Alpine chipmunk, trees moving to higher altitudes as climate changes
Alpine chipmunk, trees moving to higher altitudes as climate changes
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By McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
Published: September 1, 2008
Modified: August 31, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Modified: August 31, 2008 at 10:51 pm
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — High above a silver-blue mountain lake, a gray-bearded man tromped up a rocky slope and peered at a small metal trap. It was empty.
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Changing habitat
One century ago, alpine chipmunks owned the upper half of Yosemite. They skittered under logs and darted across rocks from the rugged Sierra crest down to the conifer forests at 7,800 feet. Today, they are missing in action below 9,800 feet.
"It's lost half its geographic range,” Patton said. "Climate is the culprit. I don't think there is any iota of reason not to think that.”
For years, climate change was a story told largely via melting snow and ice. Now, species and ecosystems are feeling the heat, too. Butterflies are expanding their ranges northward. Migratory birds are arriving earlier in spring. And in the Sierra and in other mountain ranges, species not considered migratory at all — from conifers to chipmunks — are creeping upslope toward cooler, more hospitable abodes.
Related Topics:
Science and Technology, Nature and the Environment, Sciences, Wildlife, Earth Science, Mammals, Climatology, Global Climate Change
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Secondly, one of the main purveyors of "bs" when it comes to global warming is our national embarrassment of a senator, Inhofe, for whom you probably voted. The man's a fossil fuel industry lackey--not a scientist. I wouldn't listen to him, or any of the handful of nut-case so-called experts he's trotted out from time to time.
You say the data you're using covers only 10 years. Now come on, even I know that's way too short a time-frame when studying a long-term phenomenon like climate change. It tells you virtually nothing. It's maybe a minute in this context. Did you read the article? It says, "One century ago . . . " And even that is a short period of time. You have to look at the data for trends going back to the beginning of when records of weather information stated being collected or at physical evidence from glacial ice cores from thousands of years ago.
And how is this reporter "crooked" exactly? Who is paying him/her off, the powerful environmental lobby? I doubt it. They aren't the ones who earn BILLIONS in profit in one quarter, meanwhile asking for billion-dollar corporate welfare handouts from the taxpayers, which they always get to my knowledge. I know they have their spin on how they are going to invest in alternative fuels, etc. Yeah, sure . . . maybe a PR gesture here and there. I can't believe how easy it is to bamboozle the average Okie.