Global warming: Animals and plants are affected - By: skiilio

The reason for this controversy is that most biological studies on the effects of climate change based on the so-called correlation analysis. This means that an attempt to detect statistical relationships over time between changes in climate and changes in a biological factor. But strictly speaking, is not correlation analysis evidence, they are only indications that there is a connection, and it will be subjective assessments when conclusions are drawn. It is only experimental attempt to clarify the causal relationships completely, and experiments are difficult to implement on issues relating to changes in ecosystems over large areas and long time. Biologists are accustomed to ascribe correlation analysis greater weight than economists because alternative methods are difficult to access.
Economists on the other hand, argues that one must show that the climate is the main cause of a large part of the observed changes to be able to say that with high probability, climate changes have caused the observed biological changes. Another problem the economists pointed out was that many of the biological surveys selected species in a way that could affect the conclusions and that they were added to areas where climate change is expected. Moreover, changes in biological systems have many causes. It is therefore difficult to clarify the significance of the various factors. Changes in land use that destroy or split up the species' habitat will often be the main cause of the rapid, local changes such as the prevalence of certain species. In a longer perspective, however, slow changes due to climate change are very important.
Found evidence of changes:
It is obvious that any effects of global warming on plants and animals are a very important issue in the climate debate, which also may influence political decisions. Further research on the subject after the IPCC report was completed in 2001 was therefore given high priority, and during the last time it published interesting results that shed new light on the matter.
Steps towards consensus:
The probability that some of the biological changes caused by climate change will be significantly larger, but is not stated. Parmesan and Yohe concentrated as the effects they called "sign switching". This includes studies where it is found that species that are adapted to cold regions, are less numerous and species adapted to warmer areas, are more numerous in an area where the temperature increases and vice versa when the temperature decreases. Furthermore, some species have been studied for a long time, expansion northward in the Northern Hemisphere during warm periods and vice versa in colder periods. Of the 294 species examined in which there were data from both a cooling and a heating period was 80-100% of the species (depending on the type of study so on) that showed "sign switching" in accordance with what one might expect of temperature variations. Yohe said that to the extent "sign switching" takes place, this is very compelling evidence that global warming has ecological effects. After these articles, it appears that the debate has most academic interest. The evidence that there are ecological responses to climate change on every continent and from a diversity of species is now very strong. Certainly, some other economists who participated in the IPCC's work is still somewhat skeptical, but they admit that the two articles in Nature is "a useful first step" to strengthen the evidence that such ecological effects have already been proven.

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