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They admit they can’t answer their article’s title question, “Can Biodiversity Survive Global Warming?” because ecosystems are complex and different climate models predict different degrees of warming. But “it is believed that the net effects of global climate change will favor invasive species — those opportunists that can quickly exploit the new ecological niches that will open up as native species …cannot adapt…. The additional stresses on ecosystems (along with higher temperatures) will also likely favor vector-borne diseases such as the mosquito-spread West Nile virus that has devastated populations of many bird species in the Chicago area.”
The article is heavily footnoted to the scientific literature, some of which is accessible on-line free, including a thorough 35-page 2006 review, “Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change” by Camille Parmesan of the University of Texas, who notes that “documented rapid loss of habitable climate space makes it no surprise that the first extinctions of entire species attributed to global warming are mountain-restricted species,” specifically frogs in the Costa Rican cloud forests. On a mountain, the only way to stay cool is to move up, and pretty soon you run out of mountain.
