Endangered species & climate change - it is often claimed by the IPCC and its cadre of climate doomsday scientists that global warming is threatening the survival of many species - not so in regards to the 'wandering albatross'
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Read here. The wandering albatross is officially a vulnerable species that happens to have the largest wingspan of all birds. How will global warming / climate change affect this giant of the air?
Actually, like so many other marine-based species, the wandering albatross seems to be thriving from the feared "human-induced" climate change. A new study by a team of scientists (Weimerskirch et. al) recently confirmed this to be so.
"The authors write that "in marine systems, wind is a major component of the environment, and climate change-induced alterations in oceanic wind regimes and strength have already occurred and are predicted to increase." With respect to what has "already occurred," they note that "over the past fifty years, Southern Hemisphere westerlies have shifted poleward and increased in intensity," which could well affect "the movement or distribution of wind-dependent species, such as migratory land birds or pelagic seabirds,"...The four researchers report that over the period of time characterized by the IPCC as having experienced unprecedented global warming, the foraging range of wandering albatrosses has shifted poleward...One extremely important consequence of this change was a 22% decrease in the duration of albatross foraging trips between 1970 and 2008 (a drop from 12.4 to 9.7 days). And as a consequence of this change, they write that "breeding success has improved, and birds have increased in mass by more than one kilogram,"..." [Henri Weimerskirch, Maite Louzao, Sophie de Grissac, Karine Delord 2012: Science]
Conclusions: The alarmism of endangered species & climate change is overblown by chicken-little pundits who constantly fail to embrace the empirical evidence. As has been found with the wandering albatross, most marine-based species are propsering within the current climate change conditions that are associated with a modest global warming since the Little Ice Age.
Previous endangered-species and peer-reviewed postings.
