Two hundred years ago, studies on biodiversity began. At a conference Saturday morning, a Duke University professor voiced concern that biodiversity will decrease in the next 200 years.

“The places where species are born for the past 200 years are the places where species are dying,” said Prof. Stuart Pimm to about 200 students, faculty, alumni and Chicago-area residents at the Owen L. Coon Forum. “We know a great threat to biodiversity already is the forests are being cleared. We could lose all our rain forest in about a generation.”

Pimm, a professor of conservation ecology at Duke, spoke as part of a Science Outreach Series event focusing on global warming and its threat to biodiversity.

The ongoing series, organized by Northwestern’s Department of Neurobiology and Physiology, is intended to inform the public about current and upcoming issues in life-science research.

The panel of five experts discussed the increase of harmful greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide, and the effects of global warming. Greenhouse gases are necessary to retain the sun’s heat on the surface of the Earth, but too many greenhouse gases can cause global warming.

Panelists singled out carbon dioxide as one of the most harmful gases that have increased in the atmosphere because of human activities. The carbon dioxide in the air, in addition to increasing the greenhouse effect, dissolves in the oceans. This creates carbonic acid. As a result, the acidity of the ocean has increased.

“Carbonic acid is corrosive to the shells and skeletons of many marine animals,” said Richard A. Feely, an oceanographer who has written more than 150 papers and received awards for his research on the carbon cycle in the oceans. “They begin to dissolve. These species are food for larger animals.”

As the global temperature rises, species must move in order to find more favorable temperatures and climates.

“You can see the effects of global warming: hurricanes, floods, etc. affect human life on Earth,” said David Lentz, president of the Society for Economic Botany. Lentz also serves as a professor at NU and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The panelists said there is no easy solution. “We need human ingenuity to find ways to use energy, including conservation, and to find more sources of energy,” said Thomas Lovejoy, the former president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Although global warming is a problem, the population in general does not acknowledge it as one, said Weinberg junior David Liss.

“People everywhere should actually care about global warming because this is going to be our world and our children’s world,” Liss said. “I hope we can leave them with something to enjoy.”

Reach Sameera Kumar at [email protected].