by Gregory McNamee
There is scarcely a reputable scientist—and none in the earth sciences—who doubts the reality of climate change today. Plenty of ideologues do, and it seems that no amount of evidence or fact can sway them. Still, here are a few bits and pieces from the recent news that speak pointedly to the issue.
To begin, thousands of bats died last month in Queensland, Australia, after a period of unusually hot weather (remember, of course, that it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere). The temperatures exceeded the hitherto scarcely surpassed barrier of 43C, or 110F, at several points. Reports The Guardian, the death of the bats is profound enough, but bats, now disoriented by the heat, also carry numerous viruses that are extremely dangerous to humans, including Australian bat lyssavirus and Hendra virus.
Meanwhile, in what are supposed to be cooler climes in the Southern Hemisphere, Magellanic penguins are declining in number because of extreme heat, which is especially dangerous for young birds, as well as ever more intense rainstorms, which are themselves a by-product of abundant heat in the atmosphere. Writing in the online journal PLoS One, scientists who have studied a Magellanic population in Argentina for three decades note an increasing trend of reproductive failure and increased infant mortality that can be directly attributed to climate change.
Just so, US Geological Survey researchers in Hawaii have noted that the endangered bird called the honeycreeper has been having to endure unwonted bouts of avian malaria, the product of an increasingly large mosquito population that in turn owes to warming temperature. The rate of infection, notes a new paper in the journal Global Change Biology, has increased markedly in the last 20 years; as the abstract puts it, “Increasing mean air temperatures, declining precipitation, and changes in streamflow that have taken place over the past 20 years are creating environmental conditions throughout major portions of the Alaka’i Plateau that support increased transmission of avian malaria.”
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There are bits of good news to report, too. One concerns those honeycreepers: an article in the journal EcoHealth notes that at least one population has developed some tolerance for the disease, with lower mortality rates and ill effects. Given that adaptation, there is hope that the species overall could eventually develop full resistance to avian malaria.
Another bit of good news is of the thought-experiment variety, that experiment being this: Can you imagine what animals we might be seeing in the wild 150 years from now? Writes Andrew Krulwich in a thoughtful essay for NPR, 150 years ago in North America, the passenger pigeon was abundant, the bison less so—but white deer, common pigeons, and Canada geese were all but extinct, nearly hunted out of existence. Curbs on mass hunting came too late for the poor passenger pigeon, but as for those nearly extinct creatures, well, they are plentiful today, giving further evidence that if they can be persuaded to do the right thing, humans can indeed make a positive difference in the world.
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A final bit of good news, and very real: Cannibal rats will not be swarming over the docks of Britain anytime soon. That vision straight out of the pages of Bram Stoker was itself a very real possibility thanks to a wandering ship that once plied the waters of Antarctica, then was sold to a Dominican company for scrap but broke loose of its moorings and went adrift in the Atlantic, floating along on the Gulf Stream with a cargo hold full of those cannibal rats. Let the New York Daily News tell the story, but be gladdened by an Irish Coast Guard report that the ship is in Davy Jones’s locker.