2014 Spring Climate Outlook | NOAA Climate.gov

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just released it's annual Spring Climate Outlook report.  You see a video highlighting major expectations by clicking the link below.



What will Spring mean this year?  That depends where you happen to live.



2014 Spring Climate Outlook | NOAA Climate.gov



Welcome to Spring!  It's been a long winter, and it's about time we started to warm up.

New statement on climate change from the AAAS - 2014

There is a new statement from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also known as the AAAS, on what we know about climate change.

The AAAS is the leading scientific body in the United States, represents the best of our scientific community, and is the largest scientific community in the world.

For one thing, multiple lines of evidence support the statement that 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are affecting the climate...I encourage you to take time to read the entire statement by clicking the link below.

http://whatweknow.aaas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/AAAS-What-We-Know.pdf

The link below is a 5 minute video in which the question of scientific consensus among other topics are touched upon.  It is also from the AAAS.

http://whatweknow.aaas.org/consensus-sense/

This statement and video do not represent the wild-eyed ramblings of some fringe scientific element, it reflects the mainstream scientific conclusions of the world's leading body of scientists on the topic of climate change, as well as an effort to disseminate information about what we know about it.

The AAAS is working deliberately to help people understand what we know, and calls upon governments to end the debate on a topic for which the science is settled, and move on to identifying  best approaches for dealing with the problem of climate change.

The debate is over...it's time to act.  What will you do?

Spring in the west, and deep freeze in the east

The Arctic Ocean usually reaches its maximum sea ice extent about this time of year, and we as start observing the annual spring/summer sea ice melt up north the sea ice extent is about 1,000,000 square kilometers below the 1981-2010 average.  Wow!   

This has also been a wild winter ride, and it's not over for people in the midwest.  As I type this entry schools including universities across that region are closed or running on a weather-impacted schedule.  Out here in the mountain west though it looks and feels like spring has already sprung.  We did have a dose of snow over the weekend...I had to shovel twice on Saturday and once on Sunday, but later on Sunday temperatures shot back up to 40+oF and it's headed back there today.

Normally where I live in SE Idaho is only starting the annual spring snow melt by now, but this year the snow is already all gone, except for small patches along the north sides of homes and buildings.  Wild!

Other signs of spring around here include daffodils and crocuses pushing up through the soil, motorcycles appearing in parking lots, and students walking wearing sweatshirts and even short-sleeved shirts.

 Why the early Spring-like conditions?  Well, the radical swing of the jet stream this winter has stayed north of us while it's swung far to the south over the Great Plains and Midwest.

The map below shows the current jet stream track.  Idaho is south of it, and the entire eastern part of the USA, except for the Everglades and Miami are north of it and still freezing.  Yikes!

Will this madness never end?

Cheers!

What is going on!? Early snow melt in Rexburg, Idaho

I live in Rexburg, Idaho.  For anyone who has lived here, gone to school here, or maybe even just visited, the word Rexburg often elicits a bodily chill.  OK, it can be a very cold place.  For example, the record cold temperature for Rexburg for the month of February is -36oF.  The average monthly high temp is 33oF and the average low is 16oF (for the month of February).

So what?

This is the sight that greeted me as I walked home from work yesterday around 5pm.  This is a full-blown snow melt.  The gutter was completely full.  OK, this in and of itself is no big deal.

Rexburg, Idaho, 5:15pm on February 12, 2014

We can have occasional warm days, even warm enough to cause a melt like this, but the thing that really blew me away was what I saw this morning...

...around 7:30am I reversed my path and headed back to work, and this is what I saw (see below).  My phone showed a temperature of 36oF and the gutter was STILL full of snow run off.  This is very, very, very strange.  To have a warm day and melt some snow during the day in Rexburg is no big deal, but to have overnight temperatures that do not drop below freezing and to see snow melt all night long in mid-Feb is strange, strange, strange.  Did I mention that this is strange?

Rexburg, Idaho, 7:30am on February 13, 2014

Was this one-day event caused by global climate change?  No, it's virtually impossible to link a specific one-day weather event like this one directly to climate change.  But, what you can say with a high degree of confidence is that the current global trend of warming makes weather events like this one more likely to happen.

