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.
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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.
As Kaboom indicates above, a closer-to-reality model would include the beneficial effect of CO2 on plant growth as well as the beneficial effect of higher temps and longer growing seasons.
But that closer-to-reality model might generate perverse results, jeopardizing their future funding.
It must be the lack of vegitation in Yellowstone Park, due to global warming, that is killing off all the herbirvore elk and not the wolves that are eating them. Score another victory for the “greens” and their federal injunction, legal fees paid for with your tax dollars, against shooting wolves which are now about five times their “target population” for that environment. Me thinks a few wolves introduced into the parks in DC, LA, Chicago, NYC etc. would be a great idea.
Species population goes down when food supply goes down! Wow, what a revelation. But to think this would imply any “consequences for global food security” for humans anyway, is absurd. As Kaboom points out (October 5, 2001 at5 10:16am) herbivores in the human food chain are domesticated. Even in third world countries where domesticated animals are grazed on natural pasture, it is possible to supplement the animal’s diet.
That leaves only wild herbivores to worry about. But then their “food security” is always is doubt from vicissitudes of weather. So their population goes up and down depending on any number of things. I was taught in school that this was the “balance of nature.”
Oh well, I suppose university researchers have to make a living too. So they do what they have to do to bring those grants in
We were just recently mocking a “study” that claimed warming will cause smaller animals. Now it will cause larger ones?
Honestly, this is so insanely ridiculous that I can’t believe anyone would put their name on it.
Enjoy these times… in future they will be looked back on with the same fond nostalgia as 70s Ice Age, disco, furry chests and facial hair, bell bottoms and tie die shirts, roller skating as a date, AMC Pacers, Michael Jackson’s black era, white wall tires, and a peanut farmer president.
I would welcome a break from the herbivore population explosion that is making my life h___. Way too many of them and now the large predators are increasing in their wake. If I were not within a city limit I’d be stocking up on Weatherby.
..and here I thought plants grew better in warm, moist, high CO2 environments…better tear down the green houses. Herbivores can only grow if their food source is available. They can’t grow large and then over consume….who the heck did the population dynamics on this?
old engineer
We not only need to know the direction of the food biomass at the level of primary productivity but also whether or not it is edible. As an example if your plant biomass is diatoms then generally you will have any number of higher levels competing to eat them. If the plant biomass is smaller more noxious pico-nano plankton then generally you will have less grazing pressure and end up with more plants. And we have little if any ability to predict what type of algae will predominate. Until we understand whether changes in amount of algae are the result of some input of say nutrients or temperature or changes in grazing pressure or other inputs we should probably stay away of press releases saying we found a modeled correlation.
If “Herbivore populations will go down as temperatures go up”, then we may be in for an increase in herbivores
Are we working on the premise of JCL (e.g. JOB, DD or EXEC) cards now? (See JCL, Input stream)
.
Forget about CO2, we need to greatly limit grants to folks who publish this nonsense. Otherwise, the increase in stupidity will doom us all.
(I wish I could add “/sarc”, but it really seems that we are heading downhill. Fast.)
I hate to defend this stuff (so I won’t defend the content of the paper), but when you look at the AmNat home page they do say press releases for upcoming papers which is where the link Anthony provided above comes in. AmNat is a peer-reviewed journal, I’ve reviewed for them myself in the past; the paper is probably simply ‘in press’ and not available yet with the press release intended to whip the masses into a frenzy for the paper once it’s finally available.
So…the herbivores grow more quickly than the herbs, and the herbivores die out from starvation. Now what happens after the herbivores die out? Do the herbs also die out from a lack of being eaten? Or perhaps the herbs would explode in growth due to the lack of herbivores to keep them in check?
Were the people who did this study themselves herbivores?
[SNIP: David, this is innuendo and doesn’t really contribute to the thread. -REP]
“Gilbert cautions that long-term tests are required.”
Better approve that grant right away.
