Tag Archives: biodiversity

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 12: Improving ecosystem health decreases climate extinctions

If what goes for worms goes for the wider world, there is an important lesson to be learned: in order to prevent extinctions, we need to improve ecosystem health – before climate change kicks in. That is because ecosystems with … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 6: Review & fact check Chasing Coral [EXCELLENT MOVIE – GO WATCH!]

“Over last 30 years 50% of coral has disappeared” “Based on current trends, within the next 30 years annual bleaching will kill most of the world’s coral” Earlier this month a new climate impact documentary was released, called Chasing Coral. … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 5: What are the IPCC predictions for biodiversity loss?

Climate change is a direct disturbing factor to ecosystem health. It also leads to geographical biome shifts and therefore forced species migrations. Invasive species and food chain disturbances can lead to plagues, creating further ecosystem damage. All these factors work … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 4: Earth’s biodiversity may include >1,000,000,000,000 species(!)

Yes. That’s ONE TRILLION. ‘Possibly’ – as recent research using statistical scaling rules shows Earth’s total biodiversity, expressed in numbers of species, lies somewhere between 100 billion and (possibly more than) ten times as much. Welcome to the world of … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Holocene-Anthropocene Mass Extinction 3: Biodiversity is function of time and plate tectonics

Here’s just a quick supplement on yesterday’s article, showing Earth’s historical biodiversity graph correlates with different phases of plate tectonics.

Climate Change & Holocene-Anthropocene Mass Extinction 2: Biodiversity graph shows Garden of Eden is Now

Yesterday we tried to place the Holocene-Anthropocene Mass Extinction in the context of Earth’s past mass extinctions. Listing the Holocene Extinction as the ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ proves problematic for various reasons. Today we offer additional context: although a mass extinction … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Holocene-Anthropocene Mass Extinction 1: First of all, what are we talking about?

Yes, you’ve guessed it: a new series – and one we think is (even) more important than the previous climate series on Bits of Science, like our short (ongoing) understanding sea level rise series, and the more elaborate series about … Continue reading →

A quarter of all European bumblebee species threatened with extinction

Europe is still home to 68 different bumblebee species – of which according to IUCN 24 percent are now directly threatened with extinction and about half have clearly declining populations. The reasons: Habitat loss, agricultural pollution, climate change, and general … Continue reading →

Dear Media, there is just ONE THING World Leaders Need To Do this December: Unite On Climate

We – the one million silenced voices, the one million people who this December were planning to march on Paris to call for climate justice – have a request, to the world media. For once. Just for once. For this … Continue reading →

Climate change caused 2,500 year collapse of Panamanian coral reef

partly dead coral reefClimate change drove coral reefs to a total ecosystem collapse lasting thousands of years, according to a paper published this week in Science. The paper shows how natural climatic shifts stopped reef growth in the eastern Pacific for 2,500 years. The reef shutdown, which began 4,000 years ago, corresponds to a period of dramatic swings in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). “As humans continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the climate is once again on the threshold of a new regime, with dire consequences for reef ecosystems unless we get control of climate change,” said coauthor Richard Aronson, a biology professor at Florida Institute of Technology.

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