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.
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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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Here is what I found about the first species I looked up from the article:
“Cetti’s warbler (pronounced chetty) is a skulking bird and can prove very difficult to see. It usually makes its presence known with loud bursts of song and the first glimpse will probably be of a dark, rather stocky warbler with short wings and a full, rounded tail, diving for cover. It is one of the UK’s most recent colonists, first breeding here in 1973.”
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/c/cettiswarbler/index.aspx
First breeding in the southernmost UK in 1973, and has since expanded its range northward. Therefore climate change has caused this. Facepalm.
Where’s Joshua?
Once again, preconceived conclusions are shown to be less than scientific.
I wonder about the ratio of winners to losers when an interglacial period ends and everything north of Missouri is covered by ice a mile thick?
Is that what these people want? An ice age? Really?
It’s well known that species migrate in response to climate change. (e.g. glaciers covering continents.) What’s not well known is how much of any recent migration is due to *natural climate change. In the 90s I wrote some papers on potential impacts on population genetics of species migrating in response to climate change on an increasingly fragmented (due to human land use) landscape. I do recall that most of the literature simply *assumed that current climate change was of anthropogenic origin. Toxic pollution & land use are *legitimate environmental issues, but I would caution fellow conservation biologists as follows: The assumption that all climate change is driven by humans does *not stand up to scrutiny. I also ask: What will be the impact on the environmental movement of surrendering credibility? Paul L. Vaughan, M.Sc.
So you mean… For a minuscule 0.7C change, plants and animals are adapting at an astonishing speed? So nothing to worry about from “climate change” then.
Smells like GWMG (global Warming Money Grubbing ) to Me , they wouldn`t have got any funding If they`d said as the combination of warmth and it`s follower (CO2} increase the areas in which plant life can thrive and then animal species ranges increased to take advantage of the more benevolent conditions along with the greater forage availible (obviously) .
I wonder if They would have seen the vast areas that opened up to ALL life during the transition from the Younger Dryas cold period to the Holocene Optimum as being a “BAD THING” that needed to be stopped . Mind You I`ve come to suspect that the Carbophobes not only hate the idea of crops , humans and domestic animals thriving but they actually hate the idea of any carbon base life thriving as well .
That works if you eliminate the Little Ice age….
….but if you don’t, you have to explain how fast they moved down and south as the snow and ice expanded
http://www.sikunews.com/News/Canada-Yukon/Ice-melt-leads-to-discovery-of-more-artifacts-in-Yukon-7469
“The searches of the melting ice patches have yielded up 2,400-year-old spear throwing tools, a 1,000-year-old ground squirrel snare, and bows and arrows dating back 850 years”
…..a 1000 years ago, they had squirrels that lived under the ice
so they had to set their squirrel traps under the ice to catch them
You would think that if these people believed this in fact, we would be seeing USDA climate maps for gardeners be redrawn, and all the plant wholesalers selling new plants sensitive to specific zones in entire new areas “climate change” has opened up. I can tell you, as a gardener, the wholesalers are still using the tried and true old maps as if they were un-affected by “climate change”.
This is the ultimate marker on whether climate change is happening. Are the industries that are sensitive to climates changing their business because of it? In every way, no. Are gardeners in more northern climates being successful at planting climate-sensitive plants from warmer climates? No in a statistically significant rate. Plant a Zone 5B (and warmer) plants in a Zone 4A non-urban heat island region, it will eventually die from the cold if not sheltered.
Fact: If climate were catastrophically changing, we’d see gardening practices changing.
Fact: We aren’t.
[[[ JamesonLewis3rd says:
August 21, 2011 at 4:33 am
“…moths had on average moved 67 metres uphill on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo…”… ]]]
Was the wind blowing uphill that day?
Or they could have hitched a ride and flown out of the sleeves of somebody’s wool sweater…
This is nothing worthy, just politics.
Ps: if they are worried, a little DDT will keep those moths in line….
As Darwin pointed out so clearly 150 years ago, all species produce far more progeny than can possibly survive and are therefore always in competition with their own species and others, pushing territorial limits. Unsucessful species become extinct. Besides the competition itself, there are many constraints to successful colonization of new territories. For flora, climate and CO2 supply play an important role at the margins with, for example, the tundra-taiga line or treeline on mountains shifting based on climate conditions. In the case of fauna, it is mainly the food supply which is affected by many variables including the shifting margins cited above. With the cycling of cool and warm periods, many species move toward the poles and to higher elevations and back again if they are successful competitors- nothing new here.
In the case of birds and mammals, and even butterflies, food supply is far more important than temperature, and the recent 100 year + 0.7 C change (like the similar + 0.7C changes of the previous two centuries) is, at most, a very minor forcing. Mankind’s own colonization has been far more important for most species (insectivores being the probable exception) because birds and mammals and butterflies (and all species) are opportunists. Man’s agriculture and gardens, man’s waste and landfills, and man’s handouts and intentioned feeding of wildlife- these have been a major forcer in species colonzation of those new territories that man has first colonized.
