My reading of the report has just confirmed to me again that our nature organizations are twisting and misusing data to create a crisis that simply does not exist. Audubon uses the following SCARE phrases such as "alerting America to perils", "mounting concerns over accelerating global climate change", "serious biological consequences", "curb the worst impacts of climate change", "take immediate steps", "disrupt ecosystem balance", "over exploitation by humans", "continued population declines", "long predicted dire consequences", "great jeopardy", "failure to prevent the worst impacts" and "tackling this critically important challenge".
The report states that there was an average of 35 mile northward movement of the 305 observed species. They wrote significant northward movement occurred among 58% of the 305 species, with 60 species or 20% moving in excess of 100 miles north. So that means that of the 160 that moved northward "significantly, there were 100 where the movement was less than 100 miles. I would expect some northward movement of wintering species that are likely temperature dependent because we know that during the past four decades of data that was discussed for this study US temperatures rose. My next question was how were the bird numbers affected? I have studied the Birds And Climate report but could find not one word reviewing bird count numbers.
On page 4, 6 & 7 they have enlarged photos of 9 birds with large text under each series of bird pictures, The Climate Culprit, On the Move and To an Uncertain Fate. I was curious as to what that fate was. Were these birds increasing or decreasing in population, that is the bottom line.
National Audubon has a terrific resource for graphing and study of their Christmas Count data found here. You can see historical abundance data by graphing the number seen per party hour for any species back to 1901. Let's look at the Christmas Count abundance data for the twelve pictured species for the four decades from 1966 to 2006 which is the concern of this report. How are they doing with climate change?
I created 1996-2006 charts plotting birds seen per party hour. Scroll down to the bottom of this page for a moment to look at the 12 charts which resulted.
Using rough estimate trend lines I concluded population changes in the 12 birds highlighted in the Birds & Climate Report.
Increasing: Ring-necked Duck, Red-breasted Merganser, Northern Gannet, Spruce Grouse
Same: American Goldfinch, Black-bellied Plover, Black Turnstone, Pine Siskin, Brant(increasing?)
Decreasing: American Black Duck, Western Meadowlark, Green-winged Teal (same?)
The abundance graph trend lines showed: 4 birds were increasing, 5 were the same and 3 were
decreasing. And possibly Brant could be moved to increasing and green-winged teal to the same. So at least 9 of the 12 pictured birds were either increasing in population or the same!
In other words we have a 16 page report that scares us about all the "dire" "consequences" of "continued population declines" and urges us to "take immediate steps" because of "great jeopardy" over "mounting concerns over accelerating global climate change"!!! Yet the scientists all agree that the warming stopped OVER 10 YEARS AGO.
Friends, the inmates are running the asylum. If you look at past temperature records over the past centuries you will notice that temperatures have always either decreased or increased. From 1910 to 1945 the temperatures rose at the same pace they are now as our globe began to warm and exit the Little Ice Age. See here for my previous post comparing the two temperature rises. Glaciers began to decline, see here, in the late 1800's as a couple centuries of the Little Ice Age ended. Temperatures stabilized and then decreased until the late 1970's. In those years there was talk of entering another ice age. In the late 1970's to the late 1990's, a period of twenty years of world history, the temperatures once again slowly rose and peaked during the El Nino of 1998. The El Nino of 1998 was very strong and shot temperatures skyward throughout the globe. El Nino's have nothing to do with greenhouse gases and occur regularly because of changes in ocean currents and suface winds, they strongly affect our weather.
This 16 page report is basically a scare report. There are no real lies, because I accept that many birds could have moved northward during a period of global warming. But the report gives absolutely no evidence that our avian friends are in jeopardy. In fact, for the 12 examples of severe movement there is an overall average increase in population!
All of you have heard of the polar bear scare, it is the exact same nonsense. We are being
manipulated with misinformation and disinformation from "scientists" who have an agenda that is NOT the truthful depiction of scientific information. Take a moment to look at the polar bear facts yourself. Here is a post I made previously entitled Polar Bear Populations are Stable and Healthy. I found the official petition that the Alarmist Scientist made requesting the Federal Government to list the polar bear as endangered. In the report the scientists show population data that of the 20 distinct geographic populations, 16 are stable, 2 are increasing and 2 are the same. In other words they want to list a stable population as Endangered all based on What If's? What if the stock market keeps going up forever and the economy stays strong? This is the same urging of dire consequences that National Audubon Society made in their Birds and Climate Change report. If you read that report without really looking into it you would obviously think there is a dire problem and we need to fix it right now.Now even the Alarmist Scientists are starting to backtrack, recognizing we have 11-12 years where global temperatures have not risen. Look at this post, Real Climate is where the main blog of the Alarmist Gloom and Doom scientists. They now say temperatures might not rise for another 10 years and talk of multi-decadal variability. Why can't the rising temperature time from 1977 to 1998 be simply natural variability?
