in 2007 BioScience. We
were particularly concerned by the cavalier attitude to model validations in the Thomas paper, and the
field in general: Of the modeling papers we have reviewed, only a few were validated. Commonly, these
papers simply correlate present distribution of species with climate variables, then replot the climate for
the future from a climate model and, finally, use one-to-one mapping to replot the future distribution of
the species, without any validation using independent data . Although some are clear about some of
their assumptions (mainly equilibrium assumptions), readers who are not experts in modeling can easily
misinterpret the results as valid and validated. For example, Hitz and Smith (2004) discuss many possible
effects of global warming on the basis of a review of modeling papers, and in this kind of analysis the
unvalidated assumptions of models would most likely be ignored.The paper observed that few mass
extinctions have been seen over recent rapid climate changes, suggesting something must be wrong
with the models to get such high rates of extinctions . They speculated that species may survive in
refugia, suitable habitats below the spatial scale of the models. Another example of an unvalidated
assumptions that could bias results in the direction of extinctions, was described in chapter 7 of my
book Niche Modeling.When climate change shifts a species’ niche over a landscape (dashed to solid
circle) the response of that species can be described in three ways: dispersing to the new range
(migration), local extirpation (intersection), or expansion (union). Given the probability of extinction is
correlated with range size, there will either be no change, an increase (intersection), or decrease
(union) in extinctions depending on the dispersal type. Thomas et al. failed to consider range
expansion (union), a behavior that predominates in many groups. Consequently, the methodology
was inherently biased towards extinctions. One of the many errors in this work was a failure to
evaluate the impact of such assumptions. The prevailing view now, according to Stephen Williams,
coauthor of the Thomas paper and Director for the Center for Tropical Biodiversity and Climate Change,
and author of such classics as “Climate change in Australian tropical rainforests: an impending
environmental catastrophe”, may be here.¶ Many unknowns remain in projecting extinctions, and the
values provided in Thomas et al. (2004) should not be taken as precise predictions. … Despite these
uncertainties, Thomas et al. (2004) believe that the consistent overall conclusions across analyses
establish that anthropogenic climate warming at least ranks alongside other recognized threats to global
biodiversity. ¶ So how precise are the figures? Williams suggests we should just trust the beliefs of
Thomas et al. — an approach referred to disparagingly in the forecasting literature as a judgmental
forecast rather than a scientific forecast (Green & Armstrong 2007). These simple models gloss over
numerous problems in validating extinction models, including the propensity of so-called extinct
species quite often reappear. Usually they are small, hard to find and no-one is really looking for them
Consensus of experts agree that there is no impact to warming
Hsu 10 (Jeremy HSu, Live Science Staff, July 19, pg. http://www.livescience.com/culture/can-humans-survive-extinction-doomsday100719.html)
His views deviate sharply from those of most experts, who don't view climate change as the end for
humans. Even the worst-case scenarios discussed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
don't foresee human extinction. "The scenarios that the mainstream climate community are advancing
are not end-of-humanity, catastrophic scenarios," said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate policy analyst at the
University of Colorado at Boulder. Humans have the technological tools to begin tackling climate
change, if not quite enough yet to solve the problem, Pielke said. He added that doom-mongering did
little to encourage people to take action. "My view of politics is that the long-term, high-risk scenarios
are really difficult to use to motivate short-term, incremental action," Pielke explained. "The rhetoric of
fear and alarm that some people tend toward is counterproductive." Searching for solutions One
technological solution to climate change already exists through carbon capture and storage, according
to Wallace Broecker, a geochemist and renowned climate scientist at Columbia University's LamontDoherty Earth Observatory in New York City. But Broecker remained skeptical that governments or
industry would commit the resources needed to slow the rise of carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, and
predicted that more drastic geoengineering might become necessary to stabilize the planet. "The rise in
CO2 isn't going to kill people, and it's not going to kill humanity," Broecker said. "But it's going to
change the entire wild ecology of the planet, melt a lot of ice, acidify the ocean, change the availability
of water and change crop yields, so we're essentially doing an experiment whose result remains
uncertain."
