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.
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?
I suppose they could be right. After all, there are no longer any bengal tigers left in Cincinnati or packers in Green Bay, or buccaneers in Tampa or lions in Detroit or giants in New York or saints in New Orleans or titans in Tennessee.
Hmmmmm –
Let’s see, what mascot critters have survived the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the Modern Warm Period, and seem to be doing well at present [in no order]:
Bears
Banana slugs
Seminoles
Broncos
Seahawks
Buffalo
Lobos
Rams
Eagles [at least those distant from wind turbines]
Grizzlies
Poley Bears
Cardinal(s)
Mudhens
Ravens
Falcons
Ducks
Orioles
Horned Frogs
Horned Toads
Lizards [of any type]
Hoya [whatever they are]
Tigers
Lions
Wildcats
Cougars
Panthers
Leopards
Cheetahs
Wolves [Timber and otherwise]
Razorbacks
Wolverines
Badgers
Beavers
Copperheads
Rattlesnakes
Diamondbacks
Pythons
Rhinos
Squid
Octupi
Sea Urchins
…
[possibly drifting out of reality]
Yeah, but are the banana slugs safe?
Given the proliferation of this sort of thing, here’s one team mascot (and all its relatives) that should be perfectly safe.
http://basketball.wikia.com/wiki/Muhlenberg_Mules
And then there’s Long Beach State.
http://keepingscore.blogs.time.com/2009/05/17/top-10-worst-college-team-names/slide/the-long-beach-state-dirtbags/
The Edmonton Swastikas were run out of town.
Lord…this is so yesterday
You know when we could grow bananas in Chicago…..
u want laughs:
***for the counter-intuitive & paradoxical “a lot of science” explanations, read the rest:
11 March: Guardian: Graham Readfearn: What’s going on with global warming and Antarctica’s growing sea ice?
As every good climate science denialist knows, the fact that there’s a bit more sea ice in Antarctica is proof enough that global warming is probably a load of old Adélie penguin poo.
So when a ship carrying climate scientists on an expedition got stuck in that sea ice over Christmas it was time to sharpen the blogging knives with those stones of irony…
Often when it’s pointed out that Arctic sea ice is rapidly melting, the climate change contrarianites (or if we’d like to take the short route to eliciting a Nazi analogy, we can use the term ‘deniers’) will step bravely forth with data from Antarctica…
So what’s going on down there (Antarctica)?…
The Tasmania-based Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre has just released a new “position analysis” of the brain-achingly complex issue of southern hemisphere sea ice.
***It’s got a lot of science in it…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2014/mar/11/climate-change-antarctic-sea-ice-expedition
GeologyJim says:
March 11, 2014 at 3:27 pm
Hmmmmm –
Let’s see, what mascot critters have survived the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the Modern Warm Period, and seem to be doing well at present [in no order]:
============================
They have also survived all this lot :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png
Amazing how stupid all these claims look, when you apply a shred of common sense…….
Some interesting information from the following site re reptilians and the like. One thing that did stand out for me and it is so easy to forget, is that temperature ranges for nests (and lots of other things) can very within a short range due to local factors.
Field lnvestigations:
“A large number of nests of Map and Painted Terrapins were located along the shore of the Mississippi river in Wisconsin, USA, hatching was monitored and the hatchlings sexed. Nests with males were located in sand amid shading vegetation, which cooled the temperature, and nests with females were located in the open sand exposed to the sun, with warm temperatures.”
http://www.britishcheloniagroup.org.uk/testudo/v2/v2n3sex
Everybody knows that alligators & “red wolves” only evolved 100 years ago, & as such have never had to endure a changing climate.
I wish upon wish that climate change would do something to the Duke Blue Devils. But since the Blue Devils mascot is inspired by a World War I French army unit known for their special berets, maybe they are actually causing climate change. (Don’t give NWF any ideas.)
