Climate change hype – it's turtles all the way down under

From the Society for Experimental Biology via Eurekalert, now making the rounds on websites like ScienceDaily, worrisome news that climate change will possibly, maybe, could, put the endangered Mary river turtle in Australia at further risk. Even the author of the study admits “Whether climate change has already contributed to the decline is not clear,” says Ms. Micheli-Campbell. But let’s not let that get in the way of spinning a good story.

Oddly, there’s no mention of climate change as a threatening factor on the Queensland government websites that list the endangered turtle, but many, many, other things are. See more on that at the end of the story along with a temperature analysis. I didn’t expect to spend most of my Sunday on this, but the more I dug into it, the more it looked shonky, and it is. – Anthony

Climate change threatens endangered freshwater turtle

The Mary river turtle (Elusor macrurus), which is restricted to only one river system in Australia, will suffer from multiple problems if temperatures predicted under climate change are reached, researchers from the University of Queensland have shown.

The scientists, who are presenting their work at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual conference in Glasgow on 3rd July 2011, incubated turtle eggs at 26, 29 and 32⁰C. Young turtles which developed under the highest temperature showed reduced swimming ability and a preference for shallower waters.

This combination of physiological and behavioural effects can have dual consequences for survival chances. “Deeper water not only provides the young turtles with protection from predators but is also where their food supply is found,” explains PhD researcher, Mariana Micheli-Campbell. “Young turtles with poor swimming abilities which linger near the surface are unable to feed and are very likely to get picked off by birds. These results are worrying as climate change predictions for the area suggest that nest temperatures of 32⁰C are likely to be reached in the coming decades.”

The Mary river turtle is already listed as endangered by the IUCN Red List and the population has suffered a large decline over the past decades. Some factors known to have affected the population include collection of the eggs for the pet trade and introduced predators such as foxes and dogs. “Whether climate change has already contributed to the decline is not clear,” says Ms. Micheli-Campbell. “But these results show it may be a danger to this species in the future.”

These findings may be shared by other species of turtle, but the outcome is likely to be more extreme in the Mary River turtle as climatic warming is particularly pronounced for this area and the relatively shallow nests of freshwater turtles are more susceptible to changes in ambient temperature than the deeper nests of sea turtles. Further research is needed to understand the effects of climate change on incubation in other turtles.

Seems to me that “climate change” is the least of the problems, which is probably why it  isn’t mentioned.

But let’s take this a step further and look at temperatures. They say in the press release:

The scientists, who are presenting their work at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual conference in Glasgow on 3rd July 2011, incubated turtle eggs at 26, 29 and 32⁰C. Young turtles which developed under the highest temperature showed reduced swimming ability and a preference for shallower waters.

and…

…the outcome is likely to be more extreme in the Mary River turtle as climatic warming is particularly pronounced for this area..

According to the QLD government website on the turtle:

Habitat and distribution

The Mary River turtle occurs in the Mary River, from Gympie, to the tidal reaches just upstream from Maryborough.

and…

Egg morphology and other reproductive characters seem essentially like those of the other turtles in the Family Chelidae with a southern temperate breeding pattern. Nesting occurs in late October and again about one month later.

In a brochure put out by activists protecting the turtle I found:

Nesting occurs from October to January each year, with most of the nesting occurring in November and early December.

Since nesting is in the southern spring and summer, October -January, when high  temperatures start ramping up and because the tests done where problems were shown at 32C, which is much higher than that average annual temperature of the area, I think they are most concerned with the maximum temperatures.

Fortunately, BoM maintains long period of record weather stations at both locations and offers Tmax data. The two stations, about 70 km apart span most of the length of the Mary river:

First, Gympie, at the most upstream location. The graph below is from the BoM website.

Source: here Doesn’t look like much of a trend in Tmax does it? In fact it looks warmer in the past around 1910-1920. So where is that:

…the outcome is likely to be more extreme in the Mary River turtle as climatic warming is particularly pronounced for this area… ?

I’ve also plotted the data myself two ways, since BoM helpfully provides a Comma Separated Value file here. Note the caveat BoM offers about the data, something I’ve mentioned before and I’m pleased to see they noted it:

Temperature data prior to 1910 should be used with extreme caution as many stations prior to that date used non-standard shelters.

So I chose start dates of 1910 in my plots. Here’s the annual mean Tmax:

Note the data discontinuity in 1960, which actually spans from about 1956 to 1965. There’s nothing I can do about that, since BoM has no data.

And here is the monthly data plotted for Gympie:

Either way, it appears that there is a downtrend in maximum temperatures at Gympie and that some of the hottest peaks occurred in the past.

Now let’s look at Maryborough, QLD, nearest the ocean delta outlet of the Mary river. Here’s the BoM plot for annual mean Tmax:

Source data here. And my plots:

The trend in Tmax, if there is one, seems essentially flat.

