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INGHAM'S WORLD

Experts say the impacts of global warming on nature may be exaggerated

Friday November 6,2009

By John Ingham

THE problem with global warming is that it comes with a Doomsday warning. And since man first started trying to tell the future by reading the entrails of chickens, doom-mongers have had a hard time.

In modern times, warnings of oil running out and millions dying from BSE, SARS and bird flu have all proved to be false alarms.

And today comes an Oxford University study which says predictions about the impact of climate change on plants and wildlife may be “exaggerated”.

The researchers don’t dispute that climate change is real but Professor Kathy Willis and Dr Shonil Bhagwat say a lot of the larger studies “often underestimate the full capacity of plants and animals to adapt to a changing climate”.

Their research includes studies of jungle butterflies in Africa, alpine plants in Switzerland and 785 animal species across six continents.

Writing in Science, they say: “We should expect to see species turnover, migrations and novel communities, but not necessarily the levels of extinction previously predicted.”

In other words nature will adapt as it always has. There will be casualties along the way but the end of the world is not nigh.

Just days earlier a gaggle of top scientists declared that exaggerated claims about climate change are undermining efforts to fight it.

Wild and woolly claims, they say, are gifts to climate change sceptics.

And there are just so many rival vested interests squabbling about the biggest issue of our age.

In the smoky, sooty corner are those who fear for their profits or their luxury and status – from oil barons to mums in swanky 4x4s on the school run.