El Niño and a pathogen killed Costa Rican toad, study finds

Challenges evidence that global warming was the cause

The Monteverde golden toad disappeared from Costa Rica Pacific coastal forest in the late 1980s. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Scientists broadly agree that global warming may threaten the survival of many plant and animal species; but global warming did not kill the Monteverde golden toad, an often cited example of climate-triggered extinction, says a new study.  The toad vanished from Costa Rica’s Pacific coastal-mountain cloud forest in the late 1980s, the apparent victim of a pathogen outbreak that has wiped out dozens of other amphibians in the Americas. Many researchers have linked outbreaks of the deadly chytrid fungus to climate change, but the new study asserts that the weather patterns, at Monteverde at least, were not out of the ordinary.

Continue reading at Watts Up With That

“It’s changing so fast” he said, “Their habitat is disappearing right before your eyes”.

It’s obvious where this is leading. Not to science, but to anecdotal “evidence.” Frank goes on about what his friend is telling him about disappearing this and that. And then laments on how Climategate has stopped science in its tracks.

While this is all happening on the ground climate science has, amazingly, been forced into a defensive posture. In the wake of the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia and the recognition of a few errors in the last IPCC report, the momentum of public opinion (in the US at least) appears to have stalled. There are lots of good places to find point-by-point responses to what are the non-issues of climategate (and I hope to write more them myself later) however, today I want to raise a simple point.

Then he imagines how the debate would have been over a long time if it had not been so darned politically charged. He moves on from seals to dinosaurs to show us just how badly we are understanding the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Imagine for a moment the debate centered not on temperature patterns in the Earth’s atmosphere but on the predatory habits and running speed of T-Rex. Now imagine that thousands of researchers working across five decades, gathering petabytes worth of data from an armada of high tech platforms, reached some conclusion about the thunder lizard’s nasty ways with the same level of confidence, and the same level of consensus, that exists in the climate science community. What would happen next?

The story would be over. That is what would happen.

If dino science had reached the same level of confidence about T-Rex’s running speed as climate science has about climate change that chapter of paleontological progress would be over and the research community would move on. There would still be a few skeptics who worked at the edges of the field doggedly pushing alternative views. The skeptics would serve an essential role ensuring that every stone is over-turned and every angle is explored. If the skeptics failed to produce contrary evidence that could withstand critical examination then the consensus would strengthen becoming “knowledge”. Then, in time, researchers would begin using the overwhelming consensus on tyrannosaurs running habits as a foundation to attack other unresolved questions. This is how science works. Unfortunately this is not how climate science has been allowed to work.

And in the end, if you can believe it, this guy doesn’t think the media has been giving us enough dramatic imagery of the impending doom of climate change.

As a textbook study in the progress of a research field, Climate Science has followed the textbook. If it were dino science we would all be reading about the stunning progress of the field in Discover and Scientific American. We would be watching cool animations of imaginary races between hungry Tyrannosaurs and hapless humans on NOVA and the Discovery Channel.

NPR. Brought to you by the American taxpayer.

Source: Cosmos And Culture Blog : NPR.

It all started with a polar bear and even after a wealth of evidence and scientific research proving that polar bears are thriving, the AGW cause is liable to bring about the extinction of the species purely by their obsessive desire to photograph them all the time.

Check the photo of a polar bear mother and cub stranded on a lump of ice in this Telegraph article. Heartbreaking stuff indeed, only the picture is 3 years old and the fact is, that polar bears are excellent swimmers, and were likely more concerned for the safety of the idiots on the boat.

UPI.com has the scoop:

A century of commercial whaling has released around 100 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — that’s equivalent to burning more than 50,000 square miles of temperate forest or 128,000 large sport-utility vehicles driving for 100 years.

Were I this guy I’d have gone into hiding, but no, he actually goes public with it…

Those are the findings of a study by U.S. scientists from the Gulf of Maine ResearchInstitute unveiled by Andrew Pershing from the University of Maine at the Ocean Sciences meeting this week in Portland, Ore.

