Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
UPDATE: Repaired a few typos.
How often do we see this happen—a press release about a scientific study states or suggests that global warming was the cause of a factor being studied, when the paper itself doesn’t come to that conclusion…and/or the data contradict it?
An example crossed my desk yesterday. (Thanks, Anthony.)
The closing paragraph of the press release Why are seabirds abandoning their ancestral nesting grounds in the Gulf of California? from the University of California, Riverside reads(my boldface):
Increased frequencies of abnormally warm waters in the Gulf of California, possibly as a result of globally warming oceans, coupled with extremely high fishing pressure, are delivering a combined blow to the legendary productivity of the Gulf of California, forcing seabirds to fly away in search for more suitable environments, even if that means abandoning their ancestral nesting grounds and moving into highly transformed industrial landscapes such as the San Diego Saltworks or the LA Harbor Container Terminal.
That’s odd. The paper that’s the subject of the press release doesn’t come to the conclusion that global warming is causing the migratory practices of the studied sea birds.
The press release is about the Velarde et al. (2015) paper Warm oceanographic anomalies and fishing pressure drive seabird nesting north. The abstract reads:
Parallel studies of nesting colonies in Mexico and the United States show that Elegant Terns (Thalasseus elegans) have expanded from the Gulf of California Midriff Island Region into Southern California, but the expansion fluctuates from year to year. A strong inverse relationship between nesting pairs in three Southern California nesting areas [San Diego saltworks, Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, and Los Angeles Harbor (1991 to 2014)] and Isla Rasa in the Midriff (1980 to 2014) shows that terns migrate northward when confronting warm oceanographic anomalies (>1.0°C), which may decrease fish availability and hamper nesting success. Migration pulses are triggered by sea surface temperature anomalies localized in the Midriff and, secondarily, by reductions in the sardine population as a result of intensive fishing. This behavior is new; before year 2000, the terns stayed in the Midriff even when oceanographic conditions were adverse. Our results show that terns are responding dynamically to rapidly changing oceanographic conditions and fish availability by migrating 600 km northwest in search of more productive waters.
The conclusions of Velarde et al. (2015) are (my boldface):
In conclusion, three factors seem to be playing a role in the range changes of nesting Elegant Terns. (i) The success of conservation measures in the tern’s nesting grounds both in Mexico and California has allowed an increased population growth of the species, and the exponential increase in the Isla Rasa colony in particular seems to be pushing reproductive pairs onto new nesting grounds in California. (ii) Superimposed on this systematic and continuous expansion, there is a pulse-like variation in local SST conditions in the Midriff, which seems to drive nesting pairs to emigrate toward California when surface seawater in the Midriff is too warm, the thermocline is too deep, and fish availability is poor. (iii) The decision by seabirds to abandon their traditional nesting grounds in the Midriff is compounded by the fishing effort during the previous season, which further increases the proportion of Elegant Terns migrating away from the Gulf of California.
Besides an overall growth of nesting Elegant Terns in Isla Rasa and southern California colonies as a result of successful conservation efforts, since year 2000 whenever Elegant Terns have confronted poor oceanographic conditions, indicated by high SST (>1.0°C) anomalies in the Midriff, breeding pairs have abandoned Rasa, a behavior that is further augmented by high sardine fishing effort and landings in the Midriff. This oscillatory migration dynamics between distant nesting sites suggests that Elegant Terns can make fast decisions and dynamically adapt to rapid changes in the global environment. The adequate maintenance of a healthy fish community in both the Gulf of California and the Pacific is an important priority that will help support healthy seabird communities, as well as healthy marine ecosystems in general and sustainable fisheries.
“[P]ulse-like variation in local SST conditions” and “high SST (>1.0°C) anomalies in the Midriff” do not equate to global warming. In fact, the data provided by Velarde et al. contradict the press release.
The January to April sea surface temperature anomaly data for the years of 1983 to 2014 are provided in the Supplementary Material for Velarde et al. (2015). See their Table S3 Oceanographic data. I’ve plotted their data for the Midriff of the Gulf of California and Baja California’s Pacific coast at the same latitude. See Figures 1 and 2. Both show cooling since 1983, based on the linear trends.
Figure 1
# # #
Figure 2
Note: as far as I can tell from the paper, the data for the Midriff of the Gulf of California is for the 1 deg latitude by 1 deg longitude grid of 29N-30N, 114W-113W.
