CANBERRA, Australia, May 7, 2008
Koalas Feeling Heat From Global Warming
Carbon Dioxide Pollution Is Damaging Eucalyptus Plants Needed For Survival
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A researcher says koala numbers are under threat from carbon pollution in the atmosphere because the greenhouse gas saps nutrients from eucalypt leaves with are the animals' only source of food. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
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Ian Hume, emeritus professor of biology at Sydney University, said he and his researchers also found that the amount of toxicity in the leaves of eucalyptus saplings rose when the level of carbon dioxide within a greenhouse was increased.
Hume presented his research on the effects of carbon dioxide on eucalyptus leaves to the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra on Wednesday.
The researchers found that carbon dioxide in eucalyptus leaves affects the balance of nutrients and "anti-nutrients" - substances that are either toxic or interfere with the digestion of nutrients.
An increase in carbon dioxide favors the trees' production of carbon-based anti-nutrients over nutrients, so leaves can become toxic to koalas, Hume said.
Some eucalyptus species may have high protein content, but anti-nutrients such as tannins bind the protein so it cannot be digested by koalas.
Hume estimated that current levels of global carbon dioxide emissions would result in a noticeable reduction in Australia's koala population in 50 years due to a lack of palatable leaves.
Out of more than 600 eucalyptus species in Australia, koalas will only eat the leaves of about 25, Hume said. Changing the toxicity levels in the trees could further reduce the varieties that koalas find palatable, he said.
"Koalas produce one young each year under optimal conditions, but if you drop the nutritional value of the leaves, it might become one young every three or four years," Hume said.
Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe, a marsupial physiologist, described Hume's predictions of declining koala numbers as speculative but credible.
Eucalyptus leaves already have little nutritional value, he said, and koalas have adapted to their poor diet by sleeping to conserve energy.
"It's a very precarious existence," Tyndale-Biscoe said. "They basically sleep for 20 hours a day and then they've got four hours to do everything else - occasionally eat a leaf and maybe once a year go after another koala" to mate.
Tyndale-Biscoe said koalas had already disappeared from parts of Australia but remained plentiful in others and were unlikely to be wiped out by climate change. They already have been displaced from the most nutritious trees on the most fertile land by the spread of farms and suburbs, he said.
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See all 32 CommentsNotice that the researcher did not say that the eucalyptus leaves were "damaged," but only less nutritious. Let us examine the issue:
In the first place, Supreme Court orders notwithstanding, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant from the standpoint of a green plant (e.g. Eucalyptus sp.), but an essential nutrient. The green plant gets its food from the action of light and enzymes (proteins) in chloroplasts on carbon dioxide. The more carbon dioxide, the less enzymes are needed. From the standpoint of an eucalyptus predator (e.g. koala) the leaves become less nutritious. On the other hand, the overabundance of photosynthates would enable the eucalyptus to produce greater quantities of chemical defenses, the "toxins" (from the standpoint of a predator) mentioned in the article.
The point is, that the eucalyptus is in no way damaged by any of this. It''s better off.
Imagine that the US started making much greater use of wind, solar, and nuclear power. Who would describe this phenomenon as "sapping the US of imported petroleum?"
Thanks for the absolute dribble but that debate is long over. The sane world has already acknowledged that global warming is happening and is man-made."
Posted by singingrick at 08:17 AM : May 08, 2008
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That''s right, singinrick! Hide your head in the sand (like you alarmists have been saying the skeptics do) the moment you find out that the SCIENTISTS are agreeing with the skeptics.
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But back to the point: this article is not about temperature effects (a/k/a Global Warming) but about the chemical effects of increased carbon dioxide (a necessary nutrient for green plant growth) on the chemical makeup of certain green plants.
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BTW, the word is drivel. LOL
Gaye5
Thanks for the absolute dribble but that debate is long over. The sane world has already acknowledged that global warming is happening and is man-made.
Marohasy: "That''s right ... These findings actually aren''t being disputed by the meteorological community. They''re having trouble digesting the findings, they''re acknowledging the findings, they''re acknowledging that the data from NASA''s Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they''re about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."
Duffy: "From what you''re saying, it sounds like the implications of this could be considerable ..."
Marohasy: "That''s right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer''s interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."
If Marohasy is anywhere near right about the impending collapse of the global warming paradigm, life will suddenly become a whole lot more interesting.
Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"
Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you''d expect,
Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA''s Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we''re now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"
Marohasy: "That''s right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you''ve got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you''re going to get a positive feedback. That''s what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they''re actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you''re getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."
Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"
Climate facts to warm to
Christopher Pearson | March 22, 2008
CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.
Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth still warming?"
She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you''d expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."
