I've always believed that if you are going to make a statement, you need to show your data to back it up. I didn't realize that including the links so one can read what I found was an inconvenience.
So, starting in 2000 they've been doing a census on marine life and finding new species. It's not like they are just now evolving - we're just sending deep sea submersibles looking for them now.
Of course they're finding new species - they're looking for them in places people have never been!
FYI, they just found a new salamander species in Korea. Turns out in Korea all salamanders are aquatic. No one had ever thought of looking under a rock for an non aquatic salamander ... so they found a new species!
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/05/05/MNGIUCK4R11.DTL&type=science
However, since there is 25,000 square kilometers of amazon rainforest being destroyed each year, I don't see the correlation between loss of habitat and ecosystems, with finding a new species.
# Rainforests contain 170,000 of the world's 250,000 known plant species
# A recent survey in the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil found 487 tree species in a single hectare (2.5 acres), while the US and Canada combined only have 700 species
# 1/3 of world's birds found in South America
# Whereas all of Europe has some 321 butterfly species, the Manu National Park in Peru (4000 hectare-survey) has 1300 species, while Tambopata National Park (5500 hectare-survey) has at least 1231 species
# The United States has 81 species of frogs, while Madagascar, smaller than Texas, may have some 300 (99% of which are found nowhere else). 80 frog species have been collected in a single day at localities in Peru.
# A single square mile of rainforest often houses more than 50,000 insect species
I agree with you about Popular Mechanics efforts to be factual.
So back to the point, here is an article of theirs about global warming from the Popular Mechanics october '04 issue:
The Cold Truth
Tree rings, satellites, and ice cores suggest global warming models underestimate risks.
For years critics of international treaties aimed at controlling greenhouse gases claimed that the complex mathematical models that predict widespread global warming were wrong. The latest look at those models suggests those critics may have been right. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), the chief greenhouse gas released by burning fossil fuels, is now about 380 parts per million (ppm), said Harvard University professor of geochemistry Daniel Schrag. He predicts that by the end of the century the level will rise as high as 1000 ppm. "The last time CO2 was this high was during the Eocene, 55 to 36 million years ago. Palm trees lived in Wyoming, crocodiles lived in the Arctic, Antarctica was a pine forest and the sea level was at least 300 ft. higher than today."
Given the dramatic climatic conditions that accompanied these high CO2 levels, many researchers were curious to see what would happen when concentrations in the 1000-ppm range were plugged into their mathematical models. To their surprise, temperatures refused to climb to the high that occurred in the Eocene. Despite this unexpected turn of events, researchers haven't lost faith in the models. They do, however, believe that the models need to be fine-tuned to account for the fact that the Earth appears to be more sensitive to changes in CO2 levels than previously believed.
It also appears that temperature swings can occur abruptly, Thomas Crowley, a professor at Duke University, told a recent conference on Global Warming sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He told scientists who attended the Washington, D.C., meeting that just this sort of shift has taken place in the recent past. "Composite tree-ring and ice-core studies indicate that during the Middle Ages temperatures were relatively warm in mid-high latitudes. A subsequent cooling, termed the 'Little Ice Age,' was probably the coldest period of the last 8000 years," he said.
"Changes of as much as 18°F or more have happened in about a decade in some locales," said Richard B. Alley, the Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University.
Physical evidence abounds that these quick temperature rises are now taking place. Michael Oppenheimer, Professor of Environmental Science at Princeton University in New Jersey, offered the conference some examples. "Warming is causing the retreat of ice at the margins of polar regions. Many glaciers are shrinking along the coast of Greenland, and the periphery as a whole appears to be losing ice. Floating ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have undergone spectacularly rapid disintegration over the past decade," Oppenheimer said.
And the changes are taking place not only at the polar regions.
"In 1912 the ice on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa, covered about 4.3 square miles, but today it covers only .94 square miles. If the current rate of retreat continues, the perennial ice on Kilimanjaro is expected to disappear within the next 15 to 20 years," said Lonnie G. Thompson, Professor of Geological Sciences, at Ohio State University.
Researchers are focusing on why their global warming models failed to predict the sharp temperature rises revealed in satellite images when CO2 levels reached the 1000-ppm level. Penn State's Alley believes abrupt climate changes seem to happen when warming crosses a threshold, triggering change to a new and persistent state. He draws an analogy with boating, where leaning a little too far can flip a canoe.
One force rocking the boat appears to be a change in the salinity of the sea. Extensive temperature measurements of ocean water show a clear circulation pattern. Because warm water moves to the north, Europe is far warmer than its latitude would suggest. Heat, however, is not the only factor that determines the way in which seawater behaves. Salinity plays a large role in moving the current south. As the ice melts in the most northern latitudes, more fresh water enters the system, making the ocean less dense. One of the consequences is that global warming could cause this massive oceanic conveyor, illustrated above, to shut down. The result would be that European cities would begin to experience the same low winter temperatures measured in cities with comparable latitudes.
Among those who work on warming issues, there is an emerging consensus that future global models will only confirm the need for tighter controls on greenhouse gases. But for the moment, there is only one prediction that can be made with any degree of confidence: Global warming may hold some chilling surprises.
