Hmmm... I thought I read somewhere around here that animals are wholely unable to adapt to environmental changes and therefore must immediately perish. See the polar bear model described previously.

When I grew up in Oregon's Willamette Valley (born in 1973) we only had Canada Geese as migrants. But now, there is no shortage of birds that winter there. If anyone has a possible explanation for this other than a warming climate, I'd be interested in hearing it. I generally use this as an example that I can point to, and let people know that the evidence for a warming climate is not simply in the scientist's lab; they can literally see it.

Darren - you're spot on. As climates change - as they've been doing for billions of years - animals just move. Its not like they have mortgages or kids in school holding them to a particular neighborhood. Even the polar bears seemed to have made it through all the past warming periods.

Part of me, though, has to wonder. IF the Oriole has actually left Maryland, is it really because Maryland its one of, if not the, most urbanized states in the nation? DC and Baltimore are sprawling cities that basically occupy the entire eastern part of the state. I think thats more likely to be the cause of any 'migration' than a supposed 1 degree change in temperature over 100 years. The year to year variation in temperatures, as well as the difference in temperatures between the hilly western MD and lowland eastern MD are far, far bigger than any temp change due to 'climate change'.

(sorry for any double posts - accuweather.com stalled out the first time I posted this)

And thus goes the whole animal migration thing that has been happening since the beginning of time.

Sadly though we don't see many horned toads here either and they were plentiful.

But...BUT...maybe these animals are politically motivated and they're only moving north because they're anti-capitalists who want to give the Communist Left another piece of evidence to point to in their quest to transform America into a Communist State. The animals have an agenda too, don't you see?

That was sarcasm, btw.

I was born in Ohio in '68--when I was a kid, seeing Canada Geese was a special treat. Now we call them "sky carp" and have been for 15 years or so because there are so many. Lots of them don't even bother to migrate. Why? Well, it has nothing to do with global warming. Lots of people feed the darn things and they just stick around. That may not account for what's happening in Oregon, but I can assure you, Ohio winters are just as bad as they ever were. Besides, according to the alarmists of the 70's, we should be headed into an ice age. Al Gore will be a laughingstock in a few years, as he should be.

Please!!!
Lets make every question fit the nice tidy answer.
CLIMATE CHANGE....Now thats easy.
We live in an era of short attention spans and sound bites making every revelation of percieved change into a certain fact.
In my yrs.of being an avid outdoorsman,I have seen many speces of plant growing out of its perfect habitat. Animals adapting to changes manmade or not living outside of its typical areas.Nature in its most basic form is constantly changing.
So lets step back and smell the roses and not use every possible finding of change in nature to fit the answer of climate change.

To mimitton:
As a person who has made their living off of waterfowl, I feel that I can offer expert fact (not opinion) as to what is going on with the Canada geese in Oregon, or anywhere else.

Based on what you state, I'm assuming that earlier in your life the geese merely passed over on their way south. Now they are stopping in your area and spending the winter. The following is based on that presumption.

To begin with, you do not mention what type of Canada Geese you're dealing with. Are they Giant Canadas? Western Canadas? Dusky Canadas? Short Grass Lessers? Tall Grass Lessers? Hutchin's Canadas or any of the other subspecies? The subspecies we're dealing with makes all the differnce in the world as to what has made them move into your area. In short however, all waterfowl are tied to food and water. When agricultural practices change, so do waterfowl migration routes (agriculture is the chief food source of geese during the fall and winter months). What you are seeing in Oregon is one of four things, none of which has anything to do with global warming.

First, areas to the north of you that traditionally held geese have now changed their growing practices and this has forced geese further south...geese you never knew about until they started using your area.

Second, areas to the south of you changed their growing practices, while at the same time your area started having better agricultural conditions. The geese simply stop short now because the food and water situation is better...for the time being.

Third, is that vital wetlands have either been destroyed elsewhere, or new wetlands have been created in your part of Oregon that makes this area more attractive to geese.

