Source:  NIPCC

For those serious about science and species, book and reviews here: http://www.amazon.com/CO2-Global-Warming-Species-Extinctions/dp/0981969402/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1327547485&sr=8-4

[SPPI Note: Likely one of the most notoriously unscientific groups is the Center for Biodiversity, which files reams of listings for species endangerment based on deeply flawed models, statistical manipulations and bald ignorance of the broader sciences. A multititute of papers in the literature attest to this:

Biodiversity

Summary
Among Genotypes
C3 Plants vs. C4 Plants
Fungi
General
Grasslands
Marine Species
N-Fixers vs. Non-N-Fixers
Weeds vs. Non-Weeds

A complete review of the literature can be found here.

*************************

Recent paper# 1

Reference
Sears, M.W., Raskin, E. and Angilletta Jr., M.J. 2011. The world is not flat: Defining relevant thermal landscapes in the context of climate change. Integrative and Comparative Biology 51: 666-675.

Climate alarmists have historically predicted catastrophic species extinctions based on the presumption that CO₂-induced global warming will be so fast and furious that many species of plants and animals will not be able to migrate either poleward in latitude or upward in altitude rapidly enough to remain within the “climate envelope” to which they are accustomed. (more…)

Source:  CO2 Science

Reference
Catenazzi, A., Lehr, E., Rodriguez, L.O. and Vredenburg, V.T. 2010. Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and the collapse of anuran species richness and abundance in the Upper Manu National Park, southeastern Peru. Conservation Biology 25: 382-391.

What was done
Catenazzi et al. surveyed frogs in the Peruvian Andes in montane forests along a steep elevation gradient (1200-3700 m), using visual encounter surveys to sample stream-dwelling and arboreal species and leaf-litter plots to sample terrestrial-breeding species, in order to compare species richness and abundance among the wet seasons of 1999, 2008 and 2009. (more…)

Source: World Climate Report

Who would ever guess that in 2011, one of the most popular television shows in the world is about fishing for crabs in “the vast Bering Sea.” Deadliest Catch premiered on the Discovery Channel on April 12, 2005 and currently airs in over 150 countries. If you don’t know, the show portrays the real life events aboard fishing vessels in the Bering Sea during the fall Alaskan king crab and the winter Opilio crab fishing seasons. With so much interest in the show and so much concern about climate change in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, it was just a matter of time before we explored the world of crabs and climate change. (more…)

By Noaki Schwartz and Jason Dearen, Associated Press

Apple Valley, Calif. (AP) – Fears that whirling wind turbines could slaughter protected golden eagles have halted progress on a key piece of the federal government’s push to increase renewable energy on public lands, stalling plans for billions of dollars in wind farm developments.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management suspended issuing wind permits on public land indefinitely this summer after wildlife officials invoked a decades-old law for protecting eagles, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The restriction has stymied efforts to “fast-track” approvals for four of the seven most promising wind energy proposals in the nation, including all three in California.

Now, these and other projects appear unlikely to make the year-end deadline to potentially qualify for hundreds of millions of dollars in stimulus funds. If extensions aren’t granted in the lame duck session of Congress, the future of many of these plans could be in doubt. (more…)

Source:  Warning Signs

By Alan Caruba

After three decades of trying to push the global warming scam to a point where billions could be made selling and trading bogus “carbon credits”, the global schemers have abandoned it in the wake of 2009 revelations that a handful of rogue climate scientists were literally inventing the data to support it.

If there is one lesson to be learned from and about environmentalists, it is that they are utterly relentless. The ultimate goal is one-world government directed from the United Nations by unelected bureaucrats who are soulless strangers to the truth, to morality, to humanity.

The United States supports this abomination to the tune of billions every year. (more…)

Source:  Wattsup

by Willis Eschenbach

Abstract

The record of continental (as opposed to island) bird and mammal extinctions in the last five centuries was analyzed to determine if the “species-area” relationship actually works to predict extinctions. Very few continental birds or mammals are recorded as having gone extinct, and none have gone extinct from habitat reduction alone. No continental forest bird or mammal is recorded as having gone extinct from any cause. Since the species-area relationship predicts that there should have been a very large number of recorded bird and mammal extinctions from habitat reduction over the last half millennium, I show that the species-area relationship gives erroneous answers to the question of extinction rates.

Figure 1. The Object of My Quest — The Corpse of an Extinct Bird

Source:  Journal Bioscience, vol. 60, 552-553

REVIEW OF HEATSTROKE: NATURE IN AN AGE OF GLOBAL WARMING by Anthony D. Barnosky, 2009 (Washington, DC: Island Press) 269pp.

By Daniel B. Botkin

[Dr. Botkin in not associated with SPPI.]

In the late 1960s I began studying possible ecological effects of global warming, and  first published a paper about these possibilities in 1973.  Thus, I have watched with surprise, and sometimes dismay, the sudden development of scientific and public concern over this issue.  When I first began to explore the mechanisms by which a trace gas such as CO₂ could influence our planet’s climate, getting into the then abstruse topics of atmospheric physical chemistry and energy exchange, there were just a few scientists — mainly climatologists, meteorologists, and ecologists —  who even knew about the possibility, and even fewer who were doing scientific research on it.

