Now it's climate change to be killing the Joshua trees

I don’t see any decline in Joshua trees. They do quite well in blazing heat and bitter cold.
Biggest thing that kills them is too much water and being knocked over from strong winds.
Are they implying that there was a similar spike in temps before AGW?

I always find it puzzling that a 0.7 degree temperature change that humans wouldn’t notice is supposed to kill all other life on this planet. The Joshua tree survives an 80 to 100 degree temperature shift from night to day on most days but don’t add an extra 0.7 degrees or its game over. I am insulted that these researchers think I am stupid enough to believe this crap.

Alas- the baloney from these types is astounding and seemingly never ending. I think a look at the funding will tell the tale as usual.

Sorry on the previous post replace that 0.7 degrees with 1.12 degrees F

I’ve got a hotter model and I say those Joshua trees will be gone in 30 to 60 years! (Now, where do I sign up for the USGS and get unlimited funding for modeling??)

There may be another explaination if, in fact, the Joshua Tree population has/is declining. Perhaps the Ground Sloth eating the seeds was an element of the life cycle of the Joshua Tree. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Similar to the Dodo and the Calvaria tree in Mautitius.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/plants/planet.html
“Some biologists believe the dodos ate the tree’s fruit, and that the trip through the bird’s stomach helped prepare the seeds for germination. But now that their partner in life is gone, only a few calvaria survive.”

This study is based on the premise that changes in climate at the end of the last ice age are comparable to what we can expect in the near future. That’s a pretty big assumption, which, as far as I am aware, can only be supported by models.
Even so, if the Joshua trees survived the transition from ice age to present, which they apparently did (otherwise why are they there now), then why would anyone assume they would suffer through another such change?
The author’s assumption is that fossil dung is evidence that now extinct giant sloths were the primary way of spreading seeds. From that I would have to assume (great word) that there are no Joshua trees left in the SW, and that this study was a product of an over developed imagination of some “geological” ecologists.

Computer models, assumptions, guesses, wild projections, complete disregard for previous changes … what do you know? There really is a consensus!

Bob (Skeptical Redcoat)
Not just Models Bob, State-of-the-Art Models.

So what happened 6000 years ago when it was 4 degrees warmer? Did the Joshua trees survive?
http://westinstenv.org/wp-content/postimage/Lappi_Greenland_ice_core_10000yrs.jpg

So ground squirrels and pack rats only move 6 ft a year…
…and irritable climate syndrome will move faster than that
Is there nothing these scientists don’t know??
Seems they would be worried about all of those very slow squirrels and pack rats…………

PS looks like Ken Cole will not have a job in a few years time with science like this

I think I worked it out, these must be the ghosts of the previous Joshua trees, when it was much warmer in the Minoan warming, the Holocene Climatic Optimum and Medieval Warming they all died.
The ones we see today are not real, they are just ghosts….

And Joshua trees don’t look very yummy to me. The sloths probably all died of hunger. They should have eaten the pack rats instead; I hear they taste like chicken.

This continuous drivel about the desert is monotonous. Has anyone noticed the contiguous United States hasn’t warmed in the last 15 years?
Annual 1996 – 2010 Trend = -0.01 degF / Decade
Last 15 for the West Region(includes the Mojave), Annual 1996 – 2010 Trend = -0.26 degF / Decade
Last 15 for the SW(includes Arizona and N.M.) Annual 1996 – 2010 Trend = -0.31 degF / Decade
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/regional.html
Yes, very scary, I think the Joshua trees have cooling to worry about, not warming. Can’t these imbeciles do a study based on reality rather than a model?

Its Friday, the brain is burning out, so I can contribute nothing but a humorous observation – stitching together some descriptive gems from two WUWT commenters today. (one piece from Latitude in this post above – the other somewhere else today)
New description for AGW alarmists….”Carbophobes suffering from irritable climate syndrome.”

“fossil sloth dung”
It’s just not for breakfast anymore!

“climate change to be killing the Joshua trees”
So!?

The problem, obviously, is that the rodents that we are using to disperse the seeds need to be replaced by faster rodents. What worked for the last 12,000 years is simply not good enough anymore.

I thought that the biggest danger to trees like Joshua Trees or Bristlecone Pines are Climate Scientists themselves!

