Multitude of Species Face Climate Threat
Over the past 540 million years, life on Earth has passed through five great mass extinctions. In each of those catastrophes, an estimated 75 percent or more of all species disappeared in a few million years or less.
For decades, scientists have warned that humans may be ushering in a sixth mass extinction, and recently a group of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, tested the hypothesis.
As they reported last month in the journal Nature, the current rate of extinctions is far above normal. If endangered species continue to disappear, we will indeed experience a sixth extinction, over just the next few centuries.
“The current rate and magnitude of climate change are faster and more severe than many species have experienced in their evolutionary history,” said Anthony Barnosky, the lead author of the Nature study.
Dr. Parmesan thinks that reducing other pressures, like overfishing, will make species more resilient to climate change. “We know that climate change wouldn’t be such a big problem if systems weren’t already stressed,” Dr. Parmesan said. “We really need to focus on reducing these other stressors.”
Dr. Pearson, on the other hand, argues for setting aside more land in parks and reserves. More space will help keep species ranges large even if those ranges shift.
“We need to give nature the opportunity to respond,” he said.
(By Carl Zimmer (The New York Times) - April 5, 2011 - Source https://www.stopglobalwarming.org/news/multitude-of-species-face-climate-threat/ - abridged)