From the “you can’t make this stuff up” department. Climate change is now blamed for what is called “Gary Larson events” in homage to the famed creator of the comic strip “The Far Side”
“We saw birds dying of what at best could be called Gary Larson events,” said Mark Mallory of the Canadian Wildlife Service in Iqaluit. “You see a bird for apparently no good reason fly into the cliff and die. You’ve got to be kidding.”
Of course, only MSNBC could be relied upon to report such scary science news. Here’s the link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36202287/ns/technology_and_science-science/
Now I understand how the bird tragedy shown below happened.
We just didn’t look closely enough for a the cause of why the birds went crazy back then.
Look for a sequel soon. Ed Begley Jr. is being considered for the lead male actor role.
‘You see a bird for apparently no good reason fly into the cliff and die’
Oh come on, they must have had a reason.
It’s well understood that birds’ navigation systems and brainwaves are directly effected by geomagnetics and it’s fluctuations…
So how are they linking a bird flying into a cliffside with climate change ? Since when is climate change and geomagnetics one and the same ??
One data point proves nothing. Birds die and the climate is harsh, where is the link to global warming ? I must have missed it !
How many such deaths are normal ?
Is the rate declining or increasing ?
Why jump to CO2 as an explanation when there are so many available ? Are they just doing their bit for the AGW propaganda machine?
more fun in the following, with Naomi Oreskes, William Freudenburg, Riley Dunlap plus amusing comments from abc’s own Robyn Williams:
3 April: ABC Radio Australia: The Science Show: Climate change scepticism – its sources and strategies
This week The Science Show presents excerpts from a symposium at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego which looks at the sources and strategies of scepticism to climate change science….
Stephen Schneider: …Where’s the fourth estate? How about trying to balance? Scientists are pretty incompetent at doing that because all the incentives, unless you’re at my age or you’re crazy and don’t care what your colleagues think, you just go out there and tell it, very few scientists will do that because the incentives are so strong against it, especially young people pre-tenure…
I’ve got to be real blunt; how many old men who have nothing to do with climate science are out there saying it ain’t so and getting coverage in the newspaper when they would have no prayer based on anything they’re still capable of doing? There are a lot of reasons why this goes on. Why are they being covered? Who cares what a petroleum geologist thinks about climate? They’re as competent to discuss climate as I am horizontal drilling. They are not experts, they don’t belong in that debate. ..
Why do you think the media, in my opinion, have grabbed on these three IPCC errors so far? This disinformation engine is investing all that money and all they could do is find three? I’m more arrogant. I think if I took my best students and you gave me a month I think we could probably find ten, maybe even 20. But there’s about (I haven’t counted them) 1,000 conclusions roughly in a report, 1,000 pages, one a page, something in that order. ..
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2859986.htm
the the scientists on WUWT:
8 April: ABC TV Australia: Catalyst: LIDAR (with transcript)
Greenhouse gas emissions are heating up the lower atmosphere, but 50 kilometres above Antarctica the mesosphere is cooling. Mark Horstman visits a small hut on the edge of Antarctica to find out why
Andrew Klekociuk: LIDAR stands for light detection and ranging. It’s a technique very similar to radar except we’re using light pulses from a laser, rather than radio waves, to probe the atmosphere, sending out these pulses and listening for the echoes that are coming back.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2867591.htm
So these birds are seen flying into a cliff for no apparent reason.
That’s where the story should end.
Birds have been flying into things for no apparent reason for how long?
Here’s a ‘can’t miss’ idea: Ask the birds why they flew into the cliff.
A couple of thoughts come to mind.
1. Did the scientists establish if the increase bird suicide is a statistically significant trend?
2. It is well known that the Arctic had consistently nice weather, no erosion and very few storms prior to the invention of the SUV.
http://www.surfersvillage.com/gal/pictures/ArcticSunbathe-Francois_Len.jpg
I can’t resist:
There was a wee cooper lived in Fife
Nickety nackety noo, noo. noo
And he has tae’n a gentle wife
Risselty-rosselty, hey, pomposity
Nickety nackety noo, noo, noo.
She wouldna card and she wouldna spin
Nickety nackety noo, noo. noo
For shamin’ o’her gentle kin
Risselty-rosselty, hey, pomposity
Nickety nackety noo, noo, noo.
She wouldna bake and she wouldna brew
Nickety nackety noo, noo. noo
For spoilin’ of her gentle hue
Risselty-rosselty, hey, pomposity
Nickety nackety noo, noo, noo.
She called him a dirty Hieland whelp
Nickety nackety noo, noo. noo
If you want yer dinner go get it yourself
Risselty-rosselty, hey, pomposity
Nickety nackety noo, noo, noo.
The cooper’s awa tae his wool-pack
Nickety nackety noo, noo. noo
And lain a sheepskin across her back
Risselty-rosselty, hey, pomposity
Nickety nackety noo, noo, noo.
I’ll no thrash you, for your gentle kin
Nickety nackety noo, noo. noo
But I will thrash my ain sheep-skin
Risselty-rosselty, hey, pomposity
Nickety nackety noo, noo, noo.
He’s laid the sheepskin across her back
Nickety nackety noo, noo. noo
And with a good stick he went whickety-whack
Risselty-rosselty, hey, pomposity
Nickety nackety noo, noo, noo.
Oh I will card and I will spin
Nickety nackety noo, noo. noo
And think nae mair of my gentle kin!
Risselty-rosselty, hey, pomposity
Nickety nackety noo, noo, noo.
She drew the table and spread the board
Nickety nackety noo, noo. noo
And “My dear husband” was every word
Risselty-rosselty, hey, pomposity
Nickety nackety noo, noo, noo.
All you who have gotten a gentle wife
Nickety nackety noo, noo. noo
Just send ye for the cooper of Fife!