“On 6th August 1964, one of the greatest crimes against Nature was committed when the oldest living inhabitant on Earth was unwittingly killed. WPN-114, previously known to its affectionate admirers as Prometheus, was a bristlecone pine tree that, posthumously, was discovered to have been at least 5000 years old.
In the summer of 1964, Donald R. Currey, a graduate student in geography at the University of North Carolina, was undertaking dendrochronology investigations to establish climatic change patterns during the Little Ice Age – the period of cooling that occurred for approximately 400 years until the mid 1800s. Dendrochronology, the method of dating based on the analysis of patterns of tree-rings, can date the time at which tree rings were formed to the exact calendar year. So, to facilitate his investigations, Currey went in search of the oldest living trees.
In 1957, a grove of bristlecone pines in the White Mountains above California’s Mojave Dessert stunned the scientific world when they were discovered to be the world’s oldest living trees. But while the California Bristlecone Pines captured the media’s imagination, another grove of bristlecones in the Great Basin at Wheeler Peak in eastern Nevada, not far from the Utah border, had slipped under the radar of all but few. And it was Wheeler Peak’s colossal bristlecones that Donald R. Currey chose for his investigations.
Currey began taking core samples from several trees, and took particular interest in the 114th sample – “one of the larger living bristlecone pines” – which he labelled WPN-114. After several attempts, Currey’s 28-inch coring tool broke. Without it, he was unable to obtain the continuous series of overlapping cores necessary to determine weather patterns. He therefore decided to ask the United States Forest Service to fell WPN-114.
National Forest District Ranger Donald E. Cox received the request. He consulted his superior, Slim Hansen, who was stationed some 250 miles away and consequently asked Cox to look at the tree and report back. Cox declared the tree to be “very common” and is reported to have said, “no one would have walked more than a hundred yards to see it.” Hansen replied, “Cut ‘er down.”
Robert Jacobsen, superintendent of the Great Basin’s Lehman Caves, attempted to intervene and wrote that cutting the tree “would be a loss to the world.” And at least one Forest Service sawyer is known to have refused to participate in the felling on moral grounds. Nevertheless, the felling was scheduled for 6th August.
It took the whole of the day to cut down and section WPN-114. In the process of his subsequent investigations, Currey discovered that WPN-114 had been alive for at least 4,862 years.
He had killed the world’s oldest known non-clonal organism.”http://EzineArticles.com/4812103

“Death of Prometheus
The cut stump of Prometheus
In 1963, Currey was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Under a fellowship from the National Science Foundation, Currey was studying the climate dynamics of the Little Ice Age using dendrochronology techniques.
Bristlecone pines in the White Mountains of California and elsewhere were discovered to be older than any species yet dated, and in 1963 Currey became aware of a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine population in the Snake Range and on Wheeler Peak in particular. At the time he visited the area, in the summer of 1964, he did not know that previous researchers had examined the area. Based on the size, growth rate and growth forms of some of the trees he became convinced that some very old specimens existed on the mountain and, using the scientific methods of the time, Currey began taking core samples to check. He found that some exceeded 3000 years in age, taking particular interest in a tree he designated WPN-114, the previously named Prometheus.
Currey was unable to obtain a continuous series of overlapping cores from WPN-114: he had tried at least four times with a 28 inch long borer, breaking two borers, but to no avail. He decided to ask for permission from the United States Forest Service to fell the tree. He was already acquainted with Forest Service officials at the nearby Lehman Caves National Monument (now a part of the much larger Great Basin National Park which includes the area Currey was working in), and made a request with Donald E. Cox, a district Forest Service ranger for permission to cut down the tree in order to examine the whole trunk in cross-section. Cox felt that the request was scientifically sound and, after convincing superiors that the particular tree was not a notable landmark, gained approval for felling it.
After securing permission, Cox informed Currey and assigned a Forest Service crew to join the young researcher and bring back the samples. The tree was cut and sectioned on August 6, 1964, and several pieces of the sections hauled out to be processed and analyzed, first by Currey, then by others in later years. To their surprise, the tree was not only old, but older than any other non-clonal organism ever known.
[edit] Aftermath
It took a few years for the information about the felling of Prometheus to reach the public, but once it did there was great controversy. Most criticism centered on the U.S. Forest Service’s decision to permit the tree to be cut. However, some critics questioned how the cutting of such an old tree was necessary given the topic Currey was studying. Since the Little Ice Age started no more than 600 years ago, many trees could presumably have provided the information he was after for that time period. However, in Currey’s original report (Currey, 1965) he refers to the Little Ice Age as encompassing the period from 2000 BC to the present, thus defining the Age over a much longer time period than is currently accepted. Whether this was the common sentiment at the time is not known. In the article, Currey indicates that he sectioned the tree as much from the question of whether the oldest bristlecones were necessarily confined to California’s White Mountains (as some dendrochronologists had been claiming) as from its usefulness in regard to studies of the Little Ice Age.
The incident led to a tighter restriction on the felling of old trees, the eventual creation of Great Basin National Park (now overseen by the National Park Service), and the decision to hide the exact location of Methuselah, the tree believed to be the current oldest. Currey personally took part in lobbying efforts to get Congress to designate the area a part of a national park.” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rusk_Currey

