The Three-Minute Outdoorsman: Wild Science from Magnetic Deer to Mumbling Carp

26. Recent Developments in the Climate Change News

t h e t h r e e - m i n u t e o u t d o o r s m a n 104 twice. The Gotelli team suggested that therefore the probability of observing a new species, that is, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, was essentially zero. A second study, using different methods, arrived at the same conclusion: persistence is improbable. At least some who reported seeing the bird stick to their guns. One experienced observer recounted that he got a ten-totwelve -second look as the bird flew over the trees, and that the wing was white both on top and bottom, an ivory-bill hallmark. He commented that it flew like no other woodpecker. Many attribute the lack of resightings to the bird having a large home range with plenty of places to hide. The believers continue to believe in the sightings. I was not there, but I have to number myself among the doubters. I do believe that those who reported the bird believe that they saw an Ivory-billed Woodpecker . I wish that were the same as actually seeing one. Still I hope I’m wrong and that somewhere, overlooked by armies of watchers, the species still persists. I fear, however, that believing is seeing, and our brief elation over the continued survival of the ivory-bill was a result of some optimistic mind’s eyes. 26 recent developments in the climate change news Although I earned a Ph.D. in zoology, there is an enormous number of fields about which I know no more, and probably less, than the average person. Perhaps the most important thing I have learned is to recognize when I don’t know enough to have an informed opinion. So if someone asks me what kind of rocket fuel NASA should use, I have to admit I don’t have a clue, but I hope NASA consults experts and not people whose opinion is based on secondhand information. I have been as interested as anyone else in the volatile field of I N T H E W O O D S 105 climate change. I see at least two questions: (1) Has the earth’s temperature increased in the past one hundred to two hundred years, and (2) if so, what caused it? Not being an expert in these fields, I have to rely on people who I think are experts based on their training and the research they have published in peer-reviewed journals. Most studies suggest that the earth’s average temperature has warmed. What does this mean, exactly? It does not mean that Minnesota will not have cold days or cold winters. It does not mean that the earth is warmer everywhere, all the time. Some areas might be colder. It’s an average. And a change in the average temperature can result from several different scenarios. Low temperatures can stay the same, while high temperatures go up. Both lows and highs can get warmer. Or, as seems to be the case, the low temperatures can go up, while the high temperatures stay the same. In all cases the average goes up. To put it in local perspective , if winter temperatures are warmer and summer temperatures stay the same, the average Minnesota temperature goes up—over long periods of time, not every day, month, or year. Numerous biological studies tell us that the breeding seasons of many animals in the northern United States and Europe have started earlier or their breeding ranges have shifted northwards . This is simply not debatable. A few of many examples will be enough. The midpoint in latitude of the American Goldfinch’s range has shifted north by two hundred miles in the past four decades. Glacier lilies in Colorado bloom seventeen days earlier now than they did forty years ago. The range of the North American pika, a small mammal in the western United States with no tail and rounded ears, has shrunk by 50 percent in the past one hundred years. Pikas have very specific temperature requirements: they die in extreme heat and in winter if there is no snow under which to burrow. Pikas no longer occur in areas they once did owing to a changing climate. Similarly, those who have lived in Minnesota for long enough know that opossums are relative newcomers from the south. Any one of these examples could be “explained away” with- t...