Huffing and Puffin' On the Isle of Maybe

Rich wonders:

"Nature as harmonious and peaceful? Have these people watched Springwatch?"

Good point. They had live footage of swallows eating their own chicks the other day.

Springwatch somehow manages to marry the genres of science documentary, freakshow and aspirational lifestyle programme. And how better to combine the three than with a bit of dolphin telekinesis? Not only can dolphins navigate and hunt using sonar, but by picking up each others' sonar as it bounces back, they can, ("we think," coughs co-presenter Simon King), read each others' minds.

Wow, dolphins. See how these clever, gentle creatures play...

[Shots of dolphins riding the multi-storey bow-waves of oil tankers in the Moray Firth.
Cut to celebrity wildlife-sound-recordist, Christ Watson, against a sunset. He is listening theatrically into earphones and twiddling special dials on a machine slung over his shoulder]

Simon King: "Their whole world is made up of a picture of sound. And on that point, I'd just like to show you something. Just have a look at this:

"Of course there's a lot of boat traffic up and down the Moray Firth. You'd expect it; it's normal; has been here for many years. But just listen - and this is just normal boat traffic - just listen. Just listen to what happens.
That's what you hear above water...

[calming shooshing noise].

"And this is what you hear underwater...

[horrible grinding drone]

"Sound travels about five time faster through salt water than it does through air, and it's just astonishingly loud from such a huge distance.

"Now I know there are proposals to potentially develop oil and gas extraction near the Moray Firth. And you've got to think; there's going to be increased traffic; there's going to be building; there's going to be all sorts of seismic activity; and as a result, you know, what's that going to do to the dolphins? There's a lot of study still to go, but, I don't know, the conclusion? Still waiting [...]

Kate Humble: "Thank you Simon. Yes he's right. I mean, there's been quite a lot of talk recently, particularly when there are, kind of like, multi-strandings of dolphins or whales, that it could be down to noise pollution."

Bill Oddie: "Yeah"

KH: "And when you hear that sort of thing, it doesn't surprise you at all."

BO: "Not at all. I was up there last year, with Chris Watson, actually, and we recorded the sound of a much bigger boat than that. And, I promise you, I had the earphones on. By the time it was within half a mile, it was like Status Quo on a bad night, you know, and not quite as entertaining, I promise you. The noise was unbelievable. I really couldn't keep the earphones on."

KH: "And you can see how disorienting that would be, particularly if it's sound you rely on so much to find your way, your sense of direction."

BO: "Totally, yes."

KH: "Well, certainly, yes, research needs to be done."

BO: "Well, I think the research has been done, you see. I just personally think it's just perfectly obvious that it is a problem. And we know that and, really, some sort of legislation should be done. And that should be a boat-free area, really.

So, in summary, dolphins love playing about around huge, noisy tankers. But surely, all that noise can't be good for them? Perhaps we should do some research. Although, nah, you just can't be too careful, and anyway Bill Oddie once had his earphones turned up too high, so we'd better just ban something.

We're back to Dr Fox again. Except that this is no nutter on a comedy programme. This is the voice of the BBC.

Further down the east coast, on the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, there is another environmental calamity in progress. The BBC is on to it:

Fewer puffins are going to breed at the UK's largest colony of the species, on the Isle of May, scientists report.

Numbers are down to about 41,000 breeding pairs this year from almost 70,000 pairs in 2003.

We have as little against puffins as we do against dolphins. The Isle of May is beautiful. We know it well. You can't move for puffin burrows. That's because the Isle of May's puffin population has been growing spectacularly over the last half century.

Puffin numbers on the Isle of May increased steadily from a handful of pairs 50 years ago to around 69,300 pairs in 2003.

Global warming good for puffins, anybody? On the contrary, the BBC somehow still manages to turn it into a global warming scare story:

Researchers believe the decline is linked to changes in the North Sea food web, perhaps related to climate change.

