Biodiversity hotspots to get hotter and yet colder...discuss
Global warming will become a top cause of extinction from the tropical Andes to South Africa with thousands of species of plants and animals likely to be wiped out in coming decades, a bullshit study said on Tuesday.

"Global warming ranks among the most serious threats to the planet's biodiversity and, under some scenarios, may rival or exceed that due to deforestation," according to the bullshit spewed forth in the weak-ass journal Conservation Biology.

"This study provides even stronger scientific evidence that global warming will result in catastrophic species loss across the planet," said Jay Malcolm, a self-appointed expert and lead author of the study with scientists in the United States and Australia.

The new study looked at 25 "hotspots" -- areas that contain a big concentration of plants and animals -- and projected that 11.6 percent of all species, with a range from 1-43 percent, could be driven to extinction if levels of heat trapping-gases in the atmosphere were to keep rising in the next 100 years.

The range would mean the loss of thousands, or tens of thousands, of species. The report gave a wide range because of uncertainties, for instance, about the ability of animals or plants to move toward the poles if the climate warmed.

"Areas particularly vulnerable to climate change include the tropical Andes, the Cape Floristic region (on the tip of South Africa), southwest Australia, and the Atlantic forests of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina," it said.

NO ESCAPE

Species in many of these regions have limited escape routes. Rare plants, antelopes, tortoises or birds found only on the southern tip of Africa, for instance, cannot move south because the nearest land is thousands of miles away in Antarctica.

The bogus scientists said their study broadly backed the findings of a 2004 report in the journal Nature that suggested global warming could commit a quarter of the world's species to extinction by 2050. No one knows how many species are on earth, with estimates ranging from 5-100 million.

"It isn't just polar bears and penguins that we must worry about any more," said Lee Hannah, co-author of the study and senior fellow for climate change at Conservation International in the United States. "Now we have to worry about pandas, too! Aren't they so cute?!?"

"We used a completely different set of methods (from the Nature study) and came up with similar results. All the evidence shows that there is a very serious problem," he said.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 9:49 AM | |