Claim: Climate Change Will Cause Lots of Extinctions, but “we do not know exactly when”
22 hours ago Eric Worrall
Essay by Eric Worrall
I thought science was supposed to be falsifiable?
December 10, 2024 | Elaina Hancock – UConn Communications
Climate Change Extinction Risk
A global meta-analysis of climate change extinction risk emphasizes that we are at a crucial point and drastic action is needed
The impacts of climate change are intensifying, and according to the most recent United Nations Emissions Gap Report, we need to take dramatic action if we are to remain below 1.5C of warming. The climate crisis significantly threatens global biodiversity, and effective conservation policies and efforts to mitigate disastrous outcomes rely on accurate models and predictions. To increase certainty in available models, UConn Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Professor Mark Urban analyzed 485 studies, comprising over 5 million projections, to create a global assessment of climate change extinctions. The study is published in Science. Urban met with UConn Today to discuss his findings.
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Read more:
https://today.uconn.edu/2024/12/climate-change-extinction-risk/#What were your findings, and did anything surprise you?
Whereas past assessments indicated high uncertainties, this analysis suggests with increasing certainty that climate change has caused and will cause global extinctions. Climate change results in an accelerating risk of global extinction, rising from 2% currently to 30% under the highest-emission scenario. Current policies and actions place the world on a path to a 2.8 degrees Celsius rise in global temperature, which would still result in 5% of species being at risk. This study presents a choice for decisionmakers: Will we curb emissions now and only need to protect 2% of species at risk, or will we choose another path that will fundamentally alter the nature of our world.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/12/14/claim-climate-change-will-cause-lots-of-extinctions-but-we-do-not-know-exactly-when/