• Question: When would there be a time when climate change will be at its worse? Also, is it the cause of extintion?

    Asked by Jade to Aileen, Caroline, Christopher, Rehemat, Stephanie, Stephen on 7 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Christopher Nankervis

      Christopher Nankervis answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      Climate change will continue to get worse until we produce zero emissions from human activities including driving and producing energy.

    • Photo: Caroline Hickman

      Caroline Hickman answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      The effects of climate change are increasing now, it will only get worse and worse unless we all act quickly to prevent it.
      It is causing huge extinctions, I am really interested in this, and the impact on us in turn:
      Mark C. Urban – Accelerating extinction risk from climate change Science Vol.348. Issue 6234 pp.571-573 1st May 2015
      One sixth of the world’s species face extinction due to climate change
      The world is on the edge of the sixth mass extinction
      Relatively small land masses worst affected as animals are unable to migrate
      Impact of global warming combined with pressures such as deforestation, pollution & overfishing have led to loss of half the animals in the world in the past 40 years
      These losses will affect our economy, cultures, food security & health
      Even if global warming is limited to 2% one in 20 species still face extinction
      If warming continues at the current rate (4%) then 16% of species (one in six) face extinction
      And those that avoid extinction will still probably have to face changes in numbers & distribution
      Risk to biodiversity – potentially collapse of entire systems

      Guardian 19th Oct 2017 Damian Carrington Insect Armageddon
      The number of flying insects has plunged by ¾ in 27 years
      Insects are an integral part of life as pollinators & prey. Flies, moths & butterflies are as important as bees for many flowering plants & crops and provide food for many birds, bats, mammals, fish, reptiles & amphibians
      It was already known that butterflies were in decline, but the current scale of extinction warns ‘the world is on course for ecological armageddon’ with profound risks for human society
      Destruction of wild areas & widespread use of pesticides & climate change
      Only going to get worse as agriculture becomes more intensive to feed population increase (9 billion by 2050)

    • Photo: Stephanie Mann

      Stephanie Mann answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      Unfortunately even if we stopped ALL our emissions right now, the world would continue to heat up for the next decade, and that’s because of some feedback effects and the atmosphere holding on to some carbon before it is reabsorbed. So because of that we need to stop emitting AS SOON AS WE CAN and stop finding new oil and coal sources to dig up.

      Climate change definitely is a factor in extinction, but lots of it is due to over hunting and habitat loss (like cutting down forests for farmland)

    • Photo: Rehemat Bhatia

      Rehemat Bhatia answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      so it’s pretty bad at the moment – we’ve reached carbon dioxide levels that were last seen around 3 million years ago (400 parts per million). we didn’t really want to reach this 🙁

      it can be the cause of extinctions, yes.

      Around 56 million years ago, at a time called the Paleocene-Eocene-Thermal-Maximum (PETM), the deep oceans became so acidic that nearly every species of sediment living plankton (benthic foraminifera) became extinct 🙁 . The PETM was was caused by a massive injection of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This was then drawn down into the oceans (slowly) and caused ocean acidification.
      The world took tens of thousands of years to recover from this. If we add lots of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere today, we could make some forms of ocean life extinct too.

    • Photo: Stephen Twomlow

      Stephen Twomlow answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      How long is a piece of string. we have no real ideas, we just hope the governments of the world will come to agreements and begin to moderate the green house gas emissions and limit temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees by 2050! However, we do not know enough about global weather patterns and what are the tipping points – i.e. will an increases in temperature in one part of the planet cause a change in wind currents that might cause ore rapid changes than we expect- we are in for a roller coaster ride with a lot of learning to take place

    • Photo: Aileen Baird

      Aileen Baird answered on 9 Mar 2018:

      I think all the other scientists have hit the nail on the head here- the current global warming caused by humans is as bad as climate change has ever been. Climate change is causing extinctions right now!
      As all the others said- we need to do something about climate change NOW to try and decrease the negative effects that it is having, because currently it is only going to keep getting worse and worse.
      How bad does it have to get before we starting making significant changes? Its an interesting question and one that lots of governments are starting to think about at the moment.

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