"This current rate of climate change cannot be sustained, and the earth's fine equilibrium (mīzān) may soon be lost".
So unfortunately we're quite likely, simply because of the rate of climate change today, to see extinctions occurring.
Perhaps that is just as well, because scientific estimates of the rate of climate change have steadily been downgraded.
Achim Steiner, UN Environment Program executive director, said that delayed action to reduce emissions would increase the rate of climate change-fueled impacts.
Most small mammals without high ground to escape to will not be able to keep up with the rate of climate change.
This has slowed the rate of climate change on land, but its profound effects on marine life are only now being understood.
Yet even emergent species won't be able to keep up with the current rapid rate of climate change, meaning that the rate of extinctions will increase, it concluded.
"The rate of climate change this century is expected to be greater than it has been in the past 10,000 years," Sir John T. Houghton, co-chairman of the Shanghai meeting and former head of Britain's weather agency, said.
Plus, the data can be used to analyse the rate of climate change and its effect on the oceans – key to the seals' own survival, let alone our own.
As Dr. Oppenheimer put it, "About 1860 we entered a period of about 140 years in which the rate of climate change kicked up, and most of the changes were in the positive direction.
[Reuters] A new study suggests that a warming climate and rising seas will help salt marshes capture more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, possibly slowing the rate of climate change.