Study of the orbital mechanics of the solar system in the 1970s led Russians to believe the Earth was about to cool and we should prepare quickly because it will be catastrophic......and
As the sun goes even quiter and January, 2008 saw the greatest year to year temperature drop ever (128 years of NASA GISS data), it is clear cooling needs to be considered as a very plausible future.
Posted by Seafang
I can think of one species even dumber - humans! What other species would destroy and pollute the very environment in which they must live?
And the dumbest of the dumb? Those that deny it is even happening !
The Koala and the Panda (neither is a bear), should arm wrestle to see which is the stupidest animal on the planet; one only eats 25 out of several hundred species of tree leaves, and the other one only eats a few out of hundreds of species of bamboo; talk about dumb critters; neither one of them deserves to survive if they are that stupid.
"I live in Australia and as yet I haven''''t heard this above on the news so their"
Posted by Gaye5 at 06:45 PM : May 07, 2008cant be much concern here.
This particular Item was on the Australian ABC national news yesterday [wednesday].
Further there are various news items almost daily on all major Australian news sources about the problems, both current, and anticipated in the future pertaining to global warming as it will affect Australia.
Further ithe Australian Government is contiually taking into account the potential future problems associated with Global warming, they at least are not hiding their heads in the sand as are many others.
The southern hemisphere has been cooling over the last 10 years, just about as much as the north has been warming.
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Posted by Gaye5 at 06:52 PM : May 07, 2008
I realize you claim to live in Australia, however few Australians would believe the above statement.
There are many solid scientists who think that the amount of warming is so small that it is indistinguishable from the noise in the data sets, and that the data have not been properly adjusted for such things as urban heat island effects, and instrument calibration. This is particularly true of the global data set. Also, it is generally accepted that the Earth has been much warmer than today, for example, in the time of the dinosaurs (the mid-cretaceous period) when the CO2 was 2 to 4 times greater than today (NOAA). More recently, in the prior period between ice ages, just 125,000 years ago, the Earth also was much warmer than today and the sea level much higher - by about 13 to 20 feet (4 to 6 meters) (IPCC).
Virtually all scientists agree that the Earth has warmed a small amount since the year 1000 or, if you choose, since 1850, when instrumented temperature records became reasonably accurate and distributed in key areas of the world.
Study of the orbital mechanics of the solar system in the 1970s led Russians to believe the Earth was about to cool and we should prepare quickly because it will be catastrophic. Their arguments were lost in the rush to warming group-think in the 1990s, but the arguments for impending cold are well founded and still believed by many good scientists. As the sun goes even quiter and January, 2008 saw the greatest year to year temperature drop ever (128 years of NASA GISS data), it is clear cooling needs to be considered as a very plausible future. This is highlighted by 2 papers published in March 2008. Scafetta and West showed that up to 69% of observed warming is from the sun and remind us that the sun is projected to cool and Ramanathan and Carmichael show that soot has 60% of the warming power of CO2. Both papers state that these factors are underappreciated by IPCC.
The southern hemisphere has been cooling over the last 10 years, just about as much as the north has been warming.
I live in Australia and as yet I haven''t heard this above on the news so their cant be much concern here. That doesn''t mean that it hasn''t been on the news I just haven''t heard it yet..
And from what I am reading you are exactly right, but there is so much money to be made out of global warming that the powers to be who are making the money will double talk and go on with their deception.
People like you and I have had to put up with the extreme hatred and insults on here, but because they don''t want to read both sides of the evidence they will continue to just believe we are heating up.
Having said that, something has to be done about the pollution we cant keep going on and polluting the world and expect people to not get sick..
I will include in the next post some info for you..it is just the other side of the debate..
I hate Quantas.
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Posted by talkingham at 12:16 PM : May 07, 2008
At least Qantas operate very profitably, unlike the majority of American airlines.
Further Qantas has the best safety record amongst the world airlines.
Even Dustin Hoffman likes qantas.
Not trying to be a nudge but just pointing out that the NOAA has stated that it will get colder over the next 10 years (reduced solar activity) Since the warming peak in 1998 it has gotten nothing but colder.
And .. again not to be a nudge ... we just had a huge Volcanic eruption in Chile. Just that eruption placed more pollutants in the atmosphere than humans have created since we crawled from the primordial soup.
Volcanos = Global Cooling
All I ask from the Global wamring folks is to keep an open mind. I love the Earth and want a clean environment for my kids. Ignore the temperature. Pay attention to what we make.
Can we recycle it? If the answer is no we need to make a product that we can recycle. That is the answer.
Where do they find these junk scientists?
Posted by lochlan
And you received your Ph.D. from?????? I can absolutely assure you that 38thousandth''''s of a percent (380 ppm) of sarin will kill you in seconds. According to enviro''s ppb''s (parts per billion) of numerous chemicals can cause harm, so 380 ppm surely can be important.
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