NYT/Reuters: Global Warming Could Wipe Out Most Birds: WWF

[DeepModem Mom]

Global Warming Could Wipe Out Most Birds: WWF
By REUTERS
Published: November 13, 2006

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Unchecked climate change could drive up to 72 per cent of the world's bird species into extinction but the world still has a chance to limit the losses, conservation group WWF said in a report on Tuesday.

From migratory insect-eaters to tropical honeycreepers and cold water penguins, birds are highly sensitive to changing weather conditions and many are already being affected badly by global warming, the new study said.

'Birds are the quintessential 'canaries in the coal mine' and are already responding to current levels of climate change,'' said the report, launched at a United Nations conference in Kenya on ways to slow warming.

'Birds now indicate that global warming has set in motion a powerful chain of effects in ecosystems worldwide,'' WWF said.

'Robust evidence demonstrates that climate change is affecting birds' behavior -- with some migratory birds even failing to migrate at all.''...

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-environment-climate-birds.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[gulfcoastliberal]

1. No fish, birds, frogs, etc, etc

Anyone beginning to understand we're actually witnessing an extinction on a scale of, if not greater than, the dinosaurs? And it'll be within our lifetimes.

[lapfog_1]

14. The world's coral reefs are already 1/3 gone

dead, centuries to rebuild... and that's if we can fix the acidity level and the temperature.

Lloyd Bridges would be so pissed.

[gulfcoastliberal]

16. I meant to say, we're CAUSING a bigger extinction than Triassic-Jurrasic

in the span of our lives. Without nuclear winter.

[OnyxCollie]

2. (Sigh)

:banghead:

[YankeyMCC]

3. We can tell the new Congressional Leadership that this is an important issue

Here is a way you can do it easily and quickly:

https://secure2.convio.net/dow/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=577&autologin=true&s_einterest=C3C4&s_Affiliate=act_&JServSessionIdr010=qn16wzjmo1.app20a

[mcscajun]

4. With all the frogs, toads, fish and birds gone...

all we'll have left are the INSECTS. No predators = Overpopulation.

Oh, goodie. :sarcasm:

[kestrel91316]

8. Picture the giant insect-thingies in Stephen King's novella

The Mist (from the early 80s) and that's what I expect we will eventually have. Mammals will die way back. Same for avians and reptiles/amphibians. But OH, the invertebrates!!!!! They will thrive.

[AlienGirl]

21. They won't get giant, though--not a high enough concentration of oxygen

[niallmac]

5. What do you suppose it is that will grab our attention

and cause us to seriously change our behavior on this planet?

I am not speaking holier than thou.

I have a pretty good grasp of the evidence for golbal warming but
I am STILL motivated by my daily routine of working to earn a
living for myself and my family.

Would I devote my life to a solution if I knew a comet was
twenty years away from a collision with Earth or would I just keep
working cause, well, one still has to eat.

[leftchick]

6. WWF Website..

http://www.worldwildlife.org/consumer/sgw.cfm

I wish Nancy Had This, THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE in her first hundred hours!!!!!

:cry:

[life_long_dem]

7. No birds=many more insects. I believe someone here posted a link

last week about this. Here is one link and a few paragraphs:

A rise in the Earth’s temperature could lead to an increase in the number of insects worldwide, with potentially dire consequences for humans, a new study suggests.

New research shows that insect species living in warmer areas are more likely to undergo rapid population growth because they have higher metabolic rates and reproduce more frequently. The finding has scientists concerned that global warming could give rise to more fast-growing insect populations and that we could see a spike in the number of six-legged critters.

The consequences could be more serious than just a few extra bug bites each summer. “If they’re crop species, we could count on needing to use more pesticides and it could be very costly,” said Melanie Frazier, a doctoral student at the University of Washington and lead author of the study.

Insect-borne diseases are also a worry. Malaria, Lyme Disease and a host of others rely on insect vectors to spread among humans, and a swell in their populations could mean more infections

snip...

http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/061104_gb_insects.html

[gorbal]

19. You will see the plague of locusts...

The drought, the famine, the plague, the floods. They all go together. It isn't merely some mystical mumbo-jumbo some wise men had forseen, but the actual turning of events as out-of-control civilizations end.

[keopeli]

9. I remember, as a child, crying at a film about the extinct Dodo bird.

I have six canaries who live with me.

Birds, like humans, are both hearty and fragile. Their tiny bodies perform many amazing feats, from flight to singing to sniper hunting. They are known for their tiny brains - to which I can say only that they must use it very efficiently. Humans use only a small percentage of their brain.

