Climate Change and Loss of Species

[wili]

I was looking for a place to put this post, but I didn't see a thread of this type and it seems like a kinda important one. Call me a misanthrope, but the even greater tragedy than the collapse of world civilization imho is the loss of creation itself--of the rich diversity of complex life that was the world we inherited and are now destroying. So it seems worthwhile to start one thread devoted to this, to me, central consequence of GW, especially as this is in the midst of being accelerated and exacerbated by Arctic feedbacks. (Neven, please merge this with the appropriate thread if there is already one and I missed it.)

The particular article that got my attention involves an effect that I would never have thought of--as air temperatures increase, some bats will find it harder to hear their own frequencies.

Climate Change May Bode Ill for Bat Populations

   

As temperatures rise, bats that make the highest frequency squeaks could be at a disadvantage, the authors report. This is because warmer air is more likely to attenuate sound, and therefore limit the range at which a hungry bat can pinpoint its next mouthful.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-change-may-bode-ill-for-bats-16860

(So maybe McPherson needs to change the name of his blog to "Nature's Bats DON'T Last"   )

Here's a good (if longish) film on the current mass extinction event to get the conversation going:

http://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/play/7350/Call-of-Life--Facing-the-Mass-Extinction

Call of Life--Facing the Mass Extinction

[Laurent]

Global reductions in seafloor biomass in response to climate change
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12480/full

[JimD]

As an addition to our never ending quest to exterminate life on the planet I offer another example of stupidity.

Let's drill for oil in the place which has the highest level of biodiversity on the planet.  That'll do it.

Opinion: Why oil drilling in Ecuador is 'ticking time bomb' for planet

Ecuador's ambitious Yasuni-ITT Initiative, launched in 2007, was hailed as a landmark plan to keep oil exploration out of the country's most pristine forest and to preserve the homes of indigenous tribes living there. But Ecuador abandoned the plan last year, and drilling could now begin any time.

In November I travelled to the Yasuni National Park in northeastern Ecuador and marveled at its beauty, diversity, and bounty. It alone sits at the intersection of the Amazon, the Andes Mountains, and the Equator. It is a biological hot spot for mammals, birds, insects, plants, and more. One hectare of the Yasuni contains not only more tree species than are native to the whole of North America, but also 100,000 insect species, the highest diversity per unit area in the world for any plant or animal group, according to one estimate. The United Nations declared the Yasuni a World Biosphere Reserve in 1989...

...The Napo region, including the Yasuni, is now one of the 14 major deforested areas in the world. Ecuador has the highest deforestation rate of any Latin American country, in part because oil is located so deep within the forest that extensive systems of roads must be built to reach it.

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/28/opinion/ecuador-rainforest-oil-exploration/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

[Shared Humanity]

Shellfish die offs increasing rapidly as ocean acidification expands.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/26/3332141/ocean-acidification-kills-scallops/

[morganism]

ongoing extinction event 100x worse than first modeled

http://m.phys.org/news/2014-09-extinctions-human-era-worse-thought.html

[Lennart van der Linde]

Peter Sinclair video on species extinction by antropogenic climate change:
http://climatecrocks.com/2015/08/05/new-video-we-are-the-asteroid/

[JimD]

Recently I saw the below article on the global decline of insects (this is a really bad thing in case you were wondering).  And then today I read the 2nd link about how hydropower installations are also responsible for negative effects on downstream ecosystems (in addition to all of the other negative effects we already knew about) due to their causing big declines in insect populations.  It is just endlessly interesting the multiplicity of ways we are screwing things up.

...Recently, researchers presented the results of their work to parliamentarians from the German Bundestag, and the findings were alarming: The average biomass of insects caught between May and October has steadily decreased from 1.6 kilograms (3.5 pounds) per trap in 1989 to just 300 grams (10.6 ounces) in 2014.

"The decline is dramatic and depressing and it affects all kinds of insects, including butterflies, wild bees, and hoverflies," says Martin Sorg, an entomologist from the Krefeld Entomological Association involved in running the monitoring project......

http://www.desdemonadespair.net/search/label/insect%20decline

Hydroelectric power is a well-established and low-cost form of renewable energy that doesn’t produce greenhouse gases. But, like any power source, it also has its dark side: A common hydroelectric power practice known as hydropeaking can be deadly to insects, with serious downstream consequences for a dammed river’s ecosystem, according to a paper in BioScience.......

https://psmag.com/how-hydroelectric-power-kills-insects-and-why-that-matters-e452baeceed2#.8opxiwe0e