Brendan,
There was an excellent NAS Sackler Symposium a few years ago that
focused on the biodiversity components of mass extinction (and
includes several talks involving or informed by the fossil
record). Jeremy Jackson (using both modern and ancient ecosystems)
sounded perhaps the most frightening forecast of extinction in modern
and future oceans. This extinction is already very well underway,
and likely orders of magnitude worse than on land. He makes the apt
comparison that whereas many current terrestrial extinctions are
involving the loss of a sparse patchwork of species, in the marine
realm it's more akin to transforming a rain forest into a desert. A
likely prediction is that sardines will be dominant fishes and
eutrophication and ecosystem alteration will bring ecosystem states
back to the Precambrian, dominated by algal slime and jellyfish. In
many parts of the world, we're already there. And most of this
change is reasonably well documented in the written, historic record
of nautical expeditions since the 1400s. Here's a link to video of
each (all are archived and also make great multimedia to use in
classrooms):
http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageNavigator/SACKLER_biodiversity_program
and to Jackson's in particular:
http://progressive.atl.playstream.com/nakfi/progressive/Sackler/sackler_12_07_07/jeremy_jackson/jeremy_jackson.html
. Unfortunately, such issues just don't have the mass appeal as do
the extinction of more charismatic megafauna, and their solutions are
more systemic.
Cheers,
Phil
At 09:38 PM 5/22/2009, Brendan Rogers wrote:
Okay, I'm the average Joe or Jane, concerned with my kids' educations,
mortgage payments, a failing economy, crime, and sometimes endangered
species. When the media warns of global warming, they most often cite three
reasons why I should care:
1) more heat waves
2) more storms
3) sea level rise
I'm thinking, 100 years ago we hadn't flown a plane, landed on the moon, or
fought off the Nazis. We didn't have computers, cell phones, or the
internet. Why is everyone so up-tight about global warming if all we have to
conquer in the next 100 years are some more heat waves, a few more
hurricanes, and some lost shoreline?? Sounds like a fairly short order.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Phil
Novack-Gottshall [email protected]
Assistant Professor
Department of Geosciences
University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30118-3100
Phone: 678-839-4061
Fax: 678-839-4071
http://www.westga.edu/~pnovackg
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