UPDATE: Highly recommended reading from Donna LaFramboise (h/t to reader Lars P), apparently this researcher has had several rebuttals posted against his previous peer reviewed version of this claim. One rebuttal by a prominent ecologist said:
“the worst paper I have ever read in a major scientific journal.”
So here’s Donna’s take on it:
The Backstory to the ‘Fleeing Species’ Claim
Journalists aren’t telling you that the lead researcher behind the species-are-fleeing-global-warming story has come to questionable conclusions in the past.
=============================================================
I wonder how they excluded all of the other possible factors and settled exclusively on climate change as the culprit. For example below, look at global human population growth from 0AD to the present, and extrapolated to 2050 AD. I converted the flash interactive map from NOVA to an animated gif and added the years.
How do they know that the plants and animals are just tagging along with human growth and development which has made some tremendous latitude gains? It seems more plausible that plants and animals would react to this more than 0.7°C which is a fraction of normal seasonal variation at any latitude.
From the University of York:
Further, faster, higher: Wildlife responds increasingly rapidly to climate change
New research by scientists in the Department of Biology at the University of York shows that species have responded to climate change up to three times faster than previously appreciated. These results are published in the latest issue of the leading scientific journal Science.
Faster distribution changes. Species have moved towards the poles (further north in the northern hemisphere, to locations where conditions are cooler) at three times the rate previously accepted in the scientific literature, and they have moved to cooler, higher altitudes at twice the rate previously realised.
Analysing data for over 2000 responses by animal and plant species, the research team estimated that, on average, species have moved to higher elevations at 12.2 metres per decade and, more dramatically, to higher latitudes at 17.6 kilometres per decade.
Project leader Chris Thomas, Professor of Conservation Biology at York, said: “These changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the Equator at around 20 cm per hour, for every hour of the day, for every day of the year. This has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue for at least the rest of this century. ”
The link to climate change. This study for the first time showed that species have moved furthest in regions where the climate has warmed the most, unambiguously linking the changes in where species survive to climate warming over the last 40 years.
First author Dr I-Ching Chen, previously a PhD student at York and now a researcher at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, said: “This research shows that it is global warming that is causing species to move towards the poles and to higher elevations. We have for the first time shown that the amount by which the distributions of species have changed is correlated with the amount the climate has changed in that region.”
Co-author Dr Ralf Ohlemüller, from Durham University, said: “We were able to calculate how far species might have been expected to move so that the temperatures they experience today are the same as the ones they used to experience, before global warming kicked in. Remarkably, species have on average moved towards the poles as rapidly as expected.”
A diversity of changes. These conclusions hold for the average responses of species, but individual species showed much greater variation. Some species have moved much more slowly than expected, others have not moved, and some have even retreated where they are expected to expand. In contrast, other species have raced ahead, perhaps because they are sensitive to a particular component of climate change (rather than to average warming), or because other changes to the environment have also been driving their responses.
Co-author Dr David Roy, from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, illustrates this variation among species: “In Britain, the high brown fritillary butterfly might have been expected to expand northwards into Scotland if climate warming was the only thing affecting it, but it has in fact declined because its habitats have been lost. Meanwhile, the comma butterfly has moved 220 kilometres northwards from central England to Edinburgh, in only two decades.”
Similar variation has taken place in other animal groups. Cetti’s warbler, a small brown bird with a loud voice, moved northwards in Britain by 150 kilometres during the same period when the Cirl bunting retreated southward by 120 kilometres, the latter experiencing a major decline associated with the intensification of agriculture.
How they did the research. The researchers brought together all of the known studies of how species have changed their distributions, and analysed them together in a “meta-analysis”. The changes that were studied include species retreating where conditions are getting too hot (at low altitudes and latitudes), species expanding where conditions are no longer too cold (at high altitude and latitudes), and species staying where they are but with numbers declining in hotter parts and increasing in cooler parts of the range.
They considered studies of latitudinal and elevational range shifts from throughout the world, but most of the available data were from Europe and North America.
Birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, spiders, other invertebrates, and plants featured in the evidence. For example, I-Ching Chen and her colleagues discovered that moths had on average moved 67 metres uphill on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo.
Co-author Jane Hill, Professor of Ecology at York, said: “We have taken the published literature and analysed it to detect what the overall pattern of change is, something that is not possible from an individual study. It’s a summary of the state of world knowledge about how the ranges of species are responding to climate change. Our analysis shows that rates of response to climate change are two or three times faster than previously realised.”
