Report: Olympic
Peninsula's rain forest appears doomed
02/08/2002
SEATTLE, WA – The Olympic Peninsula's rain forest is likely doomed by
global warming, a new report says. The report was released by the World
Wildlife Fund and the University of Toronto on Thursday as city
government officials from around the country took part in an environmental
workshop in Seattle. It focused on 113 biologically
rich parts of the world, including three in the Pacific Northwest: the
Olympic Peninsula, the Washington Cascades and the Klamath-Siskiyou region
of southern Oregon and Northern California. As the globe warms, ecosystems will migrate north, scientists say. If
plants and animals can't adapt to new conditions – which could include
higher temperatures and less water, for example – or migrate fast enough
to keep up with its old climate, they'll die. But the Olympic Peninsula's rain forest has nowhere to migrate to. "That's what makes it an even more potentially critical
situation," wildlife fund spokeswoman Kathleen Sullivan said Friday. The peninsula is likely to undergo a drastic change, she said, although
scientists say it's difficult to determine how quickly that change will
occur. "Under a wide range of
assumptions about future global warming and its effect on major vegetation
types, species losses can be expected in most of the planet's globally
significant eco-regions," the report concludes. The authors used a fairly conservative prediction about the expected
rate of global warming, basing it on the estimate that the amount of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will double in the next century. Many scientists predict that the concentration will double within the
next 70 years. "It means we're probably in trouble," Sullivan said. But, she said, people can improve the situation.
The report urges governments to sign on to the 1997 Kyoto treaty, which
calls on about 40 industrialized nations to cut to fixed levels the carbon
dioxide emissions that are believed to cause global warming. The Bush administration is urging a go-slow approach which would allow
goals for emissions reductions to change depending on rates of economic
growth. That would allow for greater emissions, primarily by the United
States. At the environmental conference Thursday, officials from other cities
praised Seattle for vowing to cut its emissions of greenhouse gasses by
one-fifth over the next eight years. Seattle City Light aims to make its
operations completely climate-friendly by next year. "At the local level, we can take actions that are unthinkable at
the state or national level," Mayor Greg Nickels told the ninth
National Cities for Climate Protection Workshop. "Our utilities are
not fundamentally a business, but a legacy." No matter what happens, people can look forward to hundreds of years of
global warming based on the greenhouse gases already put into the
atmosphere, University of Washington climate scientist Phillip Mote told
the conference. "We've bought a one-way ticket to a new climate," Mote said. Related stories: Kyoto: The Remedy by Henry Lamb |
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