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Originally Posted by freeztar
The lead author is Shaye Wolf who has a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. |
OK but its still points derived from a legal brief (your link, not mine). Its an appeal to authority to imply that this document you linked to must be the whole truth and nothing but the truth by suggesting this degree factor has any relationship to the presentation of suit points in a legal briefing.
And I know enough about number crunching with people who are counting animals. I grew up with direct contact with the researchers involved with counting timber (gray) wolves in Minnesota during their listing phase. I am also alarmed with the MN methods of counting eagles and swans and I believe I have posted laments on that in the birding thread.
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Originally Posted by freeztar
Ok, but what about long term trends.
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There is no OMG its AGW trend. The isolated populations where declines are apparently being noted are marginal pika supporting habitats. Additionally, populations (geographically) of American Pikas *who seemed to have migrated across the bering straight* have fluctuated greatly over the last 12K years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freeztar
I wouldn't doubt that these aspects would be factors in the decline, but without numbers, it's impossible to quantify their contributions.
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Fine, then why not show the same restraint when declaring "Global Warming is Killing Little Rabbit Relatives"? Now I am not saying you declared such a thing, but you did link to an article and posted it in this thread. So maybe a different thread would be appropriate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freeztar
The paragraph I previously quoted had a study by Beever analyzing data from 1950-2003.
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Yes, data he did not collect, data which did not include numbers and produced information such as "abundant populations" based on chirps and calls heard. No > 15 per acre data there, no actual counts of animals who scurry about and call out abundantly to confirm/deny what the population is/was.
Look at the picture in the link. That is data from Beever regarding American Pika populations. The blue shaded area is pika habitat and is believed to be mostly habitated today (Beevers words). Sites of
Pre historic extinctions are the yellow areas (via archeological and paleological info). Notice how much yellow there is? The area of most concern is in the upper left side. Notice how marginal the habitat is?
The American Pika is in no danger of extinction and should not be referenced (imho) as an example of AGW killing small furry creatures.
I should also mention during research for this particular point in the thread, it came to my attention the study Beever did was funded by the WWF. After all the screaming about "they work for [oil,mining,etc], I thought it relevant to point out the funding source.
Here is a direct quote from Ray Beever regarding his study:
"Acute cold stress had a strong negative effect in models, chronic heat stress had slightly less of a negative effect. Loss of cold days—the only climate-change metric with good support—had a modest effect. And acute heat stress had a minor negative effect on persistence. ...snipped a bit...
We’re not arguing that direct thermal stress is the cause of this range shift."
