Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
A recent article in USA TODAY claims that a rare cactus in the Florida Keys has gone extinct due to sea level rise. This is false. Many factors have contributed to the decline of this cactus and much of it began over 100 years ago. USA TODAY and many other news outlets are misleading their readers into believing climate change is at fault by not reporting the full set of facts.
The July 10, USA Today article, titled, A troubling first: Rising seas blamed for disappearance of rare cactus in Florida, says:
A rare tree cactus that grew for decades hidden by a tangle of mangrove trees on Florida’s Key Largo has lost its battle with rising sea levels and other pressures.
It’s now considered locally extinct in the United States, a group of researchers reported in a study published this week. The demise of the cactus is believed to be the nation’s first local extinction as a result of sea level rise, the study’s authors say.
Before getting into the science, let’s first examine it from a commonsense perspective. The photo used in the USA TODAY story shows the “extinct” cactus in standard plant nursery plastic pots (done by conservationists.) This strongly suggests that the cactus not only isn’t extinct but can be cultivated and replanted.
Ooops!
Perhaps these “journalists” are unclear on the definition of “extinction.” National Geographic has a helpful, simple definition:
So much for the claim of being extinct if the “rare cactus” is being grown in nursery pots. Perhaps the cactus should be renamed Bogus Maximus in honor of the claim.
Now, let’s examine the other claim – sea level rise as the cause of the fake extinction. The Florida Museum has this to say:
The Key Largo tree cactus (Pilosocereus millspaughii) still grows on a few scattered islands in the Caribbean, including northern Cuba and parts of the Bahamas. In the United States, it was restricted to a single population in the Florida Keys, first discovered in 1992 and monitored intermittently since.
Salt water intrusion from rising seas, soil depletion from hurricanes and high tides, and herbivory by mammals had put significant pressure on the population. By 2021, what had been a thriving stand of about 150 stems was reduced to six ailing fragments, which researchers salvaged for off-site cultivation to ensure their survival.
Note they correctly blame many factors for the disappearance in the Keys, but also note the cactus grows elsewhere. The press release for the study is even more telling:
Researchers at Fairchild began monitoring all of the tree cactus populations annually in 2007, working in tandem with local land managers. One Fairchild-led study showed that salt levels were higher in soil beneath dead vs. living cacti in the years following a storm surge event in the Lower Keys, drawing a clear connection between mortality and increased salinity.
…
The Key Largo tree cactus grew on a low limestone outcrop surrounded by mangroves near the shore. The site originally had a distinct layer of soil and organic matter that allowed the cactus and other plants to grow, but storm surge from hurricanes and exceptionally high tides eroded away this material until there wasn’t much left.
They go on to describe how a hurricane poisoned the soil the cacti grew in, “In 2017, category 5 Hurricane Irma swept across South Florida, creating a 5-foot storm surge. The highest point on Key Largo is only 15 feet above sea level, and large portions of the island remained flooded for days afterward.”
But here’s the most damaging fact they reveal, this “extinction” started a long time ago before sea-level was ever an issue:
Writing in 1917, botanist John Small noted that the Key tree cactus “was for a long time very abundant [on Key West]…In recent years, with the destruction of the hammock for securing firewood and for developing building sites, this interesting cactus has become scarce, until at present it is on the verge of extermination in its natural habitat.”
That’s right, the cactus was “on the verge of extermination” back in 1917, well before climate change became a cause célèbre for the media.
Worse, the study itself contains a lie of omission. Nowhere in the study being hyped by USA Today and other media outlets do they mention or reference this important study, Maul and Martin. 1993. Key West SLR Trends in Key West. Had the researchers bothered to look at this 1993 study examining Key West sea level records all the way back to 1846, they might have noticed this paragraph (highlight, author’s):
Perhaps the researchers considered this initially, and then discarded it as a reference, because it blows the entire premise of Key West sinking under sea level rise literally out of the water. Clearly the disappearance of this cactus has nothing to do with sea level rise but has been documented to be a result of a hurricane passage causing salt water to poison the soil the cacti were growing in along with habitat destruction noted as far back as 1917.
It seems this is just another case of the media ignoring research that undermines the climate change disaster narrative they want to push. It also seems that the researchers making the claim might have ignored some inconvenient data as well.
If the media did its job, it would have found the same thing we here at Climate Realism did. Sadly, the mainstream media seems patently unable or unwilling to do even a modicum of research by way of a fact check before they publish alarming, yet false, climate change claims.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
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Journalism doesn’t pay like it used to and it shows. One might assume that the few remaining journalists are the best of the best, but that’s a bad assumption. More likely the few that are left are fighting over scraps. The pressure to produce content fast overrides all else.
The media is a business, after all. The business is delivering customers to advertisers. The media is not in the facts business.
The remaining journalists aren’t the best of the best, they are the ones who are so awful that they can’t get work anywhere else.
All the good ones have taken other paths to earn a living ‘cos they got fed up with having to toe an editorial line.
What in the world does “Locally Extinct” mean?
Is that the same thing as “intelligent journalism”
The techically correct term is extirpated. Means a species not found where previously existed (Key Largo) but still found elsewhere.
But “Locally Extinct” sounds so much scarier and more devastating than “extirpated”.
Sounds like that particular spot must have seen the cactus disappear many times in the past but, given time and rain to rebuild the soil and clear it of salt, the cactus repopulated the area from other areas on the Key Largo where they had survived past hurricanes.
