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Global warming is more than hot air

Experts say climate change also affects species from butterflies to bears

By Barbara Mitchell

The Portland Tribune, Jan 30, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

COURTESY OF OREGON ZOO

Wildlife biologist Steven C. Amstrup hangs out with three baby polar bears before weighing them to check their health. Amstrup’s the second in a lineup of four speakers recruited by the Oregon Zoo to discuss global warming and its effects.

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It’s a given that panda bears and butterflies aren’t deliberating over the choice between fossil fuels and clean energy or debating the merits of biodiesel versus electric cars.

But humans’ decisions about these and other issues that contribute to global warming are having an effect on these creatures, which could foreshadow our own fate if we choose inertia over action.

That’s the perspective taken by the Oregon Zoo’s 2007 Wildlife Conservation Series. Rather than cover the increasingly familiar ground of how climate change potentially could alter human existence, the four-lecture series focuses on the unintentional – yet profound – consequences human actions are having on our planet and the other species with whom we share it.

“I see the purpose of this talk more as providing the background of what’s happening to climate so that when people talk about their responses to that in terms of ecosystems, that the evidence has been pretty clearly laid out,” says Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at Oregon State University and the speaker for the kickoff lecture, titled “Climate Change Present, Past and Future: What We Have Learned About What to Expect.”

“But,” he continues, “the plan that I’d emphasize is why should we be concerned about ecosystem extinctions or why we should be concerned about extinctions in general in response to climate change, in the sense that the climate has changed in the past and we didn’t necessarily have widespread extinctions.

“The distinction I want to make,” he says, “is that climate has changed in the past but it took much, much longer to do so.

“What’s very unusual about the current events –and what’s going to unfold in the coming century –is that the rate of change, this climate change, is really going to be extraordinary in comparison to anything that the Earth has experienced, with the exception of maybe asteroid impacts or something that extreme,” he says.

“That’s why we should be concerned about a drastic ecosystem response that’s unable to adapt possibly to these climate changes.”

Awareness spurs optimism

Clark, who has been teaching at universities for the past 22 years, notes that it’s human nature to respond to disasters rather than plan for them, but expresses a hope for the future based on the leap in awareness that’s occurred in recent history.

“It might well take more Katrinas or more noticeable effects of climate change to force people to take measures, but I think those will be taken,” he says. “We’re in a period now where people’s understanding and acceptance of climate change has become standard rather than the anomaly it was in the past.”

Anne Warner, conservation manager for the Oregon Zoo, shares Clark’s optimism.

“We chose this subject because it is a hugely important conservation issue that every person can do something about,” she says. “It is topical and timely, and we want to give people the information they need to take positive conservation action.”