Mass Die-Off of Birds in Southwest US 'Probably Linked to Climate Crisis' (theguardian.com) 109
The Guardian reports:
The mass die-off of thousands of songbirds in south-western U.S. was caused by long-term starvation, made worse by unseasonably cold weather probably linked to the climate crisis, scientists have said.
Flycatchers, swallows and warblers were among the migratory birds "falling out of the sky" in September, with carcasses found in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska. A USGS National Wildlife Health Center necropsy has found 80% of specimens showed typical signs of starvation... The remaining 20% were not in good enough condition to carry out proper tests. Nearly 10,000 dead birds were reported to the wildlife mortality database by citizens, and previous estimates suggest hundreds of thousands may have died...
"It looks like the immediate cause of death in these birds was emaciation as a result of starvation," said Jonathan Sleeman, director of the USGS National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, which received 170 bird carcasses and did necropsies on 40 of them. "It's really hard to attribute direct causation, but given the close correlation of the weather event with the death of these birds, we think that either the weather event forced these birds to migrate prior to being ready, or maybe impacted their access to food sources during their migration...."
Most deaths happened around 9 and 10 September during a bout of cold weather that probably meant food was particularly scarce...
Flycatchers, swallows and warblers were among the migratory birds "falling out of the sky" in September, with carcasses found in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and Nebraska. A USGS National Wildlife Health Center necropsy has found 80% of specimens showed typical signs of starvation... The remaining 20% were not in good enough condition to carry out proper tests. Nearly 10,000 dead birds were reported to the wildlife mortality database by citizens, and previous estimates suggest hundreds of thousands may have died...
"It looks like the immediate cause of death in these birds was emaciation as a result of starvation," said Jonathan Sleeman, director of the USGS National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, which received 170 bird carcasses and did necropsies on 40 of them. "It's really hard to attribute direct causation, but given the close correlation of the weather event with the death of these birds, we think that either the weather event forced these birds to migrate prior to being ready, or maybe impacted their access to food sources during their migration...."
Most deaths happened around 9 and 10 September during a bout of cold weather that probably meant food was particularly scarce...
Food is scarce, so cue the trolls in 3, 2, 1 . . (Score:5, Insightful)
The article does not delve into any background, but some recent studies have confirm massive reductions in insect populations. I really don't know why we have articles with such wishy-washy language, but anyone can understand long term reductions of food (insects) and food insecurity causing a calamity when a sudden weather event occurs which cuts off access to food. Of course, the anti-climate change troll-machine will line up, so maybe that's part of it.
Re: Food is scarce, so cue the trolls in 3, 2, 1 . (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Food is scarce, so cue the trolls in 3, 2, 1 . (Score:4, Insightful)
Or the machine calling anything climate change. Here's a much more probable explanation: pesticides. Mile after mile after mile of farm fields being completely eradicated of insects by modern insecticides is going to make finding them for animals that eat them difficult to impossible.
Pesticides are definitely a problem but these things don't work in isolation. If there were fewer pesticides, the birds could probably get more insects; if there was less climate change there would also be more insects for them. The case that the biggest problem is climate change has been getting much stronger. In previous climate changes at the ends of ice ages and so on, the change was much slower and so species could move around to new areas that suited them. This time round, human driven climate change is just so much faster that it's likely to be too difficult to adapt to. That is happening everywhere whilst pesticides are more area specific, though in areas like California central valley that area can be huge. Insects could probably recover from pesticides with time, but if there aren't any insects in the other areas then they never come back.
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Or the machine calling anything climate change. Here's a much more probable explanation: pesticides. Mile after mile after mile of farm fields being completely eradicated of insects by modern insecticides is going to make finding them for animals that eat them difficult to impossible.
Pesticides are definitely a problem but these things don't work in isolation. If there were fewer pesticides, the birds could probably get more insects; if there was less climate change there would also be more insects for them. The case that the biggest problem is climate change has been getting much stronger.
Not really. There's no plausible reason to believe that climate change has resulted in the loss of any significant number of insects, most species of which have a lifecycle measured in single-digit weeks. If anything, the milder winters with fewer days of freezing temperatures caused by climate change should mean more insects, not fewer.
