Global warming and the tropics

We have all heard in the news about the stresses global warming and the associated climate changes are causing organisms in the north. The polar bear has become some what of a poster child for the impacts of global warming in the north. However,researchers are now reporting on the impacts even small changes in the tropics can have on animals there.

The tropics teem with insects which are ectotherms. These animals vary their metabolic rate with their environment. As the environment warms, their metabolism rises, and they need to eat more. The most current estimate I know of places the number of insect species in the tropics at about 3.7 million. This is a huge reduction from the previously held estimate of 30 million. The real number would be somewhere in between the two I suspect.

In any case, there are millions of insects that are being affected by warming. Why does this matter? Insects are key to life in the tropics. They play all kinds of important roles. They are a rich source of food for other animals, they are pollinators of the flowering plants that dominate the tropics, and some keep the population numbers of other species in check.

As warming causes their body temperatures to rise, their metabolic rates rise and they have to eat more, or reduce their activity to conserve the food they have.

To see a Science Digest article about this topic click here.

Polar Bears and Global Warming

Want to hear a polar bear breathing? Take a listen here.

National Public Radio had a story this morning about the polar bear monitoring that scientists with the US Fish and Wildlife Service are conducting. Take a listen to hear about the trouble these giant bears are having as the sea ice they depend on melts during the summer.

Surprise , Surprise , Surprise

The New York Times is reporting that a group called the Global Climate Coalition, an industry group that spent millions of dollars advertising that global warming was not was not "well understood", ignored their own scientists. Why? Because the scientists told them the truth-what they didn't want to hear. So while this group,which was made up of oil,coal,and car companies, was involved in advertisement and lobbying to convince folks their emissions were not to blame for global warming, their scientists were telling them just the opposite.

Here's a quote from the article taken from an internal report written by their scientists:
“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

At the same time the group was sponsoring advertisements that stated "the role of greenhouse gases in climate change was not well understood." Riiiight....

This reminds me of the executives of the tobacco industry claiming they didn't know nicotine was addictive....

Take a look at the article here