Global warming threatens isle species

[Quetzal]

Global warming threatens isle species

Whale Skate Island in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands was a tiny dot of land in the vast Pacific, about 10 to 15 acres in size. It was covered with vegetation, nesting seabirds, Hawaiian monk seals and turtles laying eggs. It no longer exists.

"That island in the course of 20 years has completely disappeared" with rising sea levels, said Beth Flint, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist for the Pacific Remote Island Refuges. "It washed away."

And with it went habitat for the birds, seals and turtles, who had to find other islands or die, in one of the more dramatic illustrations of how global warming might be affecting Earth's species and their habitat.

Warming temperatures are melting away feeding grounds from polar bears, wiping out a small-animal population in the western United States and choking the world's coral reefs, some scientists suggest.

Millions of other species are at risk of succumbing to the elevated temperatures or being forced to search for cooler environments, they say.

"There are a lot of threats to biodiversity on a local scale, but global climate change is a very broad threat that's affecting ecosystems all around the world," said Lara Hansen, chief scientist for the climate change program at the Washington, D.C.-based World Wildlife Fund. "It's happening at rates that defy evolution and adaptation."

Hansen testified last month before the Senate Commerce Committee on the effects of climate change, and said climate change "is arguably the greatest threat to the world's biodiversity."

http://starbulletin.com/2004/05/03/news/index3.html

[Paradise]

1. Happening right before our very eyes.

"It's happening at rates that defy evolution and adaptation."

A phenomenon that snowballs (no pun intended), and increasingly, and rapidly accelerates.

Thanks for the post Quetzel.

[Moderator]

2. Quetzal

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
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Thank you.

DU Moderator

[opihimoimoi]

3. Many of the Pubs are still in denial about this concern.

Rush has denied GW for years and he has brain washed his ditto hds that GW is a lot o9f shit.

Rush is a one man wrecking crew doing America great harm.