Scientific American has an interesting Extinction Countdown blog, and while I think the name puts a weird, anticipatory spin on watching life forms die out forever (or at least until we can clone them again in goats), their newest post is pretty interesting.
It focuses on Henry David Thoreau’s beloved Walden Pond:
Researchers compared Thoreau’s information with data on temperature and plant populations from this century as well as full information on plant phenology (flowering time, germination, migration and other seasonal activities). They found that the average temperature in Concord, Mass., has increased 2.4 degrees Celsius since Thoreau’s time, and that some nonnative plants have adapted by flowering as much as three weeks earlier than they used to. Some native species, by contrast, were less flexible and have not been able to adjust their flowering times. As a result, their populations have dropped.
Two years ago, they found that 27 percent of the plant species Thoreau recorded from 1851 to 1858 are now locally extinct. Another 36 percent “are so sparse that extinction may be imminent,” they wrote in a previous paper. At that time, species like lilies, orchids, violets, roses and dogwoods were shown to have seen the biggest losses.
When this important setting for Thoreau’s painstakingly detailed journey of independence and self-sufficiency becomes extinct (thanks to man’s influence on global warming), Walden will become the ultimate failed manifesto for simple living.
At least, until scientists find a goat with a uterus fit for a pond.
It’s Walden Pond, not Waldon Pond.
I’ve been there. It’s not exactly in some remote, isolated area, you know. It’s most likely due to the localized effect of having shitloads of people around, not some great global problem.
The temperature increase is likely partly due to Red Sox fans pissing in the lake.
“…man’s influence”, huh? Granted, most politicians have been men over the decades so that accounts for a lot of hot air.
I am sure you meant human influence.
The comments on the article are surprising for a scientific magazine. It seemed like about half of them are from global warming deniers, and they are %100 sure that global warming is %100 hoax. Do oil companies pay internet commenters to forward their agenda online?
“locally extinct” is not the same thing as “extinct”.
doesnt anyone know that ponds are not permanent? they evolve and change much like forests. eventually ponds fill and become fields, especially if they are filled with a stream carrying dirt. at different depths different species thrive. one day it will be grass. we should exterminate grass cuz it was part of the demise of walden’s pond. geez people wake up.
5
the whole world is catching on to the manufactured “Climate Crisis” BULLSHIT and isn’t going to take it anymore.
@7, you’re missing the point: Walden pond is disappearing because of a combination of human-introduced invasive species and rising temperatures (aka the myth of global warming). The fact that this is happening at Walden pond in particular–the setting for a famous memoir/manifesto on simplicity and living in nature–is tragically hilarious.
If by ‘whole world’ you mean the people that listen to Fox News, and by ‘bullshit’ you mean scientific fact, then I totally agree with you.
I’m just curious as to why you will listen to bought and paid for partisan media personalities and represtatives of oil companies over climate scientists. Oh wait, according to the Fox News world view, the less you know about something, the more of an expert you are.
Seriously, Exposed, how can you be so sure? According to a Harris Interactive Poll around %97 of people that study the climate say that the Earth is warmer than it was 100 years ago, and %87 agree that humans are the cause. As a non-scientist, I have to say that there has been a very solid case made that global warming is caused by man, and would be bad for humanity. The evidence is overwhelming. The consequences are dire, and even if we’re not totally sure, we’re sure enough to do something about it.
So given the facts presented, I can’t understand why climate change deniers are such zealots. You aren’t a skeptic. You just called it ‘Bullshit’. You are %100 sure of something, that even the experts on the subject aren’t. If it’s a religious belief your supporting, then you have no business speaking on scientific matters because science is only concerned with facts. If you just latched on because you consider yourself a conservative, then you just aren’t thinking for yourself. So if your writing on the internet that sure climate change isn’t happening, then your an idiot or your being paid.
@7 It’s the rate of change that causes people to worry. When the climate changes quickly, people starve.
@9, you’re missing the point: Ponds disappear.
Even ponds in the middle of the wilderness.
They.
Dis.
Appear.
poof
@11 That’s how we know that the world is only 6000 years old, there are still ponds. If the world were older, there would be no ponds left because ponds disappear.
@11 You are missing the point because you are assuming that scientifically literate people are as simple minded as you. Just because you can’t grasp complexity, that doesn’t mean that understanding of basic science is beyond everyone else in the world.
Walden Pond wasn’t very isolated when Thoreau lived there and I never really understood why his boring memoir of Trustefarian slacking was taken as some sort of bible of simplicity and independence.
It’s sad about the disappearance of Native Species in New England.
@7/@9,
Walden Pond might have the word “pond” in its name, but it has a surface area of 61 acres and a depth of 102 feet. It was formed by glaciers 10,000 – 12,000 years ago. Like other kettle ponds/lakes, it’s probably fed by underground aquifers and would ordinarily be much deeper and cleaner than what you’re thinking of as a “pond”.
Be serious – how long do you suppose it might take for a kettle lake of this size and depth to go “poof” or grass over if it were in the wilderness?
Damn it, I meant @7 and @11…
10
Thank you for your comment/question.
you deserve better than the glib smartass crack @8.
I approach it from a totally scientific perspective.
Climate IS changing.
It happens.
Not to be glib- Climate changes, it is always changing.
Humans are part of the ecosystem.
We affect it to some degree.
So do elephants passing gas.
Neither of us are ‘evil’.
We just are.
The Global Warming/Crisis zealots have used demagoguery and 100% crap junk science to panick the gullible credulous masses who are predisposed to see man as evil and worship “Nature” without understanding it.
