“Thousands of dead crabs have washed up along the Kent coast, with environmental experts believing the cold weather in Britain is to blame,” London’s Daily Mail reports. In an MSNBC/LiveScience report, we get the simple explanation. ’tis the snowfall on the beach that melted wot dun it:
“It’s been a phenomenon for probably a third year in a row,” Tony Child, Thanet Coast project manager, told LiveScience.
The crabs come closer to shore at this time of year, Child said, where they feed on the seaweed. In the past, environmental scientists ran tests to check for disease or other physiological problems with the crabs, coming up empty-handed. But Child said every year the die-offs have occurred after there was snow on the beaches. The meltwater causes temperatures near shore to drop, and Child said the deaths must be linked to hypothermia.
Now, get load of this quote from another person in the Daily Mail Article:
“Coastal warden Tony Sykes said: ‘We suspect that climate change and warmer weather has lured the crabs towards the shoreline.”
Warden, what are you smoking dude? Have a look at the SST’s for Britain, what were they doing, swimming towards Spain?
Note the colors around the southeast part of the U.K. – barely above freezing SST’s.
Source: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/fields/FS_km5000.gif
Note the quote:
It’s been a phenomenon for probably a third year in a row,” Tony Child, Thanet Coast project manager, told LiveScience.
Hmmm….now what could possibly have happened in the UK during the last three winters? BBQ Summers?
Here’s the press release from the Thanet Coast Project:
Marine wildlife hit by cold weather
Around 25,000 velvet swimming crabs and marine wildlife have become the latest victim of the recent cold weather in Thanet.
Volunteer coastal wardens from the Thanet Coast Project have surveyed the coastline and reported hundreds of dead creatures washed up on the shore. Casualties have been reported from the Nayland Rock, Margate and in bays to the Kingsgate area, with further sightings between Dumpton and Ramsgate. The discovery was made following the Christmas period, following on from the recent heavy snow falls.
So this claim from coastal warden Sykes isn’t the same ridiculous claim we’ve been hearing lately, that global warming causes cold weather. Nooo… the problem here seems to be that the crabs made the mistake of believing in global warming.
Here’s the link to the Daily Mail story with the quote.
H/T to Mark Duchamp for the email.
@One Anonymous Bloke
Not difficult to find other sources: quick Google.
The Mail probably lifted the story from the Kent paper.
Interestingly, the same thing seems to have happened two and five years ago.
(I hope the link works, it’s the first post I’ve tried here.)
LiveScience is terribly written junk journalism. The authors are uninformed and prone to agenda advancement. Ignore it as a source of information.
George says: January 8, 2011 at 5:24 am
In the weather is not climate column.
Thanks goodness that we don’t have crabs in Atlanta. We would be expecting a big kill this week. Time to run out for TP, milk, and bread for our rare toilet paper and milk sandwiches. 4-5″ with isolated 9″ is the prediction of the moment – it will change. I do wonder if the freshwater melt did not contribute to the problem. Some marine species are not very tolerant 0f water quality change, while others are far more tolerant than given credit.
The first thought thought that crossed my mind was the effect of fresh water on crabs.
Duncan says:
January 8, 2011 at 6:16 am
I bet if anyone looked at the old local papers for the area (Margate say) in a year that was known to be cold in the early 20th c or even the 19th, there would be similar stories. Unfortunately society seems to have lost its ability to look to the past. thiings that were totally obvious to our forefathers are a total surprise to us.
So anyone living in Margate:
1) Find a few known heavy snowfall years in the past
2) Go to the library
3) Look at the Dec, Jan, Feb local papers for those years on microfilm
4) Dont be surprised to find stories almost identical to this
Duncan
But wasn’t Margate a village then? Shouldn’t we therefore have expected idiots then?
It’s an unfortunate end for those crabs that were “lured” by Global Warming (a climatic phenomenon) and who ignored the weather. But that’s what happens when you read the Guardian.
Maybe it has something to do with the light?! From the Vancouver Sun
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Climate+change+brightens+Arctic/4067954/story.html
Customer to waiter : “Do you serve crabs here?”
Waiter to customer: “We serve everyone, sir.”
If there’s enough snow to change the temperature of the water near shore then there’s enough snow to change the salinity of the water near shore. How do they know which is responsible?
mmm – crabs. And ready frozen as well! Surely the local restauranteurs were out there with buckets!
Seriously, anyone who has lived close to natural systems has seen mass deaths due to heat, cold, wet, dry and so on. It is interesting that those who claim to be in more tune with nature than the rest of us seek to blame humans, as though those things never happened before.
Nature, red in tooth and claw, is too much to bear. So, it must be our fault for having large screen TVs, or too many children.
Like most locals, I am confident that the crabs will be back.
It reminds me of the 550 penguins that died last July in Brazil due to the cold as well as the 6 million tropical fish which also died of the cold in Bolivia. Or was that caused by global warming. ;>)
Initiating LazyTeenager Response Script:
Default Format:
[poster][Thesaurus(says,exaggerate)]
——-
[QuoteSelect(climate,1,2)]
——-
[SnarkScript(climate)]
=============
Output (copy and paste):
=============
Anthony harps
——-
You can’t make this stuff up, really. Crab deaths due to cold according to one authority are now being blamed on….drum roll….climate change aka global warming, by another.
