Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Guardian, climate change caused 200 reindeer to starve to death in Svalbard, though the scientists conducting the study think overpopulation might have been a factor.
Starvation deaths of 200 reindeer in Arctic caused by climate crisis, say researchers
Comparable death toll has been recorded only once before, says Norwegian Polar Institute
About 200 reindeer have been found dead from starvation in the Arctic archipelago Svalbard, an unusually high number, the Norwegian Polar Institute has said, pointing the finger at climate crisis.
…
Ashild Onvik Pedersen, the head of the census, said the high degree of mortality was a consequence of climate crisis, which according to climate scientists, is happening twice as fast in the Arctic as the rest of the world.
“Climate change is making it rain much more. The rain falls on the snow and forms a layer of ice on the tundra, making grazing conditions very poor for animals,” she said.…
The increased mortality is also due in part to a significant increase in the number of reindeer in the Norwegian archipelago. That is partly thanks to climate crisis and the warmer summers, meaning more individuals compete in the same grazing areas.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/30/deaths-of-200-reindeer-in-arctic-caused-by-climate-change-say-researchers
I’m starting to see this more and more, scientists genuflect to the alleged climate crisis, but they seem to qualify their statement, to let the truth about what is really causing the problem peek through what they are saying about climate change.
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“Climate change is making it rain much more. The rain falls on the snow and forms a layer of ice on the tundra, making grazing conditions very poor for animals,” she said.
…
The increased mortality is also due in part to a significant increase in the number of reindeer in the Norwegian archipelago. That is partly thanks to climate crisis and the warmer summers, meaning more individuals compete in the same grazing areas.”
So they are starving because there is too much food and because there is too little food!
I feel so enlightened.
Come on now, what’s so hard to understand about a layer of ice forming on top of snow and killing all the snow-grass?
Beat me to it. 🙂
This starvation issue is nothing that controlled hunting wouldn’t cure.
Exactly – they need to cull the herds every once in a while.
A valid concern is that the same will happen with the polar bears as they outstrip their food sources. Unfortunately when nature resets the balance it is most often a major reset, not just an upper limit.
**That is partly thanks to climate crisis and the warmer summers, meaning more individuals compete in the same grazing areas.”**
So why do we have more individuals? Is it because of the climate crisis?
Is it due to the warmer summers?
They make up everything as they go along.
We don’t have to do anything they will all be dead in 12 years when the world ends with the great climate crisis anyhow 🙂
Ain,t gonna be here anyways president?bye golly you 2 make sure at every turn.take space x out with your full load of doubts .
I trust in our single creator .amen
It’s almost pure Orwellian doublethink. They can simultaneously believe that there is too much food for the reindeer and too little food for the reindeer.
Some of these people seem to have missunderstood Orwell, 1984 was a WARNING, not an instruction manual.
Bob, the article from the Guardian was quite skimpy on the details:
“During an annual census of the wild reindeer population on the group of islands about 1,200km (746 miles) from the north pole, three researchers from the institute identified the carcasses of about 200 deer believed to have starved to death last winter.”
Believed is the word, no actual empirical research is mentioned.
Meanwhile here is this news worth reading:
Lightning Kills More Than 300 Reindeer in Rare Mass Death
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/08/norway-reindeer-lightning-weather/
Excerpt:
The national park, the largest in Norway with wild reindeer populations, spans some 8,000 square kilometers (3,088 square miles) and is home to 10,000 to 11,000 wild reindeer.
====================================
My article post the actual photos of dead Reindeer and state exactly where this tragedy occurred. While the article Eric posted in vague on exactly WHERE the alleged starved Reindeer was found, they state an archipelago region, but there a number of such regions in Norway. No photos of numerous dead Reindeers laying around.
The one statement they made which doesn’t support their silly “blame it on climate change”,
“Since the 1980s, the number of reindeer has doubled in Svalbard, and now stands at about 22,000, according to the Norwegian Polar Institute.”
Maybe that is the true cause of their poorly documented mass starvation cause, NOT global warming.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
If it is true that there are 22,000, and they live a max of about ten years, it stands to reason that an average of 2200 die every year.
The way it usually works is, harsh conditions are when it happens for many of the old and weak individuals, and on an island with limited food and insufficient predation to keep numbers in check, it is almost certainly the case that mass die offs will happen, on an episodic basis.
I saw nothing scientific about the way the information was gathered or written up, whatsoever.
