Canadian Harp Seals may have “read” the predictions of the coming decades of stabilization of global temperatures and perhaps some cooling. Animals like the Harp Seal have experienced many millions of years of climatic change and, through the complex processes of evolution and natural selection, may have developed an ability to sense coming changes.
This is from The Boston Channel:
Small numbers of juvenile harp seals are typically found each winter stranded along the coast of the northeastern United States. But this year, well over 100 adult harp seals – not juveniles – have been spotted … In some areas they’re reporting three times the normal number of sightings … we’ve had four sightings of adult harp seals in North Carolina, which we’ve never had before. We typically don’t see them that far south. …
For now, there is no clear explanation for why more seals are showing up in U.S. waters, said Gordon Waring, who heads the seal program at NOAA’s fisheries science center in Woods Hole, Mass.
They could be making their way south because of climatic conditions or perhaps in search of food, Waring said.
“These animals are known to wander a lot,” Waring said. “Whether they’re following food down or whatever, we don’t really have a good understanding of it.”
Garron said she and the seal organizations will look at environmental trends, such as water temperatures, to see if it’s influencing the harp seal range.
Regardless of the reason, biologists are taking notice, Doughty said.
Read more from The Boston Channel here.
Here is a 2009 WUWT item about Henrik Svensmark and his Global Cosmic Ray theory of how reduced Solar activity leads to cooling periods. Svensmark says “In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable …”
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Nah, nah, they were pining for the fjords of Conneticut. Or it may have been global warming wot dunnit.
It’s quite obviously worse than we thought! It’s getting so hot in the north that those poor seals have to abandon their normal territory and look for cold elsewhere. The shame. When will the virus known as humanity ever learn?
/sarc
What do they taste like?
It’s really hard to say anything about this at this point. We don’t want to be like some and jump to conclusions too early and thus ruin our credibility. It could just be a fluke. Maybe the seals are reacting to our unusually cold winter, or perhaps there is another reason.
Isn’t it time to admit that we don’t have good understanding of most of what goes on in the natural world and stop blaming everything that we don’t understand on CO2?
knowing that they need thin ice in order to make breathing holes………..
Given the concatenation of the cooling phases of the oceanic oscillations, the curious Cheshire Cat Sunspots, and the apparent weakness of CO2 as a warming agent, global cooling over the near to medium term is a lot more likely than global warming. Bet on it.
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Slowly but surely nature is humbling these alarmists. As one Warmist researcher put it about Mt. Kilimanjaro:
Don’t be surprised if a pal reviewed paper is produced showing that the seals moved south because of super hot temperatures in the Arctic.
Just fine for the harp seals. But a LIA won’t be so kind to the human species.
Something the warmists keep forgetting.
“…through the complex processes of evolution and natural selection, may have developed an ability to sense coming changes.”
This is basicly incorrect. Creature do not ‘develop’ the ability to survive, natural selection simple kills the ones that were not born with the ability to survive. It is this critical point that answers the question ‘How did the xxx develop yyy?’. The answer is: It did not, the ones born without yyy died out, only the xxx’s with yyy are left.
Species do not ‘develop’ to survive, they develop IF they survive.
(sorry, it just irks me when people mix this up, I think it is a critical point in understanding natural selection )
I am still not fully convinced about the magnitude of the solar activity on the Earth’s temperature. I think there is an intermediate step involving ocean cycles, but that is total conjecture.
I do think cooling will happen, primarily the NH summers will start to be cooler as the obliquity is decreasing. This also means that winters will not cool as quickly. The broad interactions of changing energy to the Earth from the Sun does not result in a neat linear change in temperature, but bursts of cooling and warming that take place over hundreds of years. I do fear that the next cooling phase will make the LIA look pleasant by comparison…
If that doesn’t scare you, nothing will. Feeding 9 billion when 60% of the current cropland is too cold should raise eyebrows more than the idea of more farmland from warmer climate.
Summer is over, Fall is fading. Winter is coming.
