[MCN] Confirmed again: Climate change --> forest change

[Lance Olsen]

Excerpts from plain-language release: "In a study 
published today in Nature Climate Change, 
scientists use fossilized pollen to examine the 
future of biodiversity on Earth under climate 
change. The scientists predict profound changes 
in the distribution of plants globally.

"It means  ...   new species in forests, on 
prairies and scrublands, while other species, 
that are common in those areas today, will be 
gone."

Full plain-language release here:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-10/fos--fra103116.php

Nature Climate Change (2016) doi:10.1038/nclimate3146
Published online 31 October 2016

Amplified plant turnover in response to climate 
change forecast by Late Quaternary records
D. Nogués-Bravo, S. Veloz, B. G. Holt, J. 
Singarayer, P. Valdes, B. Davis, S. C. Brewer, 
J. W. Williams & C. Rahbek

Abstract
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3146.html

Conservation decisions are informed by 
twenty-first-century climate impact projections 
that typically predict high extinction risk (1, 
2). Conversely, the palaeorecord shows strong 
sensitivity of species abundances and 
distributions to past climate changes (3), but 
few clear instances of extinctions attributable 
to rising temperatures. However, few studies have 
incorporated palaeoecological data into 
projections of future distributions. Here we 
project changes in abundance and conservation 
status under a climate warming scenario for 187 
European and North American plant taxa using 
niche-based models calibrated against 
taxa-climate relationships for the past 21,000 
years. We find that incorporating long-term data 
into niche-based models increases the magnitude 
of projected future changes for plant abundances 
and community turnover. The larger projected 
changes in abundances and community turnover 
translate into different, and often more 
threatened, projected IUCN conservation status 
for declining tree taxa, compared with 
traditional approaches. An average of 18.4% 
(North America) and 15.5% (Europe) of taxa switch 
IUCN categories when compared with single-time 
model results. When taxa categorized as 'Least 
Concern' are excluded, the palaeo-ca
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"The first commandment of economics is: Grow. 
Grow forever. Companies get bigger. National 
economies need to swell by a certain percent each 
year. People should want more, make more, earn 
more, spend more -- ever more."

Donella Meadows. Just So Much And No More. Yes magazine June 30, 2001
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/reclaiming-the-commons/437

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"If enterprises are to grow, they must increase 
the scale of their production.  Since production 
is useless without a market, the market must grow 
if production expands. There are many ways one 
can expand markets: the most efficient is to 
increase the buying power of the mass of the 
population."

Mead, Walter Russell.  Mortal Splendor: The 
American Empire in Transition. 381 pages. 
Houghton Mifflin. 1987.


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