Risselty-rosselty, hey, pomposity
Nickety nackety noo, noo, noo.
Well I’m convinced. There has never before been freeze/thaw cycles that split rocks on cliffs and created avalanches until AGW came along.
I’m sure if you looked at the write-up for the funding proposals these scientists put together, you’d find the magic words that open all the funding vaults – anthropogenic global warming! So, of course, their reports have to make the link no matter how ridiculous and silly.
And these birdbrains got how much government grant money to come up with these conclusions? I’d be interested in there control group and how the differential between and “climate and weather” was judged?
Don’t these people understand that this kind of crap is what is driving the rise in skepticism? How can you advance (or report on) a study like this without being a target for ridicule?
Who’s doing the peer review on these papers? Jim Carrey and Carrot Top?
I’ve noticed them running into the windows of the urban heat islands. As if they were’nt there!!!
African or European swallows?
I would think that the major killers of arctic birds are unusual accidents and weather related events. I mean, what else is going to eventually end their lives, smoking and drug addiction?
RE: Steve in SC (17:47:18) :
“… Except for crows, I have never seen or heard of a crow flying into a building…”
I’ve seen a crow, on a fence, shot with a pellet gun that hit him square in the chest. The crow staggered for a second, ruffled its feathers and the pellet fell to the ground. Crows are tough.
Chickens and .306’s are a different story…
…well, I guess nobody was buying into the drowning/starving polar bear scenario anymore, so that had to come up with another gimmick to raise funds from the Friends of the Earth types!
Absolutely ridiculous…as far as I’m concerned, this story lost any credibility it might have had when, off the top, they compared these events to “Gary Larson” events. Did that mean a fat kid with glasses was putting the birds into a jar, or what…??
George E. Smith (17:16:55) :
There is NO LEGAL usage of far side cartoon panels available to anybody for any reason at any price.
I actually do have permission [1991, from Chronicle Features, San Francisco, CA] to use this particular cartoon in connection with my Programming Tool, called ETK back then.
I think mad denier genetic engineers/climate destroyers spliced lemming genes into the birds resulting in mass suicide.
The msnbc story makes me want to fling myself into a cliff as well.
They are probably killing themselves because the Red, red, Koyapigaktoruk is eating all their worms.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m referring to the meme that Robins are suddenly all over Eskimo villages but that they have no word for them because they are there because of unprecedented warming.
Opps, March 1953, in the journal Arctic, Laurence Irving “THE NAMING OF BIRDS BY NUNAMIUT ESKIMO”-Robin=Koyapigaktoruk.
1913, Victor Stefansson “My Life with the Eskimo”, “Kre-ku-ak’tu-yok” (Mackenzie Eskimo) and “Shab’wak” (Alaskan Eskimo).
Like so many other bird brained claims, this will prove to be a bunch of nonsense.
Before the advent of the internal combustion engine all birds used to die peacefully of natural causes surrounded by their relatives.
This reminds me of some documentary I saw on cable, which claimed that whales would all die because they were unfamilar with the landscape (for lack of a better word) of the melting ice at the south pole and therefore would get lost underneath it as if Whales can’t adapt to variable landscape of ice. I’m sure the ice patterns must have varied quite a bit over the millenia.
Perhaps the scene from Mel Brooks’ “High Anxiety” is more appropriate that the Hitchcock movie.
Leif Svalgaard (18:36:29) :
George E. Smith (17:16:55) :
There is NO LEGAL usage of far side cartoon panels available to anybody for any reason at any price.
I actually do have permission [1991, from Chronicle Features, San Francisco, CA] to use this particular cartoon in connection with my Programming Tool, called ETK back then.
—–
YOU TELL ‘IM, LEIF! I mean, really…if anyone on this blog is going to do something by-the-letter perfectly, I’d expect it to be Dr. Svalgaard!!
Mike McMillan (17:35:00) :
“Next thing you know they’ll blame climate change for killing the dinosaurs.”
They already have….. 🙂
http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/ansmate-change-killed-dinosaurs-german-scientist-says/19417294
There are a number of comments here about the Altemont Pass Wind Farms in Livermore and Windmill Bird Strikes. I believe Smallwood’s environment reports on this topic are another Climategate in the making albeit much smaller.
For example, there appears to be attribution of 10x higher burrowing owl deaths during Jan. Except in Jan, the windmills barely turn if at all. How do I know that, I see the windmills from my house, the power generation curves say they don’t (<3% of the power is generated at this time), and the physics of cold racing from the pacific ocean to fill the warm air rising over the central valley is not as applicable during the winter time.
Birds die, Birds die in greater numbers during the winter time. N. California does not have lots of Birds running into non-spinning windmills.
Smallwood even has Bird Strikes rising dramatically, even though there are less operational windmills since the last study a trend that has been going on for a long time. And yet each report keeps increasing the rate of the strikes.
Mosquitoes? Al Gore told me you only get mosquitoes when it warm. It must be sooooo warm there!
Now we have cracks in rocks caused by Climate Change!
Liquified rocks caused by Climate Change! It must be soooo hot there!
Freezing and melting caused by Climate Change! Every year!
Statistics 101, anybody? The chances of lots of birds ‘hitting each-other’ in the air? Anyone? It obviously increases with Climate Change!
Ah! It’s because it’s sooooooo warm there are mosquitoes! Even when it’s below freezing it’s warm!
*cough* of course not *cough*
Looking for a grant instead, perhaps? S’funny how so many researchers looking for a grant seem to tumble into ‘Climate Change related’ wildlife mortality. I assume nothing ever died in the Arctic before we started driving SUV’s and sending loony researchers and ‘explorers’ to the Arctic, eh? All caused by less than a degree of warming, so I imagine everything died in the MWP.