From the University of Toronto, where they can’t even choose an appropriate photo and caption to go with the story headline (yes, that’s it at right). The jump of logic going on here requires some sort of warp drive I think. Of course there’s that mighty big “if” qualifier used, so feel free to ignore this press release.
Herbivore populations will go down as temperatures go up, U of T study says
As climate change causes temperatures to rise, the number of herbivores will decrease, affecting the human food supply, according to new research from the University of Toronto.
In a paper being published this month in American Naturalist, a team of ecologists describe how differences in the general responses of plants and herbivores to temperature change produces predictable declines in herbivore populations. This decrease occurs because herbivores grow more quickly at high temperatures than plants do, and as a result the herbivores run out of food.
“If warmer temperatures decrease zooplankton in the ocean, as predicted by our study, this will ultimately lead to less food for fish and less seafood for humans,” says co-author Benjamin Gilbert of U of T’s ecology and evolutionary biology department.
Several studies have shown how the metabolic rates of plants or animals change with temperature. Gilbert and his colleagues incorporated these rates into commonly-used, mathematical models of plants and herbivores to predict how the abundance of each should change with warming. They then compared their predictions to the results from an experimental study in which phytoplankton and zooplankton populations in tanks of water shifted significantly with changes in water temperature.
Gilbert cautions that long-term tests are required. Nevertheless, if their predictions are right, global warming will cause large shifts in food chains with consequences for global food security and species conservation.
The paper entitled “Theoretical predictions for how temperature affects the dynamics of interacting herbivores and plants” was written by co-authors Gilbert and Mary O’Connor with Chris Brown of the University of Queensland.
===============================================================
And, when we look at the “paper” here, http://www.asnamnat.org/node/164 it looks just like the press release. I’m not even sure if it is peer reviewed. They don’t even use the word “abstract” anywhere on the page. There’s no indication that there is a paper behind the login. This looks more like an announcement of “we are writing a paper and here are the results ahead of time”. Of course I have to wonder a bit after looking at the header for ASN, if this just isn’t a variation on the Journal of Irreproducible Results.
If anyone can find the actual paper (I’ve also looked at UT), I’m sure we’d all be interested in finding out the methodology and data used to come up with this theory.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Stop the world, I want to get off.
“In a paper being published this month in American Naturalist, a team of ecologists describe how differences in the general responses of plants and dinosaurs to temperature change produces predictable declines in dinosaur populations. This decrease occurs because dinosaurs grow more quickly at high temperatures than plants do, and as a result the dinosaurs run out of food.”
There goes that whole comet theory.
Providing that temperatures rise 10’s of degrees…..
Reminds me of the fake studies with ocean acidification….
..raise CO2 levels to the thousands, and hold it there until all the buffers are used up
in the lab
“If warmer temperatures decrease zooplankton in the ocean, as predicted by our study, this will ultimately lead to less food for fish and less seafood for humans.”
I don’t believe it. (This may seem like an argument from personal incredulity, but there you go.) Unless the authors are arguing that productivity is going to go down, I don’t see how this statement can be true. It might work in a bucket with a two species plant-herbivore system.
It is also counter-intuitive. If I postulated that warmer temperatures were going to increase aphid population growth rates, you wouldn’t be worried about the aphids disappearing because of increased competition. You’d be worried about your broad beans disappearing.
I can’t be too harsh because I’ve only seen the abstract. But it sounds weak.
As far as I know most herbivores relevant to the human food supply are domesticated. So even if there would be a reason for them to diminish in numbers in the wild (probably because they throw in the towel when they find out they cannot ever hope to eat all the vegetation that thrives at higher CO2 levels), that would only affect hunter-gatherers in areas like Great Britain where modern civilization has been outlawed to protect the climate.
“Gilbert cautions that long-term tests are required. Nevertheless, if their predictions are right, global warming will cause large shifts in food chains with consequences for global food security and species conservation.”
Whoops, just let me insert this little “out” before I get stomped by the three-storey-high Charolais stripping that endangered elm tree across the street. Another case of a virtually undetectable temperature change causing mayhem and megafauna…only as long as their request for more tests is met.
Is there less sea life in the tropics and subtropics as opposed to temperate waters, or more?
“If warmer temperatures decrease zooplankton in the ocean, as predicted by our study, this will ultimately lead to less food for fish and less seafood for humans,” says co-author Benjamin Gilbert
======================================================
That explains why bays, estuaries, etc are less productive…
…they are obviously colder
does anyone really need this —> snark
Why can’t we normal folks file suit against the government for wasting tax dollars on stupid unscientific studies and have them pay our legal costs to do so like they do for the “green people” organizations? Perhaps we could find a federal judge who could file injunctions against further stupidity in grant allocations. That’s how the “green” idiots have stopped additional coal mining, oil drilling, power plants, refineries, logging and just about all forms of progress in the US of A.
Land animals for a second. Where do you find most animal life? Warm areas or cold areas? Warm areas, of course. Herbivores have a hard time finding grass on ice.
“What’s the latest news, hon?”
“Well, it says here we’re doomed, babe.”
“Again? Pass the cornflakes.”
“herbivores grow more quickly at high temperatures than plants do, and as a result the herbivores run out of food”
That must explain the notable lack of herbivores on the African grasslands then !
wait let me guess… a model told them… GIGA type of model of course… no trick needed.
The biggest threats to herbivores is the World Trade Organization’s “traceability” mandate that the FDA/USDA is even now trying to force on American farmers:
(There are a few more days to comment at the the Federal Registry see http://nonais.org/2011/08/18/submit-a-comment-on-neonais/ on how to make a comment)
The other threat is the OIE depopulation programs. The complete mess-up of the UK Foot & Mouth disease outbreak of 2001 is a classic example of what happens when you have decisions made by bureaucrats who do not even LIVE in the same country instead of by the Vet on the actual farm. see: http://www.warmwell.com/footmoutheye.html
The critical factor is by OIE/WTO directive, IF you vaccinate a country can not export for TWO YEARS if you “Stamp out” (kill) you can export in three to six months depending on the disease. So instead of killing the diseased animals and vaccinating all farms X miles from the source of the disease as has been done in the past with great success, the UK used “Stamping out” only in 2001. On top of that because of the new regulations many of the rendering plants were shut down AND the government would not allow farmers to bury killed animals in quicklime (again successfully used in the past) leaving rotting carcasses to spread the disease.
“… So, with 9500 farms killed out (end-September), the total cost to the taxpayers on a farm-by-farm basis was now approaching £2.5 billion, a figure still rising with every week that passed…. It was far too early for accurate figures yet to be available showing just how great the overall damage to Britain’s economy the foot-and-mouth crisis had been. Preliminary estimates had ranged from £8 billion to the £20 billion put forward by the Institute of Directors…..”
Forget Global Warming the greatest danger to herbivores and to us is run away bureaucracy!
The press release states:
“Surprisingly, the study describes the impacts of warming in very simple terms, even for complex herbivore-plant interactions”.
Chaotic self organizing systems cannot be described in simple terms! Simplicity is how we convince ourselves of things we know can’t be true.
And they show a pic of an insectivorous/piscivorous fish! LOL
I’d always heard that dinosaurs lived when much of the Earth had a semi-tropical climate. And they did so for millions of years. Was this information wrong. I’ve not kept up on the latest, but I don’t remember hearing anything to the contrary. And what about the present day tropics? Are they short on herbivores?
Oh, wait. “Mathematical models.” Sorry, never mind.
More food + a larger range from thawed land + a longer growing season = very unhappy biosphere
Obviously.
That is why people don’t use greenhouses with extra CO2 to grow plants through the winter, because plants are happiest when they are cold and malnurished. That is also why the massive cattle feedlots are all in Fairbanks instead of California.
Everyone knows that plants and animals grow best when they are frozen and dead.
//sarc off
Suggesting that zooplankton productivity would decrease with rising ocean temps and food concentrations is flat out silly. And it is the foundation of their study. The location of the most productive waters could shift, but global productivity would increase.
This explains the extinction of the dinosaur herbivores. They just ran out of plants to eat when it was warmer than today.
Kaboom says:
October 5, 2011 at 10:16 am
Are you suggesting that Global Warming caused by higher CO2 will cause greater levels of herbivore depression and suicide?
It’s Worse Than We Thought! ®
Well of course Rainbow, and other Trout species are herbivores; you fish for them with cooked corn off the cob, which is a herb, and even more popular is “Powerbait” which is flour (herb) and water solvent) along with some glitter to simulate the scales falling off small minnows that the trout may bump into. The minnows also eat seeds that fall in the stream, and seeds grow up into herbs.
Wait a minute. I’ve seen that before. Plagiarism! Here is what I wrote in 2030 (!) about the a giant solar reflector that had been placed in orbit to stave off global cooling:
Okay, so Ehrlich said it, not me, and he said it in 2030, but I still call it plagiarism.
Will it look like a hockeyschtick ? ®
U of Toronto:
My wife is from Toronto, now a naturalized US citizen. You are still embarrassing her with these childish studies, over and over again. Please keep your ideas to yourself, she is getting depressed.
Although not a scientist, she realizes that greenhouses raise their temperatures 10°C in the spring, and pump in 1000 ppm of carbon dioxide to make plants thrive and grow twice as fast. Most K through twelvers know that, too! Duh!
Fortunately for me, I’m a carnivore.
Oh, wait…
“Accidental Nature: The benefits of human waste”
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/10/05/accidental-nature-the-benefits-of-human-waste/
Let the eat ?