From the “let’s include climate change is all our work so we’ll keep getting funded” department, comes this admission in the form of a press release from The University of Kent.
Overshadowed by climate change
Kent research suggests that recent high levels of media coverage for climate change may have deflected attention and funding from biodiversity loss.
In a paper published by the journal Bioscience, Kent conservationists also recommend that, to prevent biodiversity from becoming a declining priority, conservationists need to leverage the importance of climate change to obtain more funds and draw attention to other research areas such as biodiversity conservation.
For the study, the team conducted a content analysis of newspaper coverage in four US broadsheets (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today) and four UK broadsheets (the Guardian, The Independent, The Times, and the Financial Times). Academic peer-reviewed coverage and project funding by the World Bank and National Science Foundation were also examined.
Among their findings the team discovered that:
- Press attention devoted to biodiversity has remained stable since 1990, but the proportion of climate change reports rose before 2007 and has stayed substantially higher than biodiversity since 2005
- In scientific journals, papers on biodiversity loss and conservation have increased at a steady pace, but publication of papers on climate change accelerated markedly around 2006 and overtook them
- Funding by the World Bank shows no evident change over the past 20 years, with climate change projects funded at a much greater rate than biodiversity projects. The US National Science Foundation’s investments directed toward climate change research have increased substantially since 1987, but biodiversity expenditures have increased much less and have held steady since 2004.
The researchers further recommend that, given that many human influences are driving both climate change and biodiversity loss, conservationists should aim for win-win solutions such as the United Nations program REDD+ (an extension of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation programme) – an initiative that protects forests while also creating benefits for local communities and biodiversity.
Dr Diogo Verissimo, a postdoctoral researcher at Kent’s Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), said: ‘Our findings suggest that while climate change could be deflecting attention from biodiversity loss in terms of funding, in other areas the sentiment shared by many conservationists that biodiversity loss is now a secondary issue could be a result of a comparatively quicker rise in prominence of climate change.’
Dr Zoe Davies, Senior Lecturer in Biodiversity Conservation at DICE, added: ‘Conservationists must continue to be proactive, and use the growing interest in climate change as a flagship to leverage more support and action to prevent further biodiversity loss.’
‘Has Climate Change Taken Prominence over Biodiversity Conservation?’ (Diogo Verissimo, Zoe G. Davies, Robert J. Smith, Jennifer Crees, and Douglas C, Macmillan) was published in the June issue of Bioscience.
Climate Change is sucking funding away from biodiversity which is sucking private property rights from citizens…
And Brussels is sucking resources from all of the above.
I love the solution proposed by the researchers—exaggerate any conceivable connection from your research to climate change, no matter how tenuous, so you can piggyback on the climate hysteria in order to get the funding.
Or as the author put it in much less transparent and more laudatory terms:
Be clear, I can’t blame her for saying that. If I saw my funding drying up and all the money being poured down a carbon rathole, I’d try to stick my bucket in the money stream myself.
It’s just a tragedy that “science” has come to this …
w.
Perhaps these researchers need to look at the impact of biofuels on biodiversity. I hear Orangutan habitat (rain forest) is being sacrificed for palm oil plantations. i also wonder what how much of this same resource is being diverted to sugarcane production and ethanol distillation in Brazil. And what about the expansion of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico from corn cultivation in the Midwest?
Guys, the Turnspit Dog is extinct. Major loss of biodiversity there.
How Global Warming Threatens Antarctic Animals
http://www.newsweek.com/how-global-warming-threatens-antarctic-animals-255005
Darn these commoners with their limited attention spans! We can only keep one good scam going at a time!!!
Sean – you are quite right….the impacts of mitigation attempts are extensive and immediate, but are not strategically assessed…especially not by the green advocates of action. There is a stupidly naive attitude prevalent that all green activism requires is to win some target commitment from politicians – they then leave the ways-and-means to whatever vested interests step into the subsidy trough. Biofuels are the worst offenders – through South America, SE Asia and Africa, but also new hydro schemes in remote places, tidal barrages and arrays of wind turbines.
Meanwhile, there is very little data to show the calamity for biodiversity they wish to avoid. The small changes in zonation or plants – latitudinally or altitudinally, lead to marginal changes in insects and birds – usually with an equal number of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. Millions have been spent on calculating ‘climate space’ for each species in the future. These studies take no account of natural cycles and species’ past histories of adaptation. Declining population and even extinction is always regarded as ‘bad’…whereas they are in a fact perfectly natural consequence of (cyclic) environmental change. Even when studies show a balance of ups and downs, value judgement comes in and talks of ‘threats’ and ‘bidiversity losses’ – with an obvious eye on the funding streams.
These millions could be spent on creating larger and more resilient nature reserves.
