JoNova

A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).

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Climate causes Heated Cats, native extinction. Wait… your light globes?

And so it flows. Climate causes bored dogs, but warmer winters cause, er, heated cats. The randy felines make more kittens, which means more strays, more ferals, and less marsupial mice.

Track the logic. We took long showers which made more CO2, the Earth warmed and so more cats have kittens out of season. The answer then is to take cold showers to change the weather and save the Black-tailed Antechinus. Then again, we could give the cats the cold showers instead…

When Kristina Vesk started working at the Cat Protection Society of NSW in 2006, she rarely saw kittens in winter. Now warmer weather means cats are breeding all year round, increasing the numbers of unwanted kittens and the threat to native wildlife from strays and feral cats.

Hold that thought — there is another theory. Conflict coming:

Vanessa Barrs, a Professor of Feline Medicine at the University of Sydney, said … breeding can be influenced by photoperiod, the number of available daylight hours, and “cats artificially exposed to 12 hours of light indoors … can be induced to breed all year round”, she said.

So that would be all the CFL and LED […]

February 11th, 2016 | Tags: , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Bored dogs, ripped furniture — blame climate change

Things are really getting serious now. There is not only extinction and endless droughts, but there are depressed dogs. Unprecedented depressed dogs. The chain of effect goes like this: electric heaters cause climate change which makes winters wetter in England and owners don’t like mud, so ipso, ergo, garbo, dogs get stuck indoors, go stir crazy and rip furniture.

I presume the answer to this is to sell the car, cancel the heating, and wait for the world to warm cool for your dog to get happy?

Leading pet behaviourists told The Independent that the number of depressed and unsettled dogs they have seen in recent months is unprecedented.

Carolyn Menteith, a dog behaviourist who was named Britain’s Instructor of the Year in 2015, says Global Warming might be causing pets to become depressed:

“I’ve never seen our dogs or horses this bored before in 20 years.

Yes, this is the worst in recorded history, or 20 years, whichever comes first.

Horses that have lived happily outside before are saying ‘I actually can’t cope with this mud and wet anymore’…”.

For me, the unprecedented thing here is the talking horse.

[…]

February 6th, 2016 | Tags: , | Category: Funny stuff, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Global Warming to destroy sea-food as well

It’s a disaster for fish and chip shops. Children won’t know what a sea-food restaurant is.

Our oceans are warming by 0.005 °C per year (if you believe a thermometer system with a 0.5 °C error). But fish that cope with five degrees of natural variation will apparently be devastated by an average rise of five thousands of a degree per year. Who knew?

Earth’s oceans vary from 0 – 30° C. Warm and cold currents wander, eddy currents swirl. Very little of the ocean’s surface is actually at the exact “average” temperature. In any one spot, temperatures can be a full five degrees above or below average (as in this NOAA graph, below).

The sea surface temperature varies by up to five degrees from average every day

Humans may well be changing global fish stocks, but why toss in the unscientific advertising for “climate change”? As for the acidification scare, ocean pH changes on a daily basis, and hundreds of studies show that marine life might even benefit from a slight increase in “acidification”.

ScienceDaily

Seafood supply altered by climate change

The global supply of seafood is set to change substantially and many people will not […]

July 3rd, 2015 | Tags: , , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Your car causes war! Feel the fear about Australia’s climate security.

Not only climate change destroy coffee, chocolate and beer, but war is going to ruin your weekends too.

When war breaks out and they come for your first-born, you may ask if you should’ve left the car in the garage more. You may wonder if you could have used public transport, and converted all the lights to LEDs sooner and only eaten locally sourced oranges. Feel the guilt. Send them your money.

Walk for Peace!

There is no end to the combinations and permutations of ways to use fear to ask for funds. Before we set up Departments of Climate Change, Global carbon trading markets, Emissions reductions schemes, and prepare our Defence Force for the wave of violent desperate climate refugees that were forecast but didn’t come, we need one thing more than any other. We need climate models that actually work.

“Climate change will destabilise our region and undermine our way of life, yet we are doing nothing to prevent it.”

Exactly, we are doing nothing, nothing useful at all. Though we are pouring billions of dollars down deep wells trying to reduce CO2, and prepare for a climate we absolutely cannot predict. (Is that the […]

June 22nd, 2015 | Tags: , , | Category: Funny stuff, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Look out! Climate change makes fish reckless

AIMS researchers found that fish near a natural CO2 vent were not as scared of predators as their colleagues from more alkaline water: “Ocean Acidification robs reef fish of their fear of predators”.

They compared populations in reefs with normal pH levels with those near the vent. I note this line in the abstract didn’t make it to the press release:

“Contrary to expectations, fish diversity and community structure differed little between CO2 seeps and nearby control reefs.”

So the natural laboratory of the vent has biodiversity and a community, despite the “acid” (which is not acidic of course). Milne Bay, I gather, has pH of 7.7.

The abstract points out that there might be a reason why fish are bolder:

“Our results suggest that recruitment of juvenile fish from outside the seeps, along with fewer predators within the seeps, is currently sufficient to offset any negative effects of high CO2 within the seeps.”

Less predators, anyone?

So these might be well adapted little fish that suit the natural environment around them? Call the press…

If warming were politically correct, then people might say the fish became more confident. : -)

Indeed shouldn’t we worry that fish in higher […]

April 14th, 2014 | Tags: , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |