[MCN] Climate crisis impact on life on Earth, and the question of personal responsibility

[Lance Olsen]

2006

“Climate change is not a new topic in biology. ..... 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 …."

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

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


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2006

"Conservationists must therefore assess both current and future distributions of species.”

Araújo and Rahbek. How does climate change affect biodiversity? Science 2006


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2007


Climate has long been identified as a primary control on the geographic distribution of plants.(Forman 1964, Box 1981). Therefore, plant species may be expected to exhibit marked redistributions in response to climate change." 


"…. In addition, species are expected to be redistributed independently, forming new forest types with unique species combinations (Webb 1992, Williams et al. 2004).”

McKenney et al. Potential Impacts of Climate Change on the Distribution of North American Trees. 
Bioscience  2007


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2011 

“Using a meta-analysis, we estimated that the distributions of species have recently shifted to higher elevations at a median rate of 11.0 meters per decade, and to higher latitudes at a median rate of 16.9 kilometers per decade. These rates are approximately two and three times faster than previously reported”

Chen et al. Rapid Range Shifts of Species Associated with High Levels of Climate Warming. Science 2011
 
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2012

“By the end of the 21st century, forest ecosystems in the United States will differ from those of today as a result of changing climate.”

“Climate change will alter ecosystem services, perceptions of value, and decisions regarding land uses.”

Effects of climatic variability and change on forest ecosystems: 
a comprehensive science synthesis for the U.S. General Technical 
Report PNW-GTR-870. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 
Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 265 p. 
Vose, James M.; Peterson, David L.; Patel-Weynand, Toral. 2012. 

http://treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/42610


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2013 

“The rate of warming implies …  range shifts of up to several kilometers per year, raising the prospect of daunting challenges for ecosystems …”

Diffenbaugh and Field. Changes in Ecologically Critical Terrestrial Climate Conditions. Science. 2013

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2015: 
"If you are an organization that has focused on conserving particular species in a particular place, as many of today's conservation organizations are, then something has to give—either you need to change your business model or revisit your conservation priorities. And neither is going to be easy for some of these groups," said Paul Armsworth, lead author and associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Full release:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150302105334.htm

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2015


Here we use climate projections under alternative mitigation scenarios to show how changes in environmental variables that limit plant growth could impact ecosystems and people 

Mora C, Caldwell IR, Caldwell JM, Fisher MR, Genco BM, Running SW (2015) Suitable Days for Plant Growth Disappear under Projected Climate Change: Potential Human and Biotic Vulnerability. PLoS Biol 13(6): e1002167. 

doi:10.1371/journal. pbio.1002167 


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2016

“Climate change impacts have now been documented across every ecosystem on Earth, despite an average warming of only ~1°C so far."

Scheffers et al. The broad footprint of climate change from genes to biomes to people. 
Science, 11 NOVEMBER 2016

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2017 


“Human society has yet to appreciate the implications of unprecedented species redistribution for life on Earth …. Even if greenhouse gas emissions stopped today, the responses required in human systems to adapt to the most serious effects of climate-driven species redistribution would be massive.”
 
Pecl et al. 2017. Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Science. 31 March 2017

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2021

If the past tempo of evolution for upper thermal limits continues, adaptive responses in thermal limits will have limited potential to rescue the large majority of species given the unprecedented rate of contemporary climate change. 

Joanne M. Bennett  et al.  The evolution of critical thermal limits of life on Earth. Nature Communications. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21263-8.pdf 

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2021

We show that the mean temperature of the warmest quarter (3-month period) passed the thermal maximum for photosynthesis during the past decade. 

Katharyn A. Duffy et al.  How close are we to the temperature tipping point of the terrestrial biosphere? Science Advances 13 January 2021 

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/7/3/eaay1052.full.pdf

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2021

Book review : Under the Sky We Make. Kimberly Nicholas, PhD

Excerpt : Individual responsibility has become something of a flashpoint in the climate discourse. 

On the one hand, oil companies love to harp on about <https://grist.org/energy/footprint-fantasy/> personal carbon footprints as a way of distracting from their much larger contributions to the climate crisis, both through the fossil fuel products they make and their longstanding, ongoing efforts to delay climate action and misinform the public. 

At the same time, prominent journalists and scientists have waved off individual climate actions as a distraction from the systemic changes that are needed to solve the crisis — changes like overhauling our electricity and transit systems through governmental investments in clean energy, better regulation, and carbon pricing. 

They’re joined by a growing chorus of climate justice advocates who rightly point out that asking poor people to make difficult dietary shifts or give up the car they need to get to work is completely unfair.

That’s not what Nicholas is doing. Her message isn’t aimed at folks struggling to make ends meet, but at people making a middle-class income or higher who live in a wealthy country like the United States, Germany, or France. Far from a distraction, Nicholas argues that the climate impact of the carbon elite is something we need to focus on — individually and systematically. She points out that globally, more than two-thirds of climate pollution can be attributed to household consumption <https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es803496a>, and that the richest 10 percent of the world population — those making more than $38,000 a year <https://wedocs.unep.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/34432/EGR20ch6.pdf?sequence=3> — is responsible for about half of those emissions. 

https://grist.org/culture/cutting-your-carbon-footprint-matters-a-lot-if-youre-rich/











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Book review : Under the Sky We Make. Kimberly Nicholas, PhD

Excerpt : Individual responsibility has become something of a flashpoint in the climate discourse. On the one hand, oil companies love to harp on about <https://grist.org/energy/footprint-fantasy/> personal carbon footprints as a way of distracting from their much larger contributions to the climate crisis, both through the fossil fuel products they make and their longstanding, ongoing efforts to delay climate action and misinform the public. At the same time, prominent journalists and scientists have waved off individual climate actions as a distraction from the systemic changes that are needed to solve the crisis — changes like overhauling our electricity and transit systems through governmental investments in clean energy, better regulation, and carbon pricing. They’re joined by a growing chorus of climate justice advocates who rightly point out that asking poor people to make difficult dietary shifts or give up the car they need to get to work is completely unfair.

That’s not what Nicholas is doing. Her message isn’t aimed at folks struggling to make ends meet, but at people making a middle-class income or higher who live in a wealthy country like the United States, Germany, or France. Far from a distraction, Nicholas argues that the climate impact of the carbon elite is something we need to focus on — individually and systematically. She points out that globally, more than two-thirds of climate pollution can be attributed to household consumption <https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/es803496a>, and that the richest 10 percent of the world population — those making more than $38,000 a year <https://wedocs.unep.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/34432/EGR20ch6.pdf?sequence=3> — is responsible for about half of those emissions. 

https://grist.org/culture/cutting-your-carbon-footprint-matters-a-lot-if-youre-rich/

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