Friday, April 24, 2009
Climate Change versus Habitat Loss
After reading the article "Blood for No Oil" in class, I have come to the conclusion that species extinction has a greater effect on species extinction than habitat loss, even thought that is where much of modern research is focused. Climate change definitely has an effect, but it is not as important of an issue currently. Reason being is that climate change is very gradual, and may not show any real signs of widespread damage for hundreds if not thousands of years. Habitat loss is a more immediate problem. To reference the study from PLOS Biology, as cited in the Blood for No Oil article, over a thousand species of birds are predicted to go extinct in the next century alone, whereas climate change and new weather patterns are only expected to be directly responsible for the loss of 64 species. It is possible that this study is not correct however, and I believe more research needs to be done in the area. From this data, a simple cost-benefit analysis would indicate that habitat loss is the most prominent issue. Not to say that the problem of climate change should be disregarded, but that majority of resources should be commited to preserving our wildlife areas, such as the rainforest, and other ecosystems. Another important point brought up in the article is that deforestation will also cause a change in local weather. Cutting down forests leads to water availabilty and quality issues, erosion, and also has many other detrimental impacts. Due to these reasons, I think we should start dedicating more energy to finding a solution to the habitat loss problem, maybe planting as many trees as we cut down? I'm not sure, but it just seems people are too caught up in the global warming "crisis".
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ReplyDeleteI think the reason so many people are caught up on the global warming crisis is because it can directly affect our species. The habitat loss problem only affects the poor, helpless animals on the other side of the world (mostly). This seems to be of little concern to us because a) the habitat loss may be taking from the animals, but it's expanding human development and b) as said in class, many of us have no idea many of these species even existed, let alone were losing their homes and went extinct. Just because we don't see it, though, doesn't mean it's not there.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Before we can begin to ‘solve’ the problem of climate change, we need to address habitat loss. The loss of trees and forests will significantly displace more species of animals than a change in global temperature. The issue with climate change is something we will never be able to see being solved- it takes decades and lots of effort to stop emitting as much greenhouse gases and reduce the harmful, sometimes fatal (respiratory damage) effects of NOx, N2O, 03 and CO2.
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