It read like at emotional reaction someone had to seeing a bunch of dead animals, followed by the usual jackassery blaming everything bad on the boogey man of “climate change”.
I doubt the people who have taken to referring to weather events as “climate change” know how idiotic they are being, or how truly unscientific and doltish they prove themselves to be with their inane emoting.
There was a few years so good the wolves and hunters couldn’t keep up, now there’s a more normal year.
So there a) more reindeer in general and b) more starving reindeer.
b) is a plausible consequence of a) because resources are limited.
Let‘s imagine we had the opposite situation, fewer reindeer than there used to be and also fewer starving ones. It is easy to imagine headlines like „climate emergency leads to dwindling numbers of reindeer“.
So, whether X or the opposite of X happens, if there is a way to present X as bad, a way to present it as a consequence of the „climate crisis“ will be found anyway. They seem to be aware that they have lost people who value sound rational reasoning, anyway, so they don’t seem to have many inhibitions any more.
Adrian E. thanks you covered it very well.
This comment from the “Norwegian Polar Institute”
The Svalbard reindeer often occurs in small groups of three to five individuals, except during the rut in late autumn when males gather harems and in winters with ice-locked pastures when animals can gather in larger groups on good feeding grounds.
The Svalbard reindeer is adapted to survive the variable climatic conditions and the high degree of seasonality in Svalbard. They are very sedentary and thus have low energy demands, and they have an outstanding ability to use their own body reserves (both fat and muscle tissue) when access to food is limited in the winter. The thick fur contributes to insulation against low temperatures and wind.
Starvation is the most common cause of mortality. This occurs due to worn out teeth from grazing on sparse vegetation among stones and gravel or due to lack of food when ice locks pastures – caused by ‘rain-on-snow’ events in winter.
The population dynamics of the Svalbard reindeer is regulated by a combination of density dependent processes and climatic variability causing high mortality and low reproduction.
So the climate crisis increased the deer population leading to a die off of the excess population — AND climate crisis caused the dear to starve because of frost on the grazing area?! How can both of those claims be true?
Doesn’t the whole “climate crisis” thing mean that there would be less frost on the grass because of the impending climate eschaton? How did the grass grow in the first place if it was under constant state of frost?
So the climate crisis is not only causing it to rain on the snow causing ice…which also necessitates the air being colder after it rains to form the ice, BUT it is also causing it to be warmer so there is more foliage to graze on increasing the population…
WTF?!
Absolutely, weather caused this die-off. The improved weather and living conditions allowed the (INSERT ANIMAL NAME HERE) to become very prolific and outstrip their food supply. Typically this expansion in one species is damped by naturally occurring factors. Equilibrium will be reestablished, but not always gently. This happens and has been happening ever since life began on planet Earth regardless of the environment.
Will this apply to humans?
Only the stupid ones, with luck…….
And the ones unlucky enough to be led by the stupid.
how many can the island sustain-
“Since the 1980s, the number of reindeer has doubled in Svalbard, and now stands at around 22,000, according to the Norwegian Polar Institute”
It is well known that- “It is in this difficult period, right before the summer, that many reindeer die of starvation”
Reindeer on Iceland are at an all time high.
and if the jerks monitoring them were well aware of overpopulation and the ice events then why the hell??? didnt they drop a few bales of fodder in to save them?
its the old n young that mainly died so really its natural culling,,but that wont make a headline they can use,inappropriately ,for their agenda
Why don’t they allow controlled hunting and keep the herd healthy? Managing healthy ungulate populations is hardly rocket science, and my understanding is that everyone in Svalbard walks around with rifles anyway, due to the polar bears. Just seems both cruel and a waste to allow this to happen,
Maybe lack of feeding: https://paliskunnat.fi/reindeer/reindeer-herding/challenges/feeding/
Climate change, the infinitely flexible answer to every modern problem.
f(x) = Qx
Where Q is whatever is needed to get the preferred answer
If only WUWT and others would hit back hard and expose the REAL motive for the climate change fraud – centralized, eco-fascist, techno-totalitarian world government. if you did it would unravel FAST as it totally explains the relentless insanity. Instead, the fraud marches on as most remain ignorant and Donald Trump alone tries to hold back this monster threat.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke
I think I’m pretty good at seeing the big picture as are most of the non-troll people here, as well as for example Jordan Peterson and many other reasonably well-publicized individuals. The problem is that most people never bothered to learn to think for themselves, certainly weren’t taught to in public school, and grew up very much in tune with a great deal of the cultural legacy of the 1960s (you know: drugs, promiscuity, lifelong suspended-adolescent self-indulgence), so that even if they somehow get to hear about the big picture, they reject it out of hand because it just doesn’t provide them with the kind of feedback they’re looking for. Feedback that tells them they’re morally superior to us and that even without altering their lifestyle one iota, they are “saving the planet” just by accepting the narrative.