I hope I'm not alive when the birds start dying.

Even more, I hope we can stop this madness.


Four of my birds - Crokus, Daffodil, Tulip, and Bert (the dad)

[pitohui]

12. hey nice photo

there is a wild african canary, serinus mozambicus, that seems to be doing VERY well in africa, at least in kenya, i saw oodles of them not so long ago there

serinus canaria, which is the probable ancestor of the domestic canary, i don't know much about, unfortunately, it is an island species, and island species are extremely vulnerable this time of century

[Uncle Joe]

25. Nice photo of your birds, keopeli,

I am curious as to what type of plant they are perched on?

[keopeli]

26. Thanks! That's organic wheat grass. They get a fresh batch every week! :) nt

[pitohui]

10. "with some migratory birds failing to migrate at all"

some birds are prisoners of migration, because they are stimulated to migrate by day length, and may find themselves compelled, by hormone and instinct, to migrate even when their wintering grounds are no more

the birds that survive will be birds that choose not to migrate if there is sufficient food in the area, because if their wintering grounds are destroyed by war, global warming, etc, we in their breeding territories can still keep them fed -- these will be the birds who are stimulated to migrate, or not, by choice and availability of food, rather than being compelled to migrate by daylength even when it's an unwise choice

birds do not migrate because they get cold, they migrate because they cannot find enough food, this is why the northern cardinal and northern mockingbird ( southern birds when the republic was founded) are now common widespread birds even in the winter in new england

we will lose most birds but most in the sense of 60 percent rather than 99 percent

fish and frogs are another story, except for cultivated (farmed) varieties i'm not seeing any hope for these

if you live in the usa, you can save some bird species merely by removing all feral/wandering cats from your subdivision and by planting to feed/provide cover for birds, but the widespread use of some poisons seems to doom our bats, frogs, fish no matter what we do in our yards

i can actually increase the numbers of hummingbirds using my yard, but i can't do anything about the crash in the population of bats (they don't seem to use those houses around here, they are just GONE)

[lostnfound]

11. Dear God, not the birds..

Of course it's all connected. But ohhh. What kind of world has no birds?

REM lyrics for King of Birds..
A thumbnail sketch, a jeweler’s stone
A mean idea to call my own
Old man don’t lay so still you’re not yet young
There’s time to teach, point to point
Point observation, children carry reservations
Standing on the shoulders of giants leaves me cold, leaves me cold.
A mean idea to call my own, a hundred million birds fly

[pitohui]

13. well, we're down to 20 percent of what we had in 1960

a recent study was published pointing out what older people already knew -- that today's population of usa birds was 20 percent of the population of birds in 1960

people just get used to anything and don't notice any more

it's most frustrating

now the usa has the greatest rate of BIRD extinction of any nation in the world, to my knowledge, but it's still fairly shitty that we can lose so many birds and no one notices anything

[many a good man]

15. My soul would DIE without birds

:cry:

[everythingsxen]

17. I suppose..

Jesus was saying that bugs are meek, when he said "The meek shall inherit the Earth".

Bzzzz!

[Judi Lynn]

18. It's too sad for words. A dead, silent world looms ahead of us.

The people of the current age are the idiots who will have killed it. Savage, knuckle dragging, pretentious, deluded fools.

[OneBlueSky]

20. a world without birds is a world not worth living in . . .

a week ago or so, Rosanne was a guest on Bill Maher's show, and they both made an interesting point that kind of reflects some of my own thinking of late . . .

both Rosanne and Bill noted that they were glad that they were getting older, because it meant that they wouldn't be around when the worst of the environmental collapse occurred . . . having turned 60 this year, I can certainly relate to that sentiment . . . I don't want to be here when the birds are all gone, when the oceans are dead, when the only wildlife you can see is in old "Wild Kingdom" re-runs . . . it's just not a world I'd care to live in . . .

and, fortunately, I won't have to . . .

[mcscajun]

24. Only 55 and I'm already thinking that way.

And I'm reminded of the ending of Soylent Green, where Edward G. Robinson's character gets to view the film montage of the world as it once was, full of green grass, leafy trees, wildlife from rabbits to antlered deer; beautiful, magnificent flocks of colorful birds, the awesome wonder of the deep and those creatures that dwell there. It was such a sad scene...

And we could get there...

:(

[leftchick]

22. kick

[NotGivingUp]

23. great photo!