The Planet InPeril

Wanted, more fans: Global warming threatens to inundate coastal lands and drive species to extinction unless governments and citizens take concerted action NEW YORK: In Sweden and Norway, the treeline is marching northward and uphill as the snowline recedes. In the Arctic, the polar bear finds its habitat shrinking. Elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, animals are slowly moving north to escape rising temperatures. Behind the silent movement hides a disturbing story that we had better take note of before it is too late. If the present warming trend continues, rising seawater will claim coastal cities all over the world. Animals have no choice but to move, since their survival is at stake. Recently after appearing on television to discuss climate change, I received an e-mail from a man in northeast Arkansas about his observations of the armadillo: “I had not seen one of these animals my entire life, until the last ten years. I drive the same 40-mile trip on the same road every day and have slowly watched these critters advance further north every year and they are not stopping. Every year they move several miles." The mobility of armadillos suggests that they have a good chance to keep up with the movement of their climate zone, to be one of the surviving species. Inevitable change? Predicted ice extent in the Arctic by 2030, based on information from NewScientist.com. Enlarged image Other species have greater problems. Of course, climate fluctuated in the past, yet species adapted and flourished. But now the rate of climate change driven by human activity is reaching a level that dwarfs natural rates of change. If climate change is too great, natural barriers, such as coastlines, spell doom for some species. Studies of more than 1,000 species of plants, animals, and insects, found an average migration rate toward the North and South Poles of about four miles per decade in the second half of the 20th century. That is not fast enough. During the past 30 years the lines marking the regions in which a given average temperature prevails, or isotherms, have moved poleward at a rate of about 35 miles per decade. The Planet in Peril - Part I By Jim Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and adjunct professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University's Earth Institute. Global warming, arctic ice melt and rising oceans will shrink nations and change world maps. http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=8305 The Planet in Peril - Part II It's not too late - but the world has at most 10 years to alter the dangerous trends of global warming http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=8319

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