Yikes. So many claims of doomsday, so little time to squash them all.

So the decline of the Joshua tree began 13,000 years ago when the poor old Giant Ground Sloth died out as the last ice age ended? It’s taken 13,000 years for the Joshua tree, in the American SW, to decline and now they’re worried. Give me strength. Didn’t Darwin have something to say about this kind of thing?

I wondered how many comments I would read before I saw what Willis mentioned: the glaring discrepancy that the sloth became extinct 13,000 years ago, but the climate didn’t change until 12,000 years ago. I thought something was funky there.
The story is filled with all the usual definitive media speak: “likely… future modeled range contraction…state-of-the-art climate models…warming projections”.
My opinion: I can’t believe this guy gets paid by the USGS to study and then publish this conjecture trash.

…not just a climastrologist…but an ecostrologist as well…

RE: “I think the Joshua trees have cooling to worry about”
Yep. The SW US has seen better days. The relatively warm and benign period which began during the 1800s (and led the 20th century boom) may be kaput.

t stone,
I can’t believe that I spend even a nanosecond of my day working to pay for this s***. This is the kind of thing where I’d like to march into Congress, take the budget, and mark a big, red line through this particular line item.

“On 6th August 1964, one of the greatest crimes against Nature was committed when the oldest living inhabitant on Earth was unwittingly killed. WPN-114, previously known to its affectionate admirers as Prometheus, was a bristlecone pine tree that, posthumously, was discovered to have been at least 5000 years old.
SO this fellow actually “murdered” a tree? Is that even possible? If Gaia is real, I hate to see what the afterlife has in store for me, given the amount of grass, trees and the like I’ve murdered over the years. Not to mention all of those soybean plants on the old farm!

Charlie Foxtrot says:
March 25, 2011 at 4:45 pm
“The problem, obviously, is that the rodents that we are using to disperse the seeds need to be replaced by faster rodents. What worked for the last 12,000 years is simply not good enough anymore.”
How do they know that global warming won’t cause faster rodents?
Thanks to everyone. I was ROTFLMAO. I needed that.

Ggrow some joshua trees in a greenhouse in the desert.
Raise the co2 to 600 ppm and raise the temp to their projected “AGW temp”
Let’s see what the trees do.

Lady Life Grows says:
March 25, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Models again, with no predictive value.
The only reason they can do these models is because they have excess computer power to play with. Copernicus actually had to spend years working things out in hand, and using his mind.
I’m becoming ashamed I spent the last 35 years trying to make computers spin faster. But then I also fee the same way about spreadsheets. Management by spreadsheet is a precursor of climate “modeling”.

RE: The research team used models of future climate, an analysis of the climatic tolerances of the species in its current range
Well the model of future climate without snow didn’t quite pan out for the UK, so why should I believe this one?
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

U.S. Geological Survey ecologist Ken Cole. What a dim bulb. The giant packrat ape has spread joshua trees all over the world! The joshua trees’ range has increased not decreased. This overpaid scout should be made to visit every city and town garden. Catologe the location of every plant and the condition that it lives in to establish the plants true range. pg

Who said, “You can’t shine s##t”?

