Embarrassed by the stubborn refusal of polar bears to die out, or even to appear convincingly rare, climate scientists are touting a new poster child species for our collective climate guilt – the white lemuroid ringtail possum.
The possum is restricted to just one mountain range in tropical Australia. Previously numbered in the thousands, the species was almost wiped out by a heatwave in 2005.
“I think this really should be a wake-up call,” tropical rainforests expert and James Cook University researcher Professor Bill Laurance told AAP.
“We’re arguing this is a better icon for global warming than a polar bear because it typifies the type of biodiversity we will lose in the future.”
JUST four white lemuroid ringtail possums have been found in the wild and scientists say the species could soon become the first creature to be wiped out by global warming.
Source: https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/24520231/possum-a-polar-bear-of-climate-change/
h/t to Eric Worrall
However, it may be down, but not out, from 2009:
Reports of white lemuroid ringtail possum’s extinction premature
A RARE possum said to be the first Australian species wiped out by global warming appears to be clinging to survival, if still vulnerable, in north Queensland’s tropical rainforest.
Last year, the white lemuroid ringtail possum was reported to have vanished from high-altitude rainforests in north Queensland. It was the first Australian mammal extinction attributed to climate change.
The white possums are native to the mountains that surround Port Douglas and Cairns. When news of their apparent demise was reported, rising temperatures and global warming were blamed.
they are very good to eat with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
How did this species survive the even higher Australian temperatures reported from the 1800’s?
I haven’t been able to find anything that states, definitively, that the white ones are any different than the brown ones…other than color. So if they aren’t a separate species and the brown ones are not ‘wiped out’ then what is all the fuss about?
I would be thrilled if ‘global warming’ knocked out every possum that exists in the world. Nasty, disgusting creatures.
If a single heat wave, regardless of the cause, could wipe out a species, it would seem that “Survival of the Fittest” has deemed it unfit to survive.
I had a lemuroid once.
Luckily the Preparation L worked like a charm.
“climate scientists are touting a new poster child species for our collective climate guilt – the white lemuroid ringtail possum”
No such species. It is just a colour morph of the common lemuroid ringtail possum Hemibelideus lemuroides and white individuals occur occasionally in other areas as well. However it is an excellent candidate for a “climate victim” since the all-white population on the Carbine Tableland is very small and isolated and runs an excellent chance of going extinct fairly soon through inbreeding or purely stochastic processes. The fact that this population consits entirely of the rare and probably maladaptive white morph suggests that it has been small and isolated for a long time or has passed through an extreme bottleneck after becoming isolated.
Of course one could reinvigorate the population by introducing a few individuals from some other population, but that would be cheating, wouldn’t it? Also they would then only be light cream rather than white, and perhaps lightly less cuddly.
According to the alarmist rumourmongering machine, thousands of species have already been wiped out by ‘global warming’ and now this albino possum, a freak of nature and therefore obviously easy prey, may die out? But now we are told this is only the first species threatened with extinction.
No wonder there is no such thing as climate science, only ‘climate science’.
How appropriate, or is it Freudian slip, its cousin the common ringtail possum is often confused with the black rat.
well its cute, fluffly and white, and doesn’t I assume, treat humans as potential lunch, so I guess from a pr point of view they cant lose.
I think it is obvious that the planet is in a cooling phase (the data sets would show it if any honest people were involved), but let us suppose for a moment that the planet is going to warm 2-4 C over the next 100 years or so.
Species go extinct. That is a fact of nature. It has been gong on a long time. So, if some species goes extinct during a warming phase do we automatically claim that warming killed them off?
Consider the black-footed ferret of the western portion of the USA. We have damn near wiped that species out and if we finish the job during a warming phase can we blame the climate rather than man’s various activities? (like poisoning the ferret’s main food supply)
This magic CO2 molecule can take the blame for nearly anything! What a great scapegoat. “No sweetheart, I did not mean to cheat on you — I was overcome by CO2 and that is why I screwed her. Honest!”
lea says:
I would be thrilled if ‘global warming’ knocked out every possum that exists in the world. Nasty, disgusting creatures.
I presume that you are referring to the american possum Didelphis virginiana. Australian possums are very different, and while the Common Brushtail Possum Trichosurus vulpecula can be something of a pest in urban areas, it is certainly neither nasty nor disgusting and neither are the other c. 50 species, being largely shy, forest-living creatures. And yes, they are quite cute.
vukcevic says:
July 22, 2014 at 12:53 pm
How appropriate, or is it Freudian slip, its cousin the common ringtail possum is often confused with the black rat.
If that is actually true, the average australian must be incredibly ignorant of zoology.
Personally, i am voting for the extinction of academiaticfraud and mediaocracy CAGW Warmists
How cute, we had them in the Botanic Gardens in Honiara, which is considerably warmer than where they are found in Australia.
http://s152.photobucket.com/user/irishkiwi/media/SolomonIslandCuscus12402x600.jpg.html
http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s177/irishkiwi/SolomonIslandCuscus12402x600.jpg
“tty says:
I presume that you are referring to the american possum Didelphis virginiana. Australian possums are very different”
Yes, they are different. In particular, Murican possums swim much faster than Australian possums, especially during the Summer Olympics.
Of course diseases brought to the mountain by researchers have been carefully ruled out.
/sarc
Wait a minute!! I spotted one of them critter last week raiding my garbage can.
Can someone explain how it got all the way from Australia to Almost Iowa? Oh! Oh! Wait a minute, I know! Climate change!!
This scare gets regurgitated quite often when a scary story is needed: http://pindanpost.com/2013/12/08/scary-graph-threatens-climate/
It’s certainly not climate or weather that is their problem.
species for our collective climate guilt – the white lemuroid ringtail possum….
well it’s not a species….just a color morph of the regular lemuroid, which is not threatened
There are no White Ringtail possums. They all died out during the Medieval warm period.
Q: How many Aussies does it take to eat a white lemuroid ringtail possum squashed by the roadside by global warming?
A: Three. One to dine, the other two to keep an eye out for traffic… er … I mean temperature rise.
The new poster child of the cult is a very rare FORM of a stable opossum species. I see this as more solid evidence that they are very desperate and grasping for straws.
I’ll write anything for a good grant.
Absolutely we should revert to prehistoric living conditions to protect these guys. Look how kyoooot they are!!! How would we, indeed, could we, continue without them? No species of cute animal has *ever* become extinct before now. This truly is a crisis of huge proportion!!!!!!!!