The money quote:
“With such extreme climatic events potentially becoming more common due to climate change…”
Maybe next week Nature will notice La Nina:
Cold empties Bolivian rivers of fish
Antarctic cold snap kills millions of aquatic animals in the Amazon.
Anna Petherick
With high Andean peaks and a humid tropical forest, Bolivia is a country of ecological extremes. But during the Southern Hemisphere’s recent winter, unusually low temperatures in part of the country’s tropical region hit freshwater species hard, killing an estimated 6 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins.
Scientists who have visited the affected rivers say the event is the biggest ecological disaster Bolivia has known, and, as an example of a sudden climatic change wreaking havoc on wildlife, it is unprecedented in recorded history.
“There’s just a huge number of dead fish,” says Michel Jégu, a researcher from the Institute for Developmental Research in Marseilles, France, who is currently working at the Noel Kempff Mercado Natural History Museum in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. “In the rivers near Santa Cruz there’s about 1,000 dead fish for every 100 metres of river.”
With such extreme climatic events potentially becoming more common due to climate change, scientists are hurrying to coordinate research into the impact, and how quickly the ecosystem is likely to recover.
The extraordinary quantity of decomposing fish flesh has polluted the waters of the Grande, Pirai and Ichilo rivers to the extent that local authorities have had to provide alternative sources of drinking water for towns along the rivers’ banks. Many fishermen have lost their main source of income, having been banned from removing any more fish from populations that will probably struggle to recover.
The blame lies, at least indirectly, with a mass of Antarctic air that settled over the Southern Cone of South America for most of July. The prolonged cold snap has also been linked to the deaths of at least 550 penguins along the coasts of Brazil and thousands of cattle in Paraguay and Brazil, as well as hundreds of people in the region.
Water temperatures in Bolivian rivers that normally register about 15 ˚C during the day fell to as low as 4 ˚C.
Hugo Mamani, head of forecasting at Senamhi, Bolivia’s national weather centre, confirms that the air temperature in the city of Santa Cruz fell to 4 ˚C this July, a low beaten only by a record of 2.5 ˚C in 1955.
…
Read the entire story at Nature News
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Wait. What? Non-freezing cold killed over 500 penguins?
And, was this cold-snap “sudden” like in the over-the-top movie 2012 where people had seconds to escape or being frozen to death?
And, if this is due to global warming, then how come it was colder in 1955 as stated in article?
As a layman I don’t understand these.
Richard North has right take on this:
“That is what is going to destroy their little game … not the science, but the sheer boredom of it all. Climate change is boring, boring boring”
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/
I’m bored too, but Josh cheers me up:
http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/
Tiresome phrase of the month submission: “it is unprecedented in recorded history.”
So my question is: Who’s recorded history? Bolivia? Egypt? Rome? China? Australian Aboriginal? And what constitutes “recorded”? Do cave paintings count?
@View from the Solent says: August 28, 2010 at 11:13 am
They still seem to be keeping stumm about the excess mortality in the UK for last winter. Perhaps they were keeping score on a computer coupled up to one of those wind turbines that never turned a blade for week after week after week.
If there had been a Moscow style heat wave you’d have been able to hear them shouting about the excess mortality loudly enough.
I’d love to see someone try to explain how manmade greenhouse gases caused the Pacific Ocean off South America to turn so cool.
More propaganda from those who are either ignorant to history or willfully choose to ignore it. More disheartening, especially from a so called science based magazine, is the willful redefinition of another good technical term. This misrepresentation of the facts is nothing new for NatureNews. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, this kind of thing calls the credibility of the whole into question.
I examined the hijacking of technical terms in a recent essay titled, “Climate Change, Just What Is That Anyway?”, a part of which I will quote here:
“From Wikipedia:
‘For current global climate change, see Global warming.
For past climate change, see paleoclimatology and geologic temperature record.
Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather over periods of time that range from decades to millions of years. It can be a change in the average weather or a change in the distribution of weather events around an average (for example, greater or fewer extreme weather events). Climate change may be limited to a specific region, or may occur across the whole Earth.’ Now I can live with that as it meets all the needs of my science and I suspect others. I am sure it was written by someone knowledgeable in the scientific method and the Philosophy of Science. However, the Wikipedia authors go on to say:
“In recent usage, especially in the context of environmental policy, climate change usually refers to changes in modern climate. It may be qualified as anthropogenic climate change, more generally known as “global warming” or “anthropogenic global warming” (AGW).’ I guess that explains my wondering. It is clear that two different definitions are in use. This is not good. It is very much not good, because it tends to cause confusion.”
