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WASHINGTON, DC, January 8, 2004 (ENS) – Climate change could drive more than
a quarter of all land animals and plants into extinction, a new study published
today has determined. The Earth's warming climate could extinguish the existence
of more than one million species, the researchers estimate.
The largest collaboration of scientists to ever investigate this issue used
computer models to simulate the ways species' ranges are expected to move in
response to changing temperatures and climate. Their findings are published in
today's edition of the journal "Nature."
"This study makes it clear that climate change is the most significant new
threat for extinctions this century," said co-author Lee Hannah, climate change
biology senior fellow at the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science at
Conservation International. "The combination of increasing habitat loss, already
recognized as the largest single threat ...