Warming does not risk species extinction
Idso 07 (Sherwood B. Idso, President of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change and Craig D. Idso, founder of the
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Separating Scientific Fact from Personal
Opinion, http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/hansen/hansencritique.php)
Hansen writes that "continued business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions threaten many ecosystems,"
contending - even more ominously - that "very little additional [climate] forcing is needed ... to cause the
extermination of a large fraction of plant and animal species." But where is the evidence for these claims?
Hansen says that "animals and plants migrate as climate changes," and so they do, both upward in
altitude and poleward in latitude; and he states that in response to global warming, "polar species can be
pushed off the planet [i.e., driven to extinction], as they have no place else to go," and that "life in alpine
regions ... is similarly in danger of being pushed off the planet." But again, where is the evidence to support
these contentions? In searching Hansen's testimony and his "accepted for publication" manuscript on
the subject, we could find no real-world support for this aspect of his climate-alarmist thesis. What we
did find was typically of the same nature as Hansen's own writings: claims, contentions and opinions,
but no hard evidence. Such is also the case with many peer-reviewed science journal articles that promote
the same philosophy, such as those of Root et al. (2003) and Parmesan and Yohe (2003). However, as we
have indicated in a major study of the topic that is archived on our website (Idso et al., 2003), even
these studies have failed to provide any hard data in support of their egregious extrapolations
Climate Change Won't End the World
Gottlieb 10 (Zachary Gottlieb, Founding Partner of The Porter Group, LLC. He is an entrepreneur, investment professional and
strategy advisor, Climate Change Wont End the World - Just Certain Real Estate Markets, http://www.wired.com/2010/09/pl_print_kahn/)
Everyone thinks that global warming will kill us all. But according to Climatopolis, a new book by UCLA
economist Matthew Kahn, climate change won’t destroy Earth—just fundamentally change it.¶ “City
growth has caused climate change,” Kahn says. “But that growth is also what’s going to get us out of it.”
That is, as the weather heats up, people will migrate and change their behavior—affecting city
landscapes, architecture, quality of life, cost of living, infrastructure, and more. Here’s how some key US cities
might look in our hot, crowded, flooded future.¶ LOS ANGELES Between raging wildfires, thickening smog, and suffocating inland temps, only a
fraction of LA will remain habitable, increasing the population density along the coast. Sprawl will give way to high-rises, and the inevitable
carbon tax will decimate what’s left of the city’s car culture.¶ SAN DIEGO The Road meets The Golden Girls! Once temperatures soar, potable
water becomes scarce, and 24/7 air-conditioning ratchets up demand for electricity, the able-bodied will migrate away, leaving the elderly and
infirm to duke it out for whatever limited resources remain.¶ PHOENIX Like the rest of the Sunbelt, Phoenix has seen its population skyrocket
because sunbirds have been drawn in by its toasty winters. But as the climate warms and residents flee ever roastier summers, this bird will
descend back into the ashes. Hey, at least it’s a dry heat.¶ DETROIT Here’s a sign of the apocalypse: By the year 2100, Detroit will be one of the
country’s most desirable cities, along with Salt Lake City, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. Inland and elevated, they are unlikely to suffer natural
fires and will actually benefit from warmer winters.¶ NEW YORK Once Wall Street traders figure out that their workplace is only a few feet
above sea level and increasingly threatened by hurricanes, they’ll relocate to suburban New Jersey or Westchester County. Sure, they might
wreck the local economy, but they’ve done that before.