Blaming climate change seems to be a knee-jerk reaction these days, probably because climate change research gets funded. That doesn't mean it's the cause for even half o
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Pesticides are definitely a problem but these things don't work in isolation. If there were fewer pesticides, the birds could probably get more insects; if there was less climate change there would also be more insects for them. The case that the biggest problem is climate change has been getting much stronger.
Not really. There's no plausible reason to believe that climate change has resulted in the loss of any significant number of insects, most species of which have a lifecycle measured in single-digit weeks. If anything, the milder winters with fewer days of freezing temperatures caused by climate change should mean more insects, not fewer.
I don't know enough to say for sure the priority between three things I have heard of - pesticides, climate change, habitat destruction and and artificial lights. Each of those appear to be serious issues. However, saying there is "no plausible reason" just isn't true. Pretty serious studies and modelling have show that climate change is a major issue [theguardian.com]. The claim is that most insects depend on specific ecosystems and that with climate change those become unsuitable for them. Insect lifecycles are complex
Re: Food is scarce, so cue the trolls in 3, 2, 1 (Score:5, Interesting)
There's also a huge incentive to commit fraud by the anti-climate change people, businesses and especially governments. The next Province over from me is spending 10's of millions to try to prove that there is a massive conspiracy to attack their oil mining while they spiral into debt and unemployment due to their right wing politics.
Re: Food is scarce, so cue the trolls in 3, 2, 1 (Score:1)
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OTOH, there is the conspiracy to deny the cleanup costs, whether the abandoned wells (nothing like the farmer with a leaky sour gas well with no owner on his land rusting away) or the massive leaking polluted settling ponds.
Seems to be conspiracies all the way down.
Re: Food is scarce, so cue the trolls in 3, 2, 1 (Score:1)
"Oil and gas extraction is necessary to sustain our standard of living for the foreseeable future. Natural resource extraction of any sort has costs and those costs will necessarily be born by some small number of people more than others because the costs tend to be geographically concentrated while the benefits are distributed. We must accept that the net benefit of cheap and plentiful liquid hydrocarbon fuels are worth thos
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OTOH, there is the conspiracy to deny the cleanup costs, whether the abandoned wells (nothing like the farmer with a leaky sour gas well with no owner on his land rusting away) or the massive leaking polluted settling ponds.
Seems to be conspiracies all the way down.
The real problem is that there are only two clueless extremes and no intelligent middle. On the one hand, you have the people screaming to stop the pipeline entirely, no matter how much effort goes into making it safe. On the other hand, you have the people screaming to get the pipeline approved without doing anything to make it safe.
Where are the people in the middle, demanding seismic protection and double-walled pipes in the most critical areas (e.g. above water) with "pigs" that crawl between the inne
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So socialize the costs and privatize the profits?
I'm not saying get rid of oil, which I need to drive until I can afford an electric vehicle, and others need for heat as it is currently cheaper then hydro. Thing is that mining bitumen is extra dirty and should we be giving our natural resources away to for profit industries which conveniently have shell companies that go bankrupt when it is time to cleanup their mess?
There's the real cost of extracting natural resources and there's the fake cost where all t
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""Oil and gas extraction is necessary to sustain our standard of living for the foreseeable future. Natural resource extraction of any sort has costs and those costs will necessarily ... lead to overall lower standards of living than what we have built over the last century and a half."
That's full of inaccuracies, vague and manipulative statement
"That's an adult statement."
Childish?
Re: Food is scarce, so cue the trolls in 3, 2, 1 (Score:1)
Also a problem: 30 year old know-nothings in Congress *are* pushing for an immediate ban on oil and gas. Whackaloon limousine liberals here in Massachusetts are laying down in front of bulldozers to stop natural gas pipeline construction so that we can keep using
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Good points, though one of the downsides of the one approved (actually the Federal government bought it) pipeline is the increased tanker traffic that goes with it. Supposedly the tankers are safer then ever, also bigger. It would be nice to get some straight answers about the stuff in the pipeline, like does it float or sink and what exactly are they cutting it with to make the tar flow through the pipeline.
