Good news for rainforests in a hotter world

Kieran · Post by **Kieran** » 04 Feb 2009, 17:29

Seems rainforests can adapt to higher temperatures:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 45910.html

Quote

"The size of Titanoboa indicates that it lived in an environment where the average yearly temperature was between 30C and 34C, which is about 5C hotter than the average temperatures at Cerrejon in Colombia today.

"This temperature estimate is much hotter than modern temperatures in tropical rainforests anywhere in the world," said Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, the other co-leader of the research team.

"The fossil floras that the Smithsonian has been collecting in Cerrejon for many years indicate that the area was a tropical rainforest. That means that tropical rainforests could exist at temperatures of 3C to 4C hotter than modern tropical rainforests experience," Dr Jaramillo said.

"These data challenge the view that tropical vegetation lives near its climatic optimum+ and it has profound implications in understanding the effect of current global warming on tropical plants," he said. "

Assuming we don't cut them all down meanwhile, of course.

Billhook · Post by **Billhook** » 04 Feb 2009, 17:58

Also assuming that the rainforests can somehow adapt their entire ecology at a rate of 0.2C per decade and rising -

Also assuming that while the temperature changes by the proposed amount, the several GCM are entirely wrong
in forecasting the consequent disruption of rainfall over the DODGY TAX AVOIDERS and much of Asia,
which tends to be problematic for rainforests.

Also assuming that our passivism in face of this existential (lethal) threat is not such that we cause 8 to 10C of global heating.

The Smithsonoan's press release is framed to be a ready-made hype for brazen denialists. Shame on the Inde for being gulled..

Regards,

Billhook

Kieran · Post by **Kieran** » 04 Feb 2009, 18:06

All very good points Billhook. Damn

Andy Hunt · Post by **Andy Hunt** » 04 Feb 2009, 21:26

Agreed, good points Billhook, no reason for complacency.

However it does confirm something I've often suspected, and that is that nature is maybe more resilient than she is sometimes given credit for, and will take any opportunity which is presented to her when it comes to adaptation and survival.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 05 Feb 2009, 21:08

Andy Hunt wrote:Agreed, good points Billhook, no reason for complacency.

However it does confirm something I've often suspected, and that is that nature is maybe more resilient than she is sometimes given credit for, and will take any opportunity which is presented to her when it comes to adaptation and survival.

Yes for example there are plants (C4 type?) which grow faster when there is more CO_2 in the air...the caveat being (a) they need more water in order to do this, and (b) they need to not get eaten by hoards of starving people.

pablo · Post by **pablo** » 06 Feb 2009, 00:17

Andy Hunt wrote:Agreed, good points Billhook, no reason for complacency.

However it does confirm something I've often suspected, and that is that nature is maybe more resilient than she is sometimes given credit for, and will take any opportunity which is presented to her when it comes to adaptation and survival.

Yes the biosphere as a whole is incredibly resilient having survived several mass extinctions in the past. This one will be no different - the constituent parts of the biosphere will undergo massive change.

Homo sapiens is merely a constituent part.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 06 Feb 2009, 08:06

If losing 90% of the creatures that appear in the fossil record is your idea of incredibly resistant I'd rather not be part of it.

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 06 Feb 2009, 10:14

biffvernon wrote:If losing 90% of the creatures that appear in the fossil record is your idea of incredibly resistant I'd rather not be part of it.

Given those odds you probably won't be

But biodiversity on this planet will recover eventually. Just not before homo sapiens becomes extinct. We basically have two choices. Learn to live in ecological balance with our environment (which will mean accepting the impact of evolution on us. We either evolve into a less destructive species or we go extinct), or we keep damaging our environment until it can no longer support human life. End result in each case is no more homo sapiens.

The difference with this mass extinction is that we have consumed 100 million year's worth of stored energy which will not be available to any other intelligent species to exploit in a more sustainable manner, and the sun and earth are not getting any younger. I'm not sure how many more hiccups (mass extinctions) life can go through before the sun gets middle aged spread and cooks the earth beyond the limits of Gaia to compensate.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 06 Feb 2009, 11:42

We need to adapt rather than evolve. It works faster. Get busy with the bio-char.

The next intelligent species to evolve won't need the fossil fuels because they will be, er, intelligent.

pablo · Post by **pablo** » 07 Feb 2009, 00:06

biffvernon wrote:If losing 90% of the creatures that appear in the fossil record is your idea of incredibly resistant I'd rather not be part of it.

Absolutely. My point was that we are precipitating a mass extinction (I'm not sure of the exact definition of such an event e.g. percentage of species made extinct over a period of time) but I think that the current rates of extinction match those of previous events that are termed 'mass extinctions'.

Therefore citing the resilience of the biosphere as a defence of our actions in altering the composition of the atmosphere is not a tenable position.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 07 Feb 2009, 04:13

Rain forest? Is that what used to be where all the palm oil now comes from? ':?'

fifthcolumn · Post by **fifthcolumn** » 07 Feb 2009, 05:57

At the time this snake lived (eocene tbermal maximum), co2 concentration was 6000 parts per million.

Right now we are at 350 parts per million.

Though I doubt we could sustain 7 billion people through such a transition as that, it's clear that nature itself won't be completely wiped out by our malfeasance.

skeptik · Post by **skeptik** » 07 Feb 2009, 10:32

fifthcolumn wrote:At the time this snake lived (eocene tbermal maximum), co2 concentration was 6000 parts per million.

That looks exceedingly high for such a short time ago. Where did the 6000ppm figure come from? I would have guessed 600ppm would be nearer the mark for the Eocene.

Billhook · Post by **Billhook** » 07 Feb 2009, 10:45

We haven't been at 350ppmv for several decades.

We are now at a little over 387ppmv.

Seeing as this is an issue of genocide, the numbers do matter.

Regards,

Billhook

skeptik · Post by **skeptik** » 07 Feb 2009, 10:55

And after a quick Google...

a couple of papers...

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004AGUFMPP53D..02P
http://www.scienceonline.org/cgi/conten ... /5795/1928

Which put Eocene atmospheric CO2 levels at between 1000 and 1500ppm.