Warming won’t lead to extinction
Botkin 07 (DANIEL B. Botkin, a scientist who studies life from a planetary perspective, a biologist who has helped solve major
environmental issues, and a writer about nature, Page A19 the wall street journal GlobalWarming Delusions
http://junksciencearchive.com/oct07/Global_Warming_Delusions-WSJ.com.pdf)
Global warming doesn't matter except to the extent that it will affect life -- ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest
news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the
contrary. Case in point: This year's United Nations report on climate change and other documents say that 20%-30% of plant and animal
species will be threatened with extinction in this century due to global warming -- a truly terrifying thought. Yet,
during the past 2.5 million years, a period that scientists now know experienced climatic changes as
rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us, almost none of the
millions of species on Earth went extinct. The exceptions were about 20 species of large mammals(the famous mega fauna of the last ice age
--saber-tooth tigers, hairy mammoths and the like), which went extinct about 10,000 to 5,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and many dominant trees and
shrubs of northwestern Europe. But elsewhere, including North America, few plant species went extinct, and few mammals.
We're also warned that
tropical diseases are going to spread, and that we can expect malaria and encephalitis epidemics. But
scientific papers by Prof. Sarah Randolph of Oxford University show that temperature changes do not
correlate well with changes in the distribution or frequency of these diseases; warming has not
broadened their distribution and is highly unlikely to do so in the future, global warming or not. The key
point here is that living things respond to many factors in addition to temperature and rainfall. In most cases, however, climate-modeling-based forecasts look
primarily at temperature alone, or temperature and precipitation only. You might ask, "Isn't this enough to forecast changes in the distribution of species?" Ask a
mockingbird. The New York Times recently published an answer to a query about why mockingbirds were becoming common in Manhattan. The expert answer was:
food -- an exotic plant species that mockingbirds like to eat had spread to New York City. It was this, not temperature or rainfall, the expert said, that caused the
change in mockingbird geography. You might think I must be one of those know-nothing naysayers who believes global warming is a liberal plot. On
the contrary, I am a biologist and ecologist who has worked on global warming, and been concerned about its effects, since 1968. I've
developed the computer model of forest growth that has been used widely to forecast possible effects of global warming on life -- I've used the
model for that purpose myself, and to forecast likely effects on specific endangered species. I'm
not a naysayer. I'm a scientist
who believes in the scientific method and in what facts tell us. I have worked for 40 years to try to
improve our environment and improve human life as well. I believe we can do this only from a basis in
reality, and that is not what I see happening now. Instead, like fashions that took hold in the past and are eloquently analyzed in the
classic 19th century book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," the popular imagination today appears to have been captured by beliefs
that have little scientific basis. Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the
possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate. They tell me that my belief in open and honest
assessment is naïve. "Wolves deceive their prey, don't they?" one said to me recently. Therefore, biologically, he said, we are justified in exaggerating to get society
to change. The
climate modelers who developed the computer programs that are being used to forecast
climate change used to readily admit that the models were crude and not very realistic, but were the
best that could be done with available computers and programming methods. They said our options
were to either believe those crude models or believe the opinions of experienced, data-focused
scientists. Having done a great deal of computer modeling myself, I appreciated their acknowledgment of the limits of their methods. But I
hear no such statements today. Oddly, the forecasts of computer models have become our new reality, while facts such as the few extinctions
of the past 2.5 million years are pushed aside, as if they were not our reality
No impact to warming
Lomborg 8 (Björn Lomborg, Director - Copenhagen Consensus Center Adjunct prof, Copenhagen Business School. , Warming warnings
get overheated, 15 August 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/15/carbonemissions.climatechange)
Much of the global warming debate is perhaps best described as a constant outbidding by frantic campaigners, producing a barrage of ever-more scary scenarios in
an attempt to get the public to accept their civilisation-changing proposals. Unfortunately, the general public – while concerned about the environment – is
distinctly unwilling to support questionable solutions with costs running into tens of trillions of pounds. Predictably, this makes the campaigners reach for even
more outlandish scares. These alarmist predictions are becoming quite bizarre, and could be dismissed as sociological oddities, if it weren't for the fact that they get
such big play in the media. Oliver Tickell, for instance, writes that a global warming causing a 4C temperature increase by the end of the century would be a
"catastrophe" and the beginning of the "extinction" of the human race. This is simply silly. His evidence? That 4C would mean that all the ice on the planet would
melt, bringing the long-term sea level rise to 70-80m, flooding everything we hold dear, seeing billions of people die. Clearly, Tickell has maxed out the campaigners'
scare potential (because there is no more ice to melt, this is the scariest he could ever conjure). But he is wrong. Let us just remember that the UN climate panel,
the IPCC, expects a temperature rise by the end of the century between 1.8 and 6.0C. Within this range, the IPCC predicts that, by the end of the century, sea levels
will rise 18-59 centimetres – Tickell is simply exaggerating by a factor of up to 400. Tickell will undoubtedly claim that he was talking about what could happen
many, many millennia from now. But this is disingenuous. First, the 4C temperature rise is predicted on a century scale – this is what we talk about and can plan for.
