Disaster at sea: global warming hits UK birds

[Minstrel Boy]

Disaster at sea: global warming hits UK birds

by Michael McCarthy Environment Editor
30 July 2004
The Independent

Hundreds of thousands of Scottish seabirds have failed to breed this summer in a wildlife catastrophe which is being linked by scientists directly to global warming.

The massive unprecedented collapse of nesting attempts by several seabird species in Orkney and Shetland is likely to prove the first major impact of climate change on Britain.

In what could be a sub-plot from the recent disaster movie, The Day After Tomorrow, a rise in sea temperature is believed to have led to the mysterious disappearance of a key part of the marine food chain - the sandeel, the small fish whose great teeming shoals have hitherto sustained larger fish, marine mammals and seabirds in their millions.

...

More than 172,000 breeding pairs of guillemots were recorded in the islands in the last national census, Seabird 2000, whose results were published this year; this summer the birds have produced almost no young, according to Peter Ellis, Shetland area manager for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

sadly, more:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=546138

Hundreds of links here on the current Mass Extinction:
http://www.well.com/user/davidu/extinction.html

[mom cat]

1. We cant have Kerry soon enough..we are going to have to fight for

our very survival! More from the story

Martin Heubeck of Aberdeen University, who has monitored Shetland seabirds for 30 years, said: "The breeding failure of the guillemots is unprecedented in Europe." More than 6,800 pairs of great skuas were recorded in Shetland in the same census; this year they have produced a handful of chicks - perhaps fewer than 10 - while the arctic skuas (1,120 pairs in the census) have failed to produce any surviving young.

The 24,000 pairs of arctic terns, and the 16,700 pairs of Shetland kittiwakes - small gulls - have "probably suffered complete failure", said Mr Ellis.

In Orkney the picture is very similar, although detailed figures are not yet available. "It looks very bad," said the RSPB's warden on Orkney mainland, Andy Knight. "Very few of the birds have raised any chicks at all."

But the astonishing scale of what has taken place is already clear - and the link to climate change is being openly made by scientists. It is believed that the microscopic plankton on which tiny sandeel larvae feed are moving northwards as the sea water warms, leaving the baby fish with nothing to feed on.

[lapfog_1]

2. Unfortunately for mankind

not to mention the rest of the species on the planet...

Kerry may be too late.

the global warming may just now be reaching the tipping point,
and it's taken decades to get here. No matter what we do, short
of simply stopping all CO2 producing activities immediately,
the climate will change drastically in the next few years (10 or
less).

The worlds coral reefs are all dying.

migration patterns are changing.

ocean salinity levels are dropping dramatically (especially in
the North Atlantic).

and the ice shelves and glaciers are receding.

But with Kerry in office, at least he can initiate programs into
looking at what we can do, instead of sticking his head in the
sand and hoping that the Rapture happens, which is *'s plan,
apparently.

[mom cat]

4. Our chances for survival just went from zero to 10%.Better than nothing.

[CrispyQ]

10. I think we are dangerously close to the point of no return . . .

...if we haven't already passed it. When are population & sustainability going to become election issues?

SIX BILLION MIRACLES IS ENOUGH!!!!

===========================
from the environment forum:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x11748

<snip>
The South Pole Melting

In the South Pole a couple of years ago Larsen A ledge broke off, which surprised many scientists. At that time we were told by the scientific personnel that were studying this event that it was no big deal since this ice ledge had only been connected to the South Pole for about the last ten thousand years.

And these same scientists also added that Larsen B ledge that was behind Larsen A ledge would never melt as it has been there for many ice ages. Yet last year, Larsen's B ledge broke off and went to sea. These same scientists said that it would take six months to melt because of its immense size, but again they were wrong. It melted in a mere 35 days, and more significant, it rose the entire world's oceans by almost an inch.

Now with Larsen's B ledge gone, an incredibly enormous ice shelf called Ross's Shelf is exposed and the only thing holding Ross's Shelf from sliding into the ocean was Larsen's B ledge. According to my sources, Ross's Shelf is now cracking.