P.S. I am a lifelong UNC Tar Heel fan. Hating Duke is in my blood. Here is one of my favorite plays, ever. Maybe climate change caused Danny Green to jump extra high.
Let’s not forget Nittany Lions. They never even existed to begin with.
“If we’re going to turn climate change into a Cinderella story…”
Too late.
@GeologyJim –
Don’t forget the University of California, Irvine Anteaters.
As for the mascot article, or whatever it was – obviously there isn’t enough space in our mental institutions.
“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.”
What part of Michigan got warm this winter?
The article is right! Team mascot namesakes the Falcons, Redhawks and Eagles are definitely threatened by attempts to stop Climate Change with those wind generators going up all over the place.
Just as well they’ve never heard of British Football (soccer) teams. We’ve got the lot – lions, tigers, foxes, bulls, badgers, robins, seagulls, bees, cats, eagles, hornets, …….
And flora – poppies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_football_club_nicknames_in_the_United_Kingdom
Winthrop Eagles getting swatted by wind mills.
“found at only three feet elevation or less, making them extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels and hurricanes.”
What we have here is some global weirding. If sea level rises 3 feet, there will be no land from zero to three feet. It will start at 3 feet. There will be a void/tear in space from zero to three feet.
The zero to three feet habitat won’t just move up the bank.
@alexwade: A B C
Go (Red)Wolfpack.
The cold protracted winter really scared the bejaysus out of the consensus. They’re desperation can’t be good for their health. I think the cannibalistic lobsters, imperiled mascot animals, the crazy search for heat’s hiding places, new redoubled wishful climate sensitivities, Democrat Senators having a global warming pajama party, UEA discovering mysterious gases, the misadventures of the Ship of Fools, Obama using climate change as a guide to good nutrition… have the feel of symptoms of a terminal disease. It’s different than before. Every day is a climate craziness of the week. I think the big deadline that will keep this crescendo rising is the end of Obama’s term. This is their last chance.
Climategate and 17 years of cooling after only about the same amount of warming that caused all the fuss and trillions in expenditure is definitely the turning point. I’m surprised at how few defections or even altered thinking there has been under such pressure. I think it is time to drop the second batch of emails to stop the craziness and maybe set the stage for the next US elections.
“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…”
They are talking about the sharp drop into a Little or Big Ice Age Right? RIGHT??
I endured a 10 degree C rise in the temperature today . It started with frost this morning and ended up quite balmy this afternoon. Unprecedented!
Here, to be sure. But what is the average person, especially the young one, who doesn’t spend hours reading WUWT, to make of widely-reported quotes like this?
Sure the brutally-cold winter would seem to give the lie to “rising global temperatures,” but a whole generation has experienced nothing but CAGW propaganda from the schools, the media, and the politicians. It would not occur to them to take exception to such a statement; it’s just the “plain truth” they’ve heard so often before.
Countering this pervasive mindset is a huge problem. I think it has to start, not with the Climate-Parasite politicians, nor with the blind media, but with the schools.
/Mr Lynn
There was a site on the Internet that listed about 1,000 things said to be caused
by global warming. Some of the items were so comical, that I nearly pissed my
pants laughing. I especially liked more women engaging in prostitution and a
rape epidemic. So, if global warming is happening, it should mean that even
ugly guys like me will stand a better chance of getting laid.
I do not know about cannibal crabs, but I am sure the polar bears are safe.
All of those photos of the creatures on tiny bits of ice floating in the arctic
has me asking the same question: Hey shutterbug, turn the camera around
180 degrees so that we can see how close to land you are!
Polar bears are strong swimmers and I am sure that there is nothing wrong
with their survival instinct, so I can safely assume that they would not drift
out of sight of land or the ice cap.
Teddy bears are next in line to become innocent victims of Mann-Made Global Warming.
I used to work for NWF – unfortunately its current senior leadership is obsessed with climate change. Sadly it’s no longer the organization it used to be.
