Tom Barr writes via email:
From the “End of the Interglacial Department”: A Borough Council in Surrey, U.K. is set to spend up to £100 million to protect rare birds just about wiped out in 2008/9.
Residents in Surrey are all too familiar with draconian planning restrictions imposed to protect the Dartford Warbler. New builds are heavily taxed to fund Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace, which supposedly attracts Warbler damaging visitors away from the endangered bird’s lowland heath habitat. The good Warbler news is that according to Natural England, the little birds are bound to benefit, at least in the UK, from the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming that has allegedly being going on for the last half-century:
In fact, the RSPB see the Dartford Warbler as the “Canary in the Coal Mine”, flagging the sensitive little things as an indicator of Global Warming, as they move north from their long established lowland heath habitats in Southern England:
One small problem with that: It was cold weather, not Global Warming, which did for the Dartford Warblers at home in Surrey:
http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/guildford-borough-council-could-spend-13613229
The Warmist’s chosen Canary in the Coal Mine has frozen to death.
Ok, the headline and the picture are really funny. +1 to Anthony and +2 to Mr. Barr.
Apparently CO2 is causing a worrying increase in the number species mutating into canaries. Soon the world will be inhabited by nothing but canaries. This is damaging biodiversity !!
and all without enough coal mines to house them in!! Oh the tragedy!!!!
So…no longer is the Council in Surrey issuing Japanese foldable fans to these birds but small down-filled jackets?
Just askin’
Quit you guys I just blew coffee through my nose, still laughing!!
All these Chicken Littles worried about the effects of “climate change”… just wait until they discover the potential threat of continental drift to existing habitat .
hehe, or the sun turning into a red dwarf and consuming the Earth.
Red giant, not red dwarf?
Regards, Allan
Vice-President, Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Red Giants and White Dwarves
nah red dwarf… CO2, that magic molecule does the rest lol
It never occurred to me that ‘red giant’ is a racist term. Lets call it ‘ethnic giant’.
(for real, I found a toy in a toyshop called ‘ethnic’ toy, meaning non-European, and started to wonder if I’m entitled to call my ethnicity ‘ethnic’ at all.)
Hi Hugs,
The snowflakes are finding more and more reasons to take real or false offence at the slightest slight.
I suggest that people who are this uber-sensitive are far too fragile for their own good, and should stay safely indoors and never communicate with anyone.
This especially applies to sugar-frosted snowflakes, the ultra-uber-fragile among us, who need to be completely protected – from themselves.
Best, Allan
Hugs, you do realize that you are not acceptable into the realm of diversity, you are not ethnic, you do not have a culture…… In many ways I suppose you are “Deplorable”. So there!
I’ve started to see the warmunists say “it doesn’t matter if you believe humans are the cause we’ve got to do something about it now.” Wonder what they’ll say we can do about keeping the continents in place.
Hah…nailed it!!
No, it’s canaries, not chickens. Get with the program. Mind you, what would you expect; the number of canaries is directly proportional to the number of coal mines isn’t it?
Just can’t count on those darn “canaries” for anything, can you?
The RSPB has been taken over by the catastrophic climate change alarmists. They also support bird-killing, bat-mincing wind power. I gave up my RSPB membership many years ago.
But Phillip, for “that £64m, possibly as much as £100m,” they could put up a dedicated bat-mincer and supply electric heat for the 894 nests they found.
He added: “On my enquiring how many birds were involved in Guildford the officer’s reply was that ‘the bird population was effectively wiped out in cold spells in 2008/9’. This was confirmed by NE [Natural England] who could only locate two DW [Dartford warbler] nests, no WL [woodlark] and maybe four NJ [night jar] on Whitmoor Common in 2016. Not only that but in March this year NE evaluated the whole scheme in 11 districts and counted only 894 nests
This story illustrates perfectly why it is impossible to build anything important in the UK – like a new nuclear power station, railway line, new London airport in the Thames Estuary (where it should always have been linked to a new seaport on Maplin Sands) – without an endless procession of enviro-nutters causing endless delays because of some claimed extinction of whatever birdtoadbat is locally in fashion (of course they never do, nature being somewhat more resilient than eco-flakes).
The current impasse in the U.K. about another runway for Heathrow would have been avoided if the case made 40 years ago for a combined Maplin seaport/airport with high speed rail link to London had been followed. The seaport would have given easy access for up to 500,000 ton tankers taking advantage of a natural north-south tidal scour with soft sand bottom as opposed to Rotterdam which requires constant dredging as the natural north-south scour of the North Sea fills in their shipping channel naturally. It would have regenerated a dull, depressed area of coastline notable only for a depressed variety of wildlife and rich variety of unexplored bombs and shells from the large area military firing rang, the constant firing of which strangely doesn’t seem to have troubled the birds etc that live there.
I remember seeing archaeologists on their hands and knees looking for a newt in a field before they could start digging. The nutjob enviro supervisor had not worked out that any newts would be long gone with all the noise.
We are in the middle of a housing crisis, by all accounts. Yet I have seen at least two large housing developments, which have taken years to negotiate, plan and design, put on hold yet again because they run up against some environmental barrier like nesting birds, newts in a pond or bats in the belfry!
And now the geologists, archaeologists and environmentalists are finding new and fanciful objections to the proposed road tunnel under Stonehenge, including the release of radiation!
Seriously? Crossrail can be built under London, coming within feet of existing London Underground tube lines with nothing catastrophic happening. Why do these nutters believe engineers can’t build a simple tunnel under a few rocks?
Environmentalists still have the ‘Great Crested Newt’ on the endangered species list here in the UK (no I’ve not made it up). Any hint of it on a potential building site will stop development in its tracks!
It has been suggested that environmentalists have planted Great Crested Newts on potential building sites where they have never existed!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/12/rare-newts-planted-at-development-sites-to-stop-the-bulldozers/amp/
Good day Hot…
Could not find any photos of the Great Crested Newt – care to help out?
What you have there is The Great crusty nitwit!
Great Crested Twat!
I experienced the height of idiocy recently with the Great Crested Newt:
1. None live in my garden.
2. Before being granted planning permission, I had to submit plans for a ‘reptile refuge’ for the Great Crested Newts that don’t live there.
A ‘reptile refuge’ by definition is a loose pile of logs, an ideal home/hideout for rats.
And newts aren’t reptiles by the way.
Lunacy abounds. We have lived in a listed, terraced cottage with a communal loft for 30 years. The risk of a fire spreading is horrendous but we are not allowed to install firewalls because of its listed status.
To my certain knowledge, there has not been one person, including council officials, who have asked to gaze into the loft to ooh and ahh during our time here.
Here in Ottawa, if you want to stop a development, you find a Blanding’s Turtle.
The sad thing for those animals and plants truly threatened and endangered is that the environmentalists think nothing of using them to stop anything they don’t like. They do little to recognize and stop the real problem such species face. They also refuse to accept the fact that regardless of what humans do or don’t do some species are destined for extinction.
I don’t worry about species going extinct. They always have, ultimately. And another species will evolve to fill the space left open. Can someone tell me the ill effects of the extinction of the carrier pigeon?
Not all extinctions are necessarily a bad thing in my view. I often wonder how much money the US Government would be forced to spend by the Center for Biological Diversity to re-introduce Melanoplus spretus (Rocky Mountain Plague Locust) should a population be rediscovered. It was a species with stupendous fecundity and appetite for anything even vaguely herbaceous. Of course we would need it to “restore the natural balance of things”. While it’s supposed extinction(last one was found in Canada) was apparently collateral damage as a result of growing food for a whole lot of people, that is secondary to the purposeful recreation of the Garden of Eden in North America. They would go nicely with the grizzly bears, wolves, bison, ect. Sorry about the passenger pigeons, no luck there; I guess we’re screwed.
