Great Tits Cope Well With Warming

This is the kind of stuff you just can't make up. There it was, the headline we've all been waiting for, and on the BBC no less, Great Tits Cope Well With Warming. Finally, a positive story about global warming. Women's breasts, if their great, will be OK even if the world continues to warm up. Unfortunately, that's not exactly what the story was about, although I counted the phrase great tits 11 times on the page so it's well worth reading. The great tit is a type of bird apparently, wikipedia says "Great Tits are easy to recognize, large in size at 14 cm".

In a good news bad news story, we learn that the Great Tit chicks are hatching about 2 weeks earlier than they did 47 years ago. This is an adaption the species has undergone as the chicks' main nourishment, caterpillar larvae, has been emerging earlier and earlier each year as temperatures rise. So, although temperatures are rising, at least this species is adapting. On the flip side, researchers have found a greater number of species that are failing to adapt to the changing climate. Wait a second, I said the CC words, climate change, even GW, global warming, better back up.

First off, is it happening? It seems that for every person who is concerned about the warming planet, there is a naysayer who denies it. Why? The denial argument usually goes something like this. The earth has always gone through periods of warming and cooling, this period is just another naturally occurring cyclical event, so relax. In large part they are correct, as shown below, temperatures have gone up and down over the past 400,000 years or so. But the important question here is why have they gone up and down? One of the most obvious answers seems to be CO2 concentrations in the air. It's hard not to see the correlation between temperature and CO2:

According to NOAA and NASA data, the Earth's average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4ºF in the last 100 years, keeping in step with the CO2 rise. The scary part is barely visible on the right, check out that 2006 CO2 concentration level! Ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we've been putting more and more pollution into the thin layer of atmosphere that we have. The human population has been growing at the same time, soon to be 7 billion. These people will demand more and more as economies like China and India grow, putting more God Cars on the streets. So, here's what we know:

• Human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times are well-documented and understood.
• The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.
• An “unequivocal” warming trend of about 1.0 to 1.7°F occurred from 1906-2005. Warming occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans (IPCC, 2007).
• The major greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise over the next few decades.
• Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet.

Mmmhmm, so, the planet is warming, so what could happen? Well, of course now we do move a bit into the world of hypothesis and speculation. Each year scientists are learning more and more, but a random sampling of the events that are likely to occur include:
-melting glaciers, early snow melt and severe droughts causing water shortages
-rising sea levels leading to coastal flooding
-warmer sea surface temperatures fueling more and more intense storms
-forests, farms and cities will face new pests and more mosquito-borne diseases
-disruption of habitats driving many plant and animal species to extinction

The science may be complicated, some of it may even be disputable, but how much in life is certain? When a rational, sentient being is faced with a situation in which they must choose between two options, the decision making process should lead one to choose the option with the most positive likely outcome. We have two choices, do nothing, or do something. Imagine a man standing on a railway line. As the train approaches, he has two choices. One option is to not move. Here we have two possible outcomes, one being instant death as he is crushed by the train, and two, a miraculous occurrence, such as the train derailing or Superman saving the day. The second choice is the man simply steps aside, in which case the train slides harmlessly past, or the train will jump the rail and still hit him. By stepping off the rail we increase our odds of a positive outcome. Add to this the potential for economic gain that could come from investment in the research for new technologies that could lessen our reliance of fossil fuels. Instead of pumping money into the Middle East, or Russia, or Venezuela, money could be spent at home developing and producing new technologies...aah, sounds like a rant for another day. Wasn't I talking about tits?