And yet, despite being quoted at length in the article, Professor Mike Harris from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), who conducted the research, apparently says nothing about the climate change connection. Neither does the CEH press release that announced the survey results. The BBC has to go to the RSPB press office for that:

The suspicion is that climate change is altering the distribution of plankton across the North Sea.

This disrupts the entire food web, including predators such as puffin.

"This fits in with other evidence that North Sea birds have been desperately short of food over several seasons," said the RSPB's Grahame Madge.

By the time that the story has made it down to children's news reports, the BBC has dropped any caution or context whatsoever. We're killing the puffins and that's all there is to it:

Scientists are worried that puffins are getting underweight and dying because they haven't got enough fish to eat in the North Sea.

The Firth of Forth in Scotland is home to one of the UK's largest puffin colonies.
But experts who've been counting the seabirds there say their numbers have fallen by about a third in five years.

They think climate change could be to blame for the birds not having enough to eat.

Oh for the days when all kids had to worry about was nuclear annihilation. At least that would be quick. Without a cold war to scare them silly, children now have to lie awake at night
fretting about the ecopocalypse.

Here's something else to give them nightmares: The Moray Firth bottlenosed dolphins, which are among the best studied population of dolphins anywhere, have a nasty habit of going around murdering harbour porpoises. What's more, they only do that because they mistake them for baby bottlenosed dolphins:

'Evidence for Infanticide in Bottlenose Dolphins: An Explanation for Violent Interactions with Harbour Porpoises?'

Most harbour porpoises found dead on the north-east coast of Scotland show signs of attack by sympatric bottlenose dolphins, but the reason(s) for these violent interactions remain(s) unclear. Post-mortem examinations of stranded bottlenose dolphins indicate that five out of eight young calves from this same area were also killed by bottlenose dolphins. These data, together with direct observations of an aggressive interaction between an adult bottlenose dolphin and a dead bottlenose dolphin calf, provide strong evidence for infanticide in this population. The similarity in the size range of harbour porpoises and dolphin calves that showed signs of attack by bottlenose dolphins suggests that previously reported interspecific interactions could be related to this infanticidal behaviour. These findings appear to provide the first evidence of infanticide in cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises). We suggest that infanticide must be considered as a factor shaping sociality in this and other species of cetaceans, and may have serious consequences for the viability of small populations.

That's all a bit too much, however, for even Springwatch to cover.

Environ Mental Ism

We've mentioned before how those of an Environmentalist bent are liable to blame the perceived failings of anybody who disagrees with them on some sort of mental illness. There's Andreas Ernst, for example, the scientist who says that the psychology of sceptics is more like that of rats than human beings. Or there's the professor of psychiatry, Steven Moffic, who thinks that aversion therapy involving the use of “distressing images of the projected ravages of global warming” can cure sceptics of their pathological ways.

But there's a corollary to the idea that scepticism is a form of madness, which is that to stay sane, you just have to be environmentally aware. A recent example is to be found on the BBC news site, which reports on the mounting scientific consensus, or emerging truth if you prefer, that to avoid depression, stress or psychosis, your best bet is to commune with Mother Nature:

The secret ingredient? Greenery. Those of us who live in towns and cities, and even some who live in the countryside, don't get enough of it.

The result for most of us is highly stressful; we get irritable and depressed, and even physically ill (because high levels of stress mean higher risk of things like heart disease and diabetes).

While farmers, who arguably get more than their fair share of greenery, would seem to present something of a challenge to the theory (although that's presumably just due to the psychiatric equivalent of climatic 'natural variation', or the rise of out-of-town shopping malls or something), it's probably not much of a surprise to most people that doing non-stressful things like walking in the woods is good for reducing stress.

But this is science. The BBC's wholly uncritical 'news' story (which is actually just an excuse to flag up its perennial Springwatch tv series, which this year features 'nature does you good' as one of its themes) draws on 'research' by Natural England, the RSPB, journalists, celebrities and various other experts in the field to prove its point.

