AP, Brit Press, etc: Paleo-evidence says warming oceans mean mass extinctions. We’re warming the oceans. Ergo….
While US researchers sat in Congress saying human health is at risk in a hotter world, British and other researchers published on the bigger picture. They say that when one charts biological diversity, as seen in fossils, against ocean temperature correlations emerge. Warm the ocean, impoverish the biota (at least, as seen in diversity). It’s in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. And if the past is the marker, more than half of all animal and plant species could vanish in the next few centuries.
Most of the accounts The Tracker sees have a hole in them. If warmed seas and hot climates generally correlate with mass extinctions, and if – as we’ve also read – giant blasts from space cause mass extinctions à la dead dinos and Chicxulub crater, then the reporter ought ask sources to sort that out. (Note: An initial version of this post said all have the hole. Some, including AP’s Seth Berenstein’s below, do address the asteroid angle).
-CP
Stories:
AP Seth Borenstein includes the main news — every time the seas warm, extinction heats up too, with the rough threshold for such things looming toward the end of the century if things go on as they are. He also hints at the coarseness of the data, requiring that it be binned in 10-million-year chunks ; BBC has the lead author calling the results “simple and consistent” and posits the sea surface temperature indicators in geological strata as good proxies for over all climate change; Independent (UK) Steve Connor says four out of five mass extinctions fit the prescription; Times (UK) Lewis Smith writes first that all five were linked to climate change, then says four out of five. Hmmm ; Reuters Michael Kahn says three of the four biggest ones came with temps high;
Grist for the Mill:
Royal Society Press Release; Univ. of York Press Release; Univ. of Leeds Press Release;
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