Sun, Jun 1, 2008 (2:08 a.m.)

A federal report released last week says the nation’s forests, wildlife and water resources are exhibiting global warming’s effects and that negative effects will continue to be widespread and significant over the next 25 to 50 years.

The report is the result of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program’s analysis of more than 1,000 scientific papers. It was commissioned by the Agriculture Department and provides what is considered one of the most detailed reviews of how global climate change is altering America’s environment.

Those effects, caused by humans’ burning of fossil fuels, include increased frequencies of forest fires and drought and declines in mountain snowpack, especially in the West. In addition, the report predicts the United States could lose species that have evolved without the destruction and regeneration cycles of wildfires — such as saguaro cactuses and Joshua trees.

Of the 1,598 species of animals profiled in more than 800 studies, 60 percent have been affected by climate change, the report says. Stream temperatures also have increased, which can adversely affect species that rely on colder water, such as brown trout.

And it is not just the effects themselves that are unsettling, researchers say. It is also the speed with which they are occurring.

“They’re not in some distant future,” Anthony Janetos, director of the University of Maryland’s Joint Global Change Research Institute, told The Washington Post. “We’re experiencing them now.”

Short of immediately halting carbon emissions altogether, even the most drastic proposals for emissions reductions will not reverse some of the trends noted.

“Even under the most optimistic CO2 emission scenarios, important changes in sea level, regional and superregional temperatures and precipitation patterns will have profound effects,” the report says.

Such dismal conclusions could make conservation and emissions reduction efforts seem futile. On the contrary, that would be a simplistic response.

If anything, the notion that the planet may already have reached some level of irreversible degradation should inspire people to work harder to prevent further deterioration of the world’s precious natural resources. There is value, after all, in working aggressively to sustain our planet the best we can.