Wading birds declining in the UK | Environment | The Guardian
Someone should probably tell the morons at the Guardian that temperatures in England have plummeted nearly 1ºC over the past decade.
The decrease in bird populations couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the tens of thousands of birds being killed by wind farms.
Is there any correlation between the reduction in wading birds and the construction of wind turbines?
My vote goes to the handy-dandy Ronco bird-chopper.
Buy early and get this fabulous Ronco-reconer that automatically counts the chopped birds.
No more hand counting the bird bodies – with the Ronco-reconer easily attached to your Ronco bird-chopper, and the Ronco-reconer will count all the bloody remains. (Ronco-reconer is the only WWF approved automatic counting device.)
Tom,
Has anyone ever mentioned you have a sick sense of humor?
I like the WWF approved BTW.
That was my first thought as well, Ken. Now they want to blame the birds killed by wind turbines, on climate change. What will it take, before the masses wake up to this whole blasted scam?
No point engaging, Steve. It’s a true religion these days at Guardian Towers. The number who absolutely cannot, will not, under any circumstances engage in anything other than Gaia worship / CO2 is Devils Spawn is astonishing. Especially as they all consider themselves so intellectually superior.
They’re a study in collective confirmation bias.
Most of the wading birds are warm climate species anyway, and highly migratory. Think of herons, egrets, and cranes. They typically fly 1,000 mi (1600 km) or more to overwinter in a tropical zone. What are the chances they will complain if they find that England is a degree or two warmer in summer?
I would definitely look to other possible causes, such as predation, windmills, loss of habitat, or disease before turning to a mild warming. In fact it’s pretty lazy science to finger warming without doing an extensive study.
Especially with all the bird bodies littering the ground under the wind mills.
A half A$$ed study cited by the Smithsonian: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-turbines-really-kill-180948154/?no-ist
Talk about lazy….
I don’t suppose cold affects birds.
Now let me tell you about the birds and the bees.
You forgot the Flowers and the Trees.
UK weather: Spring flowers, Blooms will be a month late due to a run of cold weather
You haven’t done your homework.
Climate change is causing the drop in temperatures in the UK.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL050582/abstract
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/4/044015/article
Try analysing the summer and winter contributions to the CET temperature decline. Let’s look at it in your favour (using CET Daily Max), from the peak in 2003 of 14.8degC to 2013 (13.1degC), the last year of full data.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/ssn_HadCET_max.txt
Then transform the data into a difference series, calculating the interannual difference for each season. the resulting total differences from 2003 to 2013 are:
DJF -2
MAM -3.1
JJA 1.1
SON -0.6
Ann Avg -1.15
To check, you’ll find that the average of the seasons is -1.15, the cumulative difference for the annual average. Now Autumn (SON) contributes little, the largest contributors being the winter and spring (DJF and MAM), I’ll get to the summer.
Looking at winter and spring the cooling is found to be due to colder winters and late springs, see the first paper I referenced, which finds that sea ice loss has been driving colder boreal winters.
Summer (JJA) has actually warmed over that period, but that hides detail. 2003 to 2006 saw a net increase of 2.1 cumulative interannual difference in temperature. But 2007 to 2013 saw a drop of 1degC, this was due to cool temperatures in 2007, 2008, 2011 and 2012 (~1deg cooler than 2009 and 2013). Summers from 2007 to 2012 have been generally cool and wet, indeed 2007, 2008, and 2012 are in the top ten wettest years for the UK since records began in 1910. See the second paper I referenced at the start of this reply which finds that loss of sea ice has been driving wetter north west European summer.
So the loss of sea ice has been driving cooler weather which has countered the trend of AGW in the UK.
On the subject of UK Rainfall, here is what has happened to UK annual average rainfall.
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3891/14457253230_dfc9e409d5_o.png
Summer Arctic sea ice area is the highest in a decade, but thanks for sharing your superstition with us.
Superstition doesn’t come backed up with primary peer reviewed science. But I recognise you’d have a problem with this fact,
Summer sea ice this year will still be in the bottom of the set, and remains below the 1980 to 1999 average in terms of Area and Extent.
I think you mean Pal reviewed Bafflegab™ ®?
See Papers by Dr J. Scott Armstrong “Bafflegab Pays,” and “Who is Dr. Myron L. Fox? ”
Also see:
Scientific fraud and the power structure of science
How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data
US scientists significantly more likely to publish fake research, study finds
Peer review is sick and collapsing under its own weight
And the newest:
SAGE Publications busts “peer review and citation ring,” 60 papers retracted
I have a whole collection of science fraud cases. As a chemist I find it sickening that the discipline has whored itself mostly for grant money.
