NASA: Climate Change May Flip 40% of Earth's Major Ecosystems This Century. By Climate Guest Contributor on December 26, 2011 at 1:00 pm "NASA: Climate Change May Flip 40% of Earth’s Major Ecosystems This Century" by Rolf Schuttenhelm, cross-posted from Bits of Science The results of studies that try to quantify the effects of climate change on biodiversity loss — which include damage to the micro scale level of subspecies and genetic variation — are perhaps most shocking. When, however, you focus on the response to climate change at the macro level, the ecosystem level, you get a better understanding of what is one of the major drivers of that biodiversity loss: forced migrations.
And even here, the numbers may be larger than one would expect, as a new assessment by NASA and Caltech published in the journal Climatic Change shows that by 2100 some 40 percent of “major ecological community types” – that is biomes like forest, grassland, tundra – will have switched to a different such state. Ecological damage is the real climate problem Migrations will crisscross. The History of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Earth. Only one part in 2597 of Earth's atmosphere is carbon dioxide. Yet, plants make themselves from it. A very substantial oak tree is made from what seems like a few insubstantial air molecules. Plants use photosynthesis to make themselves from water, carbon dioxide and energy from the Sun.
Atmospheric oxygen is a byproduct of photosynthesis. Animals reverse photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide and water vapor are the most important greenhouse gases. We humans, because of our numbers and our technology, greatly influence Earth's atmosphere. Charles Keeling began precise monthly measurements of the concentration of carbon dioxide in 1958. The black wiggles are a continuous record of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere from 1958 to May 2007. The black wiggles record the breathing of all the plants and animals on Earth. The red line shows the same data but with the yearly variations removed. Clearly the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing.
Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. Mark Lynas. Student Energy. 10 Unsolvables | Energy problems the world must solve.