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I concur. In the US, some mining permits are contingent on up-front deposits into a trust fund to be used for cleanup after the mining is done, decades down the line. I believe this is a state-by-state thing and not federal, but I could be wrong.
It's Provincial here, the Provinces are in charge of their natural resources, so they decide things like trust funds and how big they should be. Problem is trying to mine stuff that really needs $100+ per barrel prices at current prices and never thinking about how there will be a downturn, or their biggest customer discovering fracking all that shale. The problem is the conservatives seem to have forgotten about things like diversity and putting money aside for a rainy day. Instead it is cut taxes to a bar
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Probably most of those theories were things that could reasonably be true and are worth investigating but even in cases where those theories were so bad they shouldn't have been considered you still have to overcome Halon's razor - "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
Having said that, the judgement of the truth of a theory is whether it's proponents make more, better predictions that it's opponents. Climate scientists keep winning bets about this [mashable.com] and it's pretty cle
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Not really. There's no plausible reason to believe that climate change has resulted in the loss of any significant number of insects, most species of which have a lifecycle measured in single-digit weeks. If anything, the milder winters with fewer days of freezing temperatures caused by climate change should mean more insects, not fewer.
Here's a plausible hypothesis. Background - Insects have adapted to their environment. As proof of that, there are insects that only live in Tropical or damp environments - they do not have worldwide distribution. Sometimes they will move to different areas in order to obtain an environment that suits.
But if a mass of insects dies off because of a climate that has changed to say dry when they were adapted to a rainy climate, it is then plausible that the animals that feed on them will also expire of star
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Not really. There's no plausible reason to believe that climate change has resulted in the loss of any significant number of insects, most species of which have a lifecycle measured in single-digit weeks. If anything, the milder winters with fewer days of freezing temperatures caused by climate change should mean more insects, not fewer.
Apologies - I forgot one thing. If some insects do not die off because of milder winters, it does not mean there are more insects, it means that the insects that once were killed off are now interfering with other insect life cycles. So there might be less, or there might be insects not as useable as food for species adapted to eating other insects that are in short supply now.
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Not really. There's no plausible reason to believe that climate change has resulted in the loss of any significant number of insects, most species of which have a lifecycle measured in single-digit weeks. If anything, the milder winters with fewer days of freezing temperatures caused by climate change should mean more insects, not fewer.
Here's a plausible hypothesis. Background - Insects have adapted to their environment. As proof of that, there are insects that only live in Tropical or damp environments - they do not have worldwide distribution. Sometimes they will move to different areas in order to obtain an environment that suits.
But if a mass of insects dies off because of a climate that has changed to say dry when they were adapted to a rainy climate, it is then plausible that the animals that feed on them will also expire of starvation.
My main problem with that is that most insect species have a really wide range. For example, the American grasshopper covers almost all of North and South America. Two species of anopheles mosquito cover almost all of the United States, with their territories separated only by a narrow arid strip in the middle. And so on.
Also, insect species can migrate pretty quickly. Africanized bees expanded their territory at a rate of several hundred miles per year. Red ants expanded their territory at well over a
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Not really. There's no plausible reason to believe that climate change has resulted in the loss of any significant number of insects, most species of which have a lifecycle measured in single-digit weeks. If anything, the milder winters with fewer days of freezing temperatures caused by climate change should mean more insects, not fewer.
Here's a plausible hypothesis. Background - Insects have adapted to their environment. As proof of that, there are insects that only live in Tropical or damp environments - they do not have worldwide distribution. Sometimes they will move to different areas in order to obtain an environment that suits.
But if a mass of insects dies off because of a climate that has changed to say dry when they were adapted to a rainy climate, it is then plausible that the animals that feed on them will also expire of starvation.
My main problem with that is that most insect species have a really wide range. For example, the American grasshopper covers almost all of North and South America. Two species of anopheles mosquito cover almost all of the United States, with their territories separated only by a narrow arid strip in the middle. And so on.