CLOSING
It’s sad when claims made in a press release are not supported by the conclusions of the paper its advertising, even sadder when data supplied as part of a scientific study contradict that press release.
Shouldn’t truth-in-advertising laws also apply to press releases for scientific studies?
As a result of the false claims made in the press release, it has been picked up by alarmist mainstream media outlets. Examples:
ScienceWorldReport—Climate Change: Seabirds are Abandoning Ancestral Nesting Grounds in California.
The findings reveal that warm waters may be the cause behind these shifts. This, in turn, could be a result of globally warming oceans.
Zee News—Sea-level warming forces seabirds to abandon nesting grounds.
The reason for the migration is to be found in global warming.
Oy vey!!
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Only in this heightened political environment could a report about a greatly increasing population of birds following their food source leave one thinking the birds in question were actually on the brink of extinction.
+100
Ecology is a dead end science. Presumably there is some point at which the “sweet spot” is arrived at where the planet is forever in a steady state of oscillating dynamic equilibrium around islands of climax community steady state. There is no room, actually, for evolution in the environmentalists world view. So chase those terns back where they belong and stop harvesting sardines! By all means don’t pollute the atmosphere with life giving gases it will have an effect like a 5 mile wide asteroid hitting the planet!
What I cannot understand how people keep churning out this cr@p, when everyone, including the warmists agree, that there has been no warming for 18.5 years. Logically any contemporaneous study carried out in the last few years must be wrong!
How often do we see this happen, about has often as see the authors of the papers totally fail to correct the press statement , as they know that such statements are ‘useful’ in so many career enhancing and grant farming ways.
Can definitely see the ENSO signal but something long term is lowering the RMS value.
Sounds like the birds didn’t leave their ancestral breeding grounds, even with higher water temps, before positive conservation efforts increased their numbers. Maybe at their lower numbers, a deeper thermocline didn’t matter, there were still enough fish.
But if you have increased fishing pressure, and increased numbers of nesting terns, then there isn’t enough food.
So it is the combination of overfishing, increased numbers of terns, and a steeper thermocline (decreasing fish availability) that leads to migration to S California locations. Success story for elegant terns, not so much for sardines.
“…the exponential increase in the Isla Rasa colony in particular seems to be pushing reproductive pairs onto new nesting grounds in California.”
————
Yay for them reproductive pairs – one good tern deserves another.
I believe “reproductive pair,” formerly known as a “marriage,” has been recently redefined. No doubt the birds’ behaviour will soon evolve to conform to the new, enlightened and politically correct meme.
Well a lot of people have their knickers in a bunch over the inclusion of non-reproductive pairs into “marriage”
One important piece of this puzzle was the observation in the abstract that the number of birds has risen sharply.
(i) The success of conservation measures in the tern’s nesting grounds both in Mexico and California has allowed an increased population growth of the species, and the exponential increase in the Isla Rasa colony in particular seems to be pushing reproductive pairs onto new nesting grounds in California.
So, the conditions in the Gulf of California are so bad that the total population has exploded and the habitat will not support, not the original population, but the increased population. If the conclusions were honestly reached, they would have said that the warmer waters have produced such good conditions that the total habitat for nesting pairs had to be increased to accommodate the increased populations.
But that conclusion wouldn’t pay the bills, and certainly wouldn’t pay for the raises, upgrades and extras that all the public trough seem to want as a natural right.
pbh
Glad someone noticed.
A massive effort to induce anxiety. I wonder if pharmaceutical companies are involved.
Excellent catch Bob. You should send your analysis to the University of Riverside and suggest they retract the press release.
In the bizarro world of climate change where flawed computer models are called settled science anything is possible. The stories keep getting wilder and wilder as we approach the 2016 elections in the US. If a conservative president is elected and I think this will happen. The message to NOAA will be, “grab your lug nuts it’s time for an overhaul”.
That message has already been sent by the Republican Congress. The latest budget agreed upon by both Houses moves money away from climate studies and into weather research. Of course, the Dems are threatening a filibuster. We wouldn’t want to pass an actual budget, now would we??
The paper notes that the terns were found on Isla Montague at the Colorado Delta during el Ninos of 1992 and 1998. Those years were unique in that exceptional precipitation allowed the Colorado to flow to the Gulf as it did 70+ years ago before all the water was diverted. Those terns may have been paying a visit to their ancestral homeland for a glimpse of the way things were.
Perhaps the diversion of the Colorado River had an effect on upwelling in the gulf.
Ha! They caught nature adapting to change. What – did they think the birds would just sit and die?
It’s the “climate change communicators” doing their job. Their Fascist propagantist heroes would be proud.
Globally warming oceans?
How exactly do warming oceans on the other side of the world cause sea birds in CA to migrate to new locations?
The Conclusion of a Press Release Should Match the Scientific Study, Don’t Ya Think?
Well, why should it when we see that the conclusions of so many “scientific” climate studies don’t match their data?
“Man is the measure of all things” — Protagorus. In American Progressivism the Truth is whatever the Superman says.
Eugene WR Gallun
Now that would be a good title for a book about American Progressivism —
WAITING FOR THE SUPERMAN.
Eugene WR Gallun
NEVER trust The Man! (Super or not.)
🙂
After all ,This CAGW monster is all a Government construct.
Also, in Oklahoma it has caused the Cedar Waxwing to extend its stay and the Western Kingbird to move eastward. I’m pretty sure that’s the cause. I know it’s not the fine particulate matter from fireworks.
Don’t expect the press to get anything right or do the right thing. Their mode of operation is ‘we decide the news and the worse it is, the better the sales.’
Just reading a book, entirely unrelated in topic, where the author describes a job he once had writing abstracts of scientific papers, for one of the first on-line suppliers of such things. He was given a daily quota, and a schematic on “how” to write abstracts, and his quota steadily increased as he continued work there. The quota system did not give him any time to genuinely understand the papers he was to “abstract”, and many of them (if not most) were so far from his background that he would have needed at least one college course just to get the (genuine) gist. For that matter, the “schematic” on how to write abstracts was purely mechanical, wholly divorced from the content of any given paper.
(fwiw, his book is not about this job as such)
I don’t know if press releases are handled similarly.
Hmmm – I just noticed that the 2 graphs Figure 1. and Figure 2. are from January to April (4 months)…What does Jan. to December (12 months) look like?
Perhaps journalism should be treated like medicine and required to practice ‘evidence-based journalism’? 50%+ would lose their jobs overnight!!
Not being flippant or anything, just gratified by the fact that there is such a thing as an Elegant Tern.
I learned this lesson back in the late 1980s. I had a dream job that tasked me with reading scientific literature looking for anything that could have a profound effect on the large corporation I worked for. Anything was fair game, from technology breakthroughs to health issues.
At the time, the AIDS epidemic was on the front page. One study I read indicate the number of new female cases locally had taken a jump over a period of a week. The numbers were small, going from something like six in one week to nine the next. The (CDC?) study explained that the increasing awareness of AIDS among medical professionals, and actively looking for it, led to the jump.
I was stunned when I read how it was finally reported in the newspaper. No actual numbers were given, nor the explanation for the increase. Instead, they reported that the number of cases had increased 50% in one week, and at that rate, the disease would overwhelm the entire female population of the US in less than one year!
That was about the same time that personalities such as Oprah Winfrey were warning that 20% of heterosexuals in the US would be dead within three years from the epidemic.
For those who do not remember or were not around at the time, politics and personal agendas created the AIDS scare, though you won’t see much of a explanation why all the predictions were wrong. At the time, C. Everett Koop was the U.S. Surgeon General. He was a conservative, pushing monogamy in marriage or abstinence. The gay community, which was (is) at serious risk, wanted huge government funding for a cure and a vaccine. Newspapers, of course, wanted sensational headlines. They had no need for conclusion to realize that each could advance their agenda by supporting the scare. Not so surprisingly, few of those on the receiving end of the grants objected to how their studies were twisted by others, or if they did, it never got published. For those who do remember those years, have you ever seen an explanation for why the epidemic never materialized, or hear an apology from the fearmongers claiming the end of civilization was at hand?
From that time on, I’ve only trusted my own interpretation of the original research, or the conclusions of a small number of trusted sources, most of whom publish on this site.
The Elegant Terns have done well in a changing environment. I hope someone spares a thought for the Inelegant Terns. Ugly, ignored, friendless, wallflowers of the avian world.
Sorry, I couldn’t help it.