Fossil record points to 'major transformation' of Australian ecosystems in next 100 years

If the world continues on a "business-as-usual" trajectory on climate change, global ecosystems including Australia's will undergo a "major transformation" over the next century.

Australia's ecology is
predicted to change
significantly if greenhouse
 gas emissions aren't reduced.

That's the warning from researchers who have analysed hundreds of pollen and fossil records from the Earth's last period of significant global warming, which followed the last glacial maximum around 14,000 years ago.

The study, published today in the journal Science, found that ecosystems that underwent low levels of change were "concentrated in regions where the temperature anomaly was relatively small”.

The researchers used their data to predict the amount of future ecological upheaval that would occur under warming scenarios of 1.5 degrees, 2.4 degrees, 3 to 4 degrees and 5 degrees, by the end of the century.

Read the story from ABC News by Nick Kilvert - “Fossil record points to 'major transformation' of Australian ecosystems in next 100 years.”

'Unlucky Number' - the challenges we face

George Monbiot.

Climate change, or at least our efforts to measure up to it are unlikely to be realised, according to Guardian columnist, George Monbiot.

Writing about the crises facing us (humanity), Monbiot says (and this is point 10):

National climate change programmes bear no connection to the commitments governments made at Paris. Even if these programmes are fully implemented (they won’t be), they set us on a climate change trajectory way beyond that envisaged by the agreement. And this is before we know what Trump will do.

Point 11 says:

One of the many impacts of climate breakdown – aside from such minor matters as the inundation of cities, the loss of food production and curtailment of water supplies – will be the mass movement of people, to an extent that dwarfs current migration. The humanitarian, political and military implications are off the scale.

Read the latest piece by George Monbiot - “Unlucky Number.”