Let me start off by saying that your arguments are pretty sound. As well, I am not convinced that it is AGW for insect decline anyhow. I just wanted to point out that there were plausible arguments for AGW related dieoff.
My main criticisms on your points are that migratory routes are pretty fixed, and that the way a species changes it's location to a changing food source is that the individuals that live where the food is no longer available, die, and where there is still food, they continue to live. Also
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So much of all of this is conjecture, and we'll know soon. The good news is that birds have an incredible capacity to regenerate populations once protected. Locally we used to make fun of the Ducks Unlimited's quest to protect Mallards. They were having some issues here, but Many started feeding and protecting them, and their population rose to the point were people were told not to feed them, they needed to disperse themselves. Apparently something similar happened to the Chickadees. Something was killing them a few years back. Now at our backyard feeder, they are close to dominant.
And then, there are the [expletive deleted] starlings.
If you've never seen your entire lawn turn black with starlings, count yourself lucky. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the songbirds were just being out-competed for food by aggressive and prolific invasive species.
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So much of all of this is conjecture, and we'll know soon. The good news is that birds have an incredible capacity to regenerate populations once protected. Locally we used to make fun of the Ducks Unlimited's quest to protect Mallards. They were having some issues here, but Many started feeding and protecting them, and their population rose to the point were people were told not to feed them, they needed to disperse themselves. Apparently something similar happened to the Chickadees. Something was killing them a few years back. Now at our backyard feeder, they are close to dominant.
And then, there are the [expletive deleted] starlings.
If you've never seen your entire lawn turn black with starlings, count yourself lucky. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the songbirds were just being out-competed for food by aggressive and prolific invasive species.
There was a mass poisoning of Starlings near our city airport. It worked once or twice, but it turns out that it really didn't help much, and new ones moved in immediately. They probably shouldn't have put the airport where it's surrounded by working farmed fields on all sides. A veritable smorgasbord for birds and their predators.
Which was pointed out when they were asked if they were going to constantly poison all the birds in the city. Not a terribly pleasant task, and a lot more than starlings were ki
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Pesticides are definitely a problem but these things don't work in isolation.
More notably, pesticides are definitely a problem but they're not particularly new.
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The problem is, neither is climate change. I realize that either can reach a tipping point, and I guess maybe that could be it, but given the rate of decline, this intuitively seems more like an infectious process. Have they ruled out wasting diseases (e.g. bornavirus) as the cause of malnutrition?
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Don't think of the birds migrating to where the insects, think more migrating back to the same locations. As climate changes, the ecology changes and shifts, impacting insect populations that then impact those that prey upon them. The insects spring back next season further south or north as the case may be and the bird populations tend to shift with them, sort of, think younger birds in new territory older birds dying in the old territory, sort of thing.
Unseasonal weather and just the typical outliers you
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PS by localised, keep in mind what birds do in the morning, scream "My tree, I am not dead yet, over and over", so returning to the same exact locale and blocked from other locales by other existing residents, birds are territorial especially insect eaters, seed eaters not so much.
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Hush. The global climate has always been static.
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Pesticides can absolutely work in isolation. They aren't dependent on the weather.
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Pesticides can absolutely work in isolation.
Trust me - no pests ; no pesticides killing pests.
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Wow, that's almost tautology. Fascinating.
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And that's almost sarcasm.
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Keep trying! You'll get it right next time.
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Was the dead guy killed by the kick to the kidneys or the punch to the head? He suffered both, and the doc says either would have put him on the brink of death -- but I believe it was the kick, head trauma can't possibly kill someone!
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Here in the North - where global warming is faster than elsewhere - there have been numerous studies that has observed it being caused by spring arriving faster every year.
Birds rely on the emergence of insects to coincide each spring with their eggs hatching or otherwise they will have less food to feed their hungry chicks.
Insect populations rely on there being plant life to sustain them when they emerge each spring from hibernation.
If insects are lured to emerge by warm weather too early in the spring, th
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Insect populations rely on there being plant life to sustain them when they emerge each spring from hibernation. If insects are lured to emerge by warm weather too early in the spring, they will starve and not be available as food to birds.
