How many animals die...?

Question

How many animals die every year because of Global Warming? I have to do a porject on global warming for my high school honors class.

Answer 1

There's only one way to know. Wake up really early on January 1 and start counting. Of course, you'll have to figure out if the animals died because of global warming or from some other cause. If global warming has so far only raised temperatures by a fraction of a degree, you'll have to prove that the animals would still have been alive if the temperatures had been a fraction of a degree cooler.

Moreover, you'll have to take into account the fact that many animals become MORE populous with warmer temperatures. You'll have to decide if you'll count additional deaths that arise from increased animal populations even if the total number of animals increases despite the larger number of deaths. You'll have to decide if you'll offset the deaths by the marginal increase in the population (such that you might even have a negative number of net deaths). You'll have to extrapolate the effects of changing populations of each species to other animals up and down the food chain, as well as taking into account species that become extinct and new species that come into existence because of global warming, as well as evaluating their impacts up and down the food chain. Then, you'll have the answers worthy of your high school honors class project.

Answer 2

Global warming has not killed many animals recently IMO. Global warming hasn't occurred to any great extent in spite of what some here in Yahoo answers and the media suggest. Generally more animals are killed due to cold. There are corals that have suffered die offs from warmer waters but there are others that have become more healthy and vigorous. One problem is that some people, especially those with an agenda, focus on the negatives. They will count the animals at the warm extreme of a habitat and disregard the cold extreme. As a honors student, I hope you have learned a healthy skepticism of politics parading as science. You might discuss the megafauna (i.e mammoths and saber toothed cats) which theoretically died off as environments changed at the end of the last glacial period 10,000 years or so ago.

Answer 3

This is the project part of the assignment. There is no real answer to your questions, only estimates (which I would declare them all to be WAGs or nearly so). So you are going to have to find estimates and talk about how hard it is to attribute short term changes to climate change.

Answer 4

This the project part of the assignment. There is no real answer to your questions, only estimates. So you are going to have to find estimates and talk about how hard it is to attribute short term changes to climate change.

Answer 5

There are between 3 and 10 million different species of animals on the planet. There can be millions, billions, even trillions of the same species of animals. To try to figure out the number of animals on the planet would be nigh on impossible but it would certainly be one big number.

Rather than use actual numbers it may be better to talk in terms of percentages and in this respect one of the most comprehensive reports into the effects if climate change can help you - the Stern Report, which you can view a summary of here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/30_10_06_exec_sum.pdf

On page six it states "Ecosystems will be particularly vulnerable to climate change , with around 15-40% of species potentially facing extinction after only 2°C of warming. And ocean acidification, a direct result of rising carbon dioxide levels, will have major effects on marine ecosystems, with possible adverse consequences on fish stocks."

A study led by Professor Chris Thornton and published in Nature suggests that 15 to 37% of species could be extinct by 2050, the report states "our analyses suggest that well over a million species could be threatened with extinction". http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3375447.stm

Both reports are coming up with the same sort of numbers (15 to 40% and 15 to 37%), if they're right then it translates to the extinction of a about a quarter of the planets 3 to 10 million species within the next 50 years.

In terms of species lost per year the lowest figure (15% of 3 million) would be 9000 species a year and the highest figure (40% of 10 million) would be 80,000 species a year.

Answer 6

Probably none. Although, being that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct, it is possible saome will die off , but not because of AGW.

Answer 7

My guess is that less die during warming periods of the earth than during the cooling periods, but I guess that makes your project rather meaningless.

Answer 8

None. More species are discovered every day. Warmth is good for life.