This study, like so many, is a superficial example of using knowledge that has been known for decades and longer to spin information in a way so as to attract funding from the “it’s worse than we thought” funding machine- nothing new here!
How do they know categorically that these species were not in the area beforehand, and can anyone tell me what new species have arrived in Britain as a result of global warming. Their research must surely have this information if it is to be believed.
“Species have moved towards the poles . . .
. . . changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the Equator . . .”
I wonder? Is anyone riding on the caboose looking back? Can someone determine the trailing edge of the many migrations northward and those areas now devoid of life?
Curmudgeon Geographer says:
“I can tell you, as a gardener, the wholesalers are still using the tried and true old maps as if they were un-affected by ‘climate change’.”
I am also a gardener. A few years ago, after a series of mild winters, the organisation that I work for started talking about how we would have to begin changing our planting schemes, because of all the scarey climate change that was causing warm winters. Then we had a couple of cold winters (due to climate change – of course.) We lost a lot of “borderline” plants, as most people did. Plus ca change. They no longer talk about having to alter our planting because of climate change.
This is not really a movement but an expansion of range overall. If the tropics are saturated with life, then it stands to reason that the range would expand northward. The city of Houston grew outward tremendously in the 20th century, but that does not mean that the city is in any peril.
Only Debbie Downer could read this report and draw a negative connotation from it.
Game and Fish Commissions establish populations of various species into new areas to expand their range all the time. They monitor the progress and work diligently to protect these establishing populations. Since humans have moved much more away from being a hunter/gatherer into agriculture, populations of many species have also taken the opportunities to migrate.
“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.”
The slanted use of the words some and many in the conclusion goes beyond the science and into advocacy. Pull their certificate.
Just another case of shooting the arrow first and drawing the target around it.
Pathetic (and wrong altogether).
The map is not very accurate. All the population of New Zealand (that’s the two islands at bottom right) appears to be concentrated in part of NZ where few people actually live.
Is this the Club of Rome all over again?
Now who would have thought that a dynamic biosphere would quickly move to the rhythm of natural cyclic climate change? The ebb and flow of animal and plant life moving to habitable areas and away from less habitable areas in perfect timing with an ever changing climate. If you could speed up the progress of life on earth it is a series of heartbeats as regular as a heartbeat. Those who do not adapt and move and evolve stagnate at best and at worst die off.
Well, its revolutionary isnt it? Never before has any human mind been able to comprehend such a concept….Apart from thousands of scientists and naturalists and biologists since the time Darwin and before even. For hundreds of millions of years life has engaged in a dynamic cycle of evolutionary progress that includes habitat relocation as circumstances permit.
The mind boggles doesnt it? That alarmists have become so desperate, so incredibly bottom of the barrel desperate they are reduced to recycling well know and accepted natural patterns and passing them off as proof of their rancid cult religion. What? Do these cultists believe that life enjoys some kind of stasis, that life never changes and never moves and never adapts? This pseudo science mumbo jumbo is thriving as never before as it gorges on billions in research grants handed out by grant bodies that Lysenko would approve of.
@Anthony
“interpolation is a method of constructing new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data …” – wikipedia
Did you mean extrapolate?
REPLY: Yup sure did, late night blogging. Thanks – Anthony
From all over the Earth, from Siberia, from semi-arid regions around Sahara, from American Southwest — people are telling me that plants are flourishing, that soils are more productive, that harvests are improving, that there is more fish and lobster, etc.
Something is very right.
Isn’t it profoundly ironic that the “green” movement is against the very gas that makes everything greener, healthier, more alive? Gaia is laughing at alarmist swindlers.
Surprised to see that no one lives in Alaska, and won’t even in 2050. Per the illustration.
REPLY: The dots represent density, Alaska has quite low density – Anthony
” Some species have moved much more slowly than expected, others have not moved, and some have even retreated where they are expected to expand.”
Notice that it didn’t say, “shifted”, it said “expanded”. Species aren’t dieing out closer to the equator, they’re spreading their ranges. That’s a POSITIVE trend, not a NEGATIVE trend.
This is really too stupid to actually comment on, so I will.
I thought that I would do a scientific test. If animals and plants have really moved away from the equator at 17.6km per decade, presumably there is now a zone several kilometres wide around the equator devoid of life. If there are any animals still there, then obviously they haven’t moved. However, I don’t live on the equator and wasn’t able to test this directly.
So, for my second empirical test, I have just observed my friend ‘Tigger’ sleeping in the garden. I wanted to see if he would move northwards at 20cm per hour. Eventually, he did move northwards to his food bowl. This is much more than 20cms, so I can confirm that the situation is at least three times worst than the University of York first thought.
.
Here is another one that will fit in with its worse than we thought. Has anyone read any information related to this. I read something about the ice roads and erosion a while back but cannot seem to rind it right now.
Here is the kicker-“Cities and communities also have warned that their ice roads are disappearing and shorelines eroding as the ground beneath homes and public buildings melts away with rising temperatures that are increasing much faster than other regions on the planet”.
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Harper+urged+alter+Arctic+strategy/5285390/story.html#ixzz1Vfxo1MgF