What is too early? It is either warm enough or it is not. If it is warm enough for insects, it is warm for plants too, and both come back to life. Otherwise both stay hibernated. The system is quite robust and proven, it was well-oiled during the last few hundreds million years.
Weather can be destructive to both insects and plants (and then animals) if it is unstable, that is, if it gets back cold after becoming warmer in spring or vice versa in autumn, but that's another problem.
It would be foolish to look for just one reason for the decline of insects and dismiss all others.
Which is exactly the probl
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What is too early? It is either warm enough or it is not. If it is warm enough for insects, it is warm for plants too, and both come back to life. Otherwise both stay hibernated.
That was my thought too, unless the plants are much smarter than the insects, which seems unlikely.
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A lot of plants are tied to daylight hours rather then weather when it comes to waking up in the spring and going dormant in the autumn. While there is a of natural variety in the timing, I see it in a local Cottonwood forest where a few trees wake up really early and a few late compared to the majority, it takes time for a population to adjust as the early ones need to out breed the later ones.
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A lot of plants are tied to daylight hours rather then weather when it comes to waking up in the spring and going dormant in the autumn.
is false. It is the length of darkness that matters: some plants require long nights to bloom (those blooming in early spring or autumn), others require short nights (summer flowers, many vegetables). An early spring just means that spring flowers bloom early. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Well, I didn't mention seeds, rather when plants come out of, go into dormancy. And hours of darkness is just the inverse of hours of light.
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And hours of darkness is just the inverse of hours of light.
Not in this case, since the hours of darkness must be consecutive. Just a few minutes of light in the middle of the night and the clock of a long-night plant is disrupted. A few minutes of darkness during daytime do nothing. That is why a very cloudy day or a sun eclipse have no real consequences on plants.
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You may be right and the increasing lightning storms are causing problems, I don't know.
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Here in the North - where global warming is faster than elsewhere - there have been numerous studies that has observed it being caused by spring arriving faster every year.
Birds rely on the emergence of insects to coincide each spring with their eggs hatching or otherwise they will have less food to feed their hungry chicks.
Insect populations rely on there being plant life to sustain them when they emerge each spring from hibernation.
If insects are lured to emerge by warm weather too early in the spring, they will starve and not be available as food to birds.
That explanation seems extremely implausible to me. Although some species do die off and come back in the winter, others either freeze and thaw, shelter in warmer areas (streams, near houses, etc.), or continue to behave normally. Warmer winters mean that more of those latter groups of insects survive the winter, so on average, you would expect more insects, not fewer, when winters are warmer. In fact, lots of northern areas are having real problems caused by invasive species from the south moving north
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...then I would look into the overuse of pesticides, herbicides and the likes...
That changed quickly this year, or your argument makes no sense.
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Re:Food is scarce, so cue the trolls in 3, 2, 1 . (Score:5, Insightful)
then I would look into the overuse of pesticides, herbicides and the likes, before looking into climate change.
Sure, but you may find that the overuse of pesticides has a smaller effect than climate change if you do. Inserts are incredibly climate dependent so your instinct to dismiss climate change "because everything nowadays is climate change" just shows your own bias.
When asking yourself why everything is climate change you could look at all those Ferrari driving scientists with their grant money, oh wait that doesn't exist. Well the other option is that the world is in fact sensitive to climate and as we fuck it up we actually cause a very large and diverse number of problems.
PSA: Please everyone look up the word "troll"! (Score:2)
No, it does not mean *that*, nor did it ever.
It means *this*: http://www.catb.org/jargon/htm... [catb.org]
The reason for the pussy footing (Score:5, Insightful)
This is made possible because the right wing has zero compunction about lying (we know they're lying too, we have SEC filings where they don't lie discussing climate change, the US Military talking about it in detail, the oil executive's own scientists discussing it in papers from 50+ years ago, etc, etc).