Stay tuned, life is interesting.

It's a bit early for the Arctic sea ice melt, but...

It's been a while since I posted anything about the state of the Arctic, but when I checked the National Snow and Ice Database website this morning I thought it was worth a few words.

The graph below shows the Arctic sea ice extent between Nov 2013 and Feb 12, 2014.  There are a couple of notable things here.  First, the ice extent has been between 250,000 and 500,000 square kilometers below the 1981-2010 average the entire time.  This doesn't come as a shock to anyone who follows the Arctic, but it's just an ongoing confirmation of a warming Arctic.

BTW, did you know that according to the National Climactic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that the last time that an annual global average temperature was cooler than the 20th century average was in 1976?  Yep, that's 37 years ago (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/).  I shared this with one of my classes of university students yesterday and realized as I said it that all of them were born well after 1976, so they have known only a warming world.  That's a sobering thought.

The second thing the graph shows that's interesting, though not yet significant is what happened over the last week or two.  If you notice the average sea ice extent usually reaches its maximum coverage around the end of February or early March.  The extent does show some ups and downs, as clearly shown in the 2011-2012 (dotted) line.  This year's data are shown on the blue line.  Anyway, so what?  Data of the last week or two show a leveling off and then decline in sea ice cover.  If this continues, and I'd be extremely surprised if it did this early in the season, we could really be in for a doozie of a sea ice loss year in the Arctic.  It's much more likely that this is just a temporary blip.  

Stay tuned.  Life is interesting.  

Ken Ham and Bill Nye to Debate Each Other on Creationism vs. Evolution TONIGHT February 4th

UPDATE:  Their (long) debate is now over, but you can stream it from the following site:

Bill Nye and Ken Ham Debate Evolution vs Creation Science - debatelive.org

Bill Nye - a well known television personality, proponent for science and science education, and CEO of "The Planetary Society" - and Ken Ham, CEO of the ministry "Answers in Genesis" and "The Creation Museum", will debate each other on Creationism vs. Evolution this evening.

For more information click the link below.

Ken Ham and Bill Nye to debate Creationism vs. Evolution TONIGHT (2/4)

It'll be interesting and entertaining to hear what these two have to say.

This debate fascinates me because so many people in the world contend that someone cannot be a person of faith AND a person of science.  I disagree.

I am a person of faith, an active, devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons), I'm a person of science, a university professor with a PhD in Biology (University of California, Santa Cruz, 1992), and I'm an evolutionist.

You may wonder how I pull this both without living in perpetual inner conflict.  Simple.  I believe that this life is, among other things, a quest for truth and understanding.  Science provides useful and powerful explanations about how our bodies, the world, and the universe work.  Religion is at the same time a complementary not competitive approach to obtaining truth through inspiration and revelation.  Science is good at explaining the what, how, and when, and religion is good at explaining the why of things.

My bottom line?

Evolution is a true theory that explains many things and is a central unifying theory of the field of biology.  Religion is a means to coming to a deeper understanding who I am, who God is, and about our relationship.  Science and religion expand my view and understanding of the universe and of my place in it. They both have the earmarks of truth.  And, if they truly are both truths, they cannot inherently be in conflict with each other.  There may be apparent conflicts, but when this happens I have found/believe that it's almost certainly because we lack sufficient scientific information or revealed truth on the subject to allow us to see through the apparent conflict.

Truth is truth, and it cannot contradict itself.

That's my 2 cents' worth.

Best wishes.

Orcas, the documentary film "Blackfish", and SeaWorld's Open Letter

The former head dolphin trainer for the 1960s television show Flipper turned pro-dolphin activist Ric O'Barry undertook a film project in the mid-2000s designed to expose the slaughter of dolphins at Taiji, Japan, associated with an annual dolphin hunt.  The main purpose of this hunt is to trap dolphins to be sold and then trained and used in marine mammal shows around the world.  Dolphins not selected for training are herded into a secluded, carefully guarded cove where the remaining dolphins are slaughtered for meat, that is consequently sold as "whale meat".  This documentary, "The Cove" won the Academy Award (Oscar) for best documentary film in 2009.