It is important to note that the authors of the turtle study cited incubation temperatures of 32C as being problematic in the development of hatchlings and then go on to say:

These results are worrying as climate change predictions for the area suggest that nest temperatures of 32⁰C are likely to be reached in the coming decades.

Where do they get this 32C assertion from? Perhaps this graph?

Source: http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/soe-online/SOWEB300.jsp?IndicatorId=381

Note that the above graph is an anomaly graph, referenced to a 1961-1990 baseline, or as they say “differences from the 1961-1990 average“. That’s not the same as the actual temperature data, which I plotted and as was shown on the BoM website for Gympie and Maryborough. The coolest period in their actual Tmax records was smack dab in the middle of that 1961-1990 baseline, so of course the present is going to appear warmer compared to that period. But, the fact remains, that in the actual Tmax data for Gympie and  Maryborough there is no trend, or a slight negative one.

As for turtle egg incubation worries, I’ll point out that in both Gympie and in Maryborough data, the monthly mean Tmax routinely exceeded 32C in the past, and apparently the turtles did fine before they started becoming pet store “penny turtles” in Australia, decimating the population.

And then there’s this from the SPRAT profile of the Mary river turtle published by the Australian government:

Nest temperatures in the wild vary from 26° to 40° C (Flakus 2002), and the species does not have temperature-dependent sex determination (Georges & McInnes 1998).

40C!? So what’s the problem?

And, guess what? On this second official web page run (the SPRAT profile) by the Australian government on the turtle I found, there’s no mention of “climate change” or “global warming” as being an issue. Zero, Zip Zilch, Nada, None.

Meanwhile, the compliant web press is busily regurgitating the false alarm over the Mary River turtle from this one press release, that doesn’t even have a paper attached to it yet that I can find at the Society for Experimental Biology website.

I checked the SEB sessions for this year’s annual meeting and found nothing, if anyone can spot the paper, please leave a note in comments. I’d really like to read this one. This is why science papers should always be linked to science press releases.

Another thing I find curious is the brochure (PDF)  put out by the activists that are protecting the turtle. They have their own website, maryriverturtle.com which is part of the Tiaro & District Landcare Group. According to the Tiaro & District Landcare Group the big push seemed to be to stop the Traveston Crossing Dam:

There’s a lot of chatter about stopping the dam on the activist website.

But, there’s no mention of climate change or global warming in their brochure. Zero, Zip Zilch, Nada, None. Heck, the word “climate” isn’t even mentioned in any context. There’s also no mention on their website using a Google site search for “global warming” , “climate change”, or just plain “climate” on maryriverturtle.com. I’ll bet there will be in a few days now.

But, guess who is listed in the Eurekalert PR announcement:

Yup, Tiaro & District Landcare Group aka maryriverturtle.com with a nice little yellow asterisk next to the name.

I suppose once they got the dam stopped, they needed a new boogeyman to keep people stirred up and active in saving the turtle, so here’s how I see it going down:

They got this grad student, a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, Mariana Micheli-Campbell to look into the “issue”. The photo below, is from her website:

Also on her website, note that she lists this:

Mary River Turtle Scholarship Program – Tiaro & District Landcare Group, QLD, Australia (2009-2011).

So with the help of the scholarship program from the activist group, she goes to incubate some eggs at 32C and lower temperatures, observes some “issues” at the 32C higher temperature, she speculates about local temperatures in the decades ahead exceeding 32C due to the dreaded global warming while ignoring the historic temperature record, and make a press release with the catch-all protective caveat of “Whether climate change has already contributed to the decline is not clear,” while ignoring the fact that previous peer reviewed science says: Nest temperatures in the wild vary from 26° to 40° C.

The press regurgitates the study globally, (without questioning whether temperatures have ever exceeded 32C in the history of the area or what the previous science says) thanks to it being posted on Eurekalert run by the AAAS. Boom! Instant new problem. Fools rush in. Save the turtle! Cash flows into activist coffers, more research is needed. The circle of research life is completed.

Ah, activist science at its finest, truly it’s turtles all the way down.

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SIDENOTE:

As part of my research, I looked into GISS temperature data, and was shocked at just how bad the coverage was. Here is the GISTEMP selection table for the QLD area of interest:

Within a 228km radius, only two stations, Brisbane and Amberly Aero had current data, yet I was able to get current data from BoM easily. GISS seems to think the data for most of QLD stopped in 1992.

On the plus side, the closest station to Gympie that GISS actually has data for, Brisbane at 147km, shows a cooling trend in the annual Tmean plot:

The other QLD station GISS had, Amberley Aero, seems to have a lot of missing data:

Of course, the full Amberley Aero data since 1941 seems to be available at BoM here:  Tmax and Tmin

Note to Gavin Schmidt: As a US taxpayer, may I kindly suggest you get off your RC hobby horse and do some useful work to clean up this missing data mess with some new coding and quality control? If I can find the QLD data, you can, and if people are to have any faith in your work, they shouldn’t be able to find such sloppiness so easily.