First up is Springwatch presenter Bill Oddie, celebrity ornithologist, one-time comic, and BBC spokesman on climate change and now on mental health. He suffers from depression himself, and has no doubt that contact with nature helps his condition:

"when you get a downer, and lots of people suffer from this, there is no question, every self-help book, every doctor, every therapist will tell you: get out there in the fresh air, get yourself moving. It's to do with fitness, it's also to do with a meditational thing."

Were we inclined towards the level of critical analysis provided by the BBC, we could suggest that, had Bill spent less time out in the woods talking to his feathered friends, he wouldn't have got depressed in the first place. But we're not. And anyway, it's hardly Bill's fault. (And he's really quite good as wildlife tv presenters go. He might bang on a bit about how great it is when you're out in the country and can't see a trace of all those ghastly humans, but at least he doesn't talk to the viewers as if they are seven-year-olds and pretend that nature is some sort of lovely, fluffy, real-life Beatrix Potter tale (as recent newspaper headlines testify.)) Our gripe is with the BBC. The article continues:

Scientific support for Bill's beliefs comes from Dr William Bird, who combines a career as a GP with a part-time role as health adviser to Natural England.

Last year he produced a report for Natural England and the RSPB arguing that contact with nature and green space has a positive effect on mental health, especially among children.

So, a medical practitioner hired by a quango and an ornithological charity to justify their existences and relevance to 'Modern Life' counts as 'scientific support'. Has the word 'quack' ever been more appropriate?

Dr Bird is urging his fellow GPs to prescribe regular walks and exercise in green spaces for patients suffering from heart disease, depression, obesity and the like.

We don't doubt it.

Referring patients to the natural environment rather than the pharmacist is a lot cheaper than conventional pills and prescriptions...

We don't doubt it. As we've said before, Environmentalism provides the perfect excuse for anyone in power to explain their failure to provide a public service.

The next expert witness is the journalist Richard Louv, who coined the term "nature deficit disorder" to describe the "deprivation, sometimes amounting to mental illness, of children who grow up without contact with the natural environment". It is, says the BBC

an echo of the medically-established condition, attention deficit disorder

Indeed. But as the BBC points out in about the only vaguely factual part of its article:

"Nature deficit disorder" is not a condition the medical profession recognises

As a certain Dr Fox might say, 'there's no real evidence for it, but it is scientific fact'. And anyway, it seems that most of the medical profession do recognise it:

Natural England polled 70 GPs and nurses and found that 61% recommended that patients use green space, and 79% recommended walking informally.

So what's the problem?

But that still left a sizeable minority who didn't.

Bastards.

One piece of evidence that BBC didn't mention is the Royal Commission on Pollution (RCEP) report, The Urban Environment, published last year, which also cited urbanisation as a risk factor in mental health.

The way in which urban living affects mental health and wellbeing is poorly understood, sparsely researched and perhaps unexpected… but there is no avoiding the conclusion that urban living can damage the mental health of some people.

Neither the paucity of research nor the failure to identify a causal relationship between urbanisation and mental health prevented the authors from concluding that:

One way of helping to mitigate these effects would be the provision of good quality green spaces

This is more than just silly; it is verging on the sinister. Aside from the fact that nature deficit disorder is about as scientific as any old snake oil, there is something deeply patronising about the idea that we can all be happier if only we walked in the woods.

Unhappiness is the stuff of life, in that it is the experience that prompts us to improve our circumstances. It is a sign of the political times that, rather than encouraging people to realise their aspirations, various agencies - both governmental and charitable - seem to be telling us that our aspirations are the problem; rather than seek to change the world, we ought to put up with our lot and hang out with the trees.

Anyone who takes at face-value the advice to go for a walk and achieve 'balance' with nature, won’t be engaged in any serious attempt to either improve their own life or challenge problems in the real world, as much as they will be wishing them to just go away.

By fitting symptoms to diagnoses for the sake of realising the remedy - the environmental agenda - the powers that be are failing to see the wood for the trees. Fortunately, people don't lack the brains to make the most of their spare time; unfortunately, they lack the means.

