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Another climate classic today: Animals’ body sizes shrinking from climate change, study finds by University of Cape Town
Nice theory if you can get funding for it:
“All else being equal, larger animals can tolerate cold conditions better than smaller animals, so one could expect that a warming climate is relatively more advantageous for smaller animals,” said Professor Altwegg.
There are 8.7 million species on Earth and this is based on “one” of them:
To investigate this idea and whether it could be true, the research team looked at a group of wagtails living along the Palmiet River.
It’s “a” group — just the one — and a temperature change of less than one fifth of a degree over 23 years:
Based on data from a local weather station near the Palmiet River, the researchers knew that temperatures in the area had increased by 0.18 °C. But they didn’t know how this had affected the birds’ size.
What they found supports the idea that climate change can shrink Earth’s animals.
“Supports” the idea? The study’s big achievement was only that it didn’t extinguish the idea at the “back of envelope” stage…
After nearly two weeks the ABC carrier pigeons finally brought the news that Bob Brown, former Greens leader, is campaigning against this gigantic wind farm — the $1.6b one in NW Tasmania that wants to be the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. Could it be the ABC doesn’t want to admit they were wrong too, pushing wind power non stop for years?
Look how erratic that wind is — 90% one day, zero the next
Tom Quirk looked at the nearest wind farm to Robbins Island, and it’s a fitful machine (see that graph below). Worse, it fails in synchrony with most wind farms in Australia. Thus exacerbating the unstable, fickle supply of wind energy.
Tom Quirk predicts the demise of another coal plant
Quirk was Deputy Chairman of VENCorp, which managed the transmission and wholesale natural gas market and system planning for the electricity market in Victoria, Australia.
A wind farm on Robbins Island will simply extend the variations in power supplied to the mainland while making no difference to the correlations of wind through the states in the wholesale market. Thus more backup would be required from gas and hydro sources. Loy Yang B […]
Expensive birds
California Valley Solar Ranch Photo Credit: Sarah Swenty/USFWS
Oops. On June 5th, an event described as “an avian incident” started a fire at the California Valley Solar Ranch plant in California. The 250MW plant was reduced to 40MW of generation. It’s expected to be back up and running on July 1. By then the incident will have cost the company $8m.
‘Avian Incident’ Knocks Out 84% of Massive California Solar Farm
by Millicent Dent, Blomberg
An “avian incident” sparked a fire at one of California’s biggest solar farms, affecting 1,200 acres and knocking out 84% of the California Valley Solar Ranch’s generating capacity.
Impressive company spin:
” incidents such as these give us continued confidence in our risk prevention and mitigation plans.””
It’s not clear if this was one bird, or a flock.
The plant covers 2000 acres (8km2) was built in 2013 at an estimated cost of $1.6b using a $1.2b loan from taxpayers through the DoE. It makes about 550 GWh a year at times that may or may not suit Californians. No doubt readers here will help out comparing the output of an equivalent coal plant built at […]
By Crikey! Birds are deliberately using fire as a tool. Humans are not the only animals on Earth setting things on fire.
Aerial arsonists are on the loose. Sneaky Australian raptors have been spotted picking up burning sticks, or even stealing them from a campfire and then deliberately dropping them on grass so they can feast on rodents fleeing from the fire. Apparently they do this in hunting packs, and will drop the burning stick half a mile away on the far side of waterways or roads. Aboriginal people have been talking about this for years, but no one quite believed it.
This really puts a spanner in the works of the fire management plans. So much for firebreaks.
Someone is going to have to get these birds to apply for permits.
Australian raptors can spread fires. Credit: Bob Gosford
Australian Birds Steal Fire to Smoke Out Prey
Live Science, Mindy Weisberger
Three species of raptors — predatory birds with sharp beaks and talons, and keen eyesight — are widely known not only for lurking on the fringes of fires but also for snatching up smoldering grasses or branches and using them to kindle […]
These birds weigh only 9 grams, but they can apparently tell that the weather is going to get really nasty. Is it infrasound? And how often do thousands of birds split the scene for a false negative scare…
Songbirds fly coop long before tornadoes arrive in Tennessee By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – You might want to be careful about who you call a birdbrain. Some of our feathered friends exhibit powers of perception that put humans to shame.
Scientists said on Thursday that little songbirds known as golden-winged warblers fled their nesting grounds in Tennessee up to two days before the arrival of a fierce storm system that unleashed 84 tornadoes in southern U.S. states in April. The researchers said the birds were apparently alerted to the danger by sounds at frequencies below the range of human hearing
7.8 out of 10 based on 50 ratings […]
This week the Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, called people who oppose green energy subsidies “liars”.
Mr. Schmidt said: “And the people who oppose it (climate change) are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people—they’re just, they’re just literally lying.”
Meanwhile, Google uses mostly non-renewable fuel to power its operations, but has “pledged $1.5billion” to fund renewables. It has invested millions into solar panel plants that are “bird-fryers” — literally roasting birds in the sky. These investments mostly occur in states with renewable-mandates, would not survive without taxpayer funding, qualify for tax credits, and require infrastructure (like transmission lines) that electricity consumers or governments have to fund.
Wall St Journal
Google Kills Birds The mercenary motives behind Eric Schmidt’s appeal to green virtue.
“The real charlatans are businesses like Google that use climate change as a pretext for corporate welfare.”
… nearly all of Google’s solar and wind farms are located in states with renewable-energy mandates, which create opportunities for politically mediated profit-making. For instance, California requires that renewables make up a third of electricity by […]
It’s one rule for you, and another for their friends. If a coal plant was wiping out thousands of birds and bats you can be sure Greenpeace would be launching a campaign. But when an industrial turbine with blade-tips travelling at 180mph does the killing, who cares?
The law for normals makes it expensive to kill birds and bats:
“Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, BP was fined $100 million for the damage it caused to bird populations in the area, both migratory and resident. — AlaskaDispatch
“Exxon Mobil has agreed to pay $600,000 in penalties after approximately 85 migratory birds died of exposure to hydrocarbons at some of its natural gas facilities across the Midwest. — NY Times
And it was going to get expensive for windfarms:
“Nov 22 2013 Duke Energy has agreed to pay a $1 million fine for killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at two Wyoming wind farms. — audublog
That was the first time a windfarm got pinged. And it works out to be about $6000 a bird. Could get expensive, eh?
“The Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that 440,000 birds are […]
Trawling through our National Archives, Lance Pidgeon has found stories of how a heatwave in 1932 was so extreme that it caused mass bird deaths across outback Australia. The PDF is posted on Warwick Hughes blog. As Lance says, imagine the headlines if that had happened 80 years later. Presumably some would blame coal, airconditioners, and SUV’s for “killing billions of birds”. These old newspaper records also raise questions about our national temperature databases. Things appeared to be hotter then, than history now records them? I’ve only had time for a quick look and a cut and paste.
Great numbers were killed alone by the fortnightly train to Alice Springs. These fell exhausted on the railway line. A large number flew into the fans in the carriages and perished. Thousands fell exhausted in water pools and were drowned. A letter from Minnie Downs told of the death of thousands of birds on one day. The temperature that day was 125 degrees in the shade— and there was no shade. One woman at Tarcoola filled a 40-gallon drum, with shell parrots in one afternoon. Trees actually snapped under the strain of flight after flight of birds which swarmed […]
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