As for why I'm "assuming" they will diminish, this the conclusion, not the presumption, of most of the research in that area.
What you call "conclusion" is probably a forecast, since we're talking about the future, right?
In broad terms, we should expect this kind of thing to happen because so many species are adapted very strongly to very specific niches. When circumstances change rapidly, those species are unable to cope, and die out, but there are no species which are strongly adapted to the new circumstances to adequately replace them.
Recent ice ages have advanced and retreated very quickly on the evolutionary time scale. Earth's various ecologies survived, for example, the last ice age just fine and the glaciation looks to me to have been MUCH more disruptive for temperate zones than a couple of degrees of warming are likely to be.
Yes. By itself, anthropogenic climate change is unlikely to result in a mass extinction on the level of one of the Big Five, but it would still almost certainly be visible in the fossil record as a mass extinction event
I agree that we're in the middle of an anthropogenic mass extinction, the only thing is that it has nothing to do with climate change. It's just man taking over the planet. This mass extinction started thousands of years ago, goes on now, and will likely continue in the future.
I think that whatever extinctions global warming may cause, they will be insignificant and indistinguishable from noise given the ongoing (non-climate) human impact.
What you call "conclusion" is probably a forecast, since we're talking about the future, right?
In some cases, yes, in other cases, it's already observable as an ongoing process (I brought up reef ecosystems before because they're a particularly visible example of this.)
...Recent ice ages have advanced and retreated very quickly on the evolutionary time scale. Earth's various ecologies survived, for example, the last ice age just fine and the glaciation looks to me to have been MUCH more disruptive for temperate zones than a couple of degrees of
Note: Please see this post of mine for more on the project, my sources, and potential sources for bias.
I have written a couple of blog posts on my understanding of climate forecasting, climate change, and the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis (here and here). I also laid down the sources I was using to inform myself here.
I think one question that a number of readers may have had is: given my lack of knowledge (and unwillingness to undertake extensive study) of the subject, why am I investigating it at all, rather than relying on the expert consensus, as documented by the IPCC that, even if we're not sure is correct, is still the best bet humanity has for getting things right? I intend to elaborate on the reasons for taking a closer look at the matter, while still refraining from making the study of atmospheric science a full-time goal, in a future post.
Right now, I'm curious to hear how you formed your views on climate change. In particular, I'm interested in answers to questions such as these (not necessarily answers to all of them, or even to only these questions).