Unless of course, that is the purpose to cause confusion.
The hundreds more or less don’t matter. The peoples are only the numbers in the statistics and headlines.
A peer-reviewed paper on the decline and fall of “Nature” as a scientific journal seems like a good idea. I hope (in vain I’m convinced) that the three decades of unashamed dalliances with “new world oder (sic on purpose) anti-scientists” will end with the folding of Nature. I hope (perhaps not in vain) that those journals that bravely published papers critical of the CAGW hypothesis (really when you know you are cooking the stuff, hyothesis or any noun suggesting legitimate inquiry is not appropriate let alone “theory”) will be promoted to premier status. Time is short for changing horses y’all.
To quote the article: “With such extreme climatic events potentially becoming more common due to climate change…” and, “The blame lies, at least indirectly, with a mass of Antarctic air that settled over the Southern Cone of South America for most of July.”
I never thought I would see the day that a mass of Antarctic air was considered unusually extreme. I guess I underestimated CAGWers determination.
One of the comments to the article===
Climate Change Dictionary
PEER REVIEW: The act of banding together a group of like-minded academics with a funding conflict of interest, for the purpose of squeezing out any research voices that threaten the multi-million dollar government grant gravy train.
SETTLED SCIENCE: Betrayal of the scientific method for politics or money or both.
DENIER: Anyone who suspects the truth.
CLIMATE CHANGE: What has been happening for billions of years, but should now be flogged to produce ‘panic for profit.’
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE: Leftist Nutcase Prize, unrelated to “Peace” in any meaningful way.
DATA, EVIDENCE: Unnecessary details. If anyone asks for this, see “DENIER,” above.
CLIMATE SCIENTIST: A person skilled in spouting obscure, scientific-sounding jargon that has the effect of deflecting requests for “DATA” by “DENIERS.” Also skilled at affecting an aura of “Smartest Person in the Room” to buffalo gullible legislators and journalists.
JUNK SCIENCE: The use of invalid scientific evidence resulting in findings of causation which simply cannot be justified or understood from the standpoint of the current state of credible scientific or medical knowledge.
That shift from “global warming” to “climate change” was really convenient. Now there is truly nothing that can’t be blamed on “climate change”.
“We hope to secure financing for these studies to find out why the fish are dying,” he says. With luck, and money, these will start in October.
That is from the “Nature” article. May be the reason for the obligatory cite of “climate change”. The mention that there was a colder period in 1955 went kind of “mentioned in passing”.
You admit only tangentially (as in your reply to the above comment) that this AGW hoax is led by misanthropy and not science, but yet, you won’t call it that. I now have a new sig:
Animus homo inimicus delenda est.
Misanthropy is to be wiped out.
So what is the possible observation to falsify AGW? Either cold or warm, dry or wet, all just confirm Man Is Warming Climate Catastrophically? If you question it, you’re being a denier.
Doesn’t this sound like a religion?
Here is a plot of the average annual temperature anomaly averaging the six 5×5 grids covering most of Bolivia from the Hadley CRUTEM3 database
(Link didn’t show up in previous post)
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/climgraph.aspx?pltparms=HCRUG100AJanDecA188020090900610AR25-20S:65-70W%20%20×25-20S:60-65W%20%20×20-15S:65-70W%20%20×20-15S:60-65W%20%20×15-10S:65-70W%20%20×15-10S:60-65W%20%20x
A long-term cooling trend is observed.
Curiousgeorge says:
August 28, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Tiresome phrase of the month submission: “it is unprecedented in recorded history.”
==================================================
George, they contradict themselves in the article.
They say it’s “unprecedented in recorded history”, then say 55 years ago, it was a lot colder “a low beaten only by a record of 2.5 ˚C in 1955.”
Now this is beyond absurd. I think the article is referring to studying the Effects of natural catastrophic SUDDEN climate extremes in order to predict what will happen with anthropogenic events. So it is studying the Effects of a natural cold extreme event to make predictions about anthropogenic extreme events. Next year, when another natural cold extreme event happens (or a natural hot event like what happened in Russia), they will study that too, in an all out effort to prepare for anthropogenic events. Problem is, when do we get to apply all the newly learned knowledge if all they ever do is study natural events?
