95th ESA Annual Meeting

Global Warming: The legacy of our past, the challenge for our future

Increases in surface temperatures on a global scale over recent decades support past predictions of global warming as a theory. Although this pattern may be attributable to long-term cycles in global temperatures and atmospheric CO₂, data sets examining climate phenomena at multi-millennial time scales (e.g., the Lake Vostok data) clearly demonstrate that current trends are far out of range of cyclic change alone. The accumulation of such data has led the United National Environment Programme's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the unavoidable conclusion: human activity has brought about unprecedented rates of temperature increase on a global scale through release of greenhouse gases primarily associated with combustion of fossil fuels.

In contrast to the high level of certainty of the phenomenon of global warming, environmental scientists (including and especially ecologists) have been less certain of its far-reaching effects, although recent evidence suggests that these effects can be far ranging: from altered plant phenology to enhanced occurrence of disease to exacerbated glacial retreat to increased frequency and intensity of tropical storms. Indeed, global warming will continue to exert influence at virtually all levels of ecological organization, from individuals to landscapes. At its 2010 Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA, the Ecological Society of America will place global warming at center stage to draw a critical combination of scientists, policy makers, and concerned citizens to understand further its causes and consequences and to elucidate a clear scenario for addressing what is perhaps the most serious environmental threat facing the biosphere.