No mays, coulds, or mights here in this press release headline from UEA. They say “will“. As usual, they assume nature so poorly equipped her creations that they can’t adapt. That’s some ballsy certainty.
Climate change will cause widespread global-scale loss of common plants and animals
More than half of common plants and one third of the animals could see a dramatic decline this century due to climate change – according to research from the University of East Anglia.
Research published today in the journal Nature Climate Change looked at 50,000 globally widespread and common species and found that more than one half of the plants and one third of the animals will lose more than half of their climatic range by 2080 if nothing is done to reduce the amount of global warming and slow it down.
This means that geographic ranges of common plants and animals will shrink globally and biodiversity will decline almost everywhere.
Plants, reptiles and particularly amphibians are expected to be at highest risk. Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, Amazonia and Australia would lose the most species of plants and animals. And a major loss of plant species is projected for North Africa, Central Asia and South-eastern Europe.
But acting quickly to mitigate climate change could reduce losses by 60 per cent and buy an additional 40 years for species to adapt. This is because this mitigation would slow and then stop global temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial times (1765). Without this mitigation, global temperatures could rise by 4 degrees Celsius by 2100.
The study was led by Dr Rachel Warren from theTyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at UEA. Collaborators include Dr Jeremy VanDerWal at James Cook University in Australia and Dr Jeff Price, from UEA’s school of Environmental Sciences and the Tyndall Centre. The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Dr Warren said: “While there has been much research on the effect of climate change on rare and endangered species, little has been known about how an increase in global temperature will affect more common species.
“This broader issue of potential range loss in widespread species is a serious concern as even small declines in these species can significantly disrupt ecosystems.
“Our research predicts that climate change will greatly reduce the diversity of even very common species found in most parts of the world. This loss of global-scale biodiversity would significantly impoverish the biosphere and the ecosystem services it provides.
“We looked at the effect of rising global temperatures, but other symptoms of climate change such as extreme weather events, pests, and diseases mean that our estimates are probably conservative. Animals in particular may decline more as our predictions will be compounded by a loss of food from plants.
“There will also be a knock-on effect for humans because these species are important for things like water and air purification, flood control, nutrient cycling, and eco-tourism.
“The good news is that our research provides crucial new evidence of how swift action to reduce CO2 and other greenhouse gases can prevent the biodiversity loss by reducing the amount of global warming to 2 degrees Celsius rather than 4 degrees. This would also buy time – up to four decades – for plants and animals to adapt to the remaining 2 degrees of climate change.”
The research team quantified the benefits of acting now to mitigate climate change and found that up to 60 per cent of the projected climatic range loss for biodiversity can be avoided.
Dr Warren said: “Prompt and stringent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally would reduce these biodiversity losses by 60 per cent if global emissions peak in 2016, or by 40 per cent if emissions peak in 2030, showing that early action is very beneficial. This will both reduce the amount of climate change and also slow climate change down, making it easier for species and humans to adapt.”
Information on the current distributions of the species used in this research came from the datasets shared online by hundreds of volunteers, scientists and natural history collections through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).
Co-author Dr Jeff Price, also from UEA’s school of Environmental Studies, said: “Without free and open access to massive amounts of data such as those made available online through GBIF, no individual researcher is able to contact every country, every museum, every scientist holding the data and pull it all together. So this research would not be possible without GBIF and its global community of researchers and volunteers who make their data freely available.”
‘Quantifying the benefit of early climate change mitigation in avoiding biodiversity loss’ is published by the journal Nature Climate Change on Sunday May 12, 2013.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Learn something new every day. Today I learned that plants only need 40 years to adapt to climate change. /sarc
“This broader issue of potential range loss in widespread species is a serious concern as even small declines in these species can significantly disrupt ecosystems”
I see. You’ve already counted these species and tabulated the ‘impact’, have you? That ‘suggests’ it has already happened, then…and that further ‘losses’ ‘could’ be disastrous?
This is a prime example of a “hypersentence”, which wraps up a broad, sweeping assertion in a tone of shrieking alarm…and nothing more (as if that weren’t enough). Meaningless blather breathlessly repeated by a captive reporter.
I thought God intervened 15 years ago to stop this Global Warming Mularkey……
I’d like to read it. I don’t think it would stand up to close scrutiny.
This thing is so laughable it’s not even funny. They want to pull the plug on the economy, and of course send a ton of money to Africa so that we can save the plants and give them another big whopping 40 years to adapt. 40 years for a species to adapt? Ha ha ha. It’s hilarious that these ‘progressives’ are so dead set against natural climate progress. They claim it’s conservatives who want to keep everything the same. It’s a fact: More CO2 equals happier plants. Happy plants, more Oxygen. More Oxygen, happy mammals. Win-win.
