CLIMATE CHANGE

May 2004
		A team of international ecologists using a computer model to predict the effects of climate change say as many as 1 million species could be on the way to extinction by the year 2050. One of the study's authors, Lee Hannah, and environmental experts Daniel Botkin and Patrick Michaels answer your questions.

Forum Introduction Will climate change act as a catalyst for new species? Is climate change the result of human activity or a natural phenomena beyond our control? Do we know anything about species extinction rates from the relatively recent "little ice age"? Can climate change be reversed, as opposed to deterred? Does the impact being made by humans in this (brief) period really explain world-wide shifts in climate? For every study that claims to observe climate change, there are others that seem to refute it. Wouldn't we all be better served by a global campaign to address air quality? What, if any, are the potential upsides of global warming?	Anthony of Brisbane, Australia, asks: Is it probable that climate change will act as a catalyst to give rise to new species, and this process is natural and necessary for survival of life? Daniel Botkin responds: In the long run a change in climate will likely lead to the evolution of new species. This process is natural. However, typically it takes a long time in relation to human lifetimes, and is therefore not much of solace for us. Lee Hannah responds: Scientists believe that on average, it takes 1 million years or more for new species to evolve. Thus the rate of new species appearance would be much too slow to balance the rate and numbers of extinctions projected. Patrick Michaels responds: Absolutely. It already does and has throughout Earth's history. Consider one of the biggest climate changes ever on Earth -- the likely asteroid impact at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, 65 million years ago. The ensuing climate changes included a sudden cooling from atmospheric dust, and the warm-blooded mammals dramatically outcompeted the cold-blooded dinosaurs. Hence, ultimately the Earth owes Homo sapiens to climate change!   Thelma Triche of Bethesda, Md., asks: To what extent has it been demonstrated that climate change is the result of human activity that could be changed, as opposed to natural phenomena over which we have little control? Lee Hannah responds: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated that there is now strong reason to believe that climate change due to human activities (primarily exhaust gases from fossil fuel combustion) is already occurring. It is believed that human activities are the major cause of climate change projected for the next century. Patrick Michaels responds: That is an excellent question and one that is avoided in discussions of climate change -- it is the real elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge. So here's the real answer: We can do very, very little about human-induced climate change. If every nation on Earth that signed the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which reduces emissions in most developed countries roughly 6 percent below 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012, the amount of "saved" warming by 2050 is a mere 0.07 degrees Celsius. Because human-induced warming is a linear (constant-rate) phenomenon, that works out to 0.14 degrees Celsius in a century. Consider that the normal year-to-year variability is about 0.15 degrees Celsius, and you must conclude that we couldn't even find the "signal" of our attempt to slow warming within the year-to-year "noise." That's because any attempt to really "do" anything substantial requires a dramatic shift away from carbon-based energy technologies, a shift that cannot be done with current technology. And solar energy and windmills, so-called "renewable" energy (there really is no such thing as "renewable" energy!) will never be major players because the sun isn't hot enough and the wind too inconstant. Besides, wind power is an esthetic nightmare. So, if something really is to be done, it has to be with a totally different, reliable, productive source of energy. I don't know what that is and neither does anyone else. It could be hydrogen fuel cells, it could be gravity ... beats me. But to get there requires INVESTMENT, which requires capital, which is why laws that take away capital in an attempt to stop warming, like the Kyoto Protocol, are terribly ill-advised. The obvious solution to warming is affluence that creates new technologies, not legally enforced energy privation. Good question!