Do We Care Enough To Save What's Left? (Global Warming)

[DaveColorado]

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/insight/04/23parmesan.html


INSIGHT
Do we care enough to save what's left?
UT biologist Camille Parmesan, an expert on climate change, sees a future with no penguins, no polar bears and one big moral question.

By Brad Buchholz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, April 22, 2006

Camille Parmesan is a conservation biologist, an expert on butterflies — and she has the gentle, unhurried disposition that comes from living in a tent for weeks at a time, studying the breeding cycles of insects and animals in their native habitats. Yet there is a hardness in her voice, a sense of urgency, whenever she talks about global warming and its effect on the planet.

"We're definitely seeing species going extinct because of climate change," says Parmesan, sitting in her second-floor biology office at the University of Texas, which overlooks the turtle ponds north of the UT Tower. "We're going to lose the penguins. We're going to lose the polar bears, no question. . . . I'm seeing high mountain butterflies literally being pushed off the mountains. This is happening. It is not theory. It is not people saying, 'Oh, we think it might happen.' It is happening, and it is incredibly depressing."

snip

We're going to lose a heck of a lot of what we know now. Humans, I honestly don't think are going to make it. But in 3, 4 million years, some cool new forms of life are going to evolve. We've had mass extinction events before — where everything changes. You go from almost all life on earth is tiny marine animals, to almost all life on earth is trees. Massive changes. But cool new life does evolve.

I'm basically a happy person. I really enjoy life. And my way of dealing with this is thinking in terms of "Three million years from now, it's all going to be OK. But 50 or 100 years? No."

[DaveColorado]

1. This is a great little article

You need to be registered to read it, but use bugmenot if you don't want to register:

http://www.bugmenot.com/

[brokensymmetry]

2. Excellent article...K&R.

Well worth the time to read it.

Polar bears and penguins gone; sacrificed to the Hummer God.

How very tragic.

[Lolivia]

3. K&R n/t