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The Threats of Climate Change and Global Warming
Scientific experts agree that the Earth’s climate is changing. Climate change, more commonly known as global warming, is caused by the emission of heat trapping gases produced by vehicles, power plants, industrial processes and deforestation. As these gases build up, they act like a big blanket, over-heating the planet and threatening our health, our economy and our environment.
Research shows that the world has now become hotter than at any time during the past 1000 years. Climate models that project future conditions show that global warming will continue if emissions of heat-trapping gases continue to increase.
Earth's Ecosystems at Risk
Global warming is changing distributions of plants and animals, population sizes, growth rates, timing of plant flowering, and timing of animal migration. Climate change is changing the intensity and frequency of storms, droughts and fire, raising the level of the oceans, and melting glaciers.
While land is fixed in space, the climate is not. Many of the places we protect are selected because they provide the proper habitat and climate for unique and important plants or animals. Unfortunately, given global warming, these places may no longer have the right climate for the species or communities that were the reason underlying their selection.
For example, as the planet warms, Peter’s Mountain mallow in Virginia, or the California gnatcatcher in San Diego County, or wet prairies in Oregon may no longer be able to survive on the same lands where they once flourished.
Scientific research shows that heat-trapping emissions from human activities have caused most of the global warming observed over the past 50 years. In addition to those emissions, the intermingling of highways, human developments, plantations, and farms with nature has enormously circumscribed the options for nature’s response to the current warming.
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Episode title: Moving the Village (MP3, audio download)
Description: Chronic erosion and flooding driven by climate change is making the remote Alaskan village of Shishmaref uninhabitable, so much so that the thousand-year-old Inupiaq Eskimo community wants to move their entire village.
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Human Communities at Risk
Evidence is mounting almost daily of the dangers posed by global warming. Villages along Alaskan coastlines are literally crumbling into the sea as ice and permafrost melts away. Record-high seawater temperatures in 1998 may have killed as much as 10 percent of the world’s corals, jeopardizing the survival of reef fish on which millions of coastal residents depend.
In New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, maple syrup producers say they are tapping their trees one month earlier than in years past, and as temperatures continue to rise, sap production will decline and leave trees vulnerable to disease and insects. In southern New England, lobster catches have plummeted because of parasites and heat stresses.
By working now to curb heat-trapping emissions we can reduce both the pace and magnitude of global warming and cliamte change, and be more successful in adjusting our conservation approaches to cope with the changing climate. Even incremental decreases in the emissions of CO2 will bring benefits to biodiversity.
Climate change picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Data © IPCC and Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (chart); Photo © Bill Kamin (melting icebergs, Alaska).
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