Global Warming 'Threatens Third of World Habitat'

Updated 9:49 AM ET August 30, 2000

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - A third of the world's habitat is under threat from global warming and could either disappear or change beyond recognition by the end of this century, according to a World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) report Wednesday.

In Russia, Canada and Scandinavia up to 70 percent of habitats could be lost, while in the United States much of the spruce and fir forests of New England and New York state may be wiped out if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced.

"This is not some slow, controlled change we're talking about. It's fast, it's unpredictable and it's unprecedented during human civilization," Adam Markham, a co-author of the report, told a news conference in London.

The study based its predictions on what its authors said was a "moderate" projection that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will double from pre-industrial levels during this century.

Markham, the director of the U.S.-based campaign group Clean Air -- Cool Planet, and co-author Jay Malcolm, of the University of Toronto, used climate and vegetation models to map out the potential risk to biodiversity in the future.

Markham said that as global warming accelerates, plants and animals will be forced to migrate to find new habitats. But the speed of climate change may mean many of them are not able to move and adapt fast enough.

"In some places plants would need to move 10 times faster than they did during the last ice age merely to survive," he said.

He also noted that during the last ice age, 11,000 to 13,000 years ago, humankind with its infrastructure was not there to stand in the way of species migration, a factor which could threaten adaptation even more this time around.

Among animals, the WWF report -- entitled "Global warming and terrestrial biodiversity decline" -- said some of the species most at risk were the mountain pygmy possum of Australia, the Gelada baboon of Ethiopia and the monarch butterfly which winters in Mexico.

"HORRIFYING FUTURE"

Jennifer Morgan, director of the WWF's climate change campaign, told the news conference it was time to act to stop global warming and "prevent a catastrophe that would change our world out of all recognition."

"Global warming means a horrifying future for nature," she said. "World leaders must give top priority to reducing levels of carbon pollution."

WWF campaigners said governments should seize the opportunity at November's climate summit in The Hague in the Netherlands to ensure that tough and final rules were set for the Kyoto Protocol.

The Protocol, drawn up in 1997, is designed to commit industrialized countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases to an average of 5.2 percent below the 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.

-- mr. blue sky (we.really@blew.it), August 31, 2000

Answers

I wonder how much carbon dioxide these fires pour into the atmosphere?

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), August 31, 2000.

The fires are adding a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but even worse, we now have less trees to absorb the carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. This is why global warming is going to escalate into a desperate situation before we have enough time to slow it down. We will be having more severe droughts and fires in the future as the planet gets hotter. The more trees we lose, the faster the planet will heat up, and then we'll lose even more trees. It is too late to reverse this cycle. It took about 50 years of serious air pollution to warm the planet to this stage, and we would have to totally stop polluting for at least 50 years before it will cool back to normal. We will go down in history as the dumbest, laziest, most selfish species that ever existed on this planet, and responsible for the death of millions of other life forms.

-- mr. blue sky (humans@created.hell), August 31, 2000.

All of the lumber that could have been logged though the West is now just so much ash. Burns started by nature (lightining) are very normal, and nature doesn't care what endangered species it burns.

"We will go down in history as the dumbest, laziest, most selfish species that ever existed on this planet, and responsible for the death of millions of other life forms." Now, what part did people play in the death of the dinosaurs?

-- r (r.1@juno.com), August 31, 2000.

I thought that the WWF was a collection of people with over active glands that pummeled each other in the ring with TV cameras looking on.

Based on the science in this article, I guess that I am correct.

Yes, the fire will release carbon dioxide; what does that mean? You need to take a long term view. Depends on what happens next. If the dead trees are replaced with seedlings, overtime it will remove carbon dioxide from the air. Recent studies indicate that mature forests have a respiration excess [ie, they add more carbon dioxide to the air than they remove; of course this depends on species and location]. In contrast, young, fast growing forests, have a respiration deficit [ie, they remove more carbon dioxide than they release]. This is made more complicated by looking at what burned. For example, the fire in northern Gallitan county [north of Bozeman] was mostly private ranch land and areas that had been previously clear cut. It did kill a lot of young trees that had been part of a replant project.