As a trained chemist, though I did other work for a living, I am saddened by this as well. I dropped my ACS membership some 20 years ago as well as my AAAS one when the leftist politicization became too much for me. It has since infected the AMA, which has sold its members out just like the BMA did in the 40s. The Pediatrics board and the APA really frighten me. They seem to be Stalinists hiring out Lysenkoists now.
As someone who spent 63 years living in the UK all I can say if you think it’s colder now than in previous decades you must be about 12 years old, otherwise you’d know that it isn’t any colder, or wetter, or drier, or more/less windy/cloudy/sunny than it was in the recent past – since 1945.
It is definitely cooler now than it was in the late 1990s. I remember seeing people water skiing near Heathrow in January, 2000.
My point was, which wasn’t that clear, is that climate hasn’t changed it just varies between previous extremes, it is highly unlikely to do anything else as a result of manmade CO2.
Ben Vorlich,
Cattiaux et al, 2012, “Winter 2010 in Europe: A cold extreme in a warming climate”
“similar dynamics were generally associated with even colder temperatures in past winters, so that the winter 2010 mean temperature expected from the sole atmospheric circulation is comparable to the cold record of winter 1963. Winter 2010 appears to be a remarkable event within a longer?term tendency: observed temperature anomalies
have been quasi?systematically warmer than flowanalogues ones over the past two decades, which probably results from background climate warming [Yiou et al., 2007;
Cattiaux et al., 2010].”
In other words, the winter of 2010 was very similar to the much colder winter of 1963, but AGW has taken the edge off the cold in the intervening period. Note that this is not just local UK warming, but also warming over Eurasia (Eurasia had warmed in winter prior to the recent decade’s cessation of warming due to loss of sea ice (Cohen et al)).
I have shown you a plot of UK rainfall anomalies, here it is again.
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3891/14457253230_dfc9e409d5_o.png
The UK certainly is wetter in from the late 1990s to present than in any comparable length period since 1910.
OH WOW,
A Warmer = Colder argument!
Of course that is what the MET office was trying to peddle when Mother Nature falsified their predictions and Left Dame Sluggo with egg on her face.
Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past
2013: UK – Coldest spring in 50 years, says Met Office
Potatoes in short supply as big freeze hits crops
The ice fields of GUERNSEY! Record-breaking cold spell sees rare 8ft-high snowdrifts hit what is usually one of the UK’s warmest spots
2012: Winter to last until June: This weekend looks set to be the coldest start to May for more than 70 years and the Met men say the miserable weather, more like winter than spring, could drag on until June
2011: Parts of Britain suffer coldest summer for nearly two decades
You forgot that the ice has been RECOVERING since the 2007 minimum so that excuse doesn’t fly in the more recent years.
Also the Arctic starts Icing back up in September so how does it effect Spring weather. Does it use a time machine?
My favourite was a recent comment that the North Pole is melting and this is acting like “air conditioning” and causing the rest of the planet to cool down. You have to give these people extra marks, because you’re dealing with premium grade stupid here. 😉
It is not stupid, it is willful lying based on a really warped world view. These people have a really bad case of the Disneyworld/Bambi Syndrone and have no idea that life without adequate energy is Nasty, Brutal and Short for every one except for the elite.
The need to spend a year as unpaid labor on an Amish farm clearing land by hand.
This is a classic example:
Yes, couldn’t agree more. As I’ve pointed out before (my example was an animal right activist), it is not a scientific or even a rational debate. It’s a moral issue, therefore ‘good’ versus ‘evil’.
This is the part that isn’t rational:
In closing, I told him that a reduction in economic activity would also reduce his own prospects for a high quality of life and prosperity. But he didn’t agree with me. He said that further economic expansion was of no use to him, because he believed in living a simple life.
Furthermore, that’s an “I’ve got mine and nothing else counts” (like a developing 3rd ‘whirled’) attitude that seems all too prevalent with the greenies, a significant sign of immaturity I think.
I see you’re quoting from Rod Adams website too; he has some interesting posts show up there.
.
You are correct _Jim, it is not only not rational it is very very selfish. If he wants the “Simple Live’ let him go live on an Indian reservation or with the Amish or in Rhodesia or North Korea but don’t make MY DECISION for me as if I am a child with no intelligence.
Ugh. These folk really do need to be dropped off, naked, somewhere to find out what the State of Nature really is.
That anti-nuclear ‘activist’ needs to be dropped off naked in Haiti, about one mile from the Dominican Republic’s border.
“Left Dame Sluggo with egg on her face.”
