Credit: Emrah Elmasli
Dead end
HUMANS WILL not be the only ones facing uncertain futures as changes sweep our planet: Earth's plants and animals are also in for a grim time over the next 15 years. "Basically, humanity has taken over nearly all the low-lying land that can be farmed on Earth today," says ecologist Stuart Pimm of Duke University, North Carolina. "Wild creatures have survived by holding on in highland areas, but now these are threatened; not by agriculture, but rather by climate change. And when these mountain refuges are destroyed as they warm up, there will be nowhere else for these creatures to go."
A classic example of this double whammy, land clearance and climate change, is provided by the case of the ptarmigan, a distinctive flightless bird found in Scotland. It likes cold weather and has survived nicely in the Cairngorms for aeons. But now the area is warming up and ptarmigan numbers are dwindling fast. Its chances of making it to 2020 are therefore slim – as are those of Australia's Thornton Peak nursery frog which now clings to life on a single mountain in Queensland's tropical forests. When that refuge goes, there will be no more frog.
The danger is summed up by rainforest expert Nigel Stork, of James Cook University in Queensland. "As the world warms, cloud cover will rise. It is a simple climatic fact. High rainforests such as those on Thornton Peak get their moisture directly from clouds, not rain, and so will start to dry out, with unhappy consequences."
Nor are the ptarmigan and the nursery frog alone. The prospects for many forms of wildlife now look bleak. The polar bear, the lowland gorilla and the chimpanzee, the tiger, many species of freshwater dolphin, and even the Great White Shark, now face devastating drops in numbers that could result, ultimately, in their extinction. "Take the freshwater dolphin," says David Cowdrey of the World Wide Fund for Nature's London office. "There are 15 or 16 different species and all are in peril. All the great dam projects in Asia are blocking off their habitats, while water extraction downstream is reducing rivers to mere trickles."
Then there is the case of the polar bear. As Arctic temperatures soar (climate change affects regions in high latitudes far more quickly than equatorial areas), so the impact on these animals becomes increasingly worrying. Polar bears – and particularly mothers of newly born cubs – need to find food (usually seals) quickly after they wake from hibernation. But as sea-ice melts earlier and earlier each year, the platforms from which to mount their hunting expeditions are disappearing. The result is starvation.
But it is hard to calculate how many species will be lost by 2020, for the simple reason that we still do not know how many exist now. Lord Robert May, the Australian population expert and former head of the U.K.'s Royal Society, estimates there are around 7 million different species in the world, of which we have studied about 1.5 million.
"If we just consider birds and mammals, however, we have only about 14,000 different species of these and we are losing on average one species a year," says May. "That may not seem much, but it is about a thousand times the natural background rate and, more importantly, it is going to increase as climate change worsens.
"There will not be the wholesale, instant slaughter that some activists have predicted," he adds. "But species losses will accumulate over the century until we reach a level equal to the wave of extinctions that destroyed the dinosaurs and so many other creatures 65 million years ago. That was one of the five great extinctions that have affected life on Earth over the past few hundred million years. We are now entering the sixth."
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was originally published in Cosmos in July 2006 so may refer to future events that have (or have not) now taken place. For more info on future European Space Agency missions click here.
Robin McKie is science editor of London's The Observer, and a contributing editor of Cosmos.
Life in 2020
Scientists of this day cannot even predict the weather for next week let alone 12-13 years in the future.
sigh
I miss the days when science could view future trends with budding optimism rather than through the prism of Global Warming alarmism and other doom and gloom scenarios.
Weekly weather patterns are
Weekly weather patterns are very hard to predict. Anual averages however, are much easier to follow trends for.
We're not predicting that on 23-jun-2021 the weather in Melbourne is going to be overcast with drizzle in the afternoon. We're predicting that in 2021 the average temperatures are going to be higher than now and we're going to be experiencing different patterns of rainfall.
What you're "predicting" is
What you're "predicting" is exactly what your agenda calls for.
When global warming alarmists possess and write the computer models, you can be damn sure that what the computer spits out will match what you tell it to.
Climate versus Weather: there's a big difference
Climate is the trend overall, weather is what happens from day to day. Scientists can make climate forecasts with relative accuracy if they have a really good computer to work with, capable of parallel processing, very high speed, etc.
predictions
Do these guys all have a magic 8-ball? Most of it sounds like the flying car predictions from the 60's. The rest seems to be more of the same gorewinian life ending destruction scenarios that are reminiscient of the people in 1930 screaming that the world is "undoubtably going to run out of oil resources before 1950". Typical scientific muckraking that serves only one purpose and that is to get more funding for further study. The pseudo-scientists have really figured out that disaster movies sell.
First stage of acceptance is denial
First stage of acceptance is denial
"Good morning"
That we where "a bit" less technologically advanced in 30's than we are now, we where, meaning we had "a bit" less pollution and global worming, so I think that founding, scientific studying should be supported...
Reason why I think it's worrying is because our climate/planet temperature is changing, and we are the reason why. Should we worrie or just "go with the flow"? - if theres less waterfalls, it means theres less trees, and oxygen that we NEED to survive comes from trees, as simple as that!!!
There is not a mention of
There is not a mention of the globally collapsing food chain in this hypothesis ?
Or the global financial / economic disaster that will occur due to the massive climatic changes.
When you factor in the above I doubt very much that 90% of the population will survive the next 10 to 20 years of cataclysmic change.
Gorebasm
You sound like Owl Gore when you predict 90% of us will be gone in 10 to 20 years. What a joke. Owl Gore is a has been political hack that failed out of divinity school. His scientific credentials are non existent. In today's liberal society, if you don't spout the Global Warming mantra, you don't get grants.
Don't buy this stuff. They tried to close the U S Patent Office over 100 years ago claiming that all the useful inventions had already been made. I guess the computer chip wasn't any more predictable than the weather next week or 20 years from now. The Earth has been going through the same cycles for millennia. Get a life or just enjoy the one you have.