Zooplankton are not plants and, strictly speaking, phytoplankton are not either. Consumers of plankton should be referred to as filter-feeders or forage fish. True plant-life in the oceans is essentially limited to mangroves and sea grasses: most sea life is animal (fish, sponges, coral, etc.) or algal. Zooplankton are animals. Phytoplankton are algae. On the other hand, there is quite a bit of plant-life in fresh water.
Alec Rawls quoted Ehrlich:
Also at the United Nation news conference was Dr. Paul Ehrlich, who declared that Demi-Ra would cause mass starvation by 2040. “It will lengthen the growing season in temperate regions,” Ehrlich predicted. “The resulting increase in food production will create population growth. Soon there won’t be enough food for the increased population and everyone will die.”
Yogi Berra had this logic figured out: “Nobody ever goes there ’cause it’s always too crowded.”
Like Economics in relation to economic processes, experiments on the biosphere are problematic and theories are only falsifiable by modelling or long time lags where there are observers and data are collected and replication is also problematic because time doesn’t flow backward. The problem with this study is that it is a complex inductive argument with multiple causations. This makes these types of arguments frustrating because you have to resort to alternative inductive arguments to show potential flaws but your reasoning is not falsifiable either by experiment so you are left with nothing more than skepticism about the argument’s premises. This makes skepticism a natural response to all ecological inductive arguments. They might be internally consistent but even one exception to a premise makes it untrue for one, some or all cases.
The weakness of inductive arguments is why we now have, in climate change science, layered causation and contra-causation from aerosols to volcanos to clouds to finding the missing heat. When a theory needs to be modified to account for every bit of new data it has stopped being a theory and it is just a story.
“… -REP”
REP, for completeness, I didn’t pen the original, quoted text.
[REPLY: you’re right. It got by me. Fixed. -REP]
Kaboom says:
October 5, 2011 at 10:16 am
” 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”
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My goat herd agrees with you. They take one look at the massive wall of Vampire vines (greenbriar) wild grape, honey suckle and wild blackberry and turned tail and ran for the mowed pasture! This is the SAME area they had eaten to the ground two years ago…..
I wold expect the number of herbifores decrease as the number of carnivores increase … same with fish!
Their ‘model’ obviously left out that higher CO2 will make the plants grow FASTER.
I’ve seen it happen many times, in numerous vegetable and other species
grown side-by-side in my office window, in identical commercially-bought planter kits.
With the CO2 (500 to 2000 ppm), the plants are obviously growth-obsessed,
with leaves puckered up with rapid-growth and stems lunging vertically.
Every few hours changes are visible, vs. every few days with no extra CO2.
These people are totally out of touch with reality, yet call themselves ‘researchers’.
Jim G says:
October 5, 2011 at 11:39 am
It must be the lack of vegitation in Yellowstone Park, due to global warming, that is killing off all the herbirvore elk and not the wolves that are eating them…..
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And here I thought it was Dr. Combs (no relation) who was knocking them off.
It is part of the eradication of brucellosis and tuberculosis in Yellowstone wildlife. Dr. Bret Combs, the area veterinarian in charge of the Animal and Plant Health.
Lets get to the heart of the matter. This is a quote from above:
“Gilbert cautions that long-term tests are required”
Read: a steady stream of gubbermint money is needed to keep the researchers rolling in the dough. CAGW is good for business!
Complete BS – in the extremely unlikely event overall global temperatures rise a few degrees, not much will happen in the tropics, but the rise will be concentrated mostly in the temperate and polar regions.
As for Canada (and Russia), huge areas of the north will be opened up for grazing animals like cattle and sheep, which previously only could support, caribou, reindeer and musk oxen.
There’s no need for science here, just plain old common sense.
[SNIP: David, this is innuendo and doesn’t really contribute to the thread. -REP]
It was clearly humour and sarcasm, I seriously doubt anyone would have taken it as anything but, and there are comments in this thread making outright accusations of corruption let alone sarcastic “innuendo”.
How about” “the study is deeply flawed and appears to have been written by people who perceive the world through an altered form of reality”
How’s that?