When a Butterfly Flaps Its Wings, Environmentalists Just Flap

We're glad to see that the BBC has removed the error we flagged up on Thursday. Where it said

The scientists predicted such species would struggle to cope with the 5.4C rise in tropical temperatures expected by 2100.

it now reads

The scientists predicted such species would struggle to cope with the 2-4 degrees Celsius rise in tropical temperatures predicted for the late 21st Century.

It's certainly not as ridiculously alarmist as it was. But we are no less confused as to where the new figure, 2-4 degrees Celsius, comes from than we were with the last one. It looks like some sort of hybrid between AR4 projections for tropical sea temperature increase and global average surface temperature rise. Which is odd, given that temperatures in the tropics are expected to increase less than those at the poles and temperate regions.

Anyway, we missed a trick with our last post on the issue. As commenters have reminded us, mosquitoes are insects too. But they're the sort of insects that spread tropical diseases and, given that we already know that climate change change will be a Bad Thing, they must, therefore, be expected to buck the trend and increase in numbers and range as a result of climate change, spreading tropical disease as they go. Alex Cull puts it rather nicely:

Cuddly species such as polar bears and koalas, pretty butterflies and other cute creatures such as pandas and dolphins will suffer massive extinctions. At the same time, we will see a rise in nasty, unpleasant species such as weasels and wolverines, anopheles mosquitos, icky bacteria and other creepy-crawlies such as slugs, snails and puppy-dog tails. No arguments please.

Climate change is bad for insects; but it's good for bad insects. Another BBC article reveals that it is good for British butterflies, too - but in a bad way...

Butterflies need a warm summer in order to help numbers recover from last year's washout, say conservationists.

Data from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme showed that eight species were at an all-time low as a result of an unsuccessful summer in 2007.

The main reason behind the decline was an above average rainfall, which meant the insects, such as the common blue, had fewer chances to feed or breed.

In other words, Britain's butterflies would benefit from the sort of warmer, drier summer that we are told we'll be getting more of as a result of climate change. (Although given that the BBC also reported recently that the "Next decade 'may see no warming'", what are the chances of that?) And yet, UK Biodiversity Minister (yes, there really is such a thing) Joan Ruddock still manages to twist things around so that it becomes a climate change scare story:

Butterfly populations also indicate the speed and extent of climate change. We will provide every encouragement for those working to conserve them.

OK, so it's hard to blame the BBC this time. But imagine the headline had the butterflies suffered after a particularly hot, dry summer.

These various reports on single studies/comments support an argument made a while back by Joe Kapinsky:

the genre of ‘study published today’ stories holds back understanding rather than enhancing it

Science just doesn't work in the way that the media generally portrays it, as an accumulation of individual studies that are like separate pieces in a giant jigsaw of truth. Science proceeds by replication, rejection, corroboration, falsification, stumbling up blind alleys, reformulation etc etc. It's messy.

The only purpose this sort of science reporting serves is drama. It's science as soap opera - it's what we tune into when there is nothing else worth watching. It merely provides environmental politics with its latest installment of salacious talking points.

Fat People are Killing the Butterflies

Steve Connor, science editor at the Independent newspaper warns us that

Tropical insects rather than polar bears could be among the first species to become extinct as a result of global warming, a study has found.

What does that even mean? Are the polar bears OK after all? Is the environmental movement looking for a new mascot for climate change? Is it out with the charismatic mega-fauna because of the environmental ethic that 'small is beautiful'? But it's nothing compared to the headline it appears under:

Insects 'will be climate change's first victims'

An image of a butterfly follows, with the caption...

Many tropical insect species, including butterflies, can only tolerate a narrow range of temperatures, and an average rise of 1C to 2C could be disastrous

Contrast with the measured language of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article on which Connor reports, and which the journal has kindly made available for free:

Our analyses imply that, in the absence of ameliorating factors such as migration and adaptation, the greatest extinction risks from global warming may be in the tropics, where biological diversity is also greatest.

