Climate Change: The Ice Is Melting – Free Horoscopes, Best Psychics Readings. Kajama.com

From the book, Rewilding Our Hearts by Marc Bekoff.

Ecosystems are not only more complex than we think,  but more complex than we can think.
— Frank Egler
Climate change, a.k.a. global warming, is a huge topic, one that is constantly in the news, and yet there are strong indications that we have seriously underestimated just how bad it really is. In November 2012, scientists in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado, working at the National Snow and Ice Data Center discovered that polar ice is melting at a record high. For example, polar ice sheets are melting three times faster than in the 1990s. This means Arctic ice has hit a record low, and this carries numerous disastrous environmental implications, from rising seas to a wide range of ecological and wildlife impacts.

In The Ten Trusts, Jane Goodall relates a conversation with Angaangaq Lyberth, the then-leader of the Eskimo nation from Greenland. At a gathering of a thousand religious and spiritual leaders in the United Nations General Assembly Hall, he said: “In the north, we feel every day what you do down here. In the north the ice is melting. What will it take to melt the ice in the human heart?”

Rewilding is about melting the ice in our hearts so that we might all work together to solve the dilemmas posed by climate change. First, rewilding asks us to recognize the connection between what we do and its effect on the Earth’s changing climate. Global warming is, of course, a very complex collection of interrelated impacts, one that is almost beyond our capacity to understand in its entirety, but we can no longer deny that it is happening and that humans influence it. Those who still deny human-caused climate change are in the same camp with the very few remaining skeptics who argue we really do not know if other animals are conscious or emotional beings. Given the wealth of scientific data on both issues, this skepticism — or as some might call it, agnosticism — is antiscience and harmful to animals and to us. This attitude is “problematizing the unproblematic,” as Indiana University philosopher Colin Allen, my esteemed colleague and cycling buddy, puts it about the issue of animal consciousness. At the very least, as I’ve said many times, the precautionary principle should lead us to deal proactively with the issue of climate change, rather than wait till we’re  100 percent certain of all the causes and find it’s too late to act.

Indeed, individuals of innumerable species are struggling to adapt to the changes that humans make. Climate change may already be beyond our ability to stop or manage it, and the best we can do is to halt the activities that make it worse and find ways to adapt to our changing environment. This means, of course, doing what we can to help other animals as they are impacted by changing climate. As I make clear in the next section, our success as a species depends on the Earth maintaining a sustainable biodiversity, and so it’s in our interest to care about whether other animals can adapt. Some species, perhaps many, will not. Already, American pikas and polar bears have become symbols of the devastating effects a warming climate can have on the lives of animals. It affects movement patterns, social behavior (including mating), social organization, food availability, and interactions among difference species.

Specific examples of these impacts accumulate almost daily. For instance, we know that hot weather lowers the survival of Asian elephants, and that male painted turtles are imperiled by warming temperatures. Lobsters in Maine are also larger, and there are more of them, because of climate change. The last decade was the warmest on record in the Gulf of Maine, and so the lobsters are eating one another and causing a decline in the profits for lobstermen. Starfish sacrifice an arm in order to survive in warm water, and rising seas will wipe out resting and refueling sites for migratory birds. In fact, approximately half of living bird species are threatened by climate change.

We’re just beginning to unravel how climate change influences the behavior of other animals. Two discoveries serve notice that the effects can be subtle, unpredictable, and extremely important. In one, it’s been discovered that ocean acidification can reverse the response of nerve cells of Australian damselfish, so that the scary and aversive scent of predators suddenly becomes alluring, leading damselfish to become increasingly bold. This behavioral change — a fish approaching rather than avoiding dangerous predators — certainly can’t be good. In another example, it’s been found that three-lined skinks, a type of lizard, become superintelligent when they develop in warmer temperatures because of changes in how the brain develops. This might be seen as good for three-lined skinks, but it’s a sobering indication of how little we understand about how environment affects who animals are, much less an environment that is rapidly changing before our eyes.

Thus, rewilding means we should take a “Noah’s ark” attitude toward climate change. As seas rise and the environment changes, we should each do what we can, as we can, to preserve, protect, and conserve all species, since we are all in the same boat, and we need one another.

Where the Wild Things Were: Loss of Biodiversity
Animals are vanishing before our eyes, and people all over the world are asking, “Where have all the animals gone?” They miss hearing, seeing, and perhaps smelling them. This issue always makes me think about Rachel Carson’s wonderful book Silent Spring, and also Will Stolzenburg’s book Where the Wild Things Were. Species extinctions are occurring at a dangerous rate, and every year more species become threatened or endangered. I consider the loss of wild animals as a form of abuse, but it rarely is understood or considered in this light. Animal losses not only put the Earth and her ecosystems in peril but they are detrimental to our own well-being and survival.

Biodiversity is what enables human life. This is such an accepted ecological fact that it doesn’t need further proof. Thus, it is imperative that all of humanity reconnects with other animals and fights for the survival of every species, for all species need one another. As an interdependent species, this is nothing less than a collective fight for our own survival. When animals die, we die, too. In this way, rewilding contains an element of selfishness: By making the world a better place for all, we are helping ourselves.

To put the larger issue of species extinctions in perspective, consider these details. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, we’re experiencing the worst loss of species since the dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago. We’re losing species at around a thousand to ten thousand times what’s called the “background rate,” or the rate of extinctions that would be expected to occur naturally. Amphibians are the most endangered animals. Their current rate of extinction has been estimated to range from twenty-five to forty-five thousand times the background extinction rate. This loss influences the many habitats in which amphibians live because of changes in their consumption habits, their nutritional cycling, and their role in controlling pests, among other things. For instance, as amphibians are lost, humans might suffer from an increase in harmful insects.

In addition, the “biodiversity boom” in Madagascar — the formation of new species — has slowed, and humans cause over half of the death rates (about 52 percent) in North American populations of large and medium-sized mammals. We cause the most deaths (over 34 percent) in larger North American mammals, including those living in protected areas. There also has been a dramatic decline in suitable habitat for African great apes.

That said, we really have no idea how serious the issue of species extinctions really is because we have no idea how many species there currently are. For example, a new species of bird, called the Cambodian tailorbird, was recently discovered in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. Who would have thought we could overlook a species living within a city? However, life in a fast-moving city can make us unaware of the presence of other animals, not to mention other people. In 2012, among the new animal species discovered were a butterfly in Jamaica, a tarantula in Brazil, a skink in Australia, the Lesula monkey in Democratic Republic of Congo, and a meat-eating sponge in California’s Monterey Bay. One source claims that an astonishing 86 percent of all plants and animals on land and 91 percent of those in the seas have yet to be named and cataloged. Sadly, this revelation only underscores the fact that, in all likelihood, many species will become extinct before they are even discovered.

Putting aside the effects of climate change on extinctions, humans are directly responsible for many impacts. A short list includes predation by humans — such as how we go for the biggest animals and how we overfish and overhunt species. To date there has only been one detailed observation of a nonhuman animal overhunting. Chimpanzees in Uganda’s Kibale National Park work together to catch prey, typically red colobus monkeys. Between 1975 and 2007, there was an 89 percent decline in the red colobus population, while the chimpanzee population rose by about 83 percent. The list of direct human impacts also includes pollution — which destroys ecosystems and causes diseases, but which also leads to species and pests becoming resistant to poisons and pollution and creating further ecological problems. It also includes introducing invasive species — which can completely overrun native populations and permanently alter environments.

At a talk I heard by Cornell University’s Christopher Clark in November 2012, he discussed “the ocean global commons” and the devastating effects of our acoustic footprint underwater, largely due to commercial exploitation. My mind was blown by how much large-scale damage we do to marine life just by the noise we make. As with many of our impacts on nonhuman animals, most people are totally unaware of this because the damage is hidden from our direct view.

Given our transformative, and often destructive, presence on Earth, some scientists now propose that “humans have become the biggest force in evolution.” They characterize this as “unnatural selection,” but I wonder how useful it is to try to distinguish “natural” and “unnatural” selection. After all, humans are an integral part of nature; we have a “natural history”; we are great apes. Using terms like “unnatural” only encourages an “us” versus “them” mentality, even though it’s meant to wake us up to our unseen, profound impacts on nonhuman animals.

For instance, in a New Scientist article entitled “Unnatural Selection,” Michael Le Page writes: “The Zoque people of Mexico hold a ceremony every year during which they grind up a poisonous plant and pour the mixture into a river running through a cave….Any of the river’s molly fish that float to the surface are seen as a gift from the gods. The gods seem to be on the side of the fish, though — the fish in the poisoned parts of the river are becoming resistant to the plant’s active ingredient, rotenone. If fish can evolve in response to a small religious ceremony, just imagine the effects of all the other changes we are making to the planet.”
Given all the ways that humans negatively impact other species, Le Page concludes, “It is no secret that many — perhaps even most — species living today are likely to be wiped out over the next century or two as a result of this multiple onslaught. What is now becoming clear is that few of the species that survive will live on unchanged.”

Our effects on other species are wide-ranging and far-reaching, and we most likely understate the extent of our destructive ways. As with climate change, we often don’t know or fully understand what we’ve done or the extent of our negative impacts. Even worse, we have no idea how to fix the ecological problems confronting us, whether we are at fault for them or not.