The junk science is what offends me the most.
Gore with his smug smarmy over simplifications set reasoned discourse back 50 years.
I’m not proud of it cause it’s small and petty, but, yeah- at this point just on the principle of the thing I will mock and snicker “global WARMING…” every time there is a cold spell.
Everything that happens has an impact and that includes manmade emissions however it is also true that natural events outside our control can come along and in a flash totally change the equation.
A ‘Krakatoa’ could blanket the planet in dust and cool things, sunspots could kick up and bake us.
In light of that it is difficult to get exited about gutting the economy to follow Gore’s perscription.
Adapting to change, whatever it turns out to be, seems a more reasonable less hysterical course.
If i were trying to rally the skeptics I would start over.
Repudiate Gore and the phony email crowd and all the scientific corner cutting simplification that has gotten us here.
Admit that we aren’t sure but would like to do some unbiased research to see where we are and can go.
Emphasise the national security aspects of energy independence.
Emphasise the economic benefits of new energy strategies. this seems a no-brainer but Obama has done zilch so far…
Even if there was zero risk of global warming there are critical and compelling reasons to get away from our current oil dependent model, mostly because it renders our cities/suburbs unlivable auto-chocked hellholes. I have spent years in cities (overseas) where they do public transportation right. Most Americans have no idea what they are missing. And if we got serious about it it would require reworking most of our cities. If handled correctly it would spur enormous economic activity but be a win-win as we enable more people to live with a higher quality of life and smaller carbon footprint on a smaller piece of turf. Jobs? think of the manhatten project and NASA and WW2 all rolled into one huge research industrial construction event.
It will require leadership.
That has not been evident from any side of the political spectrum so far…
@9/@14; all bodies of water evolve; every single one. Walden pond is no exception. It doesn’t matter where the water comes from that that fills or keeps filled the pond. the water contains non-water things like silt, dust and dirt, which accumulate over time, giving rise to different place species and animal species that thrive on it. blah. blah. blah. i thought this stuff was taught in junior high level science class?
12
Allow me to elaborate:
Ponds disappeear.
New ones appear.
Rivers change course.
Mountains wash into river deltas.
Species thrive.
New ones come along and thrive better.
Bye bye ‘native’ species.
The only constant is Change.
If you try to freeze an ecosystem, keep it static, you kill it.
It stagnates and smothers itself.
There has to be turnover.
Out with the old, in with the new.
Bye bye pond.
Hello pond…
(ps- it also works the same with economies…)
@17, @18,
Here’s what I think you should do:
Write a letter to the scientists who did the research on climate change at Walden Pond. You can perhaps enlighten them with your elementary knowledge about ponds (regardless of whether it applies to this particular kettle-lake “pond” or not).
I’ll bet they never even considered any of these points. And surely they are unfamiliar with the concept of change within an ecosystem.
19
These “scientist” are Liberal hack attention whores using all the right buzzwords to get their “research” into the MSM.
If you read their hack piece you discover there are NO species at Walden Pond in danger of extinction.
But that wouldn’t make a good headline, would it?
Keep lapping up the koolaid.
Liberal critical thinking is what is going extinct….
@20. Let me guess. You also believe 9/11 was planned by the government and that Barack Obama was born in Africa. I assume you do, since neither of those is as preposterous as believing scientists world-wide are conspiring on a hoax.
Talk about lapping up the kool-aid. Keep drinking what Fox gives you.
21
9-11!
Birthers!!
Koolaid!!!
Fox News!!!
you forgot tinfoil hats…
“How dare someone blaspheme the secular Humanist God of Global Warming?!
Non-believers will be ridiculed, shunned, stripped of research grants, denied tenure….
I Excomunicate You!”
I know that few researchers are going to jeapordize career and income to go against the hurricaine strength prevailing PC winds of Liberal Orthodoxy.
Your non-response to issues raised is the typical tactic of the left.
Ridicule over Fact (handy, since the facts don’t support you)
You DO realize it was warmer during the Middle Ages than it is now.
Don’t you?
I remember hiking up to the Glaciers in the various mountain ranges of BC.
Most of those glaciers are gone. Been there for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
Gone.
23
those glaciers are ponds now
@22
You DO realize it was warmer during the Middle Ages than it is now.
Don’t you?
No.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwar…
North Atlantic
.A radiocarbon-dated box core in the Sargasso Sea shows that the sea surface temperature was approximately 1 °C warmer than today 1000 years ago (the Medieval Warm Period).
Keigwin, Lloyd D. (1996), “The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea”, Science 274 (5292): 1503 – 1508, doi:10.1126/science.274.5292.1503
You’re using funny numbers scrubbed by Al Gore Global Hoax; Incorporated, dear-
A recent article in the journal Science has provided a new, detailed climate record for the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), also know as the Medieval Warm Period. It was the most recent pre-industrial warm period, noted in Europe and elsewhere around the globe. The researchers present a 947-year-long multi-decadal North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) reconstruction and find a persistent positive NAO during the MCA. The interesting thing is that the MCA had basically been removed from the climate record by Michael Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” history graph that was adopted by the IPCC a decade ago…
What they are saying is that both the MCA and the LIA were real and had identifiable root causes. This result stands in stark contrast with the hocky stick result where the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age almost disappeared, replaced by a largely benign, slight cooling trend that lasted until ~1900.
This is just the latest in a series of reports that quietly contradict some of the more outlandish untruths spread by the anthropogenic global warming extremists of the IPCC.