Fourth, and most likely, is that Canada goose numbers have absolutely exploded over the years. There are places all over the US that have geese now that never had them before. Agricultural areas can only feed so many and the rest of the geese have to find other suitable habitat to survive. They are constantly moving into new areas because of this.

I'm telling you, you see geese that seem to be moving north over time, but there are other areas of the country where the exact opposite is happening. Global warming has nothing to do with it...available food and water does. And when those 2 things are not available together, the geese will move someplace, north or south, that will allow them to survive.

Please keep in mind that all animals, particularly birds and sealife, are constantly expanding their range and it has nothing to do with global warming. It's simply the nature of life.

Wild turkeys will expand their range by five miles a year, north and south, as long as there is suitable habitat for them to move into and nesting conditions are right.

Whitewing dove in Texas expanded north over the past 25 years, but not due to global warming. The super hard freeze of 1983, and again in 1989, destoyed much of their nesting habitat in deep South Texas and northern Mexico. Because the habitat in North and Central Texas was better able to tolerate that cold, the birds simply moved further north in the spring until favorable nesting conditions were found. The nesting habitat in South Texas has recovered, but not before Whitewing populations have exploded in northern areas that traditionally did not have them. We can thank the cold for that.

When Al Gore on 3/21/07, makes the statement that 2 manatee's were found further north than their traditional range, and then claims, "they're moving because their home is so hot", it makes me shudder. I didn't hear him mention the manatee that was discovered in Texas waters last year (a first). Texas waters are typically "warmer" than Florida waters. The bottom line is the Florida Keys water is no hotter today than it was 20 years ago. Yet we don't hear about that fact.

Somewhere we have to stop the sensationalism. Animal life expands when proper conditions exist. That's just a simple fact. I just wish we could stop crying wolf whenever we see expansion, and just enjoy it for what it is...nature at work.

The bird numbers are down in my area. The north shore of the St Lawrence river bordering on New York State used to have many more birds including Oriles, Cardinals and many swallows. I feel this is because of the drastic decline of the insects. Some birds I believe depend on insects for food and some can use seeds as well as insects. Even the Robins are few and far between these days.
Wayne

Wayne:

It's obvious, all of the additional CO2 that we have been dumping into the environment has finally caught up to the poor insects. They simply can't handle it and die. A most horrible death I'm sure according to the AGW proponents. The birds then have no choice but to leave to find food somewhere else. It is clearly a result of rampant GW.

Awww rats... I forgot, according to the proponents, since it is warmer, insects will survive the mild winters and overrun the earth spreading pestilence and the like. It is us meek humans that will have to move to avoid the coming plague.

My mistake...I really don't why the birds may be leaving. I wish the story could be straightened out so we can all figure out what to do...or not to do. Or whatever.

Al Gore made an excellent point about Manatees. These creatures are highly temperature sensitive as undoubtedly are other marine life. If they are found farther north, it's because they have found the water temperature tolerable there. Of course species can fan out in search of suitable habitat and a reliable food supply where such have faltered in their known range. But in the case of Manatees where water temperature is critical, the only explanation for their appearance farther north is warmer water farther north. ( We can debate the cause of the warmer water. ) I watched the senate hearing and I don't recall Gore making the assertion that Florida waters have become intolerablly warm for Manatees prompting two individuals to head north. This would be a very foolish statement to make. If the statement were true, the entire Manatee population would be in migration which is obviously not the case. So my question to Phil Robertson is, where in his testimony did Gore make the assertion about Manatees and water temperature?

Thor,
To answer your question, here is the exchange between James Inhofe, R-Okla, and yours truly, Al Gore.

Inhofe: "It seems that everything is blamed on global warming. Last summer we had a heat wave and everyone said, 'Oh that's proof it's global warming'. Then we had a mild December. 'Oh, that's proof that global warming is taking place'...How come you guys never seem to notice when it gets cold?"

Gore: "...A manatee showed up off Memphis, Tennessee last summer. First time ever. It got too hot in southern Florida. I'm not making this up. Another one showed up off of Cape Cod, first time ever. Nature is on the run."

