They want to snip reindeer to make them better able to cope with the extra thick ice caused by global warming.
TROMSOE, Norway (Reuters/Alister Doyle) – Indigenous Sami peoples in the Arctic may have found a way to help their reindeer herds cope with climate change: more castration.
Research by Sami experts shows that sterilized males can grow larger and so are better at digging for food — as Arctic temperatures vary more, thawing snow often refreezes to form thick ice over lichen pastures.
Neutered males are more able to break through ice with their hooves or antlers, and seem more willing than other males to move aside and share food with calves that can die of starvation in bad freeze-thaw winters like 2000-01.
“To make herds more resilient in the future, we need to re-learn the traditional knowledge of castration,” said professor Svein Mathiesen, coordinator of the University of the Arctic’s Institute of Circumpolar Reindeer Husbandry.
More castration “could be useful to adapt to climate change,” he told Reuters in the Arctic city of Tromsoe. “These animals are very good diggers for the small calves in the most critical period of the winter.” Pasture this year is good.
Is this what they meant by Climate Change would cause extinctions?
So lets get this right.
The Sami people want to snip reindeer to make them better able to cope with the extra thick ice caused by global warming.
1. That doen’t make sense. So now “Extra Thick” ice is caused by (manmade CO2 warmth)!
Neutered males are more able to break through ice with their hooves or antlers.
2. But they can never have offspring, now that makes sense.
Evolution.
3. Survival of the fittest, but now we know better than mother nature.
Pasture this year is good.
4. But this winter is cold, the pastures should be bad…refer to item one above.
I believe in nature, infact you could say I’m a true enviromentalist. But castration, no.
One day it’s reindeer the next day it’s us if the greens have thier way.
If the greens are “Snipped” they will be better able to cope with climate change also!
From what I have heard, some have self snipped.
RexAlan: The point would be that there is in fact less ice in colder winters (because there’s only snow, not refrozen melted snow).
But is the home of the reindeers really getting warmer?
Not in January, at least. According to figures uploaded to http://rimfrost.no today, the long term trend for Karasjok is slightly negative:
http://www.sportsys.nu/klima/KARASJOK_JAN.GIF
Note that the 1990-2010 warm period has been (in January in Karasjok) quite a bit cooler than the 1920-1940 warm period.
I checked data for Kautokeino, too, and if there is any long term trend at all, springs and summers are slightly warmer in the current warm period, while autumns and winters are cooler.
I’m sure Ms. Huffington would love all males to be snipped so that her husband doesn’t feel all alone.
I would have thought they would have been snipping them anyway. “Snipped” cattle, humans, horses, etc. have been known for centuries to be larger, stronger, and less aggressive. How many “competent” males do they need? At least altered cattle and pigs make more and better meat. I don’t know about humans – yet.
What are “Greens” anyway. I know the color, the vegetables; but humans? The Internet is no help. I looked up “green jobs” but that seems to mean things like installing insulation or solar water heaters. We used to call that “renovation”. Or “green living”. Not having electricity or eating much meat. Growing up we called that “poor”. Maybe “Green energy”? Like nuclear power? or wind turbines–both of which require more carbon energy to produce than they save. Ah! Biofuels! Which both require more carbon energy to produce than they yield plus unbalance the whole food production systems and require expenditure of tax dollars to subsidize.
Ah! I know. “Green Science”, the process by which scientists, who know better, are fielding research that the information in any science textbook indicates is impossible.
Maybe we should start by “altering” climate scientists to make them less aggressive!
Castration seen as climate change aid for reindeer
The Economic Times
“More castration “could be useful to adapt to climate change,” he told Reuters in the Arctic city of Tromsoe. “These animals are very good diggers for the small calves in the most critical period of the winter.” Pasture this year is good.
Castration has traditionally been used by reindeer herders, partly to make wild animals more docile. Herders on the Yamal peninsula in Russia still neuter about half of all males — usually by biting into the testicles with their teeth .”
http://tinyurl.com/5t8dlyr
Combating CAGWC seems dangerous…