Scientists want us to believe ‘cockroach milk’ is a good idea
Scientists want us to believe cockroach milk is a good idea
http://www.ecorazzi.com/2016/07/25/scientists-want-us-to-believe-cockroach-milk-is-a-good-idea/
In the ongoing pursuit of superfoods, some people think insect milk is going to trump plant-based. Science Alert shared a story on the development of cockroach milk. The alleged motivation behind the research on these insects done at the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in India is the nutritional value and the hopes of it aiding our expanding population (something the National Academy of Sciences says a vegan diet can do). We kind of expected the “cockroaches live forever” theory to drive this insanity, but once again, protein blindly leads the pack. So although cockroaches don’t actually give milk in the way Fergie may easily pour it on herself, one breed called diploptera punctate, feeds it’s babies something humans feel like stealing. The protein crystals from it’s motherly secretions are said to be four times more “nutritious” than cows milk, and also higher in calories. Before you go picturing the tiny rape racks and equipment that would be required to “milk” these cockroaches, they’re instead going to attempt to grow them in a lab. After all, cockroach gut extracts probably won’t be easily marketable, although baby cow growth formula somehow is. Emphasizing that the crystals produce more protein throughout digestion, like a “time-release” pill might, doesn’t seem like a worthy excuse for finding new ways to further our opportunities for exploitation. They do however warn that those on a western diet and anyone looking to drop a pant size won’t want to get on the cockroach bandwagon. That means anyone concerned for their health, and cockroaches, will have to stick to kale and all those other super-power promising foods we’re told to ingest on the regular. We’re betting quinoa will outlive cockroaches anyway.
— gReader Pro…
University of Deleware Penguin Panic Paper Exposed As Flawed… Used ‘Tricks’
Antarctic climate models fail to handle natural variability: Adélie penguins continue to appear
By Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt
(German text translated/edited by P. Gosselin)
On June 29, 2016 the University of Delaware (UD) unleashed a climate penguin panic with its press release:
Penguins and climate change:
UD scientists report projected response of Adélie penguins to Antarctic climate change
It’s a big question: how is climate change in Antarctica affecting Adélie penguins? Climate has influenced the distribution patterns of Adélie penguins across Antarctica for millions of years. The geologic record tells us that as glaciers expanded and covered Adélie breeding habitats with ice, penguin colonies were abandoned. When the glaciers melted during warming periods, this warming positively affected the Adélie penguins, allowing them to return to their rocky breeding grounds. But now, University of Delaware scientists and colleagues report that this beneficial warming may have reached its tipping point. In a paper published today in Scientific Reports, the researchers project that approximately 30 percent of current Adélie colonies may be in decline by 2060 and approximately 60 percent may be in decline by 2099.”
That’s absolutely bitter. More than half of the penguins will be dead by 2099. In earlier times they benefitted from climate warming, but today heat is threatening to wipe them out. How has this come to be? The press release continues:
It is only in recent decades that we know Adélie penguins population declines are associated with warming, which suggests that many regions of Antarctica have warmed too much and that further warming is no longer positive for the species,” said the paper’s lead author Megan Cimino, who earned her doctoral degree at UD in May.”
Antarctica has warmed unusually over the past decades?
Unfortunately that is completely wrong, see here. Precisely on this subject a new paper by Jones et al. 2016 in Nature Climate Change tells us:
Assessing recent trends in high-latitude Southern Hemisphere surface climate
Understanding the causes of recent climatic trends and variability in the high-latitude Southern Hemisphere is hampered by a short instrumental record. Here, we analyse recent atmosphere, surface ocean and sea-ice observations in this region and assess their trends in the context of palaeoclimate records and climate model simulations. Over the 36-year satellite era, significant linear trends in annual mean sea-ice extent, surface temperature and
Species Extinction Rate Plummets Whopping 96% During Warming, Elevated CO2
…Archaeology suggests no direct link between climate change and early human innovation
Environmental records obtained from archaeological sites suggest climate may not have been directly linked to cultural and technological innovations of Middle Stone Age humans in southern Africa, according to a study published July 6, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Patrick Roberts from the University of Oxford, UK, and colleagues.
The Middle Stone Age marked a period of dramatic change amongst early humans in southern Africa, and climate change has been postulated as a primary driver for the appearance of technological and cultural innovations such as bone tools, ochre production, and personal ornamentation. While some researchers suggest that climate instability may have directly inspired technological advances, others postulate that environmental stability may have provided a stable setting that allowed for experimentation. However, the disconnection of palaeoenvironmental records from archaeological sites makes it difficult to test these alternatives.