Stupid? Hell yes. Can anything be done about it? Each of us individually may have the power to convince a few people who already trust us, but beyond that? Every passing day gives me less and less hope I’m sorry to say. If you hammer people from earliest childhood with the message that civilization is unnatural and that we are destroying the planet just by the fact of our existence, you are knowingly causing a lot of kids not only to become depressed and to despair for their future, but to actually make it more unlikely they’ll have anything like a future, because nobody is hiring for the position of social justice warrior. Multitudes of angry puppets to work gratis for the cause and then if (God help us) successful, accept a lifestyle reminiscent of the citizens in “1984.”
This problem has very deep roots. I lived in Vancouver for many years, and in the early 1990s was already meeting plenty of people who were absolutely certain that being an activist was their proper employment, to be funded off the taxpayer’s back by welfare. It’s deliciously ironic in retrospect that anarchist punks and hippies used to hate each other’s guts; their goals and philosophy turned out to be exactly the same, the only difference was their stupid asinine costumes.
I’m going to go walk the dog and forget about this for the rest of the day. This might seem weird, but finding out about Harrison Ford was kind of the last straw for me. There was a palpable sense of betrayal like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. What really needs to happen is for scum like Michael Mann to let go of their self importance and publicly admit that they’ve let things go much too far. Don’t hold your breath. 🙁
“Tekkin’ the dug fer a walk, Pet.”
Andy Capp
A walk and six pints of porter. 😀
I’ve said this before but in my opinion we (the skeptics) need a charismatic spokesman who is well versed in countering the pseudoscientific crap that the climate crisis folks keep pushing in the media. He/she needs to be a well educated and calm, a no nonsense presenter who uses common sense, someone who has thick skin and has nothing to lose, financially or otherwise. There are proponents out there who are doing a good job and can carry the counter argument extremely well, but who are not perceived to be charismatic by the public (Christopher Monckton, Marc Morano, etc.). So, we need a Bizarro World Al Gore type to get the message out and deliver it in a totally believable manner, using charm, trust, and common sense to convince the public that this is anything but a climate crisis.
Harrison Ford is nothing but an actor who believes in his own hype. Like most celebrities, he thinks that he is so important to the world public that we will clamor to listen to him & invest in his opinion. Actors are hypocrites by definition (they pretend to be someone they are not). They are generally emotional insecure creatures and they react accordingly (I once worked in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre so this is a first hand observation).
WUWT does a great job with this site. The comprehensive scientific opinions and knowledge presented on this site never ceases to amaze me. Now let’s approach someone like Anthony Robbins and start to change the narrative.
Robert: I think the solution is much simpler, a respected, widely read media source MUST expose the hidden climate change agenda: eco-fascist, techno-totalitarian world government. Just ONE respected source to spark the flame and it will spread like wildfire. Is everyone waiting for someone else to do it first? Is it fear? Self-censorship is the most insidious. There’s been NOTHING to alert the public, certainly no mention of the nefarious ‘smart meters’ that millions are rejecting. I don’t want to repeat myself after responding to two other comments, so I’ll leave it at that.
I think the level of ignorance and delusional thinking on the Left is too much for most people to really grasp. The Left is loaded with people who want to believe simple solutions to problems that are actually caused by people who aren’t accountable for their actions. The want to avoid responsibility and be free to do whatever stupid stuff feels good in the moment. What they don’t really think about is that other people have to be productive in order to cover off the liabilities of those selfish actions.
It’s way too much to ask that such people grasp the complexities of an inter-connected society wherein selfish acts impact the welfare of everybody else.
I think we just need to focus on selfishness as the great evil and make people accountable again. Deal hard drugs? Death penalty. Why not? You’re killing people. Regular crimes? Hard labour. Why not? Give something back to society instead of just consuming more of its output.
Or plant a garden and cancel the cable TV.
Why feed the idiot box if all it does is annoy you?
Michael H Anderson: I agree that our education system has conditioned people to obey Authority, but it can’t override the stark truth, which fascists know damn well and are trying hard to censor. As long as the true reason for demonizing carbon dioxide is not revealed it can re-assert HARD in a Trumpless America; it already controls Europe and much the world. Climate Change is the proverbial naked emperor and once it’s publicly identified as the foundation of eco-fascist world government, it’s OVER.