You can learn more about that film here:  The Cove - Official movie site

"The Cove" movie trailer: "The Cove" movie trailer

Like many of you, I grew up watching Flipper, Jacques Cousteau Specials, and National Geographic specials.  I particularly loved the ones about the ocean.  These early impressions led me to pursue training in marine biology, and I was blessed to become a college biology professor (zoology and marine biology), a career I have enjoyed for more than 20 years so far (PhD University of California, Santa Cruz)

In the late 1990s I took my family to SeaWorld in Aurora, Ohio (sold to Six Flags in 2001).  We there saw the marine mammal show, including dolphins and killer whales, as well as petting tanks for dolphins, etc.  I remember thinking how amazing and regal all of the marine mammals were, while simultaneously mourning their limited existence.  You see, I have had the privilege of seeing pods of killer whales in the wild on multiple occasions in the San Juan Islands, Washington, USA, dolphins in California, and elsewhere.

I was already somewhat soured by my experience, and after leaving the park in Ohio, decided never to return.  I did not want to support that industry.  Then about a decade later I saw "The Cove" (see above), and my resolve only hardened.  Then, just this week I finally had a chance to see "Blackfish", the documentary about killer whales in captivity, mainly at SeaWorld parks.

You can learn more about it here:  The official "Blackfish" movie site

"Blackfish" trailer: "Blackfish" movie trailer

These two films together or either alone is enough to make you weep for these intelligent, majestic animals.

The makers of "Blackfish" reportedly did due diligence in inviting SeaWorld to participate or at least be interviewed for the film, but they refused.  The film, in the meantime, has caused quite a stir, raising people's awareness of challenges and risks associated with holding killer whales in captivity.

SeaWorld claims that "Blackfish" has had no impact on ticket sales (apparently the primary measure that matters to ventures like theirs), but at the same time, felt it necessary to take out full page ads in major newspapers across the country in which they published the following open letter in response to "Blackfish".

You can see the complete letter at the Official SeaWorld website here: Open Letter from SeaWorld

This is the text of the letter with my personal comments (in red) on its contents:

SeaWorld: The Truth Is in Our Parks and People 

An Open Letter from SeaWorld’s Animal Advocates

Inaccurate reports recently have generated questions about SeaWorld and the animals in our care. The truth is in our parks and people, and it’s time to set the record straight.

The men and women of SeaWorld are true animal advocates. We are the 1,500 scientists, researchers, veterinarians, trainers, marine biologists, aquarists, aviculturists, educators and conservationists who have dedicated our lives to the animals in our care as well as those in the wild that are injured, ill or orphaned. Whether it’s a sea lion, manatee, sea turtle or whale, we are on call 24/7.

Here are some important facts about SeaWorld and our work:

• SeaWorld does not capture killer whales in the wild. Due to the groundbreaking success of our research in marine mammal reproduction, we haven’t collected a killer whale from the wild in 35 years. In fact, only two of the whales in our care were collected by SeaWorld and they continue to be in our care today. In addition, our research has led to a much greater understanding of whales in the wild, giving researchers important scientific insights surrounding marine mammal reproduction.
My comment:  I believe this point is true.  There is no evidence of which I am aware that refutes this.  SeaWorld has become a large enough operation with enough captive animals and knowhow to staff its parks with captive-born animals.


• We do not separate killer whale moms and calves. SeaWorld recognizes the important bond between mother and calf. On the rare occasion that a mother killer whale cannot care for the calf herself, we have successfully hand raised and reintroduced the calf. Whales are only moved to maintain a healthy social structure.
My comment:  I find this statement to be confusing at the least, and misleading at the worst.  SeaWorld states that they "do not separate whale moms and calves".  Then in the last sentence of this bullet statement they state that "Whales are only moved to maintain a healthy social structure."  So, if we look back at point one above, that no whale has been collected from the wild in 35 years, the vast majority of whales at SeaWorld have to be captive-born, so moving any of these whales removes calves (offspring) from their mothers - a bond that is permanent in the wild.  In other words, SeaWorld does not remove offspring from their mothers unless SeaWorld decides to.  


