Egads! The stupid, it burns like magnesium. And I thought the cannibal lobsters were bad. This is what I call parasitic messaging, they are hoping they will get some sort of mention in March Madness basketball related stories. – Anthony
From the NWF Media Center: With the annual NCAA college basketball tournaments set to begin, a new National Wildlife Federation report details how the climate crisis is hurting the real-life species that are mascots for many of America’s college athletic programs. Climate change is the most serious environmental threat today to many animals and plants and urgent action is needed at all levels, according to Mascot Madness: How Climate Change is Hurting School Spirit.
“We have a new version of ‘March Madness’: Extreme weather fueled by climate change, deeper droughts, and intensifying wildfires,” said Dr. Doug Inkley, senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation and lead author of Mascot Madness. “From wolverines to gators, species that have spent countless centuries adapting a home court advantage are now watching the rules of the game changed before their eyes by industrial carbon pollution. If we’re going to turn climate change into a Cinderella story, we need to act now.”
Mascot Madness looks at the best available science on how climate change is impacting many of America’s best-known mascots, from familiar species like bears and bison to exotic cats like lions and tigers. Warmer temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and rising sea levels are altering habitat in ways that can affect animals’ diet, range and behavior:
- Wolverines (U. of Michigan) rely on deep snowpack for building dens to raise their young and may be declared a threatened species as the climate continues to warm.
- Terrapins (U. of Maryland) and Gators (U. of Florida) face reproductive threats. When alligators overheat, more eggs hatch as males. In contrast, terrapins produce more females in hotter temperatures. Imbalances in sex ratios like these can be a threat to sustaining healthy populations.
- The entire range of the critically-endangered red wolf, a real-life inspiration for the North Carolina State Wolfpack, is found at only three feet elevation or less, making them extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels and hurricanes.
- Buckeyes (Ohio State) are threatened by stronger storms, deeper droughts, and more intense heat waves fueled by climate change and are being pushed to migrate north – into rival territory in Michigan.
“The National Wildlife Federation’s Mascot Madness report is a creative tool for getting past the noise and engaging people about the real-life impacts of climate change. There is no questioning how serious the numbers are on rising sea levels and global temperatures,” said Rep. Donna Edwards (MD-4th). “But it is also important to take that to the next level by conveying the public health impacts and the tragic loss of biodiversity that is an undeniable result of a changing climate.
…
Read the report at NWF.org/Mascots and get more National Wildlife Federation news at NWF.org/News.
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Getting past the noise? Scuse ‘me but this ploy IS noise.
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How can you do a parody of these guys? They are beyond parody.
Waiting with baited breath for the article which explains climate change will kill kittens and puppies, especially the fluffy ones… 🙂
Ah, not fair! They would have to pick on wildcats although I think that bobcats are pretty adaptable given their wide range. Too bad our in state rivals have a made believe critter. They aren’t threatened … although since this is a made up threat …
Good grief. WTF.
End the year-round madness!
Red wolves aren’t even a species, although the Smithsonian may declare them such in a few years, after decades of campaigning by the USFWS to get them covered by the Endangered Species Act to justify the waste of tens of millions running a reserve for them in NC. The problem is that in the wild the breed with coyotes, not surprising since the reserve animals are in fact nothing but members of a race of big coyotes from Texas, hybridized with some grey wolf ancestry.
NWF and WWF used to be good “conservation” organizations. Money corrupts! This is one of the most ridiculous ploys yet.
I’m surprised they didn’t mention that the Hurricanes have almost completely disappeared or that the Cyclones were among the lowest on record.
Rats! I don’t see “The Stanford Tree” on the list. I was hoping he would die off.
Not only do “red wolves”, otherwise known as swamp coyotes, happily breed with other coyotes, but they are so badly adapted to life that they are incapable of living anywhere above, or below, land with an elevation of zero to three feet?? Who would want to save a “species” which restricted itself in such a way? Who would be stupid enough to believe that an animal is incapable of living outside such a limited range? Oh, yeah, … the greenies.
Wolverines – with all the extra snow being dumped this year due to global warming, they ought to be fine….
Terrapins and Gators – having survived ice ages and hot house earth, my guess is they’ve got this sexism temperature thing figured out.
Red Wolves – are they really too stupid to take a step up hill rather than drown? And at 2 mm/year, you’d think they’d have plenty of time. A snail would have plenty of time.
Buckeyes – well, those or nuts. The fruit from the trees, the fans, the WWF, all nuts.
Oh Yeah??? Well the !#@*!!!ing greenies have been attacking, demoralizing and eliminating the Boilermakers for several seasons now!
Obviously a “full court press” in progress as the eco-extortionist’s are down 3 possessions with 2nd half game clock at 00:30.0. It’s “Hail Mary” time.
I am interested in what they think about the “Fighting Banana Slugs of UC Santa Barbara” ?
are nuts, not or nuts.
This may have happened already to an NFL team as the desert heat is turning away most of the Cardinals from Arizona.
There was a move afoot to rename the N.C. State Wolfpack to the Possums since we played dead at home and got killed on the road.
Yes, but what about the Duke Blue Devils?
The red wolf’s entire range is limited to elevations of three feet or less? That is a somewhat limited habitat.
Similarly the Kansas City Chiefs are being replaced by the dastardly Middle Managers. The Tennessee Volunteers are being driven out by the “Paid NGO Worker” (who gets $13.50/hr to hold up cardboard signs at Al Gore rallies). The Buffalo Bills have been all but extincted by the Executive Orders. & worst of all the New England Patriots have been driven out by the Internationalists.
Shame really. Give me a few million dollars & I can see that I do my best to try to start a movement to propose way of trying to not avoid preserving the memories of such vital & neccessary symbols of our ounce beautiful national heroes.
Climate Change also threatens pop stars, making them drop their clothes, but what will Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus do once they run out of clothes to drop?
If any millionaire warmist rent-seeker reads this: Make it your new campaign, you have permission.
I can’t stand it anymore. I think climate change is going to make me start throwing bricks through windows!!
Don Penim says:
March 11, 2014 at 3:03 pm
Good point. The Athletics were forced to move away from Philadelphia when the “Steak” (Cheesesteak, if you’re not in Philly) was invented, & then had to subsequently leave Kansas City after the advent of ribs for the better tanned & more exercised California.
At least the Washington DC
Drunken MurderersSenators aren’t endangered.Stark Dickflüssig says:
March 11, 2014 at 3:13 pm
“worst of all the New England Patriots have been driven out by the Internationalists.”
Nice! Internationalists of course have an advantage over patriots, as they are not bound to any one territory and can migrate away from dangerous Climate Change!
UC Santa Cruz are the Slugs.
Did Harvard make it in this year?