And thanks it it being a left/right political issue you can't even bring it up. Watch as I'm modded down into pulp for bringing politics into it. We've been conditioned to think anything that touches politics and the left/right divide is verboten and evil. That wasn't an accident either.
And the worst thing is, we never learn. These tactics were developed in the 70s as a response to the right wing's losses in the 50s & 60s then perfected in the 80s. We've had 30 years to figure them out and see them for what they are. And we've done jack and shit.
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Or maybe most major media outlets in the United States have been friendly to the Democrat party for decades. Liberal or otherwise.
Fox News (Score:2)
But Twitter flags the Prez when he lies so all is Fair & Balance(tm), right?
Media has an Establishment bias. Not left or right. The goal is to benefit their owners, which are the billionaires that run everything, including your life and mine. Dems call them the ruling class. GOP's rank & file call them "The Swamp" and the hard core call them the "Deep State". It's the same people.
But again, we never learn. Are you a paid shit poster? A troll? A fool? Doesn't matter. The fa
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Media has a Democrat bias. Has since Cronkite. He basically admitted it years after he retired (and tried to pass it off as "well we're human in the press, so anyone who isn't liberal is inhumane"). Stop fooling yourself.
The only people around here getting paid are either on the take from Xi or spamming affiliate links.
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I don't think "cold weather probably linked to the climate crisis" is one of those things you can say without a really good explanation. It's like saying "increasing Republican power linked to the election of Joe Biden," it's just bizarre. But that's exactly what this article does.
There are no quoted scientists in the article linking "cold weather" to "the climate crisis". One biologist is quoted saying "it appears that a change in climate is playing a role in this [mega-drought]". This is the only link to
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And yes, I know there's also a line saying "Sleeman could not say if this event was directly related to climate change but acknowledged that it is making extreme weather events more likely," which to me sounds like the journalist is trying a bit too hard to make it about climate change: "Was the the cold weather related to climate change?"..."Er, well, I can't say if it's directly related. Global warming is, uh, mostly warming."..."But isn't it true, Mr. Sleeman, that climate change makes extreme weather e
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And yes, I know there's also a line saying "Sleeman could not say if this event was directly related to climate change but acknowledged that it is making extreme weather events more likely," which to me sounds like the journalist is trying a bit too hard to make it about climate change
Or, and bear with me on this, every time a scientist says "It's climate change", they get death threats from random patriotic citizens and their funding cut by random patriotic congresscritters. So even if it's obvious, they've decided to obfuscate to maintain their short-term advantage of continued life and work, even though it's to the long-term disadvantage of their grandchildren.
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Looks like they got to you first!
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Like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Oh, and I am not "trolling". (Score:2)
Awesome, Slashdot.
An unrelated 70s ad?
Is this supposed to be an agreement with me by lack of counter-arguments?
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> I am dead serious.
If you are, then you're a hypocrite - you're "alive serious".
The wise believe what people do, not what they say.
Stop misusing moderation, you cowards! (Score:1)
STOP FUCKING MISUSING THE TROLL MODERATION TO CENSOR THINGS YOU ARE IN DENIAL ABOUT!
FACE REALITY, YOU MODERATING COWARDS!
-- ... yeah,no shit? filter error: don't use so many caps. it's like yelling. ... yeah,no shit? filter error: don't use so many caps. it's like yelling. ... yeah,no shit? filter error: don't use so many caps. it's like yelling. ... yeah,no shit? filter error: don't use so many caps. it's like yelling. ... yeah,no shit?
filter error: don't use so many caps. it's like yelling.
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You first!
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Why? He has the (Final) Solution: Mass Genocide.
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... We are the pathogen. Literally the worst in all of Earth's history. Never been an extinction even as big as us...
Modded into oblivion for speaking, if not the truth, at least a truth. That's just sad.
Good thing USDA wasn't crippled... (Score:2, Insightful)
Say... by a pointless and dumb relocation into middle of nowhere, shedding experts by hundreds [bizjournals.com] and then simply not hiring replacements.
Along with all other fun things done to CDC, NIH, FDA, NSF... [nih.gov] and general day-to-day sabotage [sciencemag.org] done by the Dumpeacho administration...
It is safe to say that the great Dumpeacho carnage of America will continue for generations.
We suggest investing in graveyard space, caskets and crematorium services.
if the cold kills the bugs (Score:1)
Climate and ? (Score:3, Informative)
Nebraska (Score:3)
Since when is Nebraska in the south-west?
From the article:
> It’s really hard to attribute direct causation, but given the close correlation of the weather event with the death of these birds, we think that either the weather event > forced these birds to migrate prior to being ready, or maybe impacted their access to food sources during their migration.
Keep reading and you find only climate considerations. It says the cause of death is related to starvation and that the big flying muscles were wasting so this wasn't a short-term starvation. There is no mention of pesticides, no mention of GMO crops - or anything other than climate. I'm all of science, really, but we need to pay attention to confirmation bias and test things that we don't already believe too.
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Why should it mention GMO crops?
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Because GMO crops are *designed*, in some cases, to target insects that are considered *pests* to the farmer. Those same insects *might* be *food* for birds. Food to the birds, pest to the farmer, *maybe*. These scientists could not see past a weather event and then point to climate change when there could be other things at work here. I'm not condemning GMOs, I'm saying that there are other things we could look at in the ecosystem beyond weather/climate. A weather event may have been too much for the
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Thereâ(TM)s a more likely culprit (Score:2)
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Is that suddenly a much bigger factor this year?
Even with climate, climate change per se doesn't kill things. Unusual weather events do, and what *were* unusual weather events are more common with climate change; the 100 year storm or drought becomes a twenty year or even ten year event. So this doesn't mean there'll be a big die off next year, in fact there may be a population rebound over several years until the 100 year famine happens ahead of schedule again.
Soylent Green will be People (Score:2)
Soylent Green will be People
It comes down to water (Score:2)
There has been almost no rain in the southwest, with many locations having experienced no rain for 100 days or more. The monsoon never materialized, was also very hot. Vegas broke the record for days without rain Ranchers have described conditions so dry, they have not been seen in 70 years or more. Most populations are highly dependent on water and also rely on the monsoon to keep them going through summer
More likely linked to cats (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Everything bad is due to climate change (Score:1)
Re:Forestry management (Score:5, Informative)
The majority of forests in California are federally managed [ktvu.com]. Perhaps the feds should do their job. Or maybe the private land owners should do their job and clean up their own properties.
Re: Forestry management (Score:2)
I would like to note that this article mentions cold being a problem.
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And a weather event. All events are now blamable on something.
They always were, just that it was an angry god in the past, give them money and power. Now it's something else, give them money and power.
Religion and politics are the same thing.
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Re:Forestry management (Score:5, Informative)
The OP laid the blame at the feet of California for not properly managing "their" forests. I pointed out the majority of forests are not managed by the State of California but by the federal government or private land owners and that perhaps those two groups, which own 98% of the forests in the state, should do their job.
Tell me how my comment isn't on point to the OP's comment.
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If a homeowner cleans up his virgin forest property, and someone trips anyway, he opens himself up to lawsuits by lawyers searching for yachts on his land. Best to leave it alone.
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If a homeowner cleans up his virgin forest property, and someone trips anyway, he opens himself up to lawsuits by lawyers searching for yachts on his land. Best to leave it alone.
That's a little cynical. He would be liable if they didn't clean it up and the person got injured, too. He is just more likely to have people trespassing (but presumably less likely to have injuries when they do, so those should balance out).
The main problem, IMO, is actually nosy local governments that pass strict rules about how many trees you can cut down on your own property when building a home or creating a neighborhood. This practice leads to an insane number of homes with an insane number of tree
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As far as fighting the actual fires, California has long relied on unpaid prison labor as forest firefighters. After years of firefighter experience, parolees are not hired as regular paid firefighters, so fewer and fewer are choosing to risk their lives for no benefit. Thus leaving CA with a significant lack of
Re:Biologists with low statistical knowledge ... (Score:5, Informative)
These birds showed signs of long-term starvation in the same year as a drought. Models of climate change predict that such droughts will become more common. A government official (Jonathan Sleeman, dir. USGS National Wildlife Health Center) noted that mass animal death events have become more common in recent years, lending credibility to this hypothesis. A professor (Martha Desmond, NMSU, biology department) is pursuing funding so they can better monitor future incidents of this nature.
