Posted on 05/15/2012 12:34:03 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
From the University of Washington, via Eurekalert, sympathy for snails, turtles, sloths, slow moving howler monkeys, shrews and moles and other slow moving critters that will apparently bake in place due to the 0.7C temperature rise of the past century. They just can’t move fast enough it seems. No mention of adaptation either. Why oh why did nature equip them so poorly? /sarc
Gotta love this reasoning:
Only climate change was considered and not other factors that cause animals to disperse, such as competition from other species.
The natural world doesn’t work that way. You can’t just turn off all the other variables and make projections using only one (unless of course you are doing climate science).
Nearly one-tenth of hemisphere’s mammals unlikely to outrun climate change
A safe haven could be out of reach for 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere’s mammals, and as much as 40 percent in certain regions, because the animals just won’t move swiftly enough to outpace climate change. For the past decade scientists have outlined new areas suitable for mammals likely to be displaced as climate change first makes their current habitat inhospitable, then unlivable. For the first time a new study considers whether mammals will actually be able to move to those new areas before they are overrun by climate change. Carrie Schloss, University of Washington research analyst in environmental and forest sciences, is lead author of the paper out online the week of May 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We underestimate the vulnerability of mammals to climate change when we look at projections of areas with suitable climate but we don’t also include the ability of mammals to move, or disperse, to the new areas,” Schloss said.
(Excerpt) Read more at wattsupwiththat.com ...
Oh well, Adapt or Die.
fyi
The analysis looked at 493 mammals in the Western Hemisphere ranging from a moose that weighs 1,800 pounds to a shrew that weighs less than a dime. Only climate change was considered and not other factors that cause animals to disperse, such as competition from other species.
Adapt or die.
History of the world.
I would not be just a nothin’ my head all full of stuffin’
My heart all full of pain.
I would dance and be merry, life would be a ding-a-derry,
If I only had a brain.
10 in 10 animals are unable to outrun my Remington 870...
Damn ... talk about overkill...
Then they need to stay off the streets and highways........You'd think they would have learned from squirrels.
Perhaps someone should sponsor a study to study the lack of brain within the skull cap of some of those doing this study.
So let me get this straight (I only have a public education):
The unfortunately slow animals that were able to (somehow miraclously) survive the previous global warming (and, ,for that matter, cooling) events are no longer able to do so? I guess evolution isn’t all it’s hyped up to be???
The temperature difference from the equator to the N pole (around 6000 miles) is in the order of 50C. To go to a place that's 0.7C cooler, the snail would have to migrate about 84 miles and has 100 years to do it (around 1,000,000 hrs).
So it would have to gallop along at an average speed of around one ten-thousandth of an hour.
Or a foot per hour?
I think they can manage both of those.
I’m confident that the animals will evolve their way out of the difficulty they are in.
About 6in/hr, I guess.
Why so sad? Are these not the same secular humanists who believe in “survival of the fittest”?
Which reminds me of the funny, and a little rude, flash video, just slightly NSFW, language.
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/shrew
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