“Most species survived the Holocene maximum, which was warmer than the IPCC estimates for 2100.” But land use (as you pointed out) is much different than it is now, making habitats more patchy, and the rate of change is also what’s troubling this time around.

“That’s what species do. They survive climate change, amongst other challenges.” They also go extinct.

Anyone who doesn’t find this list interesting – even if purely as a starting point – is either (a) not interested in science, (b) not interested in journalism, or (c), of course, both.

We now return you to your previously scheduled “framing.”

Be that as it may, estimates of species being wiped out by global warming, such as we have suffered recently in Cleveland, are grossly overblown. Most species survived the Holocene maximum, which was warmer than the IPCC estimates for 2100. Most species survived the last ice age, too. That’s what species do. They survive climate change, amongst other challenges.

What they don’t survive is land use changes. A friend’s niece is off to Indonesia to study Gibbons in the wild. She’d better hurry. The Indonesians are burning off their rain forest at a great rate and neighboring countries are complaining about massive air pollution.

In 2001, I met the captain of an oil tanker who sailed Indonesian waters. He had photos taken from the bridge of his ship where you could not see the bow. This was during the burn-off season. They don’t have an EPA.

Such massive destruction of nature’s realm no longer happens in the Western world, but it still does in the third world.

Global Warming is not the problem. Global poverty and the resultant abuse of natural resources is the problem we should be addressing. Providing cheap electricity to the third-world poor is much better for the planet than leaving them with no recourse but to burn dung and wood stripped from living trees.