Land development eventually took out the cactus from those other areas.
But since they are NOT extinct, they can be reintroduced to many areas on the Key Largo.
(Maybe even sell them to homeowners to plant?)
Maybe Dinah Voyles Pulver** of USA Today should start a movement to reverse this local (extirpated) extinction. I’d think this would be the right thing to do, and also, act as a penance.
**She writes a lot of scary stories. Meaningless drivel.
A similar story, contained in essay No Bodies in ebook Blowing Smoke. In 2012 the USGS made a big PR deal out of the fact that the azure tailed skink (Emoia Impar) had gone extinct in Hawaii.
Just three things as wrong as the Keys cactus garden pots:
WUWT does an excellent job of presenting these alarmist non-fiction.
The question is, what can we, the readers and commenters do to counteract this nonsense?
There will not be more kids believing they will die before they reach adulthood.
Spread the word via cc to your acquaintances. AW’s post is simple, visually effective, and devastating.
I just did, posted in a high traffic forum that gets 6,000 plus new posts a day.
“AW’s post is simple, visually effective, and devastating”
Well stated, Rud!
I read about this somewhere else. They didn’t even manage to work out what was eating the cactus, which seems to be a fairly major part of the problem!
Although they managed to assume whatever it was was doing it for fresh water because of the salt contamination from rising seas.
What’s the betting it’s an introduced species or uncontrolled vermin?
Most cacti aren’t much predated. That’s how they evolved. Lots of spines, fruits high up and spine protected. There are some ‘unnatural’ exceptions.
The very common opuntia in Texas in the old days would be ‘harvested’ via a deliberately set grass fire burning off the spines so cattle could eat the rest for water and food. You can buy mechanically despined opuntia as a TexMex fresh food additive in some Florida grocery stores (Publix) since it grows here naturally in sandy well drained soils.
They still burn cactus in Texas. I have a tree cactus of a different species in my back yard, they transplant easily, but surrounded by mangroves isn’t the best place to have one. Someone in their link commented that when he was a kid 40 years ago sea level was similar. That link also had one about how surprised the experts were about Beryl. Maybe they should do some homework, been in, around, running from and watching hurricanes since we were in Donna in 1960 on the outer Virginia coast in an 18th century house. Every one is different and sudden forming and dying is not unusual. Also they apparently named Chris before Beryl hit Texas for a very small depression that went into Tamaulipas. Tropical storm winds often happen in thunderstorms as one did today in Texas. Correct hurricane predictions have greatly increased and unfortunately much faster than our sense about how to handle them. A few inches of rain seems significant now like a foot used to.
Most cacti aren’t much predated. That’s how they evolved. Lots of spines, fruits high up and spine protected. There are some ‘unnatural’ exceptions. Tell that to the cacti in my yard, I have to fence some off to keep the cottontails from eating the. The larger one even get eaten they only survive because the base near the ground get to woody. And the tender new growth is out of reach.
That was my point, something unusual was happening, regularly being eaten by something. The damage and teeth marks were apparent. They set camera traps but failed to find the culprits.
The mainstream media is a real problem. You can’t count on anything you hear, read or see from the mainstream media as being true. Worse you are hard pressed to find a story reported that isn’t almost word for word the same as all the others. It is bad bad.
Story Tip: “Wet Hot Weather Has Caused Exponential Crop Growth…” in Canada.
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/nature/outdoors/wet-hot-weather-has-caused-exponential-crop-growth-a-mixed-blessing?wx_auto_reload=
We’ve had an extremely wet but very hot spring, which is quite unusual around here, so things have been growing just at exponential rates,”
Wow! Who would have thought?! Warm weather with extra CO2 in the air is good for crops in Canada!
Yet we (in Canada) are spending $billions to fruitlessly try to stop these beneficial changes. Sheer madness.
“Sheer madness.” No sure stupidity and malice.
Some comments:
1) Excellent article Anthony, and writeup!
2) Key West has always been regularly inundated by hurricane storm surges.
Nor are cactuses, that I’m aware, are particularly sensitive to salts, including sodium chloride.
Cactus store their food and water internally. They tend to have a web of fine roots that can pull a lot of ground & rainwater into the cactus during occasional rainfall.
Yet, these experts want us to believe that cactus thriving in Florida’s sandy soils for millennia next to tropically stormy salt water suddenly realized they were getting soaked in deadly salt water. Especially since the area receives abundant rainfall that quickly flushes the salts out of the surface soils.
3) The article Anthony shows us states the real problem loud and clear.
“By 2021, what had been a thriving stand of about 150 stems was reduced to six ailing fragments, which researchers salvaged for off-site cultivation to ensure their survival.”
The experts caused the extinction by sampling too often and too frequently, then finally reaping the remaining stems
Of course none of the experts wanted to take all of the guilt, so they blamed hurricanes that occur regularly, often annually. Nor should one forget the severe thunderstorms which can happen daily in Key West that can cause locally severe storm surges.
4) Any Florida researcher should know that category 5 hurricanes push and pull far more than 5 feet of storm surge, more in the range of 12-15 feet.
The nature of Florida has been so widely knocked about by development that avarice will be the only element there.To survive. You can keep on throwing rubbish in the pond but one day it will break surface, perhaps this is where the word ‘ponder’.really came from.