Second, although sea-level rise will continue for many centuries to come, the models unanimously show that Greenland's ice shelf will be reduced, but Antarctic ice
will increase even more (because of increased precipitation in Antarctica) for the next three centuries. What will happen beyond that clearly depends much more on
emissions in future centuries. Given that CO2 stays in the atmosphere about a century, what happens with the temperature, say, six centuries from now mainly
depends on emissions five centuries from now (where it seems unlikely non-carbon emitting technology such as solar panels will not have become economically
competitive). Third, Tickell tells us how the 80m sea-level rise would wipe out all the world's coastal infrastructure and much of the world's farmland –
"undoubtedly" causing billions to die. But to cause billions to die, it would require the surge to occur within a single human lifespan. This sort of scare tactic is
insidiously wrong and misleading, mimicking a firebrand preacher who claims the earth is coming to an end and we need to repent. While it is probably true that the
sun will burn up the earth in 4-5bn years' time, it does give a slightly different perspective on the need for immediate repenting. Tickell's claim that 4C will be the
beginning of our extinction is again many times beyond wrong and misleading, and, of course, made with no data to back it up. Let us just take a look at the realistic
impact of such a 4C temperature rise. For the Copenhagen Consensus, one of the lead economists of the IPCC, Professor Gary Yohe, did a survey of all the problems
and all the benefits accruing from a temperature rise over this century of about approximately 4C. And yes, there will, of course, also be benefits: as temperatures
rise, more people will die from heat, but fewer from cold; agricultural yields will decline in the tropics, but increase in the temperate zones, etc. The model
evaluates the impacts on agriculture, forestry, energy, water, unmanaged ecosystems, coastal zones, heat and cold deaths and disease. The bottom line is that
benefits from global warming right now outweigh the costs (the benefit is about 0.25% of global GDP). Global warming will continue to be a net benefit until about
2070, when the damages will begin to outweigh the benefits, reaching a total damage cost equivalent to about 3.5% of GDP by 2300. This is simply not the end of
humanity. If anything, global warming is a net benefit now; and even in three centuries, it will not be a challenge to our civilisation. Further, the IPCC expects the
average person on earth to be 1,700% richer by the end of this century.
Warming won’t cause extinction
Barrett ‘7 (Scott, Barrett, professor of natural resource economics – Columbia University, Why Cooperate? The Incentive to Supply
Global Public Goods, introduction)
First, climate
change does not threaten the survival of the human species.5 If unchecked, it will cause other species to become
is being depleted now due to other reasons). It will alter critical ecosystems (though
this is also happening now, and for reasons unrelated to climate change). It will reduce land area as the seas rise, and in the
process displace human populations. “ Catastrophic” climate change is possible, but not certain. Moreover, and unlike an asteroid collision,
large changes (such as sea level rise of, say, ten meters) will likely take centuries to unfold, giving societies time
to adjust. “Abrupt” climate change is also possible, and will occur more rapidly, perhaps over a decade or two. However, abrupt climate change
(such as a weakening in the North Atlantic circulation), though potentially very serious, is unlikely to be ruinous. Human-induced climate change is an
experiment of planetary proportions, and we cannot be sur of its consequences. Even in a worst case scenario, however, global climate
change is not the equivalent of the Earth being hit by mega-asteroid. Indeed, if it were as damaging as this, and if
we were sure that it would be this harmful, then our incentive to address this threat would be overwhelming.
extinction (though biodiversity
The challenge would still be more difficult than asteroid defense, but we would have done much more about it by now
Doomsday warming predictions are false.
