Extinction and climate change

Background:

Earth’s climate is changing rapidly.

No, it is not a hoax, not a projection for the future, not a scare tactic from whatever political or advocacy group that you or your favorite politician may not like. It’s real.

In our lifetimes, it has changed–growing warmer and often dryer, with daily weather more prone to extremes–winds, rain, snow, cold, heat, more destructive storms leading to more extensive flooding, wildfires, economic damage, deaths, etc.

The research predicting and showing climate change has been there since at least the 1970’s. Our children, our children’s children, future society will pay an even greater price than we are paying today.

One of many immediate consequences of a changing climate has been and is a noticeable loss of biodiversity–the extinction and disappearance of animal and plant species.

Could human beings eventually face this threat as well? We have seen great and even abrupt shifts of Earth’s climate in the past but, until the present day, we have not seen it during a time when human beings were the dominant species.

**updated May 2026**

Sources:

*Adams, A. M., Trujillo, L. A., Campbell, C. J., Akre, K. L., Joaquin Arroyo‐Cabrales, Burns, L., Coleman, J. T. H., Dixon, R. D., Francis, C. M., Melquisedec Gamba‐Rios, Kuczynska, V., McIntire, A., Medellín, R.,A., Morris, K. M., Ortega, J., Reichard, J. D., Reichert, B., Segers, J. L., Whitby, M. D., & Frick, W. F. (2024). The state of the bats in North America. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1541(1), 115-128.

[Journal page] [PDF] [Cited by] [More information]

*Brierley, A. S., & Kingsford, M. J. (2009). Impacts of Climate Change on Marine Organisms and Ecosystems. Current Biology, 19(14), R602-R614.

[Journal page ] [Cited by] [More information]

*Ceballos, G., Ehrlich, P. R., & Raven, P. H. (2020). Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(24), 13596-13602.

[Journal page] [PDF] [Cited by] [More information]

*James, D. G. (2024). Monarch Butterflies in Western North America: A Holistic Review of Population Trends, Ecology, Stressors, Resilience and Adaptation. Insects, 15(1), 40.

[Journal page ] [PDF] [Cited by] [More information]

*Rosenberg, K. V., Dokter, A. M., Blancher, P. J., Sauer, J. R., Smith, A. C., Smith, P. A., Stanton, J. C., Panjabi, A., Helft, L., Parr, M., & Marra, P. P. (2019). Decline of the North American avifauna. Science, 366(6461), 120-124.

[Journal page ] [PDF] [Cited by] [More information]

*Trisos, C. H., Merow, C., & Pigot, A. L. (2020). The projected timing of abrupt ecological disruption from climate change. Nature, 580(7804), 496-501.

[Journal page] [Cited by] [More information]

*Young, D. J. N., Slaton, M. R., & Koltunov, A. (2023). Temperature is positively associated with tree mortality in California subalpine forests containing whitebark pine. Ecosphere, 14(2), e4400.

[Journal page ] [PDF] [Cited by] [More information]