I was one of millions who woke up with Climategate, thanks to a subversive news aggregator hot on its trail, and I finally learned that democrats [and some republicans] are eco-fascist globalists; for decades I had NO clue, since the entire media has done a great job of suppressing it and continues to – left, right and center. Even the President avoids addressing the ‘false song of globalism’ directly. Yet once it’s widely known that the ‘new world order’ is an eco-fascist, techno-totalitarian dystopia where only the ‘elite’ are free, everything will make sense to everyone, in particular the ‘elites” loathing of Trump and their obsession with ‘climate change’ and open borders. Their recent Google gathering is a hypocritical laughingstock, but imagine the FURY once everyone knows their TRUE intentions and their frightening, pathological contempt for the rest of humanity! The Hunger Games is truly not far off, psychologically.
Omission is the most effective form of censorship and the Monster of Big Lies is hiding in plain sight and depends entirely on the silence of the entire media to reach horrible fruition, and as the saying goes, silence = consent. But once the simple truth is out it will spread like wildfire. [only cowardice can prevent wildfires?]
And I’m no bible thumper and I thought prophecy was silly until I learned the unnerving fact that carbon is 6 protons, 6 neutrons & 6 electrons, the human body is mostly carbon and globalists intend to replace cash with a carbon chip, presumably in the hand. Is prophecy staring us in the face as Science to free us from the deadly junk science holding us captive? The Creator does have a sense of Humor. But free will reigns supreme and so it seems only Truth shall make us free.
Wuwt DOES hit back hard. But you didn’t explain how to spread the word far and wide. Each of us does that in our groups but that is still limited. But I have high hopes, so I’m gloing to keep doing what I can.
Yeah, thanks for that lift and sorry for being a Debbie Downer. Here is just one of many documents that could be helpful to people when trying to convince the uninformed:
https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/8/3/83947f5d-d84a-4a84-ad5d-6e2d71db52d9/01AFD79733D77F24A71FEF9DAFCCB056.senateminorityreport2.pdf
F.LEGHORN: Only the media can create critical mass awareness, including respected WUWT, and the more urgent the truth the faster it will spread. So omission is obviously the key tactic to hide globalism’s eco-fascist foundation in plain sight – the breath of life is the gas of death. It’s the Monster of Big Lies.
THE BIG LIE
“[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.” — Socialist/fascist/environmentalist Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the state to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.” – Goebbels paraphrase
Thank you Linda for these amazing and ultra-relevant quotes, as well as all your other good thoughts. You’re definitely an asset to WUWT!
Ain,t gonna be here anyways president?bye golly you 2 make sure at every turn.take space x out with your full load of doubts .
I trust in our single creator .amen facts would be verfied like the sun light. And oil nuclear profits increase casting dought because .no money in the free wind free currents free solar or cleaning the skys waters lands polluted.
Linda-
I sense in your comments a frustration that many of us feel. If it were only a matter of a few people taking a leadership role. More than a few people are working hard to fight, as you say, “the climate change fraud.” Just look at the list of websites to the right of the page.
While they have access to the internet they do not have access to the print media. The public print media has declared that they will not publish anything critical of the climate change meme. They also don’t have access to the schools. Schools for which at least 25 years have taught C02 caused global warming as the only truth.
And don’t think that the average person who believes the global warming stuff they have been told at every turn is a bad person. They are good people who are concerned about their future, but they literally don’t regularly see challenges to global warming that might start them to think.
And THEY have been told that those that would have them question global warming are evil people.
The literature they read has the same Edmund Burke quote your referenced. Only for them the evil is the evil oil companies and their stooges who don’t care is the world fries as long as they make a profit.
What’s the answer? I wish I knew.
Thank goodness, if true, we will finally reduce the growing incidence of Lyme disease.
Dang ! Now the Magic Molecule is a murderer again !
😉
So how many years have they been tracking reindeer deaths? The Holocene era is 10,000 years old. For what percentage of that time have reindeer deaths been recorded? How many died 100 years ago, or 1000 years ago or 9000 years ago? Most likely they don’t have a clue, but declare this to be an “unusually high number” even though they say it has happened once before during the time they’ve been tracking it.
Who does the autopsy to determine that the deer starved to death as opposed to dying of disease, or animal attack or bullet holes?
