Jennifer Marohasy

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The Arctic Fox

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“Within the European Union, six species have been classified as Critically Endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The most threatened category includes the Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus) and the European mink, which both have very small and declining populations. Only 150 Iberian Lynx survive today and the Mediterranean monk seal population has decreased to between 350-450 individuals.”

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Photograph of an Arctic Fox courtesy of Denis-Carl Robidaux via Ann Novek

“The Arctic fox has evolved to live in the most frigid extremes on the planet. Among its adaptations for cold survival are its deep, thick fur, a system of countercurrent heat exchange in the circulation of paws to retain core temperature, and a good supply of body fat. The fox has a low surface-area-to-volume ratio as evidenced by its generally rounded body shape, short muzzle and legs, and short, thick ears. Since less of its surface area is exposed to the cold, less heat escapes the body. Its furry paws allow it to walk on ice floors in search of food. It is also able to walk on top of snow and listen for the movements of prey underneath. Their thick fur is the warmest of any mammal.”

In Scandinavia there are only about 120 arctic foxes left. There is a project in Sweden, to help save the foxes, including additional feeding and hunting red foxes that are a threat to Arctic foxes (the red foxes are out competing the arctic foxes). The Arctic fox eat lemmings, Arctic hares and in some areas left-overs from polar bears.

Cheers,
Ann Novek
Sweden

EU Did Not Foresee Biofuel Problems

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Europe’s environment chief has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems raised by its policy to get 10% of Europe’s road fuels from plants.

Recent reports have warned of rising food prices and rainforest destruction from increased biofuel production.

The EU has promised new guidelines to ensure that its target is not damaging.

BBC Website: EU rethinks biofuels guidelines

Another Error in Gore’s AIT

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I have previously blogged about the UK High Court finding 9 errors in Gore’s movie AIT, which resulted in the High Court ruling that: Schools Must Warn of AIT Film Bias.

Now we have an admission over at Climate Audit:

Sticking Thermometers In Places They Don’t Belong

In earlier posts, we observed that Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth claimed that “Dr Thompson’s thermometer” confirmed Michael Mann’s hockey stick, but, when analysed, what Gore described as “Dr Thompson’s thermometer” merely proved to be Michael Mann’s hockey stick mis-identified. No wonder it resembled Mann’s hockey stick – or, to use the phrase more common in climate science, no wonder there was a “remarkable” resemblance.

Hu McCulloch of Ohio State University now writes about a recent encounter with Lonnie Thompson, the serial ice core non-archiver and male nurse for the thermometer:

“On January 11, Lonnie Thompson gave a talk on Climate change at Ohio State. After his talk, I asked him if the graph identified by Al Gore as “Dr. Thompson’s Thermometer” in his book and film was really based on his ice core research.

Thompson admitted that an error had been made, and even had a slide ready that showed the data of the Mann Hockey Stick plus Jones instrumental data that Gore’s figure was based on, alongside an average of dO18 z-scores from 6 of his Andean and Himalayan ice cores, similar to the 7-series graph that appeared in his 2006 PNAS article. He stated that he recognized the error right away, and even sent Gore (and Mann, as I recall) an e-mail pointing out the mistake.

When I pressed him if it wouldn’t be appropriate to make a more public announcement, given the high-profile nature of the error, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, his wife and co-author, stood up and offered that it was Gore’s error, not theirs, so that they had no responsibility for it, and that in any event there was no forum in which to make a correction.

I suggested that since OSU’s Byrd Polar Research Center has a website with a News page, it would be trivial and virtually costless to post a press release clarifying the matter for the millions of readers and viewers of Gore’s book and film who are not on Thompson’s e-mail list. ”

“No forum”. “No responsibility.” No shame.

Another Assumption in Trouble: No Convincing Evidence for Decline in Tropical Forests

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Claims that tropical forests are declining cannot be backed up by hard evidence, according to new research from the University of Leeds.

This major challenge to conventional thinking is the surprising finding of a study published today in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences by Dr Alan Grainger, Senior Lecturer in Geography and one of the world’s leading experts on tropical deforestation.

In the first attempt for many years to chart the long-term trend in tropical forest area, he spent more than three years going through all available United Nations data with a fine toothcomb – and found some serious problems.

Read the entire EurekAlert write up here.

Philip Stott also has a good write up here.

The abstract from the paper is below:

Difficulties in tracking the long-term global trend in tropical forest area

Alan Grainger*

School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom

Edited by B. L. Turner II, Clark University, Worcester, MA, and approved December 3, 2007 (received for review April 3, 2007)

Abstract

The long-term trend in tropical forest area receives less scrutiny than the tropical deforestation rate. We show that constructing a reliable trend is difficult and evidence for decline is unclear, within the limits of errors involved in making global estimates. A time series for all tropical forest area, using data from Forest Resources Assessments (FRAs) of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, is dominated by three successively corrected declining trends. Inconsistencies between these trends raise questions about their reliability, especially because differences seem to result as much from errors as from changes in statistical design and use of new data. A second time series for tropical moist forest area shows no apparent decline. The latter may be masked by the errors involved, but a “forest return” effect may also be operating, in which forest regeneration in some areas offsets deforestation (but not biodiversity loss) elsewhere. A better monitoring program is needed to give a more reliable trend. Scientists who use FRA data should check how the accuracy of their findings depends on errors in the data.

Oh, what a golden web she weaves (part II)

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Take a long look into the face of the world’s largest two-dimensional wheel-web weaving spider: The Golden Orb-weaver (Nephila pilipes).

The red appendages, projecting forward from the head region, are sensory organs called palps. They detect scent, sound and vibration. Between them are the powerful chelicerae; made up of the base segment and the fangs. Above, the cephalothorax houses six eyes with a three-dimensional outlook.

Gigantism in these animals correlates with increased temperature, so I suppose it is inevitable that we should all enjoy a closer familiarity in this anthropogenically-exacerbated interglacial warming period.

Sir David King – ‘Greens’ Want to Take Us Back to 17th Century

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The UK Government’s former chief scientific adviser has accused green activists of putting the fight against climate change at risk by wanting to take society back to the 17th century.

He said: “There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves ‘green’ are actually keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century.

Sir David’s comments were made in an interview in The Guardian.