Wait a minute. There is some deep seated wisdom here. Can’t put my finger on it. Has to do with folly I think.
Most climate records seem to show that the 1950s were relatively cool, prior to the increases in temp for the 1980s and 1990s; the fact the the current chill in South America had precedents should come as no surprise. What records exist for that period is another question.
The English teacher in me wants to point out that “who’s” means “who is” or “who has” (Who’s coming for supper tonight? Who’s been eating my chips?). The possessive form of who is whose (Whose book is this?). Possessive pronouns don’t have apostrophes; contractions do.
Unprecidented ?
Q: So, how many critters died in ’55 ?
A: Well, uh… nobody was reporting on odd environmental events
that didn’t kill humans in Bolivia back then.
Nature news is absolutely right: it is climate change, but not global warming…
Curiousgeorge: August 28, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Tiresome phrase of the month submission: “it is unprecedented in recorded history.”
So my question is: Who’s recorded history?
Anna Petherick’s.
Cod: “With the decline cod began to disappear.”
Here’s Dr. Tim Ball: “Government only considered over-fishing as the cause and closed the fishery.”
“Fish Twisted:
“Roger Pocklington, a Canadian oceanographer and climatologist studied water temperatures from Newfoundland to Bermuda. A hero in the 1970s when cooling was the consensus because he showed water temperatures falling. He was amused when the climate consensus shifted to warming and he was an outsider because the water temperatures continued to decline. With the decline cod began to disappear. We discussed the climatic reasons for the decline, which were very cold decades in northeastern North America and changes in wind patterns pushing cold dense waters of the Labrador Current much further south into the cod fishing grounds of the Grand Banks. We were concerned about decline in the number of cod as water temperatures fell, but the standard now was to blame humans.
Government only considered over-fishing as the cause and closed the fishery. It is fourteen years on and the fish stay away despite going through three cycles because water temperatures remain low. If it was over-fishing recovery would be in progress; their absence is proof of temperature being the major factor. Closing the cod fisheries in Newfoundland was akin to banning corn production in Iowa. The economy was disrupted and would have been devastated except ironically, it was those evil oil companies that saved the day. Discovery of massive deepwater oil deposits at Hibernia boosted the economy and papered over the impact. Thousands of Newfoundlanders also migrated to the newly expanding Athabasca Tar Sands. Meanwhile a traditional economy and lifestyle are gone, but without the oil they are devastated.”
http://guineequatoriale.info/newfoundland-cod-fishery
Bill Jamison said on August 28, 2010 at 12:39 pm:
The anthropogenic GHG’s caused the warming which lead to increased evaporation which cooled the ocean then the heat was transported up into the atmosphere where condensation allowed the heat to be released where the anthropogenic GHG’s caused the heat to be radiated back to the ocean as part of a positive feedback loop leading to a cooler ocean although it was not anomalously cooler as obviously the long term trend shows warming oceans due to anthropogenic GHG’s causing Anthropogenic
Global WarmingClimate Change.Or something like that. And it makes perfect sense because Hansen predicted it would happen long ago. And it is all mankind’s fault. Except that it’s the fault of the rich Western nations, the Bolivians are blameless as Bolivia is neither rich nor a Western nation. Thus the lawsuits for loss of income, loss of livelihood, loss of property, and wrongful death may immediately begin being filed against the nearest rich Western US-based multi-national corporation, soul-less honor-less money-stealing environment-destroying capitalist bastards that they are.
So you know, you might as well admit to your own culpability in the matter right now. The UN World Climate Court will look favorably at such an early act of contrition. In the right-side toolbar of this page there is a handy “Donate” button that you may use for sending in payments, which will be 100% directed to preventing further catastrophic tragedies such as this Nature article.
When there is a sudden stratospheric warming, such as the event over the south pole this July, the polar vortex gets disrupted, sending cold polar air to lower latitudes.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/05mb6590.gif
It seems this has extended winter in the Southern Hemisphere, including Australia and South America.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa…aseasonal/temp10anim.gif
A similar sudden stratospheric warming was experienced in January 2009, over the North pole, the effects on the weather in Western Europe and the UK were notable over the following 3 weeks as the normal westerly airflow reversed, bringing Siberian chill and snow to the Atlantic seaboard of Europe.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36972
Missionaries used to come to my door and tell me that natural disasters were increasing due the sins of mankind.
Nothing ever changes. The whack jobs have just adopted a new religion.