DirkH says:
March 25, 2011 at 8:30 pm
“Gaiahova.”
Gesundheit. :^)

Dave Worley says:
March 25, 2011 at 9:36 pm
“I am confused.
……………….
So is warming good or bad for the trees?
Guess I’m just too old fashioned for this post-normal science.”
=============================================
I’d try to explain, but I find I can do no better than E. A. Blair. I’ll try to update it with some more recent technical climatology terms….
“The keyword here is blackwhite warmcold. Like so many Newspeak climatological words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent a skeptic, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black warm is white cold, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member an alarmist, it means a loyal willingness to say that blackwarm is white cold when Party the warmist discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black warm is white cold, and more, to know that black warm is white cold, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak climatology as doublethink Anthropological climate change . Doublethink Anthropological climate change is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
– Part II, Chapter IX — The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism

The truly horrifying part of this is that we putting this, and additional billions of dollars worth of similar nonsense on the National credit for our children to repay.

If sucking all the ground water out of the earth and pumping it into alfalfa fields is climate change then then, I’d agree. It didn’t help that Los Angeles stole the Owens river so long ago that nobody remembers, but there was a time when there was plentiful water in the Mojave desert and the Joshuas were doing just fine.
Actually, there was a time when that desert was under hundreds of feet of lake water when Searles Lake was 600′ deep. There is ample evidence of this in the pinnacles left behind from hot seeps around which life clung against the cold of the glacial lake and a very evident bathtub ring that lake left behind in the surrounding hills.
The problem there isn’t CO2 – it’s lack of water which has been scarce since the current temporary interglacial period started. Here’s your problem:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&q=aerial+view+of+mojave+desert&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Mojave+Desert&gl=us&t=h&ll=34.652132,-118.12603&spn=0.166347,0.370789&z=12
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=VJj&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=aerial+view+of+mojave+desert&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Mojave+Desert&gl=us&t=h&ei=TZSNTeDJI5L0tgOJp5GOCQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQ8gEwAA
Look at all that development. Zoom in and count the swimming pools and acres of irrigation. Look at those alluvial fans coming out of the southern mountains. What happened to that water? SLURP!
BTW, can you spot the fault line running across those images? Hey – while I have your attention: http://www.lucernevalley.net/history/blackhawk.htm
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=lucern&aq=&sll=34.572168,-117.715759&sspn=0.333015,0.479965&gl=us&ie=UTF8&hq=lucern&hnear=&ll=34.396145,-116.77969&spn=0.079889,0.185394&t=h&z=13
This is worth a field trip.
Anyway – Joshua trees need water – not a lot, but there’s not a lot to go around, and what there is is going into farms and coffee pots.

Lapping up some of those $30 billion tax payer provided climate research dollars over the last 20 years studying … sh*t. Well isn’t that special?

“Sloth dung” in, sloth dung out! That’s how the models work these days.

….not to worry, as the world continues to bake, their range will extend all the way north to Saskatchewan. The Canadians will appreciate the change of shrubbery, I’m sure.

I realize the Joshua tree takes very specific conditions to grow…
and will only grow at certain elevations and very limited desert conditions
…that’s why you can buy them from plant nurseries in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, etc
and it’s why people use them to landscape their yards all over the country!

And joshua survived from the last ice age through multi warm periods some 2-3C above today’s but are going down in a few decades. Where can I get some of this guy’s money.

“…will likely eliminate Joshua trees from 90 percent of their current range in 60 to 90 years”
It’s always a good idea to make predictions that won’t be proved until after you are dead. You know, so you don’t have to admit that you were wrong. I predict that if man-made global warming remains unchecked, dogs will be forced to mate with cats, producing hybridized animals, called ‘dats’, Also, the moon will fall into the sun, and corpses will be re-animated by all of the heat, only to feast on the brains of the living.
Of course, this will all occur 60 to 90 years in the future, so you’ll never be able to prove me wrong!

I live in NJ, but the Joshua Tree preserve is a beautiful, fantastic place I first visited in the early 1960’s. Went there again several times later, more recently with wife and kids in the 1980’s. It’s a shame if mother nature is now putting it under pressure, and it isn’t easy to get there, but if you haven’t seen it yet, go anyway.