If Ross's Shelf were to slide into the ocean, it has been estimated that it would raise the entire world's oceans by sixteen to twenty feet. And that, my friends, would change the world, as almost every coastal city in the world and many islands along with the county of Holland would be underwater.

Perhaps it will take an event like this to wake up the world to become
serious about Global Warming.

[seemslikeadream]

3. SMOTHERED HOPE

http://www.bushflash.com/sp.html WATCH THIS VIDEO only 3 minutes


SMOTHERED HOPE

withered rope you hang what's empty can't remain to put it simply
in time cry the hollow words to sing with false disguise
smothered hope fly from sorrow for a new divine tomorrow
i just don't want to know anymore
life shifts up and down everybody knows it's wrong
why don't you care? now do it seem fair?
it's not in the rhyme or reason
so it goes with every season crawl to top fall through bottom
first hand love is really rotten
slice of life find what's plenty inch towards a sanctuary
light with me inside the womb
i know everyone everybody knows it's me
it's my voice, my voice cries out obscenity
sightless eye regard my past sometimes it should
i just don't want to know anymore.
SKINNY PUPPY

[shadu]

7. WOW!

[0007]

5. Can this warming cycle be reversed?

[HereSince1628]

6. Global warming may effect in high latitudes and high altitudes first

My own interest in this was how the epidemiology of parasitic (primarily worms) infections in gulls was responding to changes in climate...several years of paying for research out of my pocket led to international collaborations and interesting (well to me) papers but no support in the US. But, rather than get into my sad song...

Let me just say, things are changing at demonstrable rates at high latitude. How complex biotic interactions will respond is anyone's WAG (Wild Ass Guess) but every ecologist working under the midnight sun knows things are no longer in equilibrium.

[Lorien]

8. Very frightening.

[Lorien]

9. When the bottom of the food chain disappears

the top isn't far behind. :scared:

[Minstrel Boy]

11. That's the very thing

that should have made the environment the issue 30 years ago. Now, I really think it's too late to arrest. We're experiencing the greatest mass extinction ever, right now.

"The amount of zooplankton found in the northern part of the North Sea has declined strongly since the end of the 1980s when there was jump in temperature. Now it's simply disappearing." This causes him to worry because the plankton are an important source of food for fish.
http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/ned040730.html

[Lorien]

12. The birds have the good sense to stop breeding

when their resources decline. We, on the other hand....

Honestly, this issue scares me far more than any war (except Nuclear war). It does have the potential to end life as we know it IN OUR LIFETIME!

And the environment pretty much was "the issue" 30 years ago, then Reagan came along...

[0007]

18. Birds stop breeding and humans start eating more

[shadu]

17. scary

[goforit]

13. OMG!!!!...This is scarey!!! I too have seen Canadian geese rally early

It has been strange to see these flocks gather the first
week of July rather than the third week of August.

Something is just not right.

[Lorien]

14. Yes, canarys in the coal mine

but will the people notice? Will they care before it's too late? (It may already be too late).

Some will say "Why should I care about birds? I care about people more"! Others will say" So what if all the sea life dies off; I hate fish anyway". Somehow, they think their existence is independent of the ecosystem they live in.

These stories aren't "sexy", they don't provoke the outrage that a story about Slimfast firing Whoopie does, or a story about a woman getting handcuffed for eating candy, and yet it's a story will ten thousand times more relevance to each of our lives. When will we WAKE UP? When will we ACT?

[Minstrel Boy]

15. Me too. Birds flying south in mid-July, if they still know

which direction that is.

Sad, strange times in which to be well informed.

[rfkrocks]

16. The Church locked Galileo away but that didn't alter the TRUTH

In the end science matters a whole lot-I pray that we wake up now to this disaster and start to turn the earth around-to the science hating GOP we say-ITS OUR SURVIVAL STUPID

[struggle4progress]

19. kick

:kick: