Question:

What vertebrates might thrive if Earth kept experiencing the effects of climate change for forty more years?

by  |  earlier

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...And would dolphins, chimpanzees, or any other relatively intelligent animals be included in this category?

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  1. Polar Bears.


  2. dont worry we'll all be dead in 20 hope this comforts you

  3. I would assume nearly all, except for in isolated areas.

    My reasoning:  Warmer temps usually make the atmosphere wetter, which should support the lowest chain of the food chain, plant growth.  Thus enhancing the rest of the food chain above it.

    I cant really think of any particular ones that would benefit more than the others though.

    HAH, Cindy, apes already took over the world.

  4. Good question.

    Ones that can feed on almost anything, build shelter almost anywhere, are fairly mobile and well dispersed (for genetic diversity and to survive past local and regional issues such as droughts) and small ones that can efficiently make use of sometimes meager food supplies, including a wide variety of dead organic material and fungus (the prevalent form of life after the Permian-Triassic extinction).

    Rats fill the bill nicely.

    Vertebrates have been through this before.  The largest mammal to survive the extinction of the dinosaurs was rodent-sized.  All current mammals evolved from them.  Rats are highly intelligent and stand a good chance at surviving longer than most other mammals.

    Given the past extinction records, large animals, high up the food chain, that require a healthy and complex food chain to be intact, are all toast.  

    Most of us area a lot more fragile than most vertebrates however, since we rely on a complex social system and an extensive transportation infrastructure in order to have someone else delivers our food, and we require abstract concepts such as currency and intact financial systems to exchange it through.  The human cultures that had decent survival knowledge have largely been wiped out, and we'll have mobility issues as long as neighboring cultures are defending their borders.

    I don't know if that outcome will come about in 40 years, but given that a healthy percentage of CO2 remains in the atmosphere for 1000+ years, and that further "tipping points" might result in significant emissions beyond what mankind will emit by then (methane from tundra and frozen ocean sediments for example) that sort of scenario could well be "committed" in that timeframe.

  5. The same as we have been experiencing for thousands of years.  Some of the alarmists surprise me with their questions.  Maybe they will grow less teeth, or more teeth, less vertebrae or more vertebrae....  If the apes take over the world, I guess that would be caused by global warming as well.

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