Saturday June 21, 2008, 6:50 pm
Oh I fear this cannot be good for our beloved birds...we need them sooooo...

Big Gorilly hugs

Saturday June 21, 2008, 8:55 pm
Marty - Birds are my speality, so I appreciate the report...

Saturday June 21, 2008, 10:52 pm
Folks may also be interested in this article I just found:

One in Eight Bird Species Threatened By Climate Change

Climate change is pushing one in eight species of bird towards extinction says the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The horror of climate change is detailed in Sunstroke author Dr David Kagan's book Doomwatch Legacy.

http://www.care2.com/news/member/350536392/788028

Saturday June 21, 2008, 11:02 pm
Thanks Chris I will read...

Gorilly

Sunday June 22, 2008, 7:46 am
Thanks Chris. I'm glad you guys found the post interesting. :-)

Sunday June 22, 2008, 9:15 am
I find it interesting from a scientific standpoint - it is interesting to watch how the various wildlife species will adapt to these RAPID changes - therin lies the "problem". It is quite the experiment we are running. However as a person, I worry that we are conducting this "experiment" on the only habital planet that we are aware of - what happens when the experiment goes (or continues to go) horribly wrong??????

Sunday June 22, 2008, 11:02 am
Life adapts to change BUT it doesnt adapt rapidly, for the most part. We have abused our planet, with ostrich behavior, over population, greed, ignorance, and a sense of deserved-ness. IMHO we need to wake up, pull our heads out and protect whats left.

Sunday June 22, 2008, 1:27 pm
Life adapts to change at whatever speed it occurs - big meteor impacts, super volcano eruptions etc. have occured in the past instantaneously changing the environemnt in a very big way and even without that several ice ages have started and ended and there is still life - life is incredibly resilient.
As for migratory birsd I don't really see why they would migrate longer if the climate becomes warmer - eg. this winter in Denmark was very mild, so some geese usually migrating between Norway and the Mediterainain area, stopped here - there was lots of food for them to eat and a tiolerable climate, so why bother flying on ? In addition there is a very high hunting preassure in France and Spain on these geese, which they then avoided . Ok some species may not make it, but others will change and evolve into new species, quite naturally.
Why all the doomsayers ignore natures ability to cope with changes in the past eludes me - e.g. a Danish biologist complains how all the species in the shallow Danish coastal waters will die if the sea level rises just a little bit - the next day a geologist says the sea level has gone up and down much more than the predicted change now without any such problems because the bottom rises and falls with the sea level.

If there is anything constant in nature its change - live with it.

Sunday June 22, 2008, 2:09 pm
Yes, life will continue, but does that mean it is OK for millions of people to die and thousands of species to vanish as long as SOME make it through? Yes, this has happened before, and life adapts, but does that justify the cost? Especially when we have options?? Why remain adicted to fossil fuels if the potential risks are so high???

Global Warming Could Wipe Out Most Species - Study

Rising temperatures could wipe out more than half of the earth's species in the next few centuries, according to researchers who published a study on Wednesday linking climate change to past mass extinctions.

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/44986/story.htm

Sunday June 22, 2008, 5:07 pm
Humans will have much, much to answer for in the hereafter...

Sunday June 22, 2008, 7:14 pm
Agreed Rooibos, thanks :-)

Monday June 23, 2008, 4:16 pm
This is not good news for our fine feathered friends.

Tuesday June 24, 2008, 12:29 am
Mass extinctions have happened naturally before, that in no way means we can just turn a blind eye to this mass extinction we are causing. That's like saying death is natural, thus murder is OK!

Tuesday June 24, 2008, 12:36 am
Microwaves have more to do with bird deaths than a 0.70 degreen temperature rise over the last 100 years.Birds, magnetic and electromagnetic fields

* Mobile phone masts blamed over the vanishing sparrows
* Mobile Phones and Vanishing Birds (Institute of Science in Society)
* A Possible Effect of Electromagnetic Radiation from Mobile Phone Base Stations on the Number of Breeding House Sparrows (Passer domesticus), Joris Everaert, Dirk Bauwens (Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, Volume 26, Issue 1, January 2007)
* The Urban Decline of the House Sparrow (Passer domesticus): A Possible Link with Electromagnetic Radiation, Alfonso Balmori, Örjan Hallberg (Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine, Volume 26, Issue 2, April 2007)

US and German scientists have shown that oscillating magnetic fields disrupt the magnetic orientation behaviour of migratory birds (Ritz T et al. ‘Resonance effects indicate a radical-pair mechanism for avian magnetic compass’, Nature 2004, May 13, Vol 429, p. 177). Migratory birds are known to use the geomagnetic field as a source of compass information and there are two competing hypotheses for the primary process underlying the avian magnetic compass, one involving magnetite, the other a magnetically sensitive, chemical reaction (see links below).

The researchers found that robins were disoriented when exposed to a vertically aligned, broadband (0.1-10 MHz) or a single-frequency (7-MHz) field in addition to the geomagnetic field. In the 7-MHz oscillating field, this effect depended on the angle between the oscillating and the geomagnetic fields. The birds exhibited seasonally appropriate, migratory orientation when the oscillating field was parallel to the geomagnetic field, but were disoriented when it was presented at a 24- or 48-degree angle.

The authors state that their results are consistent with a resonance effect on singlet-triplet transitions and suggest a magnetic compass based on a radical-pair mechanism. They comment:

‘The magnetic compass of birds is light-dependent and exhibits strong lateralization with input coming primarily from the right eye. However, the primary biophysical process underlying this compass remains unexplained. Magnetite, as well as biochemical radical-pair reactions have been hypothesized to mediate sensitivity to Earth-strength, magnetic fields through fundamentally different physical mechanisms.’

In the magnetite-based mechanism, magnetic fields exert mechanical forces. In the radical-pair mechanism, the magnetic field alters the dynamics of transitions between spin states, after the creation of a radical pair through a light-induced electron transfer. These transitions in turn affect reaction rates and products. Although in most radical-pair reactions the effects of Earth-strength magnetic fields are masked by a living system’s background ‘noise’, model calculations show that such effects can be amplified beyond the level of background ‘noise’ in specialized, radical-pair receptor systems.
http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/issues/nature.php

Wednesday June 25, 2008, 3:16 pm
It is interesting about the micro waves. I live on cape cod and we have a lovly thing here called pave paws, talk about radiation. Sandwich is right in front of it has one of the hightest breast cancer rates in the country and they can't prove it. What chance does a bird have. http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/nssrm/initiatives/pavepaws.htm