Aikman, 11—(Amos, Aikman, the Australian Staff Reporter, “Climate forecasts 'exaggerated': Science
journal” http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/climate-forecasts-exaggerated-sciencejournal/story-e6frg8y6-1226205464958) CJ
Dramatic forecasts of global warming resulting from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been exaggerated,
according toa peer-reviewed study by a team of international researchers. In the study, published today in the
leading journal Science, the researchers found that while rising levels of CO2 would cause climate change, the most
severe predictions - some of which were adopted by the UN's peak climate body in its seminal 2007 report - had been
significantly overstated. The authors used a novel approach based on modelling the effects of reduced CO2
levels on climate, which they compared with proxy-records of conditions during the last glaciation , to infer the effects
of doubling CO2 levels. They concluded that current worst-case
scenarios for global warming were exaggerated. "Now these
very large changes (predicted for the coming decades) can be ruled
out, and we have some room to breathe and time to
figure out solutions to the problem," the study's lead author, Andreas Schmittner, an associate professor at Oregon State
University, said. Politics muddies the debate Scientists have struggled for many years to understand how to quantify "climate sensitivity" how Earth will respond to projected increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. In 2007, the UN's peak climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, warned that a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels would warm the Earth's surface by an average of 2C to 4.5C,
although some studies have claimed the impact could be 10C or higher. Professor Schmittner said it had been very difficult to rule out these
extreme "high-sensitivity" scenarios, which were very important for understanding risks associated with climate change. The study found
high-sensitivity models led to a "runaway effect" under which the Earth would have been covered in ice during the
last glacial maximum, about 20,000 years ago, when CO2 levels were much lower. "Clearly that didn't happen, and that's why
we are pretty confident that these high climate sensitivities can be ruled out," he said. Professor Schmittner said taking his results literally, the
IPCC's average or "expected" value of a 3C average temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 ought to be regarded as
an upper limit. "Many previous climate-sensitivity studies have looked at the past only from 1850 through to today,
and not fully integrated pale climate data, especially on a global scale," he said. "If these pale climatic constraints
apply to the future, as predicted by our model, the results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought."
No impact to warming—you should assign zero risk.
Lindzen 9—(Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Resisting climate hysteria” 8-14-09 http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2009/08/14/resisting-climate-hysteria)
Climate alarmists respond that some of the hottest years on record have occurred during the past decade. Given that we are in a relatively warm period, this is not
surprising, but it says nothing about trends. Given that the
evidence (and I have noted only a few of many pieces of evidence) strongly implies that
anthropogenic warming has been greatly exaggerated, the basis for alarm due to such warming is similarly diminished. However, a really
important point is that the case for alarm would still be weak even if anthropogenic global warming were significant . Polar
bears, arctic summer sea ice, regional droughts and floods, coral bleaching, hurricanes, alpine glaciers, malaria, etc. etc. All
depend not on some global average of surface temperature anomaly, but on a huge number of regional variables including
temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and direction and magnitude of wind. The state of the ocean is also often
crucial. Our ability to forecast any of these over periods beyond a few days is minimal (a leading modeler refers to it as essentially guesswork). Yet,
each catastrophic forecast depends on each of these being in a specific range. The odds of any specific catastrophe
actually occurring are almost zero . This was equally true for earlier forecasts of famine for the 1980's, global cooling in the 1970's, Y2K and many others.
Regionally, year to year fluctuations in temperature are over four times larger than fluctuations in the global mean. Much of this variation has to be independent of
the global mean; otherwise the global mean would vary much more. This is simply to note that factors
other than global warming are more
important to any specific situation. This is not to say that disasters will not occur; they always have occurred and this will not change in
the future. Fighting global warming with symbolic gestures will certainly not change this. However, history tells us that greater
wealth and development can profoundly increase our resilience.