[MCN] Republicans can no longer hide from climate change

[Lance Olsen]

US Senator Ed Markey:  "That’s why now you’re seeing Republicans feel like they can no longer simply hide on climate <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-11/republicans-who-can-t-ignore-climate-change-seek-gop-solutions?srnd=climate-changed> at the behest of their fossil fuel backers. 

"That’s what we saw on the Senate floor. When asked, each of these Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, say, 'Yes, the planet is warming, and yes, it’s human activity causing it.’ ”

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/16/18306596/green-new-deal-climate-change-ed-markey <https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/16/18306596/green-new-deal-climate-change-ed-markey>



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Excerpts from Parmesan 2006 review of 800+ reports 

Climate change is not a new topic in biology. The study of biological impacts of climate change has a rich history in the scientific literature, since long before there were political ramifications...... Observations of range shifts in parallel with climate change ... date back to the mid-1700s.”

 This review  …  deals exclusively with observed responses of wild biological species and systems ….  

… the direct impacts of anthropogenic climate change have been documented on every continent, in every ocean, and in most major taxonomic groups …. 

The issue of whether observed biological changes can be conclusively linked to anthropogenic climate change has been analyzed and discussed at length in a plethora of syntheses, including those listed above. 

Similarly, complexity surrounding methodological issues of detection (correctly detecting a real trend) and attribution (assigning causation) has been explored in depth ....

Analyses restricted to species that exhibited change documented that these changes were not random:  They were systematically and predominantly in the direction expected from regional changes in the climate.  Responding species are spread across diverse ecosystems (from temperate grasslands to marine intertidal zones and tropical cloud forests) and come from a wide variety of taxonomic and functional groups, including birds, butterfies, alpine flowers, and coral reefs.

A meta-analysis of range boundary changes in the Northern Hemisphere estimated that northern and upper elevational boundaries had moved, on average, 6.1 km per decade northward or 6.1 m per decade upward (P <0.02). Quantitative analyses of phenological responses gave estimates of advancement of 2.3 days per decade across all species and 5.1 days per decade for the subset of species showing substantive change (>1 day per decade).

“A surprising result is the high proportion of species responding to recent, relatively mild climate change (global average warming of 0.6C). The proportion of wild species impacted by climate change was estimated at 41% of all species (655 of 1598).”

Parmesan, Camille. 2006. 
"Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change.” 
Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and  Systematics.37:pp.637-69


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