Comprehensive Study Bolsters Link Between Warming and Changes in Nature. By Emma Marris, Nature News, May 15, 2008. "A comprehensive analysis of trends in tens of thousands of biological and physical systems has provided more evidence to bolster the near-universal view that man-made climate change is altering the behaviour of plants, animals, rivers and more. The study by an international research team featuring many members of the IPCC, is a statistical analysis of observations of natural systems over time. The data, which stretch back to 1970, capture the behaviour of 829 physical phenomena, such as the timing of river runoff, and around 28,800 biological species... In around 90% of cases where an overall trend was observed, it was consistent with the predicted effects of climate warming, the researchers report in this week's Nature... [Cagan] Sekercioglu [of Stanford University who studies bird ranges] is impressed by the scope of the study, but says that there was already a wealth of evidence... 'We shouldn't even need to publish such papers at this point,' he says. 'This paper is an argument that climate change is causing the observed changes. This should be a given. Thirty years later we are still trying to convince people of this.' [Cynthia] Rosenzweig [of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the study's lead author,] sees those 30 years differently. It was about 30 years ago that... Goddard... began work on climate-change models. 'Less than 30 years after the fist model was developed, we are working on... [the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, which will expire in 2012]. I think that the global-warming issue is the [biggest] challenge facing our planet, but at the same time it is leading us to sustainability because of the rapidly growing action. It is finally shaking us up and getting us to realize what is going on with the planet.'"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment