Modern Global Warming More Damaging Than In The Past

[Township75]

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Global warming isn't what it used to be.

"Some people will tell you that the planet has warmed in the past and that species always managed to adapt, so there's no cause for alarm. Unfortunately that's not the case," said Johannes Foufopoulos, assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment. Foufopoulos says new research illustrates major differences between global warming today and past natural climate fluctuations as they relate to species extinctions.

Generally, each species requires specific habitat and climate conditions to survive. In the past when climate changed, populations of a species would die out on one edge of their habitat range and expand into newly available habitat at the other edge. This colonization process was crucial for the survival of species during the unstable climate of the last ice ages.

However this broad movement of species, which has prevented large-scale extinctions in the past, is not likely to operate effectively in the modern world, he said.


Enjoy!
http://www.umich.edu/news/index.html?Releases/2003/Aug03/r082703

[DarkPhenyx]

1. Wow...

...a part of the equation I hadn't thought of.

Anotehr thing to consider is growing season and crops. If it gets too hot in the South the growing seasons are going to begin to be pushed further North. Further North you simply don't have as good an agricultural area. The soil isn't as rich or productive. There are also a lot more roocks, big ones, at the surface level. Imagine the impact on "food wars" when relatively suddenly the major growing regionms of the world simply quit producing as abumdently as we have become accustomed.

[Kolesar]

2. So Grizzly Bears will be just pinched out of existence

They exist in small mountain pockets in the lower 48 states and those habitats will change and they will die out. This thesis had occurred to me before.

[Boreas]

3. Alaska is melting

Glaciers are receding. Permafrost is thawing. Roads are collapsing. Trees are dying. Villages are being forced to move, and animals are being forced to seek new habitats.

In Alaska, year-round average temperatures have risen by 5 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1960s, and average winter temperatures soared 8 degrees in that period, according to the federal government.

"Alaska is the melting tip of the iceberg, the panting canary,"

Alaska glaciers add 13.2 trillion gallons of melted water to the seas each year -- the equivalent of more than 13 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, University of Alaska in Fairbanks scientists concluded after a decade of studying glaciers with airborne lasers. The rate of glacier run-off has doubled over just a few decades, they found. Alaska's melting glaciers are the No. 1 reason the oceans are rising


http://adn.com/alaska/story/3799715p-3825423c.html