Some possible long-term effects of climate change are seen in “Implications of climate change for northern Canada: freshwater, marine, and terrestrial ecosystems” (Prowse, Furgal, Wrona, Reist, July 2009). The authors suggest that climate change is a source of wildlife-related problems, particularly with aquatic species, and will negatively influence human economy.
The first thing I would like to elaborate upon is the way the authors seem to be viewing climate change as a bad thing. Climate change is and always has been a natural occurrence, and to modify it would be messing with the earth’s evolutionary process. Of course, the human influence on climate change is a well-discussed theme, and it could very well have the possibility of being slowed down. Yet, the article vaguely states that “As the climate continues to change, there will be consequences” (Prowse, Furgal, Wrona, Reist, July 2009) with no mention of human impact. To make this statement more clear, it would have been helpful to include numbers based on the influence of humans, or to explain why the authors think natural climate change is wrong if that's what their opinion is. Due to this lack of clarification, we are led to believe that climate change by itself is something that should be stopped, without any knowledge of its causes.
Another problem is that the article is filled with ideas that are addressed as occurrences that will happen, however these ideas remain unexplained and therefore sometimes hard to believe. The word “will” is used six times in the article for mere predictions with no information to back them up. When mentioning the transmission of diseases through animals, the only reasoning provided is the allusion to the shifting of environmental conditions. Near the end of the article, the authors add that “Where these stresses affect economically and culturally important species, they will have significant effects on people and regional economies.” (Prowse, Furgal, Wrona, Reist, July 2009) There is no supporting sentence after or before this explaining how people and economies will be affected; the reader is left to guess what the authors mean by the statement.
Climate change has been proven to have a big effect on many different aspects of life. Animals are in fact already very influenced by its relation to hydrology. According to B.C. Bates, Z.W. Kundzewicz, S. Wu and J.P. Palutikof (2008), species in certain countries have already been brought to extinction due to changes in temperature and water; many birds that depend on wetlands during migration can no longer depend on them because the wetlands have dried up; mist is no longer available to some animals that need it to survive in forests; but the main species affected are those that live in freshwater.
Bates, Kundzewicz, Wu and Palutikof also explain that humans are likely to be directly influenced by climate change. An increased amount of precipitation is likely to affect groundwater recharge rates, either by causing the recharge to take more time in humid areas because there is already water in the ground, or less time in dryer areas as the precipitation provides faster filtration before the water evaporates. It is therefore clear that precipitation largely influences agriculture, and significant changes in precipitation can be problematic to economy in that way.
There are many other ways that the impact of climate change on freshwater resources is likely to be troublesome to humans and other living beings. Prowse, Furgal, Wrona, and Reist were not necessarily wrong with their claims; their conclusion actually made a very good point, stating that more research must be made to understand these changes and to protect species and habitats. Nonetheless, the lack of support made it seem like a poor and unknowledgeable article, no matter how much knowledge was actually behind it.
References
Prowse, T; Furgal, C; Wrona, FJ; Reist, JD. (2009) Implications of climate change for northern Canada: freshwater, marine, and terrestrial ecosystems. PubMed, July 2009. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19714961?ordinalpos=10&itool=EntrezSysem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum. Accessed 28 Sept 2009.
Bates, B.C., Z.W. Kundzewicz, S. Wu and J.P. Palutikof, Eds., 2008. “Climate Change and Water.” Technical Paper of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC Secretariat, Geneva, 210 pp. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/climate-change-water-en.pdf. Accessed 28 Sept 2009.
I think that given the length of the article, it was necessary for the authors to be concise with their thoughts on climte change. I'm confused as to the context of this article. Are they reporting findings or just sharing their opinions? They seem to be merely stating a list of the negative effects of climate change. I agree that the authors are not necessarily making false claims, but in the link you provided I was unable to find a single source citation or a reference to a study they performed. Is this article perhaps just an excerpt from a larger paper? It looks like just the abstract to me.
ReplyDelete-Elisabeth Shapiro