Implications. The current research does not explicitly consider the risks posed to species from climate change, but previous studies suggest that climate change represents a serious extinction risk to at least 10 per cent of the world’s species. Professor Thomas says: “Realisation of how fast species are moving because of climate change indicates that many species may indeed be heading rapidly towards extinction, where climatic conditions are deteriorating. On the other hand, other species are moving to new areas where the climate has become suitable; so there will be some winners as well as many losers.”
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Three times faster!!???? It’s worse than we thought!
I think you mean “How do they know that the plants and animals aren’t just tagging along with human growth and development which has made some tremendous latitude gains?”
More stupid research to try to prove a point. A point that has long since been lost to truth.
> Some species have moved much more slowly than expected, others have not moved, and some have even retreated where they are expected to expand.
More convincing science from the ivory tower of academe.
Global warming does not equal >b>Anthropogenic GW
Yes, duh!! More peepls, more dispersions….. Ya think Singapore is gonna stop spreading?
= “Please send more funds”
…On the other hand, other species are moving to new areas where the climate has become suitable; so there will be some winners as well as many losers.”
================================================================
Pure speculation. There may be some losers and many winners. There are more species where it is warm now and fewer in the higher latitudes. That means more species have a chance to “win” as their territory is expanded and there are fewer species occupying the expansion territory, so there are fewer species that would lose. But wait!. New territory will open up for them in higher latitudes so there may not be any losses.
Oh fudge! It’s better than we thought!
I’ll bet if you examined these claims on a case by case basis you could find many other equally or more genuine reasons for their move.
The most likely being loss of habitat through some other incursion.
When fauna daily faces temperature ranges of up to 40c, they would not notice 0.7c occurring over 150 years.
It’s a ludicrous claim.
Good comment Anthony. I can think of several factors besides climate change that would account for the movement of people and species. One of them is that humans may have moved North and higher because it was getting crowded South and lower. Another is that the technology in the use of energy made colder climates more survivable. Perhaps humans found more species North and higher because there were more humans there looking.
The book “Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond has some interesting theories on this subject without reference to climate change.
It is possible that the actual study took all the other factors into account and logically dismissed them. The report published here does gives the impression they jumped on climate change without a lot of thought to the alternatives.
I meant to add that in many cases it is most likely only a temporary move for other good reasons.
“…moths had on average moved 67 metres uphill on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo.”
Spying on moths as they climb mountains is a heck of a way to make a living.
“Meanwhile, the comma butterfly has moved 220 kilometres northwards from central England to Edinburgh, in only two decades.”
My goodness, how terrifying.
Let’s see what the good people of Scotland have to say about the Comma butterfly:
“The Comma favours open woodland, woodland edges or hedgerows with large sun-lit patches of nettles. It has shown a dramatic northwards range expansion in Britain, particularly up the east coast. In Scotland, the Comma is now well established in the south east and is increasingly being recorded in the south west. A high density of sightings in the Motherwell area including multiple Commas visiting a garden at the same time, suggest this butterfly may be breeding along the Clyde. The expansion in the Comma’s range and notable increases in its abundance appear to be related to climate warming.
The Comma is known to have a very dynamic range in the UK. It was known in eastern Scotland in the early-19th century being found as far north as Fife and Alloa, Clackmannanshire in the east but it was absent in western Scotland. After 1850, the Comma was in decline with the last 19th century record being for Denholm, the Borders in 1868.
By the 1920s, the Comma’s distribution in England had retreated to the west Midlands and then exapnded again in the 1930s reaching Lancashire & South Yorkshire by 1950 & Durham by 1976. By 1995-1999, the Comma had reached the Scottish borders with a few scattered records in Dumfries & Galloway. Since then, the Comma has spread north and west into Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and the Lothians. The above photos were taken in a Motherwell garden in 2008.”
http://www.southwestscotland-butterflies.org.uk/species/butterflies/comma.shtml
So the range of the Comma bounces up and down as the climate bounces up and down. The Comma was known in the east of Scotland (where Edinburgh is) in the early 1800s.
The same site gives us an interesting graph so that we can get a sense of perspective about the temperature changes in the region over the last two decades. (Only winter data, unfortunately.)
Graph is about half way down this page:
http://southwestscotland-butterflies.org.uk/blog/?cat=5&paged=2
(Or direct link to graph:)
http://southwestscotland-butterflies.org.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/edinburgh_wint_1765_2010.gif
So, in the case of the Comma butterfly, this is a total non-story. I’m guessing that if I could be bothered to check more than one species, I’d find more than one non-story.
What utterly pathetic “science”.
It’s called adaption. Some are better at it than others, and those that can’t go extinct. In general, though, warmer conditions allow flora and fauna to expand their territory, while cooling causes it to shrink. Certainly human activities have had an affect, primarily through habitat loss, but also, due to man’s superior mobility he has been responsible, for good or bad for the spread of some species of flora and fauna.
the animals fled because of glabal warming otherwise the authors wouldnt get the grant money. If it was because of natural expansion who cares.