So climate change caused more reindeer, and also now less reindeer.
What is the long term population trend?
What % is 200 animals?
On the plus side, I bet polar bears do not mind eating dead reindeer.
Nicholas McGinley
You asked, “What % is 200 animals?” Less than 1%!
What? 200 dead reindeer in Svalbard?
We have no choice – we simply must destroy all of western civilisation, immediately!
Sounds like a case of ‘Survival of the Fattest’
And,
The term ‘Reindeer’ is used for domesticated Caribou. Its use is inappropriate for this article. If these are wild animals, Caribou is the correct term.
I think it is used to make you think they are cuddly, friendly helpers if Santa…. or something.
The school system has to be seen as part of the problem. A big part. In some other countries the kids participate in cleaning and maintaining their schools and acquire a sense of pride in their schools as a result. Schools have become consequence free zones and the product is irresponsible kids growing up to be irresponsible adults.
I hope you saw the fraudulent photo one news outlet used yesterday on this story. It was a photo from two years ago when a bunch of reindeer were killed by a lightning strike.
This new reindeer story makes one recall the walruses who were supposedly “committing suicide” last year because of climate change. And of course the perennial polar bear starvation stories.
Science has been turned on its head by the alarmists.
Rhetorical question: where was the earlier story about the “climate crisis” causing the population of reindeer to increase? I seem to have missed it.
Same situation can occur with range cattle trying to forage on too thick, too hard crust, too snowy grazing land. Ask any rancher. Result of freak weather conditions, ice storm, blizzard, about every decade or two you’ll have to work hard getting enough hay to them to survive….
DMacKenzie
Twice in 12 years sounds like weather to me, rather than “Climate Change.”
DMacKenzie
In Mongolia this happened a few years ago and an enormous number of animals died because they couldn’t get through the ice. All it takes is a few days of warm weather to melt snow on top of more snow, followed the the rest of the winter. When the winter is extremely cold (called a “suud”) the animals freeze to death from heat loss and an inability to eat fast enough. That happened in 2005.
Generally speaking cold is bad.
Also a record number of yaks died of starvation in Bhutan last winter. The valley where they were grazing was cut off by unusually deep snow.
As The Grauniad correctly observes, “thanks to climate crisis and the warmer summers, … more individuals compete in the same grazing areas.” Can’t you get it in your heads, that Climate Crisis means more offspring?
Yet another article taken from “The Guardian”.
What was once “The world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change” is now nothing more than a mirror site for a cheap, trashy English tabloid.
Actually, the Grauniad is (was) the Bible of the chattering intelligentsia classes – the superior liberal-left variety who revere the working man, as long as they don’t have to meet them or have to work themselves.
That, is the Grauniad….
Ralph
The Grauniad….
https://www.grauniad.co.uk
R
1. Amazing how quickly the term climate crisis has been adopted. I think this supports your hypothesis regarding genuflection.
Who has adopted it apart from the Guardian? The consistently and persistently misquote and misreport what “scientists” say by substituting their favourite new term when paraphrasing what a scientist says. Note all the direct quotations use “climate change” NOT crisis.
Eco-warriors at the Guardian have made a policy decision only to use the terms “global heating” and “climate crisis”. This is the new orthodoxy which all writers are expected to adhere to.
“Climate crisis” has already overused……Coming soon is “climate catastrophe”…not sure what it can be named after that….maybe “climate cataclysm”….sooner or later somebody will notice whether or not it’s really happening.
So, “climate change” is causing more reindeers and “climate change” is causing less reindeers.
Those guys really get paid to produce this nonsense?
It’s not climate “change” any more, because “change” implies losers AND winners. It’s “climate crisis,” implying that every effect it has is bad.
For heaven’s sake tom, try to get it right. It’s “climate crisis” – it used to be climate change after the rather comforting “global warming”. It’ll soon be climate cooling catastrophe, and then it will be bad.
Yep the authors are not following the narrative properly, definitely should be climate crisis this year. I hear climate cataclysm is the next term up for vote.
So climate change is increasing reindeer populations so more of them die of starvation in the winter. Kill Animals So They Won’t Die.
Thanks for the little laugh, courtesy of the Guardian’s left-wing logic. Climate change is both killing reindeer in unprecedented numbers AND increasing their population. Squealer couldn’t have done better.
Surely more caribou deaths, caused by an increase in their population in the first place, is a sign of the 6th mass extinction.
i DO hope you just forgot the sarc tag?