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.
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“experimental study in which phytoplankton and zooplankton populations in tanks of water shifted significantly with changes in water temperature.”
But
Science Has Proved
that zooplankton get smaller in warmer temperatures, so although there may be more of them, each one will eat less. There will still be plenty of them for the fish to eat.
As far as I can tell, the real danger to the fish supply is overfishing. (Plus the fact that the fish off the Japanese coast are radioactive, and toxic waste is turning the fish off the Chinese coast into giant jellyfish.)
So we’re still doomed.
Roha- and like most other environmental problems overfishing is significantly associated with subsidies in the US and elsewhere
“This decrease occurs because dinosaurs grow more quickly at high temperatures than plants do, and as a result the dinosaurs run out of food.”
However this effect took a whooping 70 million years to kill the dinosaurs. Maybe we should not introduce a carbon tax right away?
Probably explains why tropical waters are devoid of life.
And this explains the known correlation between Rocky Mountain herbivore populations and Pacific atmospheric and oceanic conditions how? When conditions warm things up and wet things down, herds increase for a couple plus decades. When conditions cool down, dries soils, and freeze up, herds decrease in size. Well known proxy for long term weather pattern variations and oscillations.
The authors of the above modeled study failed. In so many ways.
Alex says:
October 6, 2011 at 12:05 am
I was thinking along the same lines toward a new theory about dinosaurs and herbivory:
“Dinosaurs are thin at one end, thick in the middle, and thin at the other end”.
This is in line with the logic processing among those similar-shaped students sitting at computers at the U of Toronto. Further study is certainly needed about dinosaur shapes, and the relation to global warming. Ka-Ching!
The best available (C)AGW-confirming peer-reviewed work has said the effects of global warming will continue for 1000 years even after (anthropogenic) emissions stop. (Reference 1, discussed here; discussion on Reference 2) Shut down civilization tomorrow, it’ll take a millennium before temperatures drop. There will also be (nigh-)irreversible changes, desertification etc.
With the intensifying of competition for edible plant matter, there will be shortages of high-nutrition items such as berries, other fruits, and nuts that many herbivores and omnivores prefer. Between the droughts and the intense frequent bad weather, farming won’t be able to cover the deficit, especially with the expected future restrictions on fertilizers and pesticides and irrigation water. With zero-emissions becoming the standard, there will also be a reduction in our ability to farm (how many acres can an electric tractor plow between charges?). Farmed crops like corn and soybeans will be severely impacted.
Therefore vegans are already on a long path to hunger, malnutrition, and possibly extinction. We omnivores will survive just fine off of the critters that consume the non-human-edible vegetable matter.
Wow, this report must be really scary to the PETA people.
Of course as the warmth continues during that millennium, there may be a few to several meters of sea level rise, which will wipe out some very productive farmland while in general it reduces the available land area for plants to grow on, with the droughts and desertification providing additional negative impacts. Thus the paper mentioned above, not accounting for that, underestimates the problem. It really will be worse than they thought.
But being vegan will overwhelmingly be known as an unsustainable lifestyle, especially not something that all humans can follow without drastic population cuts if such would even work. Eh, the benefit is worth the risks. Burn those fossil fuels and bring on the warmth!
😉
“Of course herbivore populations will go down if it gets warmer, nothing can resist the smell of burgers on a bbq of a nice summers day!”
H/T Generalissmo Michael Evans on Farcebook
Looks like the classic self-“trout slap” .
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Trout%20Slap
The fish on the photograph is a trout, a rainbow trout.
It has absolutely nothing to do with oceans.
“If warmer temperatures decrease zooplankton in the ocean, as predicted by our study…”
This kind of trout lives preferably in colder headwaters, not anywhere near or in oceans.
Just my 2 cents…
“”””” petermue says:
October 6, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Looks like the classic self-”trout slap” .
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Trout%20Slap
The fish on the photograph is a trout, a rainbow trout.
It has absolutely nothing to do with oceans. “”””””
Well some RAINBOW trout, are better known by another name; “Steelhead” The very famous Rainbow trout of New Zealand are actually Steelhead from the Russian river of California..
I almost forgot; steelhead are just rainbow trout that go to sea like salmon, and return when mature to spawn. Unlike salmon, they don’t die after spawning. Another name for the sea, is “ocean”.
PS, since they introduced all those trash rainbow trout to New Zealand waters, i’s is a lot harder to catch a decent eel in the streams anymore.
Minor typo, Anthony……
“This looks more like an announcement of “we are writing a paper and here are the results ahead of time.”
should read:
“This looks more like an announcement of “we have the desired results ahead of time and
are writing a paper.”
I don’t eat fish. Too fishy tasting.
In Yellowstone, the fish were in bad trouble because the herbivores (elk and deer) were eating all the shoots of plants right down to the streamsides, and shade and debris were in short supply. Wolves were introduced, and the elk became fewer and more cautious in their eating patterns, allowing the plant cover to recover. The fish were able to recover. Nobody foresaw or modelled this.
The complexities and interactions of the natural world are way beyond the comprehension of modellers. They project thousands or millions of extinctions based on linear extrapolations, which then proceed not to occur, they try to do reductionist analysis of massively non-linear complex systems, and never learn.
Anthony, your headline is offensively misleading. The word “schlock” reveals a bias which will distort your audience’s perceptions. The truth of the science you are reporting will, accordingly, be misapprehended.
Is there any doubt that global warming affects plant growth? Changes in temperature, humidity and moisture are having massive impacts everywhere, especially in those areas where food is grown in large quantities.The diets of animals (including us) eating these plants will obviously be impacted adversely.
REPLY: Are you writing this from Occupy Wall Street? – Anthony