Hey folks,
This week I want to do a special prompt for our blog
discussion. Of course, you may, as usual
ask and answer questions about this week’s article on microwear, but I thought
it’d be really fun to continue a discussion on current climate changes, its
effects, and how we as a scientific community interpret and convey our results
to the general public.
On last week’s blog, Mike provided some very extensive and
excellent research articles regarding current mass extinction. However, since I am a firm advocate of the
scientific method and a proponent of questioning any study under the name of
science, I’d like to play devil’s advocate for a moment and pose a few thoughts
in response to the assertion that we are currently undergoing a mass extinction:
1)
The fossil record is not always a good proxy for
past environments. Barnosky and
colleagues exclusively looked at mammals, citing that, on average, over the
past 65 million year only 2 species per year went extinct. Personally, I am a little concerned about
this assumption because there is an obvious bias toward preservation of larger
mammals over smaller and I believe it impossible to know the extinction rate of
some of the smaller fauna not preserved in the fossil record (this is
particularly pertinent since smaller mammals generally have a faster species
turnover, fast-slow continuum anyone?). Although
the authors address this problem in their article and state our incomplete
knowledge of extant species, I still believe these two records are not quite comparable.
2)
Some species have responded already to current
climate change and I believe we will continue to see some species adapt and
(potentially) a decline in the rate of extinction . Here’s just a short little
review artcile on the subject from 2002, I’m sure much more has been explored
since then: http://eebweb.arizona.edu/courses/Ecol206/Walther%20et%20al%20Nature%202002.pdf
. I also came across this article: http://www.law.arizona.edu/AdaptationConference/PDFs/ParmesanAREES_Impacts2006.pdf
which, while it definitely emphasizes concern over the ability of animals to
adapt sufficiently to climate change and is a nice (albeit longer) review.
3)
Although I noticed that many of the articles mentioned
in last week’s blog deal with increased rate of extinction in individual
species(which I by no means doubt, I believe we have ample evidence), only a
few deal with mass extinction, which is a whole other animal. While I do believe that theoretically we
could be heading in that direction, the studies explicitly dealing with mass
extinctions are still projections. The actual rate of extinction, all animals
taken together, is still not near the landmark of 75% of all species eliminated
at the moment. When all is said and done, we cannot be
certain which animals will be able to exploit these new habitats and what new
species will develop from this event (and believe me, a lot more research
effort has been focused on looking at extinction, not speciation). I have no
doubt that species diversity will decline (and has!) but I am still unconvinced
it is on the level of a mass extinction at the moment. I have a hard time accepting Barnosky’s
assumption that threatened means inevitable extinction in the near future. However,
I agree, without conservation efforts for threatened species, we are more at
risk of entering a mass extinction. I
personally think we should continue conservation efforts full-force, but I do
not believe there is ample evidence to call our current state a mass extinction
(at the moment, though I’m open to having my mind changed with sufficient
evidence). ….though I am considerably more worried about amphibians and coral
now…
As I said, I am primarily worried about agriculture and
while I by no means think we should flout conservation efforts, I do think we
should address agriculture. I turn it
over to the peanut gallery though, what concerns you most and why? If you want to debate my questioning of the
mass extinction, I encourage it! Think of this as a free forum for the rest of
the semester to discus climate change and its impacts. Here’s a few questions to kick you off:
1)
What concerns you most about our current climate
change? (articles are always
encouraged!) Be ready to defend your
answer…there are always multiple sides to one story and, as scientists, we must
be as impartial as possible…..which means we’ve got to play devil’s advocate to
our own initial proclivities.
2)
Whether we are going through a mass extinction
or not, I have mixed feelings on the way it should be conveyed to the general
public. Sometimes a more extreme prompt
can be very encouraging for change (which, of course, is a good thing!) though,
unfortunately, sometimes it can have the opposite effect of isolating more
conservative-minded folk who don’t put as much stock in science. How do you think we should convey current
issues to the general public?
3)
As students of science (who I hope will continue
to be actively involved in looking at global climate change….and coming up with
a few solutions…) how do you think we should approach climate change effects in
the future?
As always, you guys may discuss this week’s article as well…impressions,
concerns, ideas for future research, I’m all ears!
Have fun and see you all on Thursday for some more fun with
microwear!
Katie