Hey,
What a bunch of Morons.
My 2 year old kid who has not been born yet could not believe this.
The Gold Coast of QLD wil be deserted.
Warm is not good – lets go Cold.
They just can’t help themselves can they? Its like an alchoholic sitting in front of a bottle of whisky (old pultenay maybe?) and justifying to themselves why they should drink it!
Still, what goes north when it gets warm can just as easily go south when it gets cold.
I’m sure that the authors knew exactly where all of the creatures were situated before they started to “go north” and none moved until the temperature increased; but has it increased?
Nothing to see here… Move along.
See Ashworth, 2001… Critters have been running away from people and/or global warming for more than 10,000 years.
Some still have room to run. Some ran out of room and/or time.
Astonishing.
I’m not sure how all this is proof of mankind being responsible for changing global climate?
Also intuitively one would be very suspicious of a 0.7C temperature increase being the ultimate cause producing these shifts.
David Middleton says:
August 21, 2011 at 5:01 am
Nothing to see here… Move along.
Spot on
You say it was published in a magazine called “Science”? Is that part of the group that publishes The Onion?
Doubtless there are many factors besides climate affecting changes in distribution of animals and plants. But if you want to get a government grant to study the distribution of a particular butterfly, bird, or flower, your odds are much increased if you can claim to be studying the effects of ‘climate change’.
It would be interesting to test this observation with essentially the same grant proposals, with and without ‘climate change’ as a keyword in each study’s objectives, and tabulate which are most successful. But I’ll bet it’s correct.
This raises, once again, the question: how can we get government out of the business of funding (and thereby directing) research, and still insure that research can get done?
/Mr Lynn
Sorry, that was unfair on The Onion.
The article states “Meanwhile, the comma butterfly has moved 220 kilometres northwards from central England to Edinburgh, in only two decades.”
Here’s a link to a newspaper article from Thursday 26 February 1931 under the headline “English Butterflies” with some interesting facts about the movements and abundance of the Comma and other butterflies in 1930. One suspects the authors of the paper above were not familiar with it. I include the paragraph relating to the Comma, follow the link for others.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/23135755
“Not for half a century, apparently, has there been a year when the British Islands have been so void of certain migratory species, whereas certain other resident species have made their appearance to more or less abundance to various parts of the country, far away from their usual haunts. This especially applies to the very remarkable manner in which the Comma butterfly has, during 1930, rapidly extended its range over practically; the whole of the southern half of England in localities where it was previously unknown. This has not been due to the liberation of specimens, but entirely natural causes. Hitherto this butterfly was confined to a few localities to the west and south-west, chiefly the Wye district of Herefordshire. It is only during the last two or three years that a few examples have made their appearance outside its normal limited range, but during the past summer and autumn this butterfly suddenly appeared throughout the southern and midland counties, to certain districts in some abundance.”
There is also Nature article from 1929 that appears to be missing from the list of references that indicates the range of the Comma has changed substantially over the earlier part of the 1900s, presumably due to something other than climate change. The paper starts with the following paragraph, unfortunately the rest remains behind a paywall (can anyone help?).
The Comma Butterfly in England
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v124/n3130/abs/124653b0.html
N. D. RILEY
DR. DAWE’S observation serves to direct attention to a matter that is of considerable interest to students of the Lepidoptera of the British Isles in connexion with the distribution of Polygonia c-album. It is not an isolated one, for in 1928 a single example of the same species was noted in a garden at Twickenham, which is near Chiswick. The two records, however, provide an additional interest in the suggestion they contain that this butterfly may have established itself somewhere in the vicinity. Old records show that at the commencement of the nineteenth century the Comma was, if not actually common, at least widely distributed in England and to be met with in most counties. Its numbers gradually dwindled, however, until, towards the end of the century, it had disappeared from all the southern and eastern counties. By about 1905 it was no longer to be found, with any certainty, outside the area comprised roughly by Monmouthshire, Worcestershire, and Hereford-shire, and seemed still to be rather on the wane. Records of its occurrence during the War years are somewhat scarce, but it was recorded from Eastbourne (1915), Kent (1916—last seen in 1899), Shropshire (abundant, 1917 and 1918), and Cheshire (1918). The Kentish and Eastbourne records are interesting as, taken in conjunction with others given below, they seem to suggest that the butterfly had in fact been maintaining itself somewhere in the south-east corner of England in spite of its apparent absence.
I just saw James Evans post above. Well put!
Of all the species they could have emphasised in a press release it appears they chose the worst example possible.