The hysteria is frightening. Seriously. If this was anywhere near an accurate claim… seriously. Think about it. They’re still talking near annihilation. Blah, blah, blah, weather isn’t climate, but if they can’t get one day’s worth of weather regularly and accurately forecast, how can they forecast something immensely more massive and complex? and do so with any degree of accuracy? I can do better and I ain’t no scientist:
“Starting today climate will begin to change, sometimes warming, sometimes cooling. These rolling changes in climate will continue well into the next century with temperature and weather changing towards the warm or towards the cool. Weather events will peak and drop, spike and trend, with periods of increased and decreased anomalies. Droughts and floods will continue to wreak havoc on coastal and inland areas, interspersed with extended periods of more seasonal and temperate events. The long term climate forecast is “more of the same” with patterns and trends coming and going, across the globe and across the ages, displaying the gamut of climatic phenomenon. Then, in 2212, the world will come to an end just as the new Mayan Calendar has prophecied; the sun will explode at the exact moment Planet X plows into our beloved planet. It will Man’s fault, of course.”
So how come these clowns aren’t in jail? Oh wait.They have the guberment behind them.Silly me.
“Animals in particular may decline more as our predictions will be compunded by a loss of food from plants’.
So they’re turning the science on its head now? More CO2 and more warmth (though no more than the typical diurnal range anywhere in the world) = less plant food? Who’d av thunk!!
This is another fictional extreme scenario. Let’s imagine the planet warms 3C to 6C, ignoring analysis and observations that indicate that the planet will warm less than 1C. Lindzen and Choi’s analysis (two separate papers) that cloud cover in the tropics increases and decreases to resist forcing changes, negative feedback, as opposed to the IPCC model assumption of amplification. No amplification, temperature rise is 1.2C. Negative feedback, temperature rise is less than 1.2C. Idso analysis – based on the analysis of the planet’s response to eight different natural step changes in forcing to determine the planet’s response to a step change in forcing – supports Lindzen and Choi’s result.
Even if the planet did warm 3C, the biosphere will expand not shrink based on the paleo record.
The warmists are trying to distract the discussion away from the fact that observations and analysis that indicates a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in less than 1C warming. An obvious observation to support the assertion that there will be less than 1Cwarming is there was been no warming for the last 16 years. The observations indicate something is fundamentally incorrect with the general circulation models that ‘project’ a warming of 3C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from 0.028% to 0.056% is absurdly high.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-global-LT-vs-UAH-and-RSS.png
The 20th century warming is not unusual. There are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleoclimatic record. The majority of the Holocene interglacial has been warmer than the current warmer period.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/noaa_gisp2_icecore_anim_hi-def3.gif
Scientific analysis does not support the IPCC general circulation models. The IPCC GCM are not correct.
The IPCC general circulation models require water vapor in the atmosphere to amplify (positive feedback) the CO2 forcing to arrive at 3C warming for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Lindzen and Choi’s analysis of top of the atmosphere radiation emissions Vs changes in the ocean surface temperatures showed that the planet resists rather than amplifies forcing changes. Based on Lindzen and Choi’s satellite analysis a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will result in less than 1C warming.
Lindzen and Choi’s analysis’ result (the earth resists forcing change, negative feedback rather than positive feedback) is supported by Idso’s analysis of 8 actual step type temperature changes that occur on the earth to determine the earth’s sensitivity to a change in forcing. The 8 independent step change analysis cases each gave a negative sensitivity for a forcing change (the earth resists the forcing change rather than amplifies the forcing change).
Using the paper’s calculated sensitivity of 0.1C/(watt/m^2) and the IPCC’s assumed forcing change for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 of 4.5 watts/m^2, the calculate warming for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is 0.45C.
http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr/10//c010p069.pdf
CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic’s view of potential climate change
Over the course of the past 2 decades, I have analyzed a number of natural phenomena that reveal how Earth’s near-surface air temperature responds to surface radiative perturbations. These studies all suggest that a 300 to 600 ppm doubling of the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration could raise the planet’s mean surface air temperature by only about 0.4°C. Even this modicum of warming may never be realized, however, for it could be negated by a number of planetary cooling forces that are intensified by warmer temperatures and by the strengthening of biological processes that are enhanced by the same rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration that drives the warming. Several of these cooling forces have individually been estimated to be of equivalent magnitude, but of opposite sign, to the typically predicted greenhouse effect of a doubling of the air’s CO2 content, which suggests to me that little net temperature change will ultimately result from the ongoing buildup of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere. Consequently, I am skeptical of the predictions of significant CO2-induced global warming that are being made by state-of-the-art climate models and believe that much more work on a wide variety of research fronts will be required to properly resolve the issue.
A final set of empirical evidence that may be brought to bear upon the issue of CO2-induced climate change pertains to the greenhouse effect of water vapor over the tropical oceans (Raval & Ramanathan 1989, Ramanathan & Collins 1991, Lubin 1994). This phenomenon has recently been quantified by Valero et al. (1997), who used airborne radiometric measurements
and sea surface temperature data to evaluate its magnitude over the equatorial Pacific. Their direct measurements reveal that a 14.0 W m–2 increase in downward-directed thermal radiation at the surface of the sea increases surface water temperatures by 1.0°C; and dividing the latter of these 2 numbers by the former yields a surface water temperature sensitivity factor of 0.071°C/(W m–2), which would imply a similar surface air temperature sensitivity factor at equilibrium. By comparison, if I equate my best estimate of the surface air temperature sensitivity factor of the world as a whole [0.100°C/(W m–2)] with the sum of the appropriately-weighted land and water surface factors [0.3 0.172°C/(W m–2) + 0.7 W, where W is the surface air temperature sensitivity factor over the open ocean], I obtain a value of 0.069°C/(W m–2) for the ocean-based component of the whole-Earth surface air temperature sensitivity factor in close agreement with the results of Valero et al.
http://www.johnstonanalytics.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/LindzenChoi2011.235213033.pdf
“On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications by Richard S. Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi
We estimate climate sensitivity from observations, using the deseasonalized fluctuations in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the concurrent fluctuations in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing radiation from the ERBE (1985-1999) and CERES (2000- 2008) satellite instruments. Distinct periods of warming and cooling in the SSTs were used to evaluate feedbacks. An earlier study (Lindzen and Choi, 2009) was subject to significant criticisms. The present paper is an expansion of the earlier paper where the various criticisms are taken into account. … … We argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics, and the tropical feedbacks can be adjusted to account for their impact on the globe as a whole. Indeed, we show that including all CERES data (not just from the tropics) leads to results similar to what are obtained for the tropics alone – though with more noise. We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. …. … CO2, a relatively minor greenhouse gas, has increased significantly since the beginning of the industrial age from about 280 ppmv to about 390 ppmv, presumably due mostly to man’s emissions. This is the focus of current concerns. However, warming from a doubling of CO2 would only be about 1C (based on simple calculations where the radiation altitude and the Planck temperature depend on wavelength in accordance with the attenuation coefficients of well mixed CO2 molecules; a doubling of any concentration in ppmv produces the same warming because of the logarithmic dependence of CO2’s absorption on the amount of CO2) (IPCC, 2007). This modest warming is much less than current climate models suggest for a doubling of CO2. Models predict warming of from 1.5C to 5C and even more for a doubling of CO2. Model predictions depend on the ‘feedback’ within models from the more important greenhouse substances, water vapor and clouds. Within all current climate models, water vapor increases with increasing temperature so as to further inhibit infrared cooling. Clouds also change so that their visible reflectivity decreases, causing increased solar absorption and warming of the earth. …”
This is a cue for George Carlin.
“Over 90% of species that have ever existed on this planet are dead….gone…we didn’t kill them all”
An article on this appeared in the local East Anglian Daily Times, quoting its figures and views verbatim, with no attempt at analysis. I emailed a response.
“The article does not make clear that its slew of figures supposedly showing alarming effects on the ecosystem are not based on any proven likeliehood, but are the more extreme results of computer based hypothetical models of a limited set of atmospheric effects. The results are worthy of discussion as a learning piece on climate effects, but to imply that they convey any authority is simply misleading. The same computer modelists were confidently telling us a decade and a half ago that the global temperature would rise, but it hasn’t, and from actual measurements it has stayed flat.
In this way, hard reality should already have cautioned against further use of the spurious output from incomplete model systems. Yet still we see the same selective interpretations, the same assumptions that no one has noticed their past damning failures, and the downright wishfulness that we should still automatically hang onto their every word. The public deserve better.”
I hope this works.
Given the desperation of the CAGW groups, it would only be proper christian charity, to throw them a lifesaver.
My (entirely non-existent) research, has shown that at an atmospheric concentration of just 700PPM,( or any other unreachable number) the plants will awaken from their suffocation induced slumber and once again roam freely across the surface of this planet.
My greenhouse experiments have proven this, honest, but the data is proprietary.
Doom from the ancient memory of man will once again arise.
This upcoming plant rampage will destroy the works of man, we are all doomed, unless we stop the deadly carbon dioxide emissions.
Sarcasm aside, there is the foundation of a fine doomsday cult here, some fine work al la L. Ron Hubbard and we could be set up for life.
So how many protesting letters will appear in the UK Daily Telegraph, Independent etc? I’ll wager none. So many anti-AGW scientists sceptics and bloggers but none of them will stand up and refute this rubbish. Why is that? Such missed opportunities,
Did anyone notice the DTel Nature Notes on the back page saying “Global temperatures are predicted to rise 39F above pre-industrial levels by 2100 if nothing is done to stem greenhouse gas emissions”?
“biodiversity will decline almost everywhere”
—
So they don’t believe species can adapt or evolve to fill the vacuum like they always have in the past? But before biodiversity can “decline”, it would have to start warming again. If they know enough to predict a specific 60/40 percent loss in biodiversity, why can’t they predict how soon the planet will start warming again? If they can’t do that, it’s all speculation.
Incredible? Fascinating? In the ancient city of Norwich, East Anglia, England, a team of researchers were paid a handsome six-figure sum to live in a locked ‘laboratory’ on the top floor of the EUA’s mysterious west citadel tower. Their task was to prove that CAGW threatens the very extinction of some ‘things’. Their laboratory was dark and circular with thick padded walls and no natural light – just in case they might see what is really happening outside. Any communication with the outside world was restricted to a telephone link directly to the BBC and The Guardian – and each researcher chose to wear their obligatory special white ‘lab’ coat with long sleeves that reach all the way round to their backs. The report would have normally taken them nine months to complete – but this was reduced to six when they discovered that their flow of concentration (and other bodily fluids) was enhanced if they chained themselves upside-down permanantly to the laboratory wall. They survived their ordeal purely on a daily diet of overly-yeasted raw bread dough and fizzy lemonade. This was a major obstacle as each disliked CO2 with a vengeance. In fact, they hated CO2 so much that they planned to rid the world of the evil gas once and for all – just as soon as they had secured victory over the renegade enemy gang of climate change contrarian truthsayers. Well if they can make it up, so can we.
“will lose more than half of their climatic range by 2080 if nothing is done to reduce the amount of global warming and slow it down.”
This after a heading about climate change – it’s still about global warming! Anthony I think we have to relentlessly hammer this factor. In the headlines you should insert in parentheses – global warming – see below. All queries concerning the horrors of climate change should specifically ask: “Is this about rising temperatures, global warming? Then why don’t you say so up front?” If they say its about weird weather or whatever else, ask if they mean “caused by global warming”.Surely it can’t be about global cooling because they are saying reducing temp by 2 degrees below the expected 4 degrees will give the plants a chance to adapt.We have to keep these guys on message – they don’t like being on message.
As Henry Galt susinctly stated:
It. Stopped. Warming.
Arrogance: Man causes global warming. Man can stop global warming
UEA Says -WILL- Well it may, It could, It might, it’s certainly a possibility, that’s a for sure!
Hold your breath – more study and money will be required to come up with concrete solutions to the non-existent distant crisis! Lol.
Some stop gap measures = Complete industrialization of the worlds economy’s, yep that will do it nicely!
Now what I understand is that during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum which lasted about 20,000 years “Global temperatures rose at least 5°C”.
[my bolding]
“But acting quickly to mitigate climate change could reduce losses by 60 per cent and buy an additional 40 years for species to adapt.”
And if we “act quickly”, there will be extinctions of whooping cranes (see earlier thread), raptors and bats.
Funny that we don’t hear much about that. Actually, it’s not funny, its sickening.
Even if the most outlandish claims were true, they are ignoring that fact that even as ranges shrink because the southern extent is moving northward, they are also exanping as the north extent also moves northward. (Apologies for the northern hemisphere bias in the comment.)
Regardless, more CO2 in the atmoshpere enables plants to handle more extremes in the environment. And if their food survives, so will the fauna.
Is it because the Sahara is projected to get wetter and greener? The damaging effects are already here! Oh noes head for them there hills!
I often read about how birds and animal ranges are moving north due to the heat. Now get ready to have a laugh. Earlier this year the weather, not the climate, kicked in with signs of early spring.
First they tell us that plants and animals are moving range due to global warming now they tell us that they can’t. Are plants moving uphill or not? Sheesh.
This explains it all. It’s based on a model. Nuff said.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22500673