Mass Extinction Coming Due to Global Warming

By the year 2050 an estimated 25% of all plant and animal species will be threatened with extinction due to the rapid onset of extreme global warming. A report from Leeds University studied six regions around the world using climate change data with simulated cause and effect global warming scenarios. When these projections were estimated on a global scale, over a million species were seen to be threatened.

Decline or extinction of certain species was once due almost entirely to loss of habitat or senseless species slaughter for purposes like fur or ivory trade. Now with more pollution, species invasions and higher carbon dioxide emissions, humans are contributing in a more indirect way to animal and plant death. Though perhaps indirect, this is a far more efficient way of killing off rare and endangered species that are needed to maintain bio-diversity in certain at-risk regions.

Scientists believe that more than half of all species on earth are at risk and that a ‘mass extinction’ is currently underway with 20 ‘hot-spots’ identified worldwide where plants and animals are most at risk. Loss of habitat combined with destructive climate change mean that these hot-spots are most likely to experience high levels of species loss. From Tasmania to the Bahamas, Greenland, Northern Canada and Alaska, even Southern Polynesia is affected and all are targeted as prime places to protect.

This mass extinction is said to develop and occur at a faster rate than the extinction that ended the age of the dinosaurs. What needs to be done to prevent this? Immediate action should be taken to protect what little habitat is left in these areas so conservation and breeding programs can begin to reverse the negative effects and create stronger regional bio-diversity. Without bio-diversity, meaning the lack of flora and fauna variety in an area, whole eco-systems can be destroyed for want of a single plant or small animal. This upsets the whole natural order of life which all species rely upon to survive.

The build up of carbon dioxide in the landscape increases the risk of extinction so steps to curtail the rate of greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants should be taken. Threatened species have little hope of surviving global warming when already faced with habitat destruction and other competitive species invasion. If harsh, immediate global action is not taken now our children might be learning of the wonder of elephants alongside the skeletal remains of another extinct animal, the dinosaur. In a museum.