My lament of NWF’s direction http://conservefewell.org/?p=104
Hmmm.
Why not just name team mascots after creatures we WANT to go extinct, such as fleas, ticks, cockroaches, parasitic worms etc. Then everyone will be happy.
Recent refugee from Michigan. Job thing, not global warming. But I do recall that in 2004 there was a single (lost?) Wolverine that was found in Michigan, the first seen in something near 200 years. The thing died in 2010, no doubt due to global warming. Or an Ohio State fan, tough to tell.
You couldn’t make this s*#t up if you sat around stoned for a week and tried to think of the most absurd nonsense your addled mind could imagine. The truth is stranger than fiction, but this brand of fiction is the strangest stuff of all.
I realise that I’m a bit on the slow side but, If elevation is height above mean sea level how will the red wolf recognize a lift in sea level.
What we all ought to be concerned about is the effect of global warming on Australia’s drop bears!
Next they’ll be pointing out that there are no grizzlies in Memphis. Right around NBA playoff time.
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
I hope rising sea levels and increased ‘acidification’ don’t affect my beloved Crimson Tide!
I went to the University of Maryland. I don’t recall any enthusiasm for the Terrapin as a mascot anyway.
Maybe we can get the excess of gator males to mate with the extra terrapin females to beget a new species -Terragators!!! What a ferocious mascot that would make.
I for one would like to see and end to the pandering bears of the Leftist team. I think they were a hockey team. All the climate sensitivities made them scratch their backsides with their hockey sticks, but all they got was s…
“When alligators overheat, more eggs hatch as males. In contrast, terrapins produce more females in hotter temperatures.”
Warmth being worse for gators is why they are prevalent in Alaska and unknown in Florida { / sarcasm off }. Global warming (mostly high latitude non-equatorial warming back when it was happening) would tend to expand, not decrease, gator range and populations overall, but activists can’t even have the shred of honesty to admit that. They can’t even be honest about the name either, calling their global warming predictions “climate change” to hide that global cooling mismatches it.
Love all the great comedy here… great way to finish off a very busy day. Especially enjoyed Steve in SC says: March 11, 2014 at 3:04 pm.
Gonna have to remember that one, Im sure I’ll have ample opportunity to use that line in the not to distant future.
Geology Jim, from personal experience, hoyas or waxplants make great mascots:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoya
Sadly, my High School mascot was a victim of climate change. Alas, “Sabercats” and other sabre-tooth tigers are no more.
It was in the news that some billionaire socialist (other than Soros) is dangling huge amounts of cash in front of the democrats/academics recently to inflame the climate wars, hence the recent uptick in nonsense as they scramble & scrounge for crumbs.
Another creature that survived the Medieval Warm Period was off course the Human Being
This should be enough to warrant classification of the National Wildlife Federation as a predatory species.
The Jayhawkers were anti-slavery settlers to the Kansas Territory–we seem to be alive and well, thank you very much. On the other hand, losing the star forward to a back injury doesn’t bode well for tournament hopes.
Maybe the falcons are threatened, but the cuckoos are thriving at the NWF.
There are lots of names waiting in the wings, ready for use as school mascots. so GO YOU MIGHTY COCKROACHES! FIGHT ON YOU FIGHTING JELLYFISH! SUCK THEIR BLOOD MOSQUITOES! ON TO VIC-TOE-REEEEEE!
Shows a serious lack of knowledge about Gator nesting behavior. Momma gator regulates the temperature through her nest upkeep skills. Sheesh.
UC Santa Cruz is the Banana Slugs – wonder what their fate is with all this (brrr) AGW?
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Probably one of those migrating Buckeye trees stepped on it.
(Was Treebeard a Buckeye?)
The danger is apparently especially high if the mascot is a lobster!
If only energy were as cheap and plentiful as idiocractic ideas from AGW kooks and rent seekers…………
Sardines? Or do you mean “bated” (paused or stopped).