Ecosystems strain to keep pace with rapidly changing climate
By Steve Gorman, Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:14pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Earth’s various ecosystems, with all their plants and animals, will need to shift about a quarter-mile per year on average to keep pace with global climate change, scientists said in a study released on Wednesday. How well particular species can survive rising worldwide temperatures attributed to excess levels of heat-trapping “greenhouse” gases emitted by human activity hinges on those species’ ability to migrate or adapt in place. The farther individual species — from shrubs and trees to insects, birds and mammals — need to move to stay within their preferred climate, the greater their chance of extinction. The study suggests that scientists and governments should update habitat conservation strategies that have long emphasized drawing boundaries around environmentally sensitive areas and restricting development within those borders. A more “dynamic” focus should be placed on establishing wildlife corridors and pathways linking fragmented habitats, said research co-author Healy Hamilton of the California Academy of Sciences. “Things are on the move, faster than we anticipated,” she told Reuters. “This rate of projected climate change is just about the same as a slow-motion meteorite in terms of the speed at which it’s asking a species to respond.” …
CommonDreams posted a link to this story and this was my comment there:
The suggestion that plants and animals will succesfully migrate and that humans can help them seems like a grotesque misunderstanding of the evolutionary process. Species are adapted to live in their own particular niche, in a balance that developed over eons, with their predators, their source of food and nourishment, the soil, their shelter. You'd have to move all that along with them. The whole notion smacks of desperation.
It also completely ignores the effects of the "other' greenhouse gases from fossil and biofuel emissions, the sulfites and nitrates and volatile organic compounds that form ozone and other toxins including acid rain. These are causing the epidemics of asthma, emphysema and cancer and they are also killing vegetation at a breathtaking pace. Where I live, on the East Coast of the US, trees are uniformly in irreversible decline and this past summer saw damage on annual foliage leading to crop failure.
It would be nice if we could stop burning fuels before there aren't even any more viable seeds left.