ENV290 Species Distribution As Climate Changes

In Elizabeth Kolbert’s, “Butterfly Lessons”, January 2006, New Yorker article, the effects of global warming on species migration and extinction are discussed. She gives scientific information with enough personal narrative to keep me interested in it as a story. As the title would indicate the story begins with butterflies in Europe and their well documented migration northward. Reason for this is not given. Only the fact that thorough mapping has been done for the past 30 years and 22 of 35 species have shifted north.
The article shifts to global CO2 levels and how much they have risen in the last 10,000 years. With industry and coal burning, levels of CO2 have risen more in the last 200 years than they did in the previous 10,000. Projected rises in temperature caused by the rise in CO2 levels are between three and a half and seven degrees by 2050. A three degree rise would make the earth hotter than it’s been in two million years.
More examples are given of how the effects of climate change can be observed in the natural world. These include earlier mating of frogs in New York, spring flowering shrubs in Boston blooming earlier, Costa Rican toucans nesting higher up in the mountains, plants in the Alps growing at higher elevations, Californian butterflies found 300 feet higher in the Sierra Nevada mountains, East Coast mosquito reproduction habits, and the extinction of the Costa Rican golden toad.
The earth has gone through dramatic climate changes, at least 20 in the past two million years. The last shift was 10,000 years ago when the earth started warming up again. At the rate we are now warming, we will see a rise in temperature in 100 years that up till now took 10,000 years and the earth has never been as warm as is predicted. We don’t know what to expect in how it will affect species including diseases. There is overwhelming evidence that species distribution is changing and will continue to change but there is no way of knowing exactly how.

ENV290 OP-ED

My hackles were raised by Joanna Pearstein's criticism of organics in Wired's June 2008 issue. She states organics may be good for our bodies but they're not good for the planet. Does that mean we should eat food that's bad for our bodies? Would be good for the planet? I disagree with her information on lower than average yields per acre (of organically grown produce) and this creating a need to farm more land for the same amount of food.

There are many examples of the exact opposite of this statement and here is one.

The Thompsons in Iowa switched their farming methods from conventional high-intensity, monocrop methods, using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, to a diversified alternative way they call "regenerative agriculture". They are producing the same amount of food, it's costing them less because they aren't spending money on chemicals, and they are improving the quality and fertility of their soil. The organic content in their soil is twice that of their neighbors giving it the capacity to store more carbon. (Cuningham, Principles of Environmental Science, mhtml:file://D:\Additional Case Studies.mht).

Another would be what has happened in Cuba. Cuba was dependent on imported food to feed her people and fuel to run the equipment used to farm their monocrop of sugarcane. The fuel came from the Soviet Union. They sold sugarcane for premium prices to the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Cuba's economy fell apart. In a very short period of time they needed to figure out how to feed their people. They met the challenge and are leading the world in sustainable agricultural practices including the use of oxen and mules.."who have replaced 500,000 tractors idled by lack of fuel." (Cuningham)

I'm not about to be swayed into thinking that my eating of organically grown food is bad for the planet. Eating local sustainably grown organic food is one answer to the question, what can we as individuals do to help stop global warming.