The seals have obviously been listening to the ‘experts’.
Florida sounds like a good destination.
Just curious. I remember seeing reports that of observed changes in migratory patterns in animals and zone changes in plants, the vast majority are consistent with global warming. I’ve also seen studies that very high percentages of animals studied showed temperature related changes consistent with global warming.
Does this post suggest that you believe those studies to be false, or that there will be some kind of dramatic turn-around?
Or, would you just be cherry-picking?
Here is a 2009 WUWT item about Henrik Svensmark and his Global Cosmic Ray theory of how reduced Solar activity leads to cooling periods. Svensmark says “In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable …”
The long-term changes in cosmic ray intensity have been so small [e.g. http://www.puk.ac.za/opencms/export/PUK/html/fakulteite/natuur/nm_data/data/SRU_Graph.jpg ] that one cannot blame the cooling on the cosmic rays. But we don’t have to, any complex system fluctuates all by itself.
Maybe we should have a harp seal or two on the IPCC. Considering some of the current appointees, that would be an improvement.
My first choice, of course, would have been the late Knut, the polar bear.
The thought that the humble Harp Seal has a better ability to predict future climate changes than the combined “intelligence” of all the worlds Climate Scientists and their GCM’s with gazillions of mega-bytes of processing power, is one that I find absolutely freaking hilarious. Please let it be true.
Oh! The humility!
Interesting story. Wonder how this will be spun by warmers?
I also wonder if the seals opted for the pat down search or the body scanner when they crossed the border. ☺
You can see the immediate faulty logic in the article.
We have not seen this before therefore there must be a “reason”.
If there is a reason then it might be bad.
If it is bad then it is probably caused by man.
OMG we have simply got to study this!
Who knows? Maybe the Harp Seals are simply smart enough to go where they please.
After all, plenty of other types of Canadians go south to Florida for the winter?
I don’t believe that photo of a seal is a harp seal, at least certainly not an adult. Coloration is not right for an adult harp and isn’t that close to juvenile harp either (known as “beaters” or “bedlamers” depending on age). Head shape is wrong too. I believe it is a harbor seal.
Vagrant harps are known to Virginia, so North Carolina isn’t a surprise. There have been some reports of Caribbean monk seals (extinct species for a hundred years) in the Caribbean that were thought to be harps on further consideration.
Well as we know from the examples of William Shatner, Steve MacIntyre of hockey stick fame (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_MacIntyre) as well as Steve McIntyre of anti-hockey stick fame, Ross McKitrick and humbly yours truly, many Canadians are a discerning bunch, so welcome your Canadian Harp Seal Overlords with open arms and embrace Canada’s best export yet to your shores: the Arctic Climate Zone. It’s brisk and crisp isn’t it? It’s the best way that Canada will ever export it’s unique identity, other than beer, hockey, or touks, that is eh. Now what color of touk do you want to go with that sub freezing chill you got?
While often mistaken for being too polite Canadians have an analytic bite that digs deep and hits the target and once one of us gets deep into it we just won’t let go, as exemplified by folks like Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit, seemingly polite to a fault (he won’t call data fabrication a scientific fraud) but tenaciously stubborn when he senses tasty fraudulent data fabrication aka blood aka false claims of those who should know better (Mann, Jones, Briffa, Walh, et. al.). The Harp Seals are on a mission to provide a more direct Canadian experience for those south of 49.
We Canadians do have one apology to make…. Please forgive us, we had to get rid of him and that means sending him south: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GueojgiM-cg.
Oh and with the Harp Seals you can eat a few of them but save us the baby seals as they are the best. So cute.
[:)] Now what color of touk works for you?
Something tells me that soon GreenPeace will announce that this has nothing to do with cooler temps, ’cause that can’t be happening’, but rather the repeated ‘stick shampoo’s’ the baby seals are getting up in The Great White North!
Spring break? 🙂
Harp Seals: the essential ingredient of a Club Sandwich?