Birds:
“Scientists have long known that urban songbirds face a host of increased challenges, from habitat loss to altered food sources and a larger population of predators, such as skunks, rats, squirrels and, especially, house cats, compared to their rural cousins. In particular, urban nestlings weigh significantly less than those born in the country and have a decreased chance of surviving to adulthood, as a result. New research, published in the journal Ecosphere, helps to tease out exactly why.
Part of the difficulty in figuring out why urban nestlings struggle is due to what biologists call the "predation paradox:" though there are increased numbers of predators in urban areas, there is actually a lower per-capita rate of predation. "The key," says Aaron Grade, the paper's lead author who completed this research as a graduate student in UMass Amherst's program in organismic and evolutionary biology, "has been hiding in plain sight. We haven't been paying enough attention to fear itself."
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The authors discovered that, due to a variety of 'urban effects,' including availability of food, habitat loss and predation, urban nestlings all weighed about 10% less than the rural nestlings—an expected finding that is consistent with previous studies showing the effects of urban development on wildlife. But the authors also discovered that all the nestlings, both rural and urban, subjected to the owl and hawk cries saw a 10% decrease in weight as well.
2017 6/21 028aaa
"This is a largely unexplored component of human/wildlife interaction," says Grade. "Birds are very in-tune with what's going on, and if they see, or in this case hear, a predator, they'll change their behavior." For instance, the parent birds might spend less time finding food for their nestlings to avoid predation. "These landscapes of fear," says Grade, "can have a greater effect on behavior and survival than the actual predator itself."
In general, hobbyist birders should avoid using recordings of predators because they can cause unintended responses and undue stress in birds, as Grade's research shows.”
“How landscapes of fear affect the songbirds in our backyards”
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“James Hansen has updated his “Bell Curve” paper to include the last decade (2009-2019). To me, these bell curves — that show the distribution of average summer (July to August) temperatures — are some of the most powerful climate change visualizations. These curves are not predictions and are not based on models… they show, just based on temperature readings, what has already happened. And they show that “Extremely Hot Summers” in the Northern Hemisphere (defined as an average summer temperature in a particular place that is more than 3 standard deviations (“3-sigma”) above its 1951-1980 mean) have gone from happening 0.1% of the time in 1951-1980 to 22.1% of the time in 2009-2019. That is over a 200X (20,000%) increase! Extremely Hot Summers went from happening once every thousand years to once every 5 years.
And this is not just a mathematical trick. It is the climate extremes that cause infrastructure to fail, droughts to be devastating, and life to be more challenging. It is an indication of what has already happened due to climate change.
You can also see that Average Summers (where the average temperature is within 0.5 standard deviations from the 1951-1980 mean) have gone from 33.5% in the 1951-1980 period to 10.4% in the 2009-2019 period. And Colder Than Average “Cold” Summers (-0.5 to -3 sigma) have gone from 33.3% to 3.7% in those respective periods and Hot Summers (+0.5 to +3 sigma) have gone from 33.1% to 63.8%. So, compared to the 1951-1980 baseline period, we have Cold Summers happening about 90% less often, Average Summers occur about 1/3rd as often, Hot Summers occur about twice as often, and Extremely Hot Summers occur about 200 times as often.
The global average temperature has gone up about +1.3ºC since the industrial revolution but that does not tell the whole story. The increase in the global average temperature is the shifting to the right of the bell curve. But the increase in “3-sigma events” goes up a staggering amount when the curve is shifted and it is these 3-sigma events that cause death and destruction more than does the shift in the average temperature. And 5-sigma events that should only occur once every 3.5 million years and now occurring a few percent of the time!
As an interesting side note, there is a corresponding bell curve for the Southern Hemisphere and the globe as a whole. As Jim Hansen pointed out in his original bell curve paper, the shift of the global bell curve to the right IS global warming (QED). It’s like saying when you take your temperature and it reads 103ºF, we can say “you have a fever”. Your temperature reading doesn’t say why you have a fever and, correspondingly, the shift of the bell curve doesn't say why we have global warming. But it does prove we have global warming and other studies do show that the warming is mostly cause by the burning of fossil fuels.
Monday, Jul 13, 2020 · 2:02:30 AM · dannym999
I should mention an important implication of the dramatic increase in 3-sigma events. Since the “natural” rate for these events was 0.1% and the recent rate is 22.1%, when an Extremely Hot Summer in a particular place occurs now, we can say there is a 22 to 0.1 (99.5%) chance that the Extremely Hot Summer was caused by global warming rather than natural causes! In other words, we can “attribute” the Extremely Hot Summer to climate change and we don't need to use weasel words about how it is impossible to attribute any specific event to climate change. This doesn’t work for all climate changes, but it does work for those formerly extremely rare “long tail” events that are getting common now”
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Biden and Jamie dimon are not going to like this guy:
“Engineers develop a simple way to desalinate water using solar energy”
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Greta has her game on:
Comments: The New York Times - July 26, 2021
BIGGER FISH TO FRY
Pandemics are a mere pimple on the back of an elephant when compared to the possibility of the Arctic Melting and causing a Blue Ocean Event later this year - which in turn could cause a rise in temperatures of 6 degrees C or more.
This would exacerbate the climate chaos and extreme weather patterns already being experienced and in all likelihood lead to the extinction of all vertebrate animals on the planet. This abrupt change in climate compares to that experienced during the Permian extinction when 90% of life on Earth perished. In short, we have much bigger fish to fry - much more than pimples on an elephant's back.
Moreover, we should not lose sight of the looming energy and resource crisis that is bound to take hold in the next decade. Once the fossil fuels and other critical minerals are depleted there is no way for society to feed its huge energy appetite - economic and social collapse are imminent just as forecasted in 1972 by 27 researchers at MIT in their best selling book - 30 million copies - Limits to Growth.
Hence if the Arctic melt and Blue Ocean Event does not cause our collapse; then Mother Nature has a backstop of depleting all our critical energy and mineral resources in the not too distant future. One might say - Mother Nature Bats Last.
In summary, it's time to stop fretting about relatively little pimples and to take a perspective of the whole elephant for what it is and says - we have MUCH BIGGER fish to fry...
T A McNeil
Handle - Greta Prize Nobel
Published The New York Times, July 26, 2021
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“Insulated From Patent Waivers, Pfizer and Moderna Hike Vaccine Prices
"Capitalism never fails to not surprise," wrote one observer.”
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“Biodiversity’s Contribution to good Health and Wellbeing”
Biodiversity: Genes, species, ecosystem, Nature’s contributions to people
Benefits:
Provides and enhances: Water, Food, Clear Air, Energy, Drug development, traditional medicines
Risks:
Reduces impact and prevents: Risk of infectious disease emergence; Risk of Climate Change, disasters & pollution
Underpins: Animal welfare, Cultural & Spiritual enrichment; Physical & mental Health
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“Hungry for more oil, Norway aims for €36 billion investments in new fields
Oil production could drop by more than 70 percent in 20 years unless new discoveries are made.”
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“5 Reasons to Protect Mangrove Forests for the Future”
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“Help End Cruelty to Billionaires”
Excerpt from Hudson, Michael. “J IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS: A Guide To Reality In An Age Of Deception”
Excerpt From: Michael Hudson. “Killing the Host.”
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“Shell sponsored a museum exhibit on climate solutions. There were strings attached.
The exhibit centers on technologies that oil and gas companies say will allow them to keep selling fossil fuels.”
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