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As the U.N. climate change talks take place in Bali, scientists say global warming is already wreaking havoc with nature. Most plants and animals are affected, and the change is occurring too fast for them to evolve.

A HEAVY GLOBAL TOLL

More than 3,000 flying foxes dropped dead, falling from trees in Australia. Giant squid migrated north to commercial fishing grounds off California, gobbling anchovy and hake. Butterflies have gone extinct in the Alps.

"A hell of a lot of species are in big trouble," said Stephen Williams, director of the Centre for Tropical Biodiversity & Climate Change at James Cook University in Australia. "I don't think there is any doubt we will see a lot of [extinctions]," he said. "But even before a species goes extinct, there are a lot of impacts. Most of the species here in the wet tropics would be reduced to ... 15 percent of their current habitat."

Globally, 30 percent of Earth's species could disappear if temperatures rise 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit -- and as much as 70 percent, if they rise 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit, a U.N. network of scientists reported last month.

Historical effects

It wouldn't be the first time. There have been five major extinctions in the last 520 million years, and four of them have been linked to warmer tropical seas, according to a study published last month in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British scientific journal.

The hardest hit will include plants and animals in colder climates or at higher elevations and those with limited ranges or little tolerance for temperature change, said Wendy Foden, a conservation biologist with the World Conservation Union, which catalogs threatened species.

The carbon dioxide emissions that are a leading cause of global warming also turn oceans more acidic, killing coral reefs and the microscopic plankton that blue whales and other marine mammals depend on for food.

Helping the coral reefs

Just a few years ago, the lush coral reefs off Bali island were dying out, bleached by rising temperatures, blasted by dynamite fishing and poisoned by cyanide. Now they are coming back, thanks to an unlikely remedy: electricity.

The coral is thriving on dozens of metal structures submerged in the bay and fed by cables that send low-voltage electricity, which conservationists say is reviving it and spurring more growth.

The project -- dubbed Bio-Rock -- is the brainchild of scientist Thomas Goreau and the late architect Wolf Hilbertz. The two have set up similar structures in some 20 countries, but the Bali experiment is the most extensive.

Goreau said the Pemuteran reefs off Bali's northwestern shore were under serious assault by 1998, victims of rising temperatures and aggressive fishing methods by impoverished islanders, such as stunning fish with cyanide poison and scooping them up with nets.

"Under these conditions, traditional [revival] methods fail," explained Goreau, who is in Bali presenting his research at the U.N.-led conference. "Our method is the only one that speeds coral growth."

Some say the effort is severely limited.

Rod Salm, coral reef specialist with the Nature Conservancy, said while the method may be useful in bringing small areas of damaged coral back to life, it has very limited application in vast areas that need protection.

a call for scientific action

Developing nations at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali demanded rapid transfers of technology Wednesday to help them combat global warming, while a report warned that some of Asia's biggest cities could be threatened by rising sea levels.

Poor and emerging economies argue they need more scientific know-how to reduce pollution and improve energy efficiency, but the wealthy nations want to focus on booming countries such as China to set goals for cutting pollution emissions, delegates and activists said.

"How on earth can you talk about targets if you don't want to engage on the scope, the depth and need of technology?" said Meena Raman, chairman of Friends of the Earth International. "In the last two days, the sincerity and urgency that is needed and goodwill ... is not happening."

The conference is meant to start a two-year negotiating process aimed at producing a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. That pact commits 36 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by the time it expires.

In Minnesota: Climate Change Advisory Group takes concrete steps toward reduction goals. B7

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