It is worth a gander to read the accompanying articles.
From them you’ll find out that the Dartford Warbler is not anywhere near even a “threatened species” and that southern England is (was) the extreme northern end of its habitation. Initially the alarmists were being gulled into thinking that a possible benefit of climate warming would be the increase of this unremarkable bird’s potential habitat. But, alas, the promise was false and the wee birdies froze to death before the climate could warm.
Once there was a little song bird who liked his home on the farm. when the weather began to cool in the autumn he decided he would stay the winter at the farm and not migrate south with his friends. On one particularly cold morning the little bird could not take it anymore and fell shivering from his perch. As he lay freezing on the ground and though he would take his last breaths, along came a cow and dropped a load of sloppy manure right on top of him. “Great!” he thought, what worse could go wrong just add insult to injury! However, as he lay there the warm pile began to comfort him and return some vitality. He soon felt much better and began to sing. the barnyard cat was prowling by when he heard bird song emanating from a pile of cow flop and investigated. He came over and dug out the song bird then promptly ate him.
Three morals to the story:
1) Everyone who shits on you is not your enemy
2) Everyone who digs you out of a pile of shit is not your friend
3) If you are warm and happy, even though you are sitting in a pile of shit, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!
+1
The habitat of the Dartford Warbler in Surrey is the likes of Thursley common – a site of special scientific interest, a national nature reserve and home to nationally rare dragonflies, plants etc as well as the warblers: worth protecting in its own right and much needed open space in crowded SE England.
So to tie Surrey planning solely to the warblers and use it as some stick to beat climate change is really born of crass ignorance.
(this may also, as an aside, be home to the fabled Surrey puma…)
Don’t often find myself agreeing with Griff but definitely waving the same banner on this one . That dry sandy heathland is now very rare ,(some plots left in Cheshire) and all too easy to build on .
The comments about the carrier pigeons elsewhere should be reconsidered in the light of the work revealed in the book :Ancient Americas” by Charles Mann who claims that the earliest European explorers of North America found the carrier pigeon to be relatively rare , being a delicacy of the indigenous peoples. After the latter were decimated by smallpox and ethnic cleansing by European settlers the carrier pigeon population grew out of control. Similarly with the Bison . That may be a subject of controversy though.
The Surrey puma was [is?] an escapee from richer folk that I’s garden-zoos.
The Kellas Cat – a morph of the (Scottish) Wild Cat is likely surviving in parts of Scotland, albeit only just.
The (Scottish) Wild Cat may be down to double digits in pure-0bred specimens.
Interbreeding with Feral cats [and Wild-feral crosses] has certainly harmed the Wild Cat – although the lucky fathers and mothers of the cross-breed will not see it that way, I guess.
Should I anthropomorphise?
Probably not. But there we go.
Auto
Terrypratchetism in action. Nice.
I used to fly model planes on Thursley common.
I wonder how many species died of ether poisoning.
I don’t worry about species going extinct. They always have, ultimately. And another species will evolve to fill the space left open. Can someone tell me the ill effects of the extinction of the carrier pigeon?
Or T Rex?
Hunters had to increase gauge and shot size to take pheasants?
Which were introduced from China to Washington Territory in 1881.
http://www.historylink.org/File/8444
That should probably be “passenger” pigeon. Carrier pigeons were rendered obsolete by telegraphic and wireless communication.
On a more conservationist note: blowing the shit out of anything that moves because, hey!, you can, is not a particularly meritorious mode of conduct. Sustainable exploitation of resources is fair enough.
I imagine that the extermination of dodos, great auks, Steller’s sea cow, etc. weren’t particularly calamitous to anyone, or anything, other than the animals themselves. This still doesn’t make it O.K.
There is a case to be made for the argument that the demise of the American Chestnut led to the extinction of the paasenger pidgeon.
