'Major transformation' ahead for Earth's ecosystems: study

[Judi Lynn]

30 AUG 2018

The Earth's forests, deserts, landscapes and vital ecosystems risk a "major transformation" in the next century due to climate change, international scientists warned on Thursday.

Some of these changes are already under way in the southwestern United States, where massive wildfires are destroying pine forests and transforming swaths of territory into shrubland.

In the next 100-150 years, these changes will likely extend to savannas, deserts, and woodlands, upsetting ecosystems and imperiling plant and animal life, particularly in areas like Europe and the United States, researchers warned in the journal Science.

"If we allow climate change to go unchecked, the vegetation of this planet is going to look completely different than it does today, and that means a huge risk to the diversity of the planet," said co-author Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan.

More:
https://www.afp.com/en/news/205/major-transformation-ahead-earths-ecosystems-study-doc-18q2be1

[calimary]

1. Yikes...

[lapfog_1]

2. they keep saying "in the next 100 years or so"

and almost no one alive today reading this will be alive in 100 years... which leads to this sort of "let someone else deal with this" attitude.

Thing is... it might not be 100 years or so... it might be 20 years. Or 10.

we really don't know how fast the climate can change... and I suspect it behaves like a chaotic system that achieves a sort of stability that is self-reinforcing... but when perturbed hard enough for long enough, changes to a new "stable" very quickly, not over 100 years, but maybe only 20 years... and we might be at the beginning of that 20 year period right now.

Or maybe it's 40 years... idk... but it might affect anyone under the age of 50 or 60. Will we be able to feed 8 billion people in 20 years with a vastly different climate? or even moderately different climate?

[NickB79]

3. It's gonna come down like a Jenga tower

At first you can remove blocks and stack them higher with no obvious consequences. Then it starts to wobble a little bit, but still gives no signs of imminent failure.

Then you move one last block, and a tower you spent 15 minutes working on comes down in a second.

There is no "transition period" when things collapse.

[lapfog_1]

4. think titration point

adding base or acid of a known concentration to liquid of unknown acid or base concentration... and the indicator flips from red to blue with the addition of one more drop.

That tipping point... where the earth starts releases more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere than what we contribute... and without a geo-engineered solution, the concentration of green house gases and the earth's temperature continue to increase if if we completely stopped using all fossil fuels.

Permafrost is melting in the arctic... Siberia has these mysterious craters that are likely violent outgassing of methane.... and don't even mention the methane clathrates at the bottom of the ocean. Fortunately those deposits are likely a lot smaller than first thought, but there is still a lot of methane trapped in the oceans and under the land.