{"id":457,"date":"2007-09-17T13:14:32","date_gmt":"2007-09-17T19:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mjhinton.com\/wild\/?p=457"},"modified":"2007-09-17T13:14:32","modified_gmt":"2007-09-17T19:14:32","slug":"climate-change-brings-risk-of-more-extinctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/?p=457","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change Brings Risk of More Extinctions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Climate Change Brings Risk of More Extinctions – washingtonpost.com<\/a> <\/p>\n

Around the world, scientists have found that climate change is
\naltering natural ecosystems, making profound changes in the ways that
\nanimals live, migrate, eat and grow. Some species have benefited from
\nthe shift. Others have been left disastrously out of sync with their
\nfood supply. Two are known to have simply disappeared.<\/p>\n

\nIf warming continues as predicted, scientists say, 20 percent or more
\nof the planet’s plant and animal species could be at increased risk of
\nextinction. But, as the shrinking habitat at Blackwater shows, the bad
\nnews isn’t all in the out years: Some changes have already begun. “This
\nis actually something we see from pole to pole, and from sea level to
\nthe highest mountains in the world,” said Lara Hansen, chief climate
\nchange scientist at the World Wildlife Fund<\/a>,
\na private research and advocacy group. “It is not something we’re going
\nto see in the future. It’s something we see right now.”<\/p>\n

\nThe temperature increase behind these changes sounds slight. The world
\nhas been getting warmer by 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit every decade, a U.N.<\/a> panel found this year, in part because of carbon dioxide and other human-generated gases that trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\nBy nature’s clock, the warming has come in an instant. The mechanisms
\nthat helped animals adapt during previous warming spells — evolution
\nor long-range migration — often aren’t able to keep up. Scientists say
\nthat effects are beginning to show from the Arctic to the Appalachian Mountains<\/a>. One study, which examined 1,598 plant and animal species, found that nearly 60 percent appeared to have changed in some way.<\/p>\n

\n“Even when animals don’t go extinct, we’re affecting them. They’re
\ngoing to be different than they were before,” said David Skelly, a Yale University<\/a>
\nprofessor who has tracked frogs’ ability to react to increasing warmth.
\n“The fact that we’re doing a giant evolutionary experiment should not
\nbe comforting,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climate Change Brings Risk of More Extinctions – washingtonpost.com Around the world, scientists have found that climate change is altering natural ecosystems, making profound changes in the ways that animals live, migrate, eat and grow. Some species have benefited from the shift. Others have been left disastrously out of sync with their food supply. Two … Continue reading Climate Change Brings Risk of More Extinctions<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ahwilderness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}