• SeaWorld invests millions of dollars in the care of our killer whales. In the last three years alone, we have invested $70 million in our killer whale habitats and millions of dollars annually in support of these facilities. Our habitats are among the largest in the world today. They are state-of-the-art, multimillion-gallon environments of cooled and filtered water that allow for the highest and safest standards of care. We give our animals restaurant-quality fish, exercise, veterinary care, mental stimulation, and the company of other members of their species.
My comment:  All I can say about this is that "they better".  This is largely a moot point as far as I'm concerned. Of course maintaining large animals like those at SeaWorld requires a major investment in capital and maintenance costs...that's the nature of their business.  They try to keep the animals alive as long as possible and as healthy as possible, because they are their bread and butter.  A moot point in terms of the whales' mental condition or the physical risk to SeaWorld trainers - the main point of "Blackfish".


• SeaWorld’s killer whales’ life spans are equivalent with those in the wild. While studies continue to define the average life span of killer whales in the wild, the most recent science suggests that our killer whales’ life spans are comparable — indeed, five of our animals are older than 30, and one of our whales is close to 50.
My comments: Female killer whales reportedly live 50-90 years, and males 30-60 years.  SeaWorld provides ages of 6 of its whales in the statement above, presumably their oldest 6, but they provide no data on the ages of whales that have passed away in captivity.  By simply saying we have some old whales that are comparable to the average ages of whales in the wild is playing with statistics in SeaWorld's favor.  
According to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, there are currently 45 killer whales in captivity worldwide, 32 of which are captive-born.  According to one source the average age of whales in captivity is about 25 years...not the same story that SeaWorld is telling in their statement above.


• The killer whales in our care benefit those in the wild. We work with universities, governmental agencies and NGOs to increase the body of knowledge about and the understanding of killer whales — from their anatomy and reproductive biology to their auditory abilities. Some populations of wild killer whales have been classified as endangered or threatened, demonstrating the potential critical nature of these research opportunities. This type of controlled research and study is simply not possible in the wild, and has significant real-world benefits to the killer whales that live there.
My comments:  I believe this is true, but at the same time, wonder about the trade-off between scientific knowledge obtained, and the applicability of knowledge obtained from captive-born animals to native born animals.  


• SeaWorld is a world leader in animal rescue. The millions of people who visit our parks each year make possible SeaWorld’s world-renowned work in rescue, rehabilitation and release. We are constantly innovating when it comes to this care: Our veterinarians have created nursing bottles to hand-feed orphaned whales, prosthetics to save sea turtles, and a wetsuit to help injured manatees stay afloat during rehabilitation. Whether it’s the result of natural or man-made disasters, SeaWorld is always on call and often the first to be contacted. We have rescued more than 23,000 animals with the goal of treating and returning them to the wild.

My comments:  I believe this is true.  Animal rescue work is highly commendable, and I applaud their efforts in this area.  Even so, don't look for me to visit any of their parks anytime soon, or ever.

Naturalist Baba Dioum put it best when he said, “In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we have been taught.”

At SeaWorld, this has been our calling since we first opened our doors 50 years ago. It is a responsibility we do not take lightly. More than 400 million guests have visited SeaWorld. We are proud that their experiences here have a lasting and positive impact on them, and on the world in which we live.

My comment:  I'm sorry, but this point makes it sound like the work done by and at SeaWorld is carried out primarily because SeaWorld is altruistic.  The reality is that this work will almost certainly be carried out only as long as SeaWorld turns a profit.  

I just checked the SeaWorld Orlando site and discovered that their day-pass tickets cost about $80 per person. Let's see...multiply that by 400 million and you've got "Merry Christmas" SeaWorld. Of course not all 400 million paid this much (over the years), but still...that's a LOT of cash.  And they will keep doing what they are doing until they are either forced to shut down (for reasons I can't foresee) or people just stop going.

The truth about SeaWorld is right here in our parks and people. Our guests may enter our gates having never given much thought to the remarkable animals in our oceans. When they leave with a greater appreciation for the importance of the sea, educated about the animals that live there and inspired to make a difference, we have done our job. 

My comment and conclusion: As for me, as a marine biologist, I do not believe that marine mammal shows are essential.  I actually believe the opposite, that we show our arrogance and disdain for these majestic animals and for nature when we keep them in captivity.