If you are a birder, you’ll know what LBJ means. And I’ve read that, genetically, there are many “species” that are identical to each other, but because they have slightly different colouring, and considered different.
If external coloring is the only difference, then the two birds are not different species but different subspecies (breeds). Each will prefer the image it imprinted as a hatchling (its mother) and will attempt to mate only with what it prefers.
Caligula
I totally agree.
I am just resuming birding – it was ‘bird-watching’, but I didn’t monitor it – and, even in a few weeks, I have seen maybe six or eight possibly distinguishable LBJs.
Well – LBJs.
Auto
Let me get this straight, after all, I am just a Simple Red Neck, and really, really old. Are you telling me that because of differences only in external appearance black people are a different species from white people? If so, which ones are human and which aren’t?
I think the point was that a difference in external coloring only does NOT make a different species. Some people had claimed that it does.
SR
Tangentially related, the BBC World Service reported today that the snow leopard has been taken off the endangered list, apparently thanks to the small amount of money remaining after the WWF has paid for its lavish offices, lobbying and planet saving travel. Previously there was much worrying that that might reduce donations, so there was probably much underground rumbling in the jungle before the decision was finally made.
If warmth is so bad why do plants grow and animals cavort in spring/summer rather than autumn/winter?
Sadly, the small army of snow leopard counters (aka scientists) are now an endangered species:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41030489
The Dartford warbler in England is a resident bird at the very edge of it’s range. The population is also rather isolated by the English Channel since it is a resident and not much of a wanderer. Such small isolated populations are always in danger of being wiped out by a bad winter.
The species is declining in most of its range (it only occurrs in SW Europe), probably due to deteriorating habitat (it is an inhabitant of “old fashioned” farmlands with rough grazing).
However it has increased strongly in Portugal in recent years, probably due to an increase in forest fires which create suitable habitat. It is pleasant to learn that there is at least one bird species that is actually benefitting from the insane planting of eucalypts (also known as “gasoline trees”).
I love your comments, tty.
we have a protected species in Victoria aus.
called the prickly acacia
its a home for small birds..sometimes
it also harbours rabbits …a seriously feral problem,
and foxes that eat little birds nesting in it -as well as the odd bunny
its invasive and spreads madly after a fire
and its name to oldtimers is?
kerosine bush
because even green it goes up like its been doused!
Dartford Warbler numbers went even lower in 2010. It just goes to show that global warming doesn’t stop the UK from having little ice age type winters.
I shoot ML sporting clays in Surrey first Sunday every month. I wait patiently while the buzzards fly overhead, they are probably well stuffed with Dartford warblers but what can you do?
A couple of seemingly immortal Dartford Warblers (Mick and Keith were both born there!).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-15333771
Not far from Gravesend famously possibly the hottest place in UK.
Australia has just found out that our night parrot is not extinct, as thought:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-23/night-parrot-sighting-in-wa-shocks-birdwatching-world/8377624
The global average of bird species is back in balance.
If only Global warming was threatening something worthwhile like crocodiles, sharks, and mosquitos.
Clearly, you have not spotted the pattern …
According to the media, nasty things like crocodiles, sharks, mosquitoes, snakes, jellyfish, spiders and wasps will all get bigger and more plentiful as the climate warms. While cuddly things with big brown eyes will all be decimated or wiped out altogether.
Ice ages are caused by global warming. Everyone knows that.
How do we tell those stupid birds to migrate to the tropics now we have a new ice age waiting just around the corner?
When languages die out, that means a slice of humanity has became extinct. That’s a real canary in the coal mine eh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death
Become extinct.
Uh… Surrey doesn’t happen to have an abundance of windmills do they? Why would you blame a problem that hasn’t happened yet on the shrinking pop of warblers. Perhaps the warblers are hiding out in old coal mines for safety, maybe cross breeding with canaries in the dark. Have you found any birds warbling aloud that only have one wing? I’m only trying to help.