Some may have been in areas that could have been logged, but a lot of it had little commerical value. I have walked many of the areas in Montana that burned. Now the environmental consequence to wildlife; another story. Wildlife is moving. Some fire fighters working on the Beaver Creek fire [between 287 and 191] had to move their camp because the fire was driving these big brown hairy bears into their site. Time will tell.

The situation is too complex to be honestly discussed by a journalist in a 1500 character piece.

Best wishes,,,,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), August 31, 2000.

The fires are adding a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but even worse, we now have less trees to absorb the carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. This is why global warming is going to escalate into a desperate situation before we have enough time to slow it down. We will be having more severe droughts and fires in the future as the planet gets hotter. The more trees we lose, the faster the planet will heat up, and then we'll lose even more trees.

Trees That Love Global Warming

Trees That Love Global Warming

For four years now, scientists at Duke have inundated the forest with carbon dioxide in an effort to replace theory with hard facts about the impact of increased levels of carbon dioxide, produced primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. (Will Owens)

Aug. 16  Every day an 18-wheel tanker truck pulls up alongside a lush forest near Duke University in North Carolina. Within a short time, the trucks cargo of dreaded carbon dioxide gas begins flowing through a series of pipes and onto a forest rich with loblolly pines and small hardwood trees.

For four years now, scientists at Duke have inundated the forest with carbon dioxide, the principle greenhouse gas that is expected to wreak havoc on the planet in the decades ahead by elevating temperatures, causing sea level to rise, and severely altering vegetation around the globe.

Why, one might ask, would these good people deliberately subject the forest to such harsh treatment?

The goal of the project is to replace theory and conjecture with hard facts about the impact of increased levels of carbon dioxide, produced primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. Those facts are hard to come by, because the effect will be decades long, and its not easy to nail down evidence in such a complex arena. So the Duke researchers are addressing one fundamental question: What effect will elevated levels of carbon dioxide have on plant life?

Pines Thrive

The preliminary answer seems to be that at least some of the trees in the forests will love it, growing more rapidly, reproducing more robustly, thriving at a time when some parts of the globe will slip perilously into a rising sea.

Its really dramatic, says Shannon LaDeau, a doctoral candidate at Duke who is running part of the long-term experiment.

The pines are growing about 25 percent faster than pines just outside the experiment, and they are twice as likely to be reproductively active. They are making three times as many cones which carry and incubate their seeds, she adds.

So if the trees there are doing so well, why is the world in an uproar over global warming? Because the Duke experiment addresses only one part of a problem that is extremely complicated.

Whats good for the loblollies is devastating to other living organisms, including coral reefs. Researchers at Columbia Universitys Biosphere 2 in the Arizona desert have found that the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide that we might expect in a few decades will dissolve the reefs like an ice cube in boiling water.

So we can expect some good and some bad effects from global warming. Arid regions that lack water for agriculture may get a lot more rain, but low-lying regions will most likely slip below sea level.

And the forests, while robust in some areas, will almost surely change.

Youre certainly going to change the competitive dynamics between different species, LaDeau says.

We could have a change in forest composition, dominated by those species that can use carbon dioxide efficiently at the expense of others, adds William H. Schlesinger, professor of botany and the principal investigator on the project.

Localized Greenhouse Effect

The Duke experiment is an interesting marriage of technology and science. The carbon dioxide is pumped into a series of pipes surrounding a plot of land about 90 feet in diameter.

These are big pipes that extend above the canopy of the pine forest, LaDeau says. The level of carbon dioxide is continuously monitored. When the level drops, the system delivers more gas, and if it rises too high, it simply shuts down.

If the wind comes out of the west, it turns on the pipes on the west side, she adds, keeping the level precisely the same, even on a windy day.

