Climate Change
Northern Rockies Iconic Species Make New “Hot List”
Creatures have specific climate requirements to stay healthy.
By Jill Kuraitis, 12-02-09
Three critters in the Northern Rockies are featured on a new list of species most at risk of extinction because of a changing climate that affects habitat, breeding cycles and food supplies. Salmon, Canada lynx and grizzly bears are singled out in the report “America’s Hottest Species,” released by the Endangered Species Coalition. 
Leda Huta, the group’s executive director, says although grizzlies have been touted as a success story in endangered species recovery, warmer winters are creating ideal conditions for diseases that are decimating white bark pines, a grizzly food staple. And, shifting seasons mean more run-ins with humans - which can be dangerous to people and bears.
“Having them den later, overlapping more with hunters who shoot them for self-defense or mistaken identity reasons, can be another problem for grizzly bears.” 
The Canada lynx also have specific climate requirements to stay healthy - they need a solid season of deep snows. When snowpack is low, Huta explains, bigger and more aggressive species, like coyotes, edge the lynx out of hunting territories.
“It’s perfectly tailored for snow. I think that people really don’t know what that’s going to mean when this ecosystem sees so much less snow.”
Other species on the list include bull trout, a Hawaiian songbird, and leatherback sea turtles. The report calls for federal action to help species adjust, and a reduction of the types of pollution associated with climate change. The debate on how to slow climate change and whether it is tied to human actions, continues next week at the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. It begins Monday, December 7.
[End of article]At first, this may seem like an over simplification, but I don't think it is: In the final analysis, virtually all the world's environmental, social, political, and economic problems can be traced back to one, single, overiding problem that nobody even talks about, much less does anything about.
That problem is overpopulation. There are simply too many people on the planet; the population of humans is growing geometrically, and the resource base is shrinking, also probably geometrically. An ever-expanding population base pursuing an ever-shrinking resource base is a sure recipe for disaster.
We can talk, gnash our teeth, plea, legislate, and do everything else in tinkering around the edges, but until we not just stop the human population growth, but reverse it, all we'll do is - at best - delay the inevitable collapse of entire ecosystems; which could very well, eventually, lead to wholesale extictions, rivaling that tof the Permain Extictions, when some 90% of all the species on the planet became extinct. The difference would be that the Permian Extinctions took place over hundreds of thousands of years - pehaps millions - and the man-'caused would only take a few centuries, at most.
The earth has a history of mass extinctions due to climate change. And they were not long, involved deals. Most seem to be over a few years. Species that are adaptable manage to hang around, and flourish when climate again changes. Mostly, though, our climate has been getting colder for a few million years, from when there was way less land than now, and much more shallow, warmer water in the seas and on land.
The land masses haven't quit moving towards or away from each other, and even places like Maine are still looking for their geologic memory as the earth's crust seems to be rising due to the weight of past glaciers only a few thousand years missing.
If you were a hedge fund operator, a Vegas gambling boss, you would be putting your money on global cooling because all the numbers show that is the case over the long haul, and has been the case for over a million years. If we are, as a species, derailing the oncoming Ice Age, we should be doing what we are doing, keep doing what we are doing, and dance in the streets.
As for population control, the art and science of demographics, which we will practice with a keen political eye this upcoming year with our unique American census, as nations gain wealth and a better understanding of health, hygiene, agriculture and markets, the number of children born annually drops precipitously. In a generation, Mexican women have gone from an average of 7 children to adulthood down to three. And even India has fewer births per female each succeeding generation. China has a problem in that there are far fewer women in their population than men, and Korea is experiencing a baby boom among non-Korean Asian workers and wives. Our population will grow, but smaller gains and stasis will be the norm in another generation or two. And then what? We are a world that supports the geriatric generations by the work of the younger age classes. The coming problem is nobody working to support the old farts, across the world.
I told my kids twenty years ago that the way this country funds social security and pensions, it was going to be hard on them to work enough to support all the people who were entitled to a living without work. And, I was afraid that the younger generations would put a bounty on old people, dependent people, and hunt them at night with dogs about the time I got real old. I might live to see that.
What we need to do is keep our eye on the ball, and fix our economy. We need to live cheaper, and use less, and move more physically. Or, in a very cynical way, we could just putz along like we now are, and the problem solves itself: the fat people all die young, and the skinny ones will survive to re-order how things are done. Have some health care rationing, and if you smoke, eat too much, have bad genes, you die without the expenditure of trillions on your care to prolong and delay the time of your demise. Eat hearty, and die young. That solves the food production problems, the health care issues, plus it will relieve pressure on resources. Say! Do you suppose that is real purpose of corporate America? To prune the family tree with Big Macs? To Super Size your demise? I must get The Triplets of Belville and watch it again. Either that, or just sit here in the nook and watch the people waddling to the store. They come back by smoking a cigarette, with an iPod in one ear and a Giant Pepsi in the other hand, all schlumped over, in their dark clothes and faux sports gear in triple xxx and bigger. My dogs bark at them, with vigor, which keeps the dogs thin and healthy. Maybe the dogs are smarter than we are. Nah. Chris Mathews barks at people, and he hasn't gotten smarter.
Dat canadian Lynx is a dad burn rodent!!
Where de heck is De Colonel's pea shooter!!
So where do we begin to limit the population, quit developing flu vaccines, quit spending horrendous amounts of money trying to keep those who acquire AIDS alive, quit transplants of body parts, stop trying to cure cancer? A lack of workers may eventually collapse the world economy if the governments don't manage to do it first. Insisting that recreation take precedence over business or food and energy production may do it.
I don't believe any civilization ever was destroyed from being too warm were they, mostly they froze.
Climate change in this day and age has one big effect, it makes tons of money for those doing research and setting up the buying and selling of air. Hopefully the revelations of the last couple of weeks is going to drive a stake in the heart of the global warming charlatans.
Todd: Hear! Hear!....my advice to lynx is to move north. The hares will. For the sockeye salmon: are they using you as surrogates for bull trout? Bull trout have been with us how long? Twenty years? They used to be Dolly Varden, and were Sal. malmo. The fish guys needed a surrogate for fading grayling populations at their southern most habitat margins, so declared that Dolly Varden are the chars that go to sea, and Bull Trout, Sal. confluentus, stay home except to go way, way up creek to spawn. Here it is a new species and already needing ESA protection.
Old Grizz far outnumbers woodland caribou in the lower 48. But not much talk about them since the wolves arrived once again. Do ya s'pose the wuffies have taken them out by now? And if so, would anyone at USFWS tell us?
Yeah, what ABOUT those woodland caribou in the Idaho panhandle? Hmm.
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