Nice image, that would probably be an improvement.
Gail Coombs,
Ahhh, I see, you have problems understanding. I have made it as simple as I can, sorry I can’t make it simple enough for you.
The sea ice recovering since 2007? You conveniently forget 2011 and 2012 – I guess in your belief driven neurosis those years just didn’t happen.
2013 was really bad weather for ice melt, having the opposite atmospheric pattern to the summers of 2007 to 2012, that led to an increase in thicker ice in the Arctic Ocean. Over winter 2013/2014 much of that thick ice was expelled from the Central Arctic, off the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and into Beaufort, then Chukchi and the East Siberian Sea. The muted melt of this year is largely due to the presence of that thicker ice.
Once one understands mechanisms there is no need to resort to the unevidenced superstition of claiming recovery.
I am a trained scientist and ran a lab for years. For fun and relaxing I read geology and other scientific papers instead of watching TV. I also now a full out scam when I see one.
The entire CAGW scam is based on
1. CO2 is uniformly distributed through out the atmosphere. (It is not)
2. Completely rigged data.
The CO2 data is even more corrupted than the temperature data.
Instead of getting into all the details, and believe me after years of debating this I do have them, I will send you to read Dr. Glassman:
CO2 Accquittal:
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html
Well mixed ASSumption invalidated:
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2007/06/on_why_co2_is_known_not_to_hav.html#more
Also this with links to Congressional testimony by a world renown scientist.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
Dr. Segalstad
http://www.co2web.info/ESEF3VO2.htm
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N31/EDIT.php
Since you seem to think I am ignorant and you want to talk down to me…
Statement of Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski
Chairman, Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection
Warsaw, Poland
Why do I dot believe the simplistic assumptions made about CO2 to be fed to the believing masses and instead think Segalstad and Jaworowski make sense?
Because I am a chemist and have done enough work at the ppm level to understand what Segalstad and Jaworowski are talking about and to realize the four assumptions mentions are complete and utter crap. For those who are not chemists here is some simple kitchen chemistry that will cast doubt on assumptions (2) and (3)
(2) that ‘the entrapement of air in ice is essentially a mechanical process of collection of air samples, which occurs with no differentiation of gas components’ (Oeschger et al., 1985); and (3) that the original air composition in the gas inclusions is preserved indefinitely.
Take a glass jar of raw crushed garlic, a glass jar of dill pickles and a plastic jar of grape gatoraide. See how long it takes you to get rid of the smell in each of those vessels. The second experiment is to take a sealed from the factory plastic bottle of soda pop and save it for a year or two. See whether there is any CO2 fizz left when you finally open it. When you start talking ppm (odors) the chemistry gets much more difficult. Analytical chemists often use only brand new glass because you just can not get the glass ‘clean’ when you start talking parts per billion and cross contamination can really muck-up the results.
Gail, you’re an old-school chemist, and it shows. You’re also a patriot and a Lady. May God continue to bless you and yours.
When I took analytical chemistry we were slapped on the wrist, hard, if we didn’t take *any* potential contamination into account.
CO2 is well mixed – see AIRS. To accept Jaworowski’s nonsense means one would have to accept that something changed radically when measurements of CO2 started. I mean something radical in the mass balance of carbon between ocean/atmosphere/land involving changes of flux by hundreds of percent. In other words you believe that the atmosphere/ocean/land carbon system became aware it was being monitored and decided to calm down. If not, what caused the change? Or are you seriously claiming there is a cover up – Balderdash!
You’re claiming one or two scientists against hundreds. As an engineer who’s worked with chemists and phycists I am not convinced by your appeal to authority. Every field has wingnuts, yes even electronics, that you have to cling to them to maintain your inane world view speaks volumes.
I’ve remembered where I last saw the CO2 was higher before the 1950s nonsense. It was Beck, who somehow got his trash published in E&E.
http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf
Back when I was still sceptical of AGW (before the mid 2000s), someone was touting this on the BBC message boards. Even us educated sceptics found it rubbish.
Check out figure 1, consider the implications for mass transfer of such a large amount of carbon. The implications on d13C. The implausibility that the earlier data is correct.
I’m bored, I’ll leave you all to it.
“So, the loss of sea ice has been driving cooler weather…” Nice try. Bit even if you were right that’s still no proof on what’s causing the loss of sea ice.
Yes there is.
There is a strong linear regression between increasing CO2 and decreasing annual average extent.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7058/6993704168_03751afb94_o.jpg
Figure 4 of Notz & Marotzke, 2012, “Observations reveal external driver for Arctic sea-ice retreat” http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/staff/notzdirk/2012GL051094.pdf
No point in my raising the issue of model results amongst such devout believers so I’ll leave you to chew on that data.
There is a very strong correlation between rising CO2 and my age. Perhaps the new EPA regs will make me younger.
There is no mechanistic link between increasing CO2 and your age Steven.
There is a strong mechanistic argument between CO2 and sea ice via the global warming that CO2 causes.
Global sea ice area has been averaging above normal for the past 18 months. Therefore more CO2 translates to more sea ice.
What has been happening over the last two years is a result of the exceptionally poor melt weather in 2013. It has nothing to do with the CO2/Sea ice link – which the data clearly shows.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7058/6993704168_03751afb94_o.jpg
You can not model a Chaotic Nonlinear System.
“Chaotic” means that chaotic systems such as weather are not predictable at all, as a matter of principle, beyond relatively short-term horizons. It is not a matter of finite data; it is simply that small changes in such systems create patterns of change over time that are inherently unpredictable. That is why weather forecasts are terrible more than three to five days out.
Even the IPCC agreed to that.
There’s nothing to chew on there. Just more spurious correlation and assumptions taken as true but not shown as true.
I won’t argue with you that carbon dioxide is IR active. I’ve measured it myself when I did IR spectroscopy. Where I part from you is that you can generalize from the effects of IR absorption in a bottle in the lab to the free atmosphere where the degrees of freedom not only are much higher, some are not even considered by the ‘ceteris paribus’ crowd, for whom it seems to be the CO2 did it like the proverbial butler, no matter what.
“You can not model a Chaotic Nonlinear System.”
Wow! You really don’t even get the basics!
Prediction of actual states is not possible. But changes in boundary conditions produce changes in the regions of states, changes which can be predicted. Consider a container full of ping pong balls vigorously mixed by a strong current of air. If I increase the air flow is it not predictable that the average level of the balls wil increase and average speed of their movements (energy of collisions) will increase?
Likewise with brownian motion in a warmed container of gas, and the pressure in the containing with warming.
You seem to suspend what you should know as a chemist (yeah right!) whenever it goes against your belief system.
Of course emergent behaviour of a chatoic system can change in a predictable manner. Everyone else knows that, why don’t you, as a qualified chemist?
CDQuarles,
“I won’t argue with you that carbon dioxide is IR active. ”
Then you won’t argue with the implications for planetary energy balance.
Oh, hang on…
Yes, I will argue the ‘implications’ for you have to show me that there really are implications, with real measurements that have every source of known error stated, the uncertainty propagated correctly and have everything available for replication, data and code.
My money is on another cause, although the windmills will be adding to the problem, since the 1960s the UK has had an aggressive policy of protecting and re-introducing raptors. Red Kites, Peregrine Falcons, Sparrowhawks and White Tailed Eagles are particular successes but Buzzards (Tourist’s Eagle) and Kestrels are also keen on Motorways (Freeways/Autoroutes) for different reasons. As a by product of this policy Corvidae have also increased in population. As any country person and the Duke of Wellington could tell you raptors and Corvidae* have an impact on populations of other birds. The haven’t read the memo on leaving other birds alone.
http://www.critters360.com/index.php/facts-about-sparrowhawks-17054/
*Celebrity raptors are not immune from Corvidae attack.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-27315359
Windmills are famous for slaughtering raptors. Maybe that is the greentard’s plan for saving the water birds….LOL!
Ah yes, the roadside buffet. There was some concern in Boston a while back about a surge in dead crows by the roadside. Turned out to not to be a disease.
Fascinating story:
Researchers for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority found over 200 dead crows near greater Boston recently, and there was concern that they may have died from Avian Flu.
A Bird Pathologist examined the remains of all the crows, and, to everyone’s relief, confirmed the problem was definitely NOT the Avian Flu.
The cause of death appeared to be vehicular impacts.
However, during the detailed analysis it was noted that varying colors & types of paints appeared on the bird’s beaks and claws.
By analyzing these paint residues it was determined that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with trucks, while only 2% were killed by an impact with a car.
MTA then hired an Ornithological Behaviorist to determine if there was a cause for the disproportionate percentages of truck kills versus car kills.
The Ornithological Behaviorist very quickly concluded the cause:
When crows eat road kill, they always have a look-out crow in a nearby tree to warn of impending danger.
.
They discovered that while all the lookout crows could shout “Cah”, not a single one could shout “Truck.”
😉
’twas a linguistics issue…. (and a joke…..)
“Someone should probably tell the morons at the Guardian that temperatures in England have plummeted nearly 1ºC over the past decade.”
Someone (probably Mark Twain) once said that a man is ignorant if he reads nothing, but he is much more ignorant if all he reads is newspapers.
I was thinking of this one:
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” ? Thomas Jefferson
The decrease in bird populations couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the tens of thousands of birds being killed by wind farms.
Yeah, and it’s actually millions of birds killed every year worldwide, according to an estimate published in the Wildlife Society Bulletin the windmill monsters kill over 600,000 birds in the US alone. And it’s very painful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVz5hdAMGU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-YJuFvjtM0s
You might be interested in this study from the Centers for Disease Control which unfortunately for our greenhouse gas-addled friends finds that cold is worse than heat at killing humans. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf
I like their phrase ” including climate change forcing the birds to areas outside the UK ”
The implication being that it’s too hot for them or the habitat has changed as a result. This is complete and utter puerile drivel.
In the 1970’s, the period they are comparing to, we had colder winters more regularly in western Europe, as a result more wading birds and wildfowl than usual came to the UK as a last refuge as continental Europe was snow or ice covered more frequently then; these being water birds they need unfrozen water and ground to find food so they had to keep moving towards the maritime fringe of Europe where the warmth of the Atlantic Ocean ameliorated the climate.
As our winters became generally milder the birds didn’t die, they weren’t FORCED to go anywhere else. They no longer had to fly so far to escape frozen water and ground to survive the winter and so they didn’t expend unnecessary energy travelling any further than they needed to. Only extreme drought or extreme freezing forces these waterbirds anywhere.
We always have a smaller core population of waders and waterfowl that regularly comes to the UK each winter but when continental Europe experiences a cold snap during one of these milder winters the wading birds and waterfowl wintering there then ARE forced to move further westward towards our more benign maritime climate, or to move southward. When the cold spell passes they head back just as quickly as they arrived.
In the last five years we have had three colder winters (and don’t the warmists just hate that what with CO2 still going up) and during those winters we have received larger numbers of wading birds and wildfowl again, as always happens in such circumstances.
I really do not know if the people writing these reports truly believe the birds have been killed by milder winters (the journalists at the Grauniad clearly do) or if they are just cynically chasing grants/donations/publicity.
They are clearly not basing their writings on science/data/observations. These birds move in winter to avoid freezing conditions, in colder winters they travel further, in milder ones they travel shorter distances. It’s not rocket science, it’s just biological science.
And yes if the winters are milder and they don’t have to cross the North Sea more often they are avoiding having to traverse the ever expanding fields of bird choppers being erected. So milder winters are definitely better for their survival; so although it’s sad not to see so many Swans, Geese and waders here in the UK at least in milder winters they are avoiding the killing fields. Many of them make the journey across the North Sea during the hours of darkness which only increases the hazard.
Sadly like many others on here I think were are now in a cooling phase again and colder winters are probably going to increase. Unfortunately unlike in the 1970’s the North Sea is now filled with an obstacle course of bird killing machinery so there probably will now be a real decrease in these birds.
Caused by the CAGW pseudoscience spouted by these same “conservationists”.
Sickening!
Not “conservationists” but eco-nuts or if you want to be nice “Environmentalists”. Reserve the word “conservationists” for those without a political agenda attached.
Reblogged this on the WeatherAction Blog and commented:
All creatures are using the climate swings to their advantage. When it’s good they multiply in preparation for the bad times…something unfathomable to warmists.
I guess, in a way, they ARE being killed by climate change. After all, would there be so many wind turbines if the climate were not changing?
Yes there would be. It is a political money making scam designed to move wealth from our pocket to the pockets of the politically well connected while drawing the reins of tyranny ever tighter.
My sarcasm was a bit too oblique. Sorry for that.
Chris Reynolds says: @ August 1, 2014 at 7:35 pm
CO2 is well mixed – see AIRS….
AHHHhhh yes the shell game in action. AIRS data is AVERAGED over kilometers of distance. this causes the high and low peaks to disappear. (I have the links somewhere but must leave on business.)
Perhaps your definition means “vary by up to 20 ppm”
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/CT2009/co2wx/glb/co2wx_hammer-glb_20080831.png
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ccgg/CT2009/co2wx/glb/co2wx_hammer-glb_20080229.png
Perhaps calling it “plus or minus 10 ppm” gets us a bit closer to “Does not vary. {:>D
Here is what AIRS itself is saying:
They talk of middle troposphere for their results. Not column averaged as the Japanese data. Even at this level AIRS does not see well mixing.
Then you have the grooming of the Mauna Loa data:
The Japanese satellite (JAXA) also shows CO2 is not ‘well-mixed’. map 1 and map 2