And Willis – they are all at it! Hundreds, if not thousands of papers sign on as if ‘climate change’ were self explanatory, when there is actually no good evidence the current rate of ecological change is any different from previous warmings. Certainly, we are at a high-point. In the UK, for example, we now host several new breeding species – especially the Mediterranean egrets, little bittern, and the beautiful golden oriole, whereas we have yet to lose one species through loss of cold habitat – even the snow bunting is doing well on the Scottish mountain tops. Not one paper on potential biodiversity losses mentions cycles – for example, that the white storks now prospecting in the English lowlands, bred in Edinburgh in the 13th century (at the same time as the Vikings were farming in Greenland), or that in 8000BP Neolithic peoples in Somerset breakfasted on Pelicans.
Sadly, every new paper that uncritically accepts the unprecedented ‘warming’ hypothesis, contributes to this meaningless 97% of scientists who agree….etc.
It is natural for species to be negatively impacted by other species, even eliminated. It is evolution at work, species adapt to less-favorable conditions, perhaps migrate to still-favorable locations, or go extinct.
Why do the Greener-than-thous proselytize their devotion to unnatural unquestioning biodiversity?
Biodiversity is under direct assault by the icons of the CAGW cult.
Top avian species, cut to pieces as the soar the foothills, burnt to a crisp as they fly over the desert plains.
Common sense and honesty in the human species is being threatened, as a loss of diversity.
The intelligence test continues.
That, in a nutshell, is the “consensus”.
Good laaarrrd! They don’t even bother with email anymore. They just brazenly put it out there in a journal. What used to be to unseemly for public eyes is now trotted out, complete with pee…pal review, for all the eyes to see! It’s like they have Miley Cyrus disease!
At a billion dollars a day, most real science is suffering from the sucking sound coming from Climate Science.
Climate Change is sucking funding away from biodiversity
————
The leftist/greenie/warmunist extremist eco-panic industry not only sucks away funding from such issues, but blackens the reputation of worthy environmental causes via scepticism and eco-fatigue.
Raise taxes immediately!
/sarc
(attach your organization’s name here) also recommend that, to prevent (attach your research subject here) from becoming a declining priority, (attach your job title here) need to leverage the importance of climate change to obtain more funds …
And now we have a nice boilerplate to use in our next press release.
‘The title is about Climate harming biodiversity yet what they are realy talking about is loss of habitat’ is what I thought a couple of times recently e.g. today on Radio DW from Germany
“Climate change impacts human health
The United Nations University’s institute in Malaysia has become increasingly concerned about environmental change and its impact on the way we live and how healthy we are. DW spoke to the institute’s director Anthony Capon” is the intro text..but in audio he spoke about was effect of habitat loss in general not climate.
http://www.dw.de/climate-change-impacts-human-health/av-17702408
Their just putting into words what has clearly gone on for years now , stick in an AGW connection no matter how poor and make sure no matter the facts its supports ‘the cause ‘ and there is funding to be hand.
Its one of sad things about all this , that this joke of ‘science’ is dragging the rest of science down with it . And for that we can thank not the team and their friends, but those working in other areas who refused to call out the poor practice and worse ethics of the team and friends and to often planed the three wise monkeys.
When ‘the cause ‘ falls it will take much good science , the loss of which we will regret, with it .
this has been the norm for a long time…..maybe it’s just so much focus is on climate change, that sticks out…..but funding has, for the most part, piggy backed on something else
re: “Climate Change is sucking funding away from biodiversity
Since the 1980s, the mindless alarmism over a tiny amount of increased CO2 from man’s activities has sucked the life and funding out of the conservation movement that was once so strong in the U.S. — and I use “conservation” since the #@ur momisugly#$@ur momisugly!#$ left-wing crazies have ruined the term “environmentalism”.
Once upon a time we were real concerned about keeping the environment from being poisoned, clean water, clean air, habitat preservation for endangered species, and so on. But now it seems no one is left in the “environmental” movement who cares about anything other than the fictional dangers of the magic gas CO2.
All I can say is God Damn It! (sorry to be profane, but this issue deserves a profane comment) I want coal fired power plants to burn as clean as is realistic, but I want inexpensive power to fuel the industrial society that keeps some 315 million U.S. citizens alive.
Many scientists are doing this now and as a result the environment suffers. Environmentalists have diverted their attention away from the environment and onto a greening trace gas. How ironic.
As KNR and Latitude stated above, its been going on for years – bit slow on the uptake this last lot. Last one to the waterhole dies of thirst.
These two have been piggybacked for decades. I used to support the Nature Conservancy (I admired how they bought the land to preserve the critters of interest and didn’t whine about getting more restrictive laws passed) but when they hopped on the AGW bandwagon, I stopped sending checks.
Biodiversity Agenda..
A Manifesto for Rewilding the World
http://www.monbiot.com/2013/05/27/a-manifesto-for-rewilding-the-world/
http://www.ethos-uk.com/downloads.html
Cores and Connectivity: A Wildlands
Manifesto for Britain
http://www.ethos-uk.com/downloads/WildlandManifesto.pdf
Large scale ecosystem restoration initiatives in the
British landscape and the potential reintroduction of
large carnivores.
Peter Taylor (Ethos)and Simon Ayres (John Muir Trust)
http://www.ethos-uk.com/downloads/EthosRewilding.pdf
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When they threw “biodiversity” against the wall it didn’t stick as well as CAGW…er…CACC.