Oh Dear

A new study led by Dr. Barry Sinervo, professor of biology in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, has found that "populations of lizards have been lost on five continents over the past few decades, and based on these extinction patterns — and the current rate of global warming — scientists predict that by 2080 nearly 40% of all lizard populations and 20% of lizard species could vanish."

Given that lizards are a key source of food for many birds, snakes and other animals, and are important predators of insects, the disappearance of these animals could have major repercussions up and down the food chain.

...As global warming causes weather to get hotter and stay hotter longer, lizards — especially species that live in the warmest areas — spend more time seeking refuge out of the sun. "They have so little time during the day to forage and so little time to reproduce that conditions become untenable [for survival]," says Aaron Bauer of Villanova University, a co-author of the study.

To test that theory, Sinervo and his team spent a year creating a predictive model of extinction, based on what they knew about lizards' heat sensitivity, where different species lived and the measured increases in local temperatures over the past 30 years. The model pinpointed exact sites where extinctions should be happening. The scientists then scoured the scientific literature and contacted herpetologists around the world to see how the animal populations had fared.

Sure enough, populations of lizards were vanishing in just the places the model had identified.

I used to work for a guy who would shout at employees, "Adapt or die!" and I always think of him when I hear about global warming deniers and/or the free marketeers who argue that irrespective of the source of global warming, species just need to "adapt or die."

I wonder if that was an easier thing to say when they assumed that most species on the planet weren't likely to go for "die."