This is not the first time the Independent has gone on about butterflies as the harbinger of doom. Back in March - a particularly cold March, as it happens - Environment Editor Michael McCarthy hit us with:

Last month, [climate change] produced its most remarkable image yet – a photograph, taken in Dorset, of a red admiral, an archetypal British summer butterfly, feeding on a snowdrop, an archetypal British winter flower.

But as we pointed out, the red admiral is far tougher that McCarthy gives it credit for, occasionally making an appearance in Winter, and is certainly not unusual in Spring and Autumn. Yet again, the Independent is making claims about the vulnerability of species that aren't consistent with the state of knowledge.

The BBC is no more level-headed about the research...

The scientists predicted such species would struggle to cope with the 5.4C rise in tropical temperatures expected by 2100.

5.4C expected by whom? Well, expected by the anonymous author of the BBC article, apparently. Certainly, the IPCC makes no specific prediction for temperature rise this century. And 5.4ºC is not mentioned in the PNAS study, nor in the accompanying press release. The only match we can find is in IPCC AR4 where it is the top-end prediction for SRES scenario A2 (Table SPM.3), the range of which is 2.0-5.4ºC. But why pick 5.4ºC? If you're just looking for a big number to scare people with, then why not plump for the upper value for the A1 scenario (1.4-6.4°C)? Is this like buying the second cheapest bottle of wine in a restaurant to prove you are not a skinflint? Or like Josef Fritzl wondering why everyone hates him when he could have been so much more horrible? [EDIT: The BBC has now "corrected" this error.]

Call us pedantic if you like; but imagine the outcry had the BBC reported that global temperatures are expected to rise by only 1.4ºC by the end of the century (the second lowest low point among the four AR4 SRES scenarios). But then, of course, it's not just journalists (and activists) who are happy to over-egg the ecopocalyptic pudding. When, for example, Bob May (erstwhile President of the Royal Society and former chief scientific advisor to the UK government) confidently asserted in the popular media that a global temperature of 2ºC will put 15-40% of all species at risk of extinction, it was on the basis of a single, worst-case study. He was no less unobjective when he announced that climate swindler du jour Martin Durkin was also some sort of whacko HIV/AIDS denialist. And then there are the science academies, who, while being suspicious of the industry move towards open access publishing, are happy to make papers of the the-world-is-screwed-and-we're-all-going-to-die variety available to all and sundry for free. Which is what the US's National Academy of Sciences have done with this paper. And last year the Royal Society did it, too, when they published a paper which they claimed proved once and for all that the sun has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with global warming. This wasn't just any old paper; it was, in the words of the Royal Society itself, "the truth about global warming". And for some strange reason, we are still expected to take these academies' opinions on what we should do about climate change as the last word on truth and beauty - "respect the facts" as Bob May puts it.

Newspaper editors and headline writers could - possibly - be forgiven for not understanding quite how science works. It's harder to see how science correspondents could. And it's laughable that the science academies seem not to. Funnier is that scientists and science academies are only too happy to criticise journalists, newspapers and TV producers when they report the science 'wrongly' (and you can bet your house that none of them will be criticising the Independent or the BBC on this occasion). But what do they expect? What sort of example do they think are they setting?

As we keep saying, this is no conspiracy. It's just that - as they've been trying to tell us for years - scientists are human, too. Being human and everything, scientists are as jittery about the future and unsure of their role in society as the rest of us. But just because it turns out that they are as anxious as the rest of the world, it doesn't mean that there's any reason to take the claims of environmentalists at face value, or any less reason to maintain objectivity. Just as global warming is convenient for local governments, directionless leaders and crisis politics, it is also convenient for scientists and science academies lacking raison d'être.

Science might never have been quite the objective producer of facts that we like to think it is. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't strive to be an objective seeker of facts. Because striving to be objective about the facts of the material universe is precisely what science is supposed to do. When it applies itself instead to arming political narratives with legitimacy and authority, it talks itself out of a job.

Climate Change Rhetoric Worse Than Previously Thought

In case you hadn't noticed, the IPCC released its AR4 Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers on Saturday.

'Today the world's scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice,' said United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The BBC reported the event on Friday (R4 news 18:00), before the report was published...

