I don't disagree with broader picture. And there is the risk of alienating some with mere use of the word 'climate', whereas you could demonize, say, palm-oil industry with lots less push-back. But I do subscribe to science and if ornithologists are correlating temperature shifts with migration etc. then I'm not going to hide my concern. I also thought it was relatively 'balanced' (of course the title is clickbait...):
"The scientists said human activity was likely to be driving the drops in numbers, with changing rainfall patterns, increasing temperatures and deforestation causing stress to bird populations."
In the 1990s, The British Trust for Ornithology was in the midst of transferring its 50+ years of millions of card-based records (
eg ringing, nest records, phenological data) to computer. As this mammoth task proceeded, on-screen analysis of the building electronic database revealed widespread trend changes in dates of arrival and departure of migrants, earlier laying dates of residents, and mismatches of changes with food availability. For many bird species, their earlier arrival or breeding coincided with earlier availability of food sources, but for a number of bird species, especially those for whom caterpillars were a crucial food for nestlings, the caterpillar phenology was changing more slowly and so nest productivity reduced. Yet other migrant bird species, the Common Swift in particular, were behaviourally into rigid migration times, and found that several insect main prey species at the breeding grounds had already peaked.
These changes correlated well with rising mean temperatures earlier in the year and being maintained for longer periods; winter mean temperatures also showed a steady rise, which was reflected in changing numbers and locations of winter migrants, and reduced proportions of residents undergoing short migrations distances. Papers published at that time attributed these considerable changes over a relatively short timescale to climate change. the only thing that has changed since is a general acceleration of these processes. So, from the mid-1930s almost a century until now, the data on (mostly) UK birds at the BTO document relentless change due to climate change.
Climate change is a highly complex subject, particularly in those branches of science that have to develop understanding how chaotic systems (such as the atmosphere, the oceans, and the disproportionate affect of small incremental changes on the systems that function in dynamic cycles like seasonal changes) work on their own or in conjunction with others. The sheer scope of the subject and the difficulty that ordinary people have in understanding the bewildering incomprehensibility of scientific detail well beyond their own experience isn't surprising. For some, it's a case of "If I don't understand it, it must be rubbish".
Hundreds of thousands of researchers working in dozens of interlinked scientific disciplines in over 200 countries at scientific institutes, universities and in the field are directly involved with aspects of climate research. Every single author of a peer-reviewed scientific paper published in a reputable journal knows that the result of any research that presaged a break-through that would significantly lessen the task of limiting climate change would result in a Nobel Prize. So far, no magic bullet has been found, let alone hypothesised. The evidence is that climate change at the rate it is happening now is due to a multiplicity of human-caused factors.
MJB