Thor, I agree with you. That was a very foolish statement to make. But hey, I'm just glad I'm not making this up.

I have been watching this blog for several weeks and have refrained from commenting as there are several great posts that usually mirror my sentiment. However, I feel I now have something to chime in about.

First, in gerneral terms, WARMING is GOOD, and COOLING is BAD. The earth does one or the other. If you think wildlife is going to perish because we are warming, you have no idea how devasting cooling will be. Animals, including humans, adapt better to warm periods than cool periods. You can't grow crops or vegetation on snow. Manmade or not, warming is nothing to be alarmed about. Only politicians trying to justify a way to redistribute wealth will say warming is a crisis.

I grow palms as a hobby. Palms, as most people are aware, are not very cold hardy. Few species are able to survive frost or freezing temps that last more than a few hours. By and large palms survive in the tropics, subtropics and few survive in the warm temperate zones. Beacuse of this I am very in tune with temps and growing zones. I can assure you my area of FL has not experienced any significant warming. I wished it would though! The variety of palms I could grow would increase significantly. The National Arbor Day Foundation recently moved us up a growing zone. This means I should be able to grow several new species of more cold tender palms. HOWEVER, they based their data off 1990 to present. This completely ignores the devasting freezes my area experienced in the 80s. That decade had some of the coldest temps ever recorded for our area. Unless the Arbor Day Foundation will insure my stock I am not about to field grow several acres of strictly tropical palms.

In closing... BRING ON THE WARMING! I want to sell landscape palms to Minnesotans!

Don't mean to pre-empt Phil Robertson but I did find a direct quote from Gore's senate testimony concerning the two wayward Manatees - "It got too hot in south Florida" Well, for anomalously warm water to be the impetus for only two peregrinating manatees is rather mystifying. It appears Gore got some bad advice from a marine biologist or simply ad libed. I'm no expert here but logically it would seem that regional climate change can be one of a number of reasons that species relocate or extend their range. These regional changes can occur absent any appreciable change in global temperature. In defense of Al Gore, this does not refute global warming. Indeed near shore temperatures in the subtropics have probably become a little uncomfortably warm for the Manatees that typically dwell in the mangrove swamps and estuaries. For one of these creatures to have been found off Cape Cod is strong circumstantial evidence that anomalously warm water existed much farther north at the time. This one finding has me thinking that a lot of ocean water has warmed recently. Again, the debate, as senator Inhofe likes to frame it and correctly so, - Is the warming largely natural or is it man-made? The senator is convinced it's largely natural. I respect that position and for the record, I have no evidence to discredit that postion. I wonder what Sen Inhofe thinks about the carbon acidification of the ocean and Man's alleged harmful contribution. I think a compelling argument can be made because much of our carbon output is taken up by the oceans

Maybe these two Manatees just wanted to see the world, or maybe they were born with a directional deficiency and it has nothing to do with any warming at all. Maybe the one spotted off Cape Cod was really freezing to death and regretted leaving Florida, even though it sounded like a good idea at the time.

I think we tend to place too much surveillence into everything that's been taking place in our back yards for centuries, only now we can hang every observation on the crisis of the day as a sign that somethings looming. Stranger things happen in nature that have nothing to do with anything. Chaulk it up to "we don't know what those two Manatees were thinking".

HiDarren:
With all the extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere there will be an imbalance to our air. The oxygen content I believe is becoming so low that it won't support some of these insects anymore.
However I have no statistics on the oxygen content but it does make some sense to me. Even house flies in my area have been on the decline for about three years now and there seems to be a shortage of honey bees now which may cause a lot of concerns if the crops are not pollinated.
Now on a more serious note there may be insect life that has been dormant for many years that will thrive with poor air quality and bring forth many unwanted new species.
Melting ice caps may release species trapped for hundreds of years into the oceans and rivers and this may or may not be wanted. Winters are long in Canada. Let the heat come gently and we will be happy.
Wayne