I’m not a fan of whaling but jeeze….they don’t all die of natural causes sooner or later?  I mean it’s not like there have been more whales created just for whalers to kill….there’s still the same amount of whales in our oceans regardess…in fact, I’d put forth that whaling may have reduced carbon as killing whales before the end of their life span probably reduced their reproduction levels.  But he he aruges this….

When a whale dies of natural causes, its body sinks to the seabed, transporting the carbon stored in it to the deep sea, away from the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Harpooning one, however, can release the carbon directly into the atmosphere, thus intensifying climate change.

What about beached whales?  They don’t sink!  Also, let me see, we’re talking millions of years, hundreds of thousands of years, thousands of years….so what is the big difference if the carbon goes directly into the atmosphere now or a few hundred years later?  Not a long period of time considering how old the earth is.

So, now he wants to charge carbon credits for whaling even though…

The International Whaling Commission in 1986 introduced a moratorium on commercial whaling so that stocks might recover but whaling remains controversial.

Were I a citizen of Maine I’d be demanding an investigation of this guy.  I can’t even fathom what I’m going to hear next.

By means of some bizarre and pseudo-scientific word association, the AGW crowd have deemed that vegetarianism is countering Global warming. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, because anyone who can touch the end of their nose with a finger, should be aware that not eating a burger does nothing to reduce methane. Unless you have the digstive system of a ruminant, you don’t produce methane in any meaningful amount (my brother excluded). If you own a cow and then shoot it, you will reduce future emissions (please don’t try this at home).

I mention this because UK celebrities appear to think they can jet between their London apartments and Los Angeles mansions on jets to preach to Americans about how to save the world, as they show off their green haloes, refusing the boeuf bourgignon on the first class menu, and leave carbon footprints the size of an elephant herd over the planet. They call it ‘Meat Free Monday‘.

To reduce cow methane, you have to kill them but that doesn’t sound so nice, and ignores the fact that a very large number of the world cow population exists in India where it is religiously and largely legally forbidden to kill them, but what’s common sense got to do with it?

Now this is the good bit, from an article entitled “How being vegetarian does more harm to the environment than eating meat“:

It is a claim that could put a dent in the green credentials of vegetarians: Meat-free diets can be bad for the planet.

Environmental activists and vegetarians have long taken pleasure in telling those who enjoy a steak that livestock farming is a major source of harmful greenhouse gases.

When you deprive yourself of something for no good reason, it’s called religion. No problem with that, just don’t call it science or pretend it makes a difference to anything but your ego.

Doesn’t this sound like more deniers lies?

…..the report was commissioned by the environmental group WWF….

These aren’t deniers, are they?

The Cranfield University study found that switching from British-bred beef and lamb to meat substitutes imported from abroad such as tofu and Quorn would increase the amount of land cultivated, raising the risk of forests being destroyed.

Production methods for meat substitutes can be energy intensive and the final products tend to be highly processed

Rice cultivation is another major source of methane, but for some reason it’s rude to suggest that vegetarians are destroying the planet.

Termites produce significant amounts of methane, so I’m plumping for ‘Termite Free Tuesday’, if that’s okay with the AGW crowd ?

Source: UK Daily Mail

No, this isn’t Dr Pachauri getting to work in the morning. It’s reported he prefers to use a petrol driven car, but I suspect it’s how he’d like us in the West to travel.

His views on meat consumption have been widely reported:

“People should consider eating less meat as a way of combating global warming, says the UN’s top climate scientist.”

Eating meat doesn’t produce methane – fact. If you maintain a herd of ruminants (cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, and camels), then you will be producing methane. But, then so does rice cultivation. The USA isn’t exactly known as a major rice cultivator, but according to EPA figures, US methane production from rice cultivation in 2007 was more than six times that produced by petrochemical production.

Dr Pachauri’s comment was just grandstanding to whip up anti-West sentiment, The only way to prevent methane production by ruminants would be to massively cull the herds. Note that this was not suggested by Dr Pachauri. Is this why?