Ecologists are absolute masters of statistics. They rely on complex statistical tests much moreso than any other discipline, and have probably done more to advance the art than any other interdisciplinary field. Here [oup.com] is an example of a publication from Dr. Desmond's lab in which the main objective is to establish which proposed statistical model best fits their observed facts in a study of how long birds' nests survive. There is absolutely nothing defective or deficient about it, and it demonstrates an adroit willingness to utilize statistics.
In the case of this bird die-off event, you are correct that robust statistical modelling has not been applied to the extent that ecologists usually do so, but your logic is inside out. The field researchers—who often spend weeks or months at a time going out into the field to immerse themselves in their environments while collecting data—are relying on their years of experience and intuition about their data moreso than usual in this case. There's an obvious reason for this: political agendas have poisoned the well for the better part of two decades. The Trump and Bush administrations suppressed, destroyed, or defunded [theguardian.com] many of the climate studies that researchers like Desmond need in order to advance their work in an orderly fashion, and slowed or starved initiatives to monitor wildlife health that didn't depend explicitly on examining the impact of climate change as part of their mission statement. As such they have to make do with blatant observations, like thousands of animal deaths, in order to prove that something is wrong.
To an outsider with no knowledge of the field, I understand it can look "unofficial" or "illegitimate" when the warning bells reach you through a route so unconventional as an investigative piece in a British newspaper, but that's what corruption (and the resultant apocalypse fatigue [berkeley.edu]) has done to scientific institutions in the US. Regulatory capture is a relentless predator that has ruined every other federal oversight apparatus and turned them into revolving doors for industry executives. As a geek with a six-digit UID, you are no doubt aware of the mess that has happened at the FCC and how it is used to fight municipal broadband projects, manipulate the definition of "high-speed internet" to mitigate costs of government initiatives to expand internet access and wage war on small ISPs. For every Comcast and AT&T investor that had a clean conscience after Ajit Pai dismissed the investigation into the automated ballot-stuffing around the murder of net neutrality, there's two who hold stock in the petroleum industry, five or six more who think that seeding "controversy" about climate change will save coal-mining jobs, and at least one who genuinely believes the Earth is a six-thousand-year-old pancake that God created for mankind to bulldoze into a parking lot. None of these people are motivated by the pursuit of truth, and none of them derive any of their beliefs from evidence or logic. They have not earned your open-minded patience.
Re: Biologists with low statistical knowledge ... (Score:2)
"...blah blah blah..."
= it's Trump's fault (and Republicans generally)
Nicely wrapped screed, but politically motivated screed nonetheless.
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Pro-business != anti environment, although it's predictable that you seem to believe they're synonyms.
Personally I'd prefer government-paycheck scientists spend more time presenting data, and less time as advocacy crusaders because they don't get the make the decisions.
Let's say in your house that your roof is leaking, and your electrical system is old and desperately needs replacement. You'd get expert opinions from roofers and electricians, but you're not going to ask them (generally) which is 'more impo
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You mean most of them?
Generally I blame gullible voters too stupid to understand how our government works and that certain "promises" are entirely outside the power of the politician to deliver them. Such promises should be held AGAINST the candidate (who should well understand the limits of the office he or she is running for) if not simply discounted.
For example I thought Trump's Wall nonsense was just that: ludicrous, stupid, non constructive, and something he would never be able to deliver.
"Drain the s
Re: warming (Score:3)
Probably because the former verbiage was misleading to people like you. The average temperature is going up. It is warming globally. It's the proper term to describe the phenomenon but poor at implying the effects. It doesn't mean we won't have winters or our summers will be hottest every year.
It's been said since the beginning that we would see more weather in the extremes due to a warming climate.
The other aspect is that "warming" seems to imply that we have plenty of time. But we don't. Reducing our CO