Climate Change May Not Claim As Many Species As We Thought
Ecologists have yet to settle on an estimate of how many will manage to weather this change—whether by moving or by acclimating—and how many will perish. Their predictions have varied widely, with climate change causing between zero and 54 percent of species to disappear. Many of these estimates are based on computer models that try to predict extinction based on where species’ ideal climate will move as temperatures warm. But a new study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looks to the past to understand how over 500 species have responded to the warming climate so far, then uses those patterns to project future declines....