It was a time when not many were aware that life of any kind could affect the environment at a planetary level, but several of us were exploring those possibilities.  I was fortunate to be one of the first to help NASA begin using satellite remote sensing to study a planetary perspective on life.  I also worked with scientists at IBM to develop one of the first computer models that could be used to forecast possible effects of climate change on any kind of ecological system.  It seemed at that time, through the 1970s into the early 1980s,  an uphill battle to even get a large number of scientists to believe in such possibilities, let alone the public. (more…)

Source: CO2 Science

Coccolithophores are single-celled algae and protists that contain chlorophyll, conduct photosynthesis, and possess special plates or scales known as coccoliths that they produce by the process of calcification. They are found in large numbers throughout the surface euphotic zones of the world’s oceans; and we here review the results of several studies that indicate how they may fare in a CO2-enriched world of the future that is characterized by significantly altered oceanic carbonate chemistry.

Working with two previously untested coccolithophores, Calcidiscus leptoporus and Coccolithus pelagicus, which they describe as “two of the most productive marine calcifying species,” Langer et al. (2006) conducted batch-culture experiments in which they observed (1) a “deterioration of coccolith production above as well as below present-day CO2 concentrations in C. leptoporus [italics added],” and (2) a “lack of a CO2 sensitivity of calcification in C. pelagicus” over an atmospheric CO2 concentration range of 98-915 ppm, both of which observations, in their words, “refute the notion of a linear relationship of calcification with the carbonate ion concentration and carbonate saturation state.” (more…)

Source: CO2 Science

Reference
Checa, M.F., Barragan, A., Rodriguez, J. and Christman, M. 2009. Temporal abundance patterns of butterfly communities (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) in the Ecuadorian Amazonia and their relationship with climate. Annales de la Société Entomologique de France (NS) 45: 470-486.

What was done
Working within areas surrounding the Yasuni Scientific Research Station in the Ecuadorian Amazon inside the Yasuni National Park — which together with the Huaorani Ethnic Reserve comprise 1.6 million hectares of forest and were declared by UNESCO in 1987 to constitute a Biosphere Reserve — the authors studied the composition and structure of butterfly communities of the “rotting-carrion guild” of the Nymphalidae family over a period of 13 months (April 2002-April 2003), based on data obtained using traps baited with rotten shrimp that had been fermenting for 11-20 days. (more…)

Source:  CO2 Science

Reference
Millar, C.I. and Westfall, R.D. 2010. Distribution and climatic relationships of the American Pika (Ochotona princeps) in the Sierra Nevada and Western Great Basin, U.S.A.; periglacial landforms as refugia in warming climates. Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research 42: 76-88.

Background
American pikas are small generalist herbivores that are relatives of rabbits and hares. They tend to inhabit patchily-distributed rocky slopes of western North American mountains and are good at tolerating cold. However, they are widely believed to have a physiological sensitivity to warming, which when “coupled with the geometry of decreasing area at increasing elevation on mountain peaks,” in the words of the authors, “has raised concern for the future persistence of pikas in the face of climate change,” so much so, in fact, that “the species has been petitioned under California [USA] state and federal laws for endangered species listing.” (more…)

Source: CO2 Science

by Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso

In his 26 April 2007 testimony before the Select Committee of Energy Independence and Global Warming of the U.S. House of Representatives entitled “Dangerous Human-Made Interference with Climate,” NASA’s James Hansen stated that life in alpine regions is “in danger of being pushed off the planet” in response to continued greenhouse-gas-induced global warming. Why? Because that’s what all the species distribution models of the day predicted at that time. Now, however, a set of new-and-improved models is raising some serious questions about Hansen’s overly zealous contention, as described in a “perspective” published in Science by Willis and Bhagwat (2009). (more…)

Source: Climate Quotes

Source: #2 Climate Quotes

It’s been quiet here for over a month. This has been a busy time for me, I am now a college graduate (and looking for a job, know of any?). I intend to continue posting however, and when I saw a headline article on climate depot a while ago I dug a little deeper into the story.

This article from the Guardian talks about new UN biodiversity report. It’s worth reading. Here is an interesting quote:

The report will advocate massive changes to the way the global economy is run so that it factors in the value of the natural world. In future, it says, communities should be paid for conserving nature rather than using it; companies given stricter limits on what they can take from the environment and fined or taxed more to limit over-exploitation; subsidies worth more than US$1tn (£696.5bn) a year for industries like agriculture, fisheries, energy and transport reformed; and businesses and national governments asked to publish accounts for their use of natural and human capital alongside their financial results.

Shock! The UN is using protection of the natural world as a reason to make massive changes to the global economy? This sounds familiar, which I’m sure is why Morano posted it. Whenever the UN puts out a report that involves the world spending a lot of money, I get suspicious, so I decided to take a look at the interim report (the final isn’t going to be published until later this year). Here is the report. (more…)

Statement by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch Before the United States Senate, June 10, 2010

EPA Disapproval Resolution

Mr. President, I rise today as an original cosponsor of the Disapproval Resolution of the carbon regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.  I would like to start off by applauding Senator Murkowski for her strong leadership on this issue, and I stand squarely behind her effort.

To summarize what has already been laid out today, the EPA has released findings that, one, human carbon emissions contribute in a significant way to global warming; and, two, that global warming  –  which has been going on for about 10,000 years now  — is an endangerment to humans.  The EPA’s foundation for its proposal relies on the assumption that both of these findings are true. (more…)