——-
This just demonstrates your lack of knowledge of the nature of the problem. The added energy being retained from the excess atmospheric CO2 is causing disruption of the natural expected flow patterns. It is my understanding that global warming is causing the disruption of flow patterns such as the slowing of the Gulf Stream which contributes to abnormalities with the North Atlantic Oscillation and then the Arctic Oscillation. This results in unexpected cold flows which cause these deaths.
These are just more indicators of the danger that greenhouse gases are presenting. Even when we can’t see any extra warming as seems to be the case at the moment, the evidence is there that extra energy is present that shouldn’t be there. We have to act to reduce our emissions of CO2 now, or when that energy is once again expressed as warming we are all screwed.
I should be surprised by your lack of empathy over the early traumatic deaths of these natural creatures, but given the attitudes I’ve come to expect from this site I’m not.
REPLY: Given the predictability of such missives, some enterprising person should be able to come up with an AGW themed equivalent of the Automatic Moonbat Rant Generator, which has unfortunately, been broken for awhile. – Anthony
Small fries compared to the 2,000,000 fish that washed up in Maryland.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7056BB20110106
Still, maybe these fish were killed by global warming also?
In Kampur [?] India new record low maximum of 7.4 C (45 F); birds died in zoo. Coldest day there since records have been kept. AGW? Doubt it.
i’m really glad that the practice of blaming everything on climate change has come to be widely accepted. i say rather than fight it, go with it, it’s great, it’s got me out of so many jams i have lost count. Late for work? climate change! Came home late last night and had to answer to the wife? climate change! Got caught in bed with your best friend’s girl? climate change! Got pulled over for doing 90 in a 60? Climate change! Just who the hell do you think you are? climate change! Can’t do anything right? Climate Change!!!!
Actually caused by a cargo ship losing a container of Nix overboard. Would have done in ever more of the giant crotch crickets had the kelp been trimmed before hand.
“Pat” posting on January 7th notes a “ten-year increase in [global] biomass.” That’s news… could we see charts with backup- and source-data documenting this effect? Since Gaia (sic) has cyclically ceased rebounding from her 500-year Little Ice Age (LIA) from about 1998, correlating a 12-year relative cool-phase with biomass could prove revealing if plotted back to (say) 1890 or thereabouts.
…along with a mess in Bolivian rivers last August. Chilling news. (pun intended)
Cold of the past and dead fish stories.
Thousands of dead crabs wash up on Kent beaches – Jan 2010
“It is the second year that icy temperatures have killed off the sea creatures in such large numbers. ”
BBC
Death of fish laid to cold – January 1948
Cold Kills Fish – Dec. 1957
Cold Winter Blamed for Fish Kill – April 1961
AGW skeptics don’t get it…yes, the crabs were killed by the cold, and so were some manatees last year in Florida, and even some fish in Peru, but because of AGW, they would have been killed by much worse cold, and maybe even more dead…so AGW made them die with a little less cold.
(for you Antlhony)
Correction:
Cold of the past and dead fish / crab stories.
Moderator, please put a “sarcasm off” at the end of my last post, just before I said (for you Anthony)
thanks
Another “Things caused by global warming”
It must be warm this mid-winter. ;>)
says:
January 7, 2011 at 11:49 pm
So just how do we solve the problem of solar warming?.
Taken literally, the question asks how do we keep the temperature of the sun from increasing? The CAGW crowd answer: Send a team of environmentalists to the sun with equipment to sequester all CO2 near the surface of the sun. To avoid overheating and sunburn, make the solar landing at night.
What happened to “The Oceans are getting dangerously warm ” ?
Weren’t they just regaling us with this fantasy last week ?
Found in my previous post from January 8, 2011 at 8:08 am:
I had noticed that curious separator, “——-“, that’s used. I was wondering why I’m seeing a tiny space at the end. Turns out it’s just three characters, an ordinary hyphen (minus) preceded by (according to the Character Map) two “EM DASH” characters, “may be used in pairs to offset parenthetical text.” On my Linux box, in Unicode, that’d be Ctrl-Shift-u 2014. What normal human would go to the trouble of using such a special character for mere separation? Especially someone self-identified as “Lazy” by their handle?
However if some form of automation like a script was involved, even if it only partially filled in a template… Also, if I was planning to automatically parse out a web page and look for certain comments (perhaps for accounting purposes?), “EM DASH, EM DASH, hyphen” makes for a rather unique identifier, suitable for use by a unique commenter.
☺
R. Gates says:
January 8, 2011 at 10:32 am
LOL! Glad to see evidence of an excellent sense of humour – are you straying towards a lukewarm stance?
———–
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
January 8, 2011 at 8:08 am
Initiating LazyTeenager Response Script:
——–
I laughed, I cried, I snickered. Wonderful satire!