Number of cows globally: 1.5 billion [NATURE oct 04]
Number of cows in India: 200 million [Times of India aug 04]
Number of buffaloes in India: 90 million [Times of India aug 04]

In many states in India it is against the law to kill a cow, for any purpose, as it’s an object of reverence in Hindu religion. If he had suggested culling cattle it could have caused riots.

Another inconvenient fact:

India is the largest producer of milk producing more than 100 million tons of milk per annum.

Source: report by Hindustan Studies & Services Ltd. and Infolitics

Conclusion? Dr. Pachauri had to say something shocking that only affected Westerners. He couldn’t suggest banning rice production as a source of methane, or that would outrage developing countries. Similarly he couldn’t suggest culling ruminants as India has larger herds than anyone, and killing them is a religious taboo. That left eating meat as his perfect target, which ignores the fact that eating meat doesn’t produce methane at all. If producing meat for food is inefficient then surely maintaining the world’s larget herd of cattle that is never eaten is even more inefficient.

A peach of an article in The Australian newspaper makes a mockery of Prime Minister Rudd’s failure to address the serious amount of greenhouse gas that belching and farting camels inflict upon that nation’s climate. The stink of catastrophe is surely brewing.

Reporter, Ean Higgins, tells his readers:

Scientists have found camels to be the third-highest carbon-emitting animal per head on the planet, behind only cattle and buffalo. Culling the one million feral camels that currently roam the outback would be equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road in terms of the reduction to the country’s greenhouse gases.

It is one of the many quirks of international carbon accounting standards that nothing can be done to address the camel problem. Camels in Australia are the only feral herds of their kind in the world and are estimated to number more than one million, with the capability of doubling in size every nine years. Does Prime Minister Rudd give a flying one? Not on your Nelly! Like us he knows CO2 junk science is all hot air and government carbon emissions policies are merely a tax raising scam that just hit the fan.

(For all non-British readers, ‘Carry On’ films were the epitome of bawdy and farcical English humor, much of the ilk of Benny Hill. And this is the kind of farce that is going to make Rudd’s cap-and-trade government as unpopular as Climate Minister, Penny ‘camel-toe’ Wong.

Olivera reported:

Iguanas and other tropical wildlife are bearing the brunt of the severe Arctic weather in Florida, where Miami’s subtropical beaches have been left all but deserted this week with temperatures plummeting to around 32 F (zero Celsius).

“Cold weather impacts iguanas severely and many are killed,” said Gabriella Ferraro, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). Manatees and sea turtles are the most vulnerable during the cold weather, she added, noting that some of the animals had died in central Florida. Known as sea cows for their bulky frame–adults are an average of three meters (10 feet) long and weigh between 800 and 1,200 pounds (360 and 540 kilograms)–manatees abound in Florida’s warm waters close to river mouths and can die from prolonged exposure to low temperatures.

When water temperatures drop, manatees gather in warm-water habitats, such as discharge canals at power plants, canal systems or springs to avoid a deadly “cold stress syndrome.”

Yes, Al Gore has for years been telling us the clue to the climate is in Nature and we need to look for the “climate canaries.” So that’s what we’re doing Al. But what we see more and more of is yet another “inconvenient truth” pop up to knock the wind of out the climate alarmists’ sails.

Florida is yet again having another bitterly cold winter. The cold front sweeping in from the Arctic, with temperatures below freezing in parts of the southeastern state, is killing many animals accustomed to a temperate climate that sends droves of tourists swarming to enjoy yearlong warmth in the “Sunshine State.”

This latest bad news for Florida’s wildlife comes soon after our recent story on how more regular colder winters are killing food crops. An increase in colder winters in the past decade has been hitting the cold-sensitive orange crop hard, too.

Evidence from the real world grows ever more compelling that the great climate science emperors really don’t have any clothes. So can someone please tell Al? It’s cold outside, buddy–you better get your clothes back on!