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.
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The only thing NOT caused by climate change is an elevation of an AGWers’ IQ. There’s apparenly an inverse relationsip.
’nuff said!
Re: The Birds
I’ve actually visited Bodega Bay and the site of where the school is (which is a few miles inland).
The school is now dominated by several very large trees and is a museum (if I recall correctly). The restaurant is now extensively rebuilt to accommodate visitors and looks nothing like the film.
The film is still a classic, though.
Ahhh, Schools of Climatology and Broadcast; Schools for the Gifted.
timetochooseagain (18:52:33) :
They are probably killing themselves because the Red, red, Koyapigaktoruk is eating all their worms
Koyapigaktoruk? any relation to the “Manabearpigatourk”?-sorry, I had
to do that….
My favorite Larson is the two Pilots looking out and saying:” Gee look at that
Mountain goat way up here in the clouds!”….
Layne:
“Next thing you know they’ll blame climate change for killing the dinosaurs.”
They already have….. 🙂
Note: if true, it got COLDER!!!!!
Increase you intelect by 23.7% …kill your TV.
Dr Svalgaard – I could care less about copyright rules at the moment. I snorted up my mouthful of water when I saw it! Thanks for that lighthearted moment 🙂
As a very late reply to ‘Steve in SC’ where he stated that he’s never seen a crow fly into anything; this is because crows are considered to be very smart birds. There’s lots of opinions about intelligence in animals but some sites I’ve seen put crows in the top 10 among animals for smarts. I believe they’ve learned they can drop things (seeds, shells?) on roadways for vehicles to run over them and crush them, thereby presenting an easy meal.
Yeah, right!! More funding please. This sort of event has probably always occured and it has just occured to these researchers that if they could tie in the birds deaths to the normal change in climate from season to season they could apply for further cash to feed their families and pay their mortgages.
I claim warmer oceans causes whales to beach themselves I need to do some further research to examine the exact process. Can I get some funding :o)
——
The Guardian link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/11/wildlife.conservation1
These birds are registered Democrats. 2 left wings will not fly. The aerodynamics just do not work.
They also have given up on hopenchange.
Good one Lief. I can feel a German Summary whelling up in side of me. ‘Stuka Eein AGW Kamikazi Schnitzel phart. CRU-ScmnukkDorkSpielmeister bit Cliff un final. Nyet un Suicide bitten bird un depressed’.
Crows at the Bainbridge Island ferry dock, (across Puget Sound from Seattle), pull mussels off the pilings at low tide and fly up about twenty feet and drop them on the pavement to crack the shells so they can pick out the meat. They are way too smart to let cars run over them and squish the meat into an in-edible mush of shell, meat, and road grit. And ravens make crows look like CAGW believers. Read Bernd Heinrich’s books.
“Never watch MSNBC, never trust anything from MSNBC, never waste your time with the dinosaur media. Their only purpose is to advance Liberalism and carry out Obama’s orders.”
Gotcha, stay away from FOX News, as they only exist to indoctrinate you in the ways of the Obama Youth.
Larson was ok, but Kliban was much deeper and very underrated: http://www.coldbacon.com/pics/kliban/bksubjective.jpg
I couldn’t tell just what specific species they observed flying into the cliffs from the article. They mentioned murres being killed by other factors though, and this bird is known to have landing and take off problems (though they can fly very fast) and frequently smack into cliff faces when trying to land at their nesting spots:
http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=57
This is from the pseudo-science manual of novel phenomena.
Observing any previously unobserved phenomenon constitutes a novel phenomenon without precedent.
(If you’re going to repeat that at a party, make sure it’s before your second drink. :-))
I wonder if they bothered to look and see if there were any Rough-legged hawks in the area. The Rough-legged Hawk breeds in Arctic tundra both in the Old and the New World. I do not know the area or the birds but a flying predator is the first possible explanation I would come up with.
If you are fleeing from a predator you may not bother to watch where you are going. I just had an 7 year old pony bounce off an 8 wire high tensile fence when he was “chased” by a flying plastic bag tossed from a car. The fence has 2 inch wide tape at the middle to make it visible and he has been in the paddock for two months. (No he was not hurt, that is why I use eight wires instead of the usual three or four)
With journalists lacking any basic level of curiosity about things that for some strange reason I learned as a child at school, (eg; weathering of rocks including freeze thaw cycles) we are destined to have still more and more uncritical rubbish splashed across the media.
The only giant leap made by this “Scientist” is from the results to a AGW CC conclusion.
I feel more like the owner of a Norwegian Blue Parrot as each day passes.
Is it any wonder more skeptics are coming out of the closet.
Birds run into cliffs because they are really, really stupid, not because of AGW. They also occasionally run into trees and telephone poles for the same reason. Kill the trees, save the birds.
If you want to look for a link to AGW, look for bats running into cliffs or other obstacles. Unlike birds, bats are very intelligent (they can fly with their eyes closed, what more can one say?).
On a similar note, which do you suppose kills more birds… cold snaps in early spring or AGW?
More funding and a contribution to the next IPCC report for sure.
Re: Tom Judd (Apr 8 20:07),
I have seen crows drop walnuts on the asphalt from up high.
“The researchers note that despite the strange endings, the percentage of dead birds was relatively low — just a few thousands out of millions of birds in the area.”
This statement shows how dire the situation is… for the scientists’ future prospects of grant money. Perhaps some rework of their paper/study geared towards successful animal adaptation and selection processes in the arctic would help.
While void of science the article was at least entertaining in an unintended sort of way… especially if you strategically segment it, such as “strange Arctic birds” or “You see a bird for apparently no good reason”.
Climate happens.
I don’t know if this merits being added to this archive
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
They already have all these
bird loss accelerating, bird strikes, bird visitors drop, birds confused, birds decline (Wales), birds driven north, birds face longer migrations, birds return early, birds shrink(Aus), birds shrink (USA), bittern boom ends, blackbirds stop singing, blackbirds threatened,
The current total, including links that have gone dead, of tragedies or potential tragedies attributable to CAGW is 756, but it is obviously by no means exhaustive.
In1973 I spent 6 weeks at a U of Queensland research station on Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. It was nesting season for the pelagic birds. Every evening at dusk there was a crash as a Wedgetailed Shearwater would smack into the side of barracks hut next to my bunk. I would go out to find the bird sitting dazed on the ground. I guess the hut had been built in the flight path of the landing pattern among the trees. It went on until the young had fledged and they all had gone their merry way. Does the term “Bird Brain” ring a bell?