HARRABIN: They're haggard with lack of sleep, but beaming that they've reached an agreement on an unequivocal message to politicians that climate change is real, dangerous, but manageable if steps are taken now. The results are compromised as usual, some wanted the final wording softer, others more strident still, but I'm told the final document when it's published tomorrow will be impossible to ignore. It'll say that we can see climate change happening already, sometimes, like in the Arctic, much faster than scientists predicted previously. We're likely to have more droughts, floods, oppressive heatwaves and species extinctions, it'll say, and some changes will be irreversible. That last phrase is so strong that some countries wanted it left out, but according to Steffan Zinger of WWF, they were voted down.

ZINGER: The word irreversible for instance was strongly debated and strongly questioned by certain governments which are on the other side of the Atlantic. But they in the end gave in and accepted that climate change will have irreversible consequences.

So that's how the 'science' that is supposed to inform the political process is achieved... Everybody stays up late, and argues until somebody 'gives in', or is 'voted down'. Some kind of 'speaking clearly and with one voice'.

Despite the headlines and column inches, there is virtually nothing new in this report. It's a rehash of the three reports published earlier this year by the IPCC. All that is new in the report itself (and which most news outlets chose to lead with) is the word 'irreversible'. Writing on the BBC website, for example, environment correspondent Richard Black tells us that 'The IPCC states that climate change is 'unequivocal' and may bring 'abrupt and irreversible' impacts'. But the only mention of these words in the IPCC report are in the section 'Anthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rate and magnitude of the climate change', which reveals a far less frightening and urgent picture than such accounts suggests:

Partial loss of ice sheets on polar land could imply metres of sea level rise, major changes in coastlines and inundation of low-lying areas, with greatest effects in river deltas and low-lying islands. Such changes are projected to occur over millennial time scales, but more rapid sea level rise on century time scales cannot be excluded. {3.4}

Does that mean immediate sea-level rise can't be ruled in? 'We don't know' would have sufficed. Similarly...

Climate change is likely to lead to some irreversible impacts. There is medium confidence that approximately 20-30% of species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk if increases in global average warming exceed 1.5-2.5oC (relative to 1980-1999). As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5oC, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody that extinction is an irreversible process. The clue is in the word "extinct". And anyway: likely... some... medium confidence... approximately... 20-30% of species assessed so far... likely... increased risk... if... Of how many 'assessed species', exactly?

As for the 'abrupt' bit (which isn't new, in that it was in the Working Group II report published back in April), all we get is

Based on current model simulations, the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) of the Atlantic Ocean will very likely slow down during the 21st century; nevertheless temperatures over the Atlantic and Europe are projected to increase. The MOC is very unlikely to undergo a large abrupt transition during the 21st century. Longer-term MOC changes cannot be assessed with confidence. Impacts of large-scale and persistent changes in the MOC are likely to include changes in marine ecosystem productivity, fisheries, ocean CO2 uptake, oceanic oxygen concentrations and terrestrial vegetation. Changes in terrestrial and ocean CO2 uptake may feed back on the climate system.

Contrasting the report with statements in the press reveals very different pictures. Over the weekend, BBC Radio 4 was ending its news items on the report with: 'The mainstream message from the IPCC is that it's not too late - if we act now.' According to Black's article on BBC online: 'The panel's scientists say the reversal needs to come within a decade or so if the worst effects of global warming are to be avoided.' Trouble is, the report doesn't actually say that. Anywhere. At all. Whatsoever.

So what is going on here? It is true that Dr Pachauri said in the press conference that CO2 emissions need to peak and start declining by 2015. But Pachauri is not the IPCC. And as we've pointed out recently, his statements on this issue do not reflect the IPCC position. Meanwhile, journalists are happy to confound 'the consensus' with 'what Pachauri reckons' because that way they can say that 'things are worse than ever before'.

The only differences between this report (and the press coverage of it) and previous ones concern the language, not the science. That language is getting more abrupt, and the problem is becoming irreversible. And our models predict it to get worse than previously expected.