Schlesinger says he wasnt surprised that the trees in the plots grew dramatically during the first year of the experiment, 1996, because trees absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis.

But the trees continued to grow about 25 percent faster than trees outside the plots over a three-year period, and that, he says, was surprising.

Basically, the trees woke up one day to 560 parts per million carbon dioxide, and that was essentially newfound wealth in terms of photosynthesis, but you cant sustain that rate in photosynthesis in greenhouse experiments without adding fertilizer, Schlesinger says.

He added that they did not add fertilizer to the soil and its still too early to tell if that growth rate will be sustained through the current year, the fourth year of the project.

One unintended result of the research was to fuel the vigorous political debate over global warming. Some scientists argue that the dire predictions will never come true, partly because forests will expand rapidly and absorb any significant increases in carbon dioxide.

Good for Some, Bad for Most

Our calculations suggest there will be some of that, but at the very most we can only get half the emissions of carbon dioxide from fuels into the forests, Schlesinger says. The other half would accumulate in the atmosphere and lead to global warming.

He also points out that loblolly pines are not typical. They are among the fastest growing trees on the planet, and as the Duke experiment reveals, they are very responsive to elevated levels of carbon dioxide. So it would be a terrible mistake, he says, to extrapolate from the Duke experiment and conclude that nature will heal this wound.

The impact of carbon dioxide on plant life is just beginning to be understood. A similar project in Tennessee has found that hardwoods also experienced a 25 percent jump in their growth rate during the first year, but that is a very young experiment and it remains to be seen whether that growth will be sustained.

Young hardwoods, mostly oak and hickory, near the base of the loblolly pines in the Duke experiment are also growing rapidly. They should take over the forest in about 50 or 60 years, Schlesinger says, smothering out the loblollies. Unless, of course, the pines win that battle by sucking up enough carbon dioxide to beat out the competition. Thats the sort of thing ecologists worry about, because it could upset the balance of nature that allows many other creatures to survive.

No matter how it pans out, Schlesinger says, the forest of the future will probably look much different than it does today.

There will be a different composition, and the diversity may be lower, he says.

But theres one thing hes pretty sure of. Some of those trees are going to grow like crazy.

-- Don't Make Assumptions (question@everything.xxx), August 31, 2000.

You should have read the original. It assumes an increase of CO2 to an 8% concentration. Since humans die at a good bit lower concentration of CO2, this scenario seems unlikely to say the least.

Besides, the gasses as global warming theory is now passe'. New theory published yesterday actually has some FACTS to back it up. Ultra fine carbon particulates, which act to reduce cloud cover, cause temp increases around cities and other areas of high pollution, due to reduced albedo of the area. Bigger city, hotter it gets. All backed up with actual satellite observations. NO FICTION INVOLVED!

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), August 31, 2000.

And, we'll just add here that if you want to reduce the amount of available carbon in the world, you should buy up all the paper, wood and so on, and bury it in the Great Dismal Swamp. Few million years, it will be coal, and everything will be right back where it started from. (he said with tongue in cheek)

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), August 31, 2000.

I see a lot of denial here. This is inconsequential actually, since there is nothing we can do, and the reality of our dilemma will become obvious soon enough. Those who are observant of the world around us and more sensitive to the signs will have more time to prepare themselves.

Congratulations to "r (r.1@juno.com)," the winner of the grand prize for dumbest response award, obviously an illiterate and uneducated person. While we usually see the most ignorant responses from Maria, you have actually outdone her this time.

-- mr. blue sky (farewell@to.mankind), September 01, 2000.

I see a lot of denial here.

Yep. We're just a bunch of stupid pollies. We can't seem to see the BIG picture - unlike you, of course.

This is inconsequential actually, since there is nothing we can do, and the reality of our dilemma will become obvious soon enough.

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE - IT CAN'T BE FIXED IN TIME! Sound familiar?

Those who are observant of the world around us and more sensitive to the signs will have more time to prepare themselves.

Yep, all you BIG BRAINS out there better make sure to get lots more rice and beans. Maybe Dennis Olson will loan you his generator.

I swear to God, some of you people need serious help. Now that one "disaster" has passed you've latched on to another.

Get a fucking life.

-- Don't Make Assumptions (question@everything.xxx), September 01, 2000.

Mr blue sky, kiss my butt. Is that smart enough for you, you moron?

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), September 01, 2000.

Mr blue sky, you just don't get it, do you. Don't you see the irony of what's going on in Montana? Because of the stupid people like you who have tried to "save the planet", we've just lost more than 6 million acres of forests, spent millions of dollars a day, and people's lives. Stupid people like you believe that we can't cut a single branch of a tree. Well, those branches have fueled these fires. Looks like the tides may have turned; legislation to thin our forest may soon be in place. Thanks for the great effort stupid people like you have put forth. Once again you have proved that we know little about our environment and what's best for it.

But yes, we're doomed because of stupid people like you.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), September 01, 2000.

Maria,

I don't think one can place complete blame for the practice of fire supression at the feet the fernfeelers.

It seems only 'doomers' are found guilty of binary thinking, eh?

-- flora (***@__._), September 01, 2000.

:) I did get a little carried away in making my point!

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), September 01, 2000.

LOL Maria! Congratulations, you have won your award back for most ignorant responses as you usually do on every post. I knew there was something strange about your first response, you must have been sick that day.

Please explain to me how all of the forests just happened to become overgrown all during the same summer. If you're trying to say that the climate has nothing to do with it, you must be out of your freeking gourd. Talk about stupid people, you are obviously the most uneducated, illiterate, dumb cunt on this entire forum.

-- (LMAO@ignoramus.maria), September 02, 2000.

I swear to God, some of you people need serious help. Now that one "disaster" has passed you've latched on to another.

Get a fucking life.

-- Don't Make Assumptions (question@everything.xxx), September 01, 2000.

Some people like to stay informed about what could potentially be problems in the long run. It's no surprise some of the same people who closely followed news about Y2k also follow the news about global warming, the ozone 'hole' and oil reserves. Diane Squire was known for her interest in renewable energy sources.

I try to stay informed about this kind of stuff myself. I don't necessarily believe most of these things are going to happen, but I do think the issues are important enough to follow on a regular basis.

It helps if there are at least a few people who are on the lookout for potential long-term problems. Many people are only concerned about the current quarter compared the one a year ago--that or payday.

-- (long@term.planning), September 02, 2000.

I swear to God, some of you people need serious help. Now that one "disaster" has passed you've latched on to another.

Get a fucking life.

-- Don't Make Assumptions (question@everything.xxx), September 01, 2000.

Some people like to stay informed about what could potentially be problems in the long run. It's no surprise some of the same people who closely followed news about Y2k also follow the news about global warming, the ozone 'hole' and oil reserves. Diane Squire was known for her interest in renewable energy sources.

I try to stay informed

YOU wouldn't know how to "stay informed" on serious matters involving Science and/or Technology.......if you begin by assuming (as the Doomzies did with Y2k) that you can collect some articles and "find the truth".

Most of you argue or "contribute" from an a priori position that is mostly ludicrous whether it be Y2k, the state of culture, the supply demand situation in Oil and now a biggie revived by academics and Beltway PARASITES for grant money, "Global Warming".

In addition, as was done in Y2k, you "assume" (wrongly) that you are "entitled" to peerage because you have a vote. BULLSHIT. If you have a Ph.D. and are recognized by peers in Science, you might have something worthwhile to say about anything but I would doubt that.

As "Don't assume" stated and Maria emphasized in her usual GENTEEL, soft spoken manner:

I swear to God, some of you people need serious help. Now that one "disaster" has passed you've latched on to another.

Get a fucking life.

-- cpr (buytexas@swbell.net), September 04, 2000.