The authors of this study carried out analyses of animal remains, shellfish taxa and the stable carbon and oxygen isotope measurements in ostrich eggshell, from two archaeological sites, Blombos Cave and Klipdrift Shelter, spanning 98,000 to 73,000 years ago and 72,000 to 59,000 years ago, respectively, to acquire data regarding possible palaeoenvironmental conditions in southern Africa at the time. For instance, ostrich eggshell carbon and oxygen stable isotope levels may reflect vegetation and water consumption, which in turn vary with rainfall seasonality and amount in this region.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-archaeology-link-climate-early-human.html#jCp…
Cosmopolitan Magazine: Global Warming Causing Shark Attacks!
Cosmopolitan Magazine warns that 2016 will be a big year for shark attacks around the world and global warming is to blame.
In a Cosmo essay shared with EsquireMagazine, Sarah Rense writes that last year saw “a record number of shark attacks” with a total of 98 attacks and six deaths. In comparison, she says, ten years ago there were only 58 attacks. Moreover, experts have predicted that 2016 will be “a big shark attack year,” she writes.
Her foregone conclusion? The cause “is largely climate change.”
Oddly, Ms. Rense does not examine statistics on numbers of swimmers, or on seal migration patterns (which account for killer sharks’ primary food source) or even a year-by-year analysis of shark attacks going back beyond ten years to see whether the trend holds up over time. Instead, she employs the single, unremarkable statistic of 98 incidents of shark attacks in 2015 to insist that global warming must be the culprit.
Rense does, of course, throw in a dollop of pseudo-science, citing a “recent study” according to which warmer oceans are pushing sharks 20 miles further up the coast each decade. This slow northerly push means that sharks are crossing paths with more humans and “reaching New York and New Jersey beaches, where fewer people will be expecting them,” Rense writes.
If Rense’s theory holds and “global warming” is truly to blame, then the extra shark attacks should fall within that 20-mile swath of beach where sharks are allegedly venturing for the first time.
Unfortunately for Rense—and Cosmopolitan—this simply isn’t the case. There was only one shark attack in New York and none in New Jersey since the year 2000. The most serious shark incidents in New Jersey history occurred exactly a century ago, in 1916, when a series of shark attacks between July 1 and 12 left four people dead and one injured.
In 2015, by contrast, the greatest increase in attacks actually occurred in North Carolina and Florida, regular haunts for sharks having nothing to do with climate change.
Of the eight U.S. counties with more than 15 shark attacks since the year 2000, four are in Florida (accounting for a whopping total of 273 attacks), two in Hawaii and the other two in South Carolina.
According to a report from the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History, the most likely explanation for the greater …
Critical spring feeding for polar bears is over – sea ice levels are now irrelevant
Polar bears in virtually all regions will now have finished their intensive spring feeding, which means sea ice levels are no longer an issue. A few additional seals won’t make much difference to a bear’s condition at this point.
The only seals available on the ice for polar bears to hunt in early July are predator-savvy adults and subadults but since the condition of the sea ice makes escape so much easier for the seals, most bears that continue to hunt are unsuccessful – and that’s been true since the 1970s. So much for the public hand-wringing over the loss of summer sea ice on behalf of polar bear survival!
The fact is, most ringed seals (the primary prey species of polar bears worldwide) move into open water to feed after they have completed their annual molt, which occurs by late June to mid-July for adults and subadults; newborn pups leave the ice soon after being weaned, usually by the end of May in southern regions (like Hudson Bay) and by late June in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, aka “CAA” (Kelly et al. 2010; Smith 1975, 1987; Whiteman et al. 2015).
Thus, the most abundant prey of polar bears is essentially unavailable after mid-July (and earlier than that in Hudson Bay).
Adults and subadults of the similarly-distributed but much larger (and less abundant) bearded seal tend to remain with the ice over the summer (Cameron et al. 2010:11-12) and are most likely to be available to polar bears that remain on the sea ice over the summer throughout the Arctic. Some adult harp seals (an abundant, strictly North Atlantic species) may also be available to bears on the pack ice in Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, as well in the northern sections of the Barents and Kara Seas, and northern East Greenland (Sergeant 1991).
However, research on polar bear feeding has shown that from June to October, bears are rarely successful at catching seals because broken and melting ice affords so many escape routes for the seals. Bears may stalk the seals but they often get away (see video snapshot and video below)…
Claim: ‘Climate Change is Making Bearded Dragons Switch Sex, Possibly Leading to Their Extinction’
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/24627/20160702/climate-change-making-species-switch-sex-possibly-leading-to-their-extinction.htm
Climate change is reportedly changing male reptiles into females, and this may lead to an all-male reptile population–and eventually extinction.
Last year, it was reported by several media outlets that Central bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps) are undergoing instant sex reversal because of the unusual high temperature that they are experiencing within their habitat.
According to the study published in the journal Nature, the Australian species demonstrated transitioning from genotypic to temperature-dependent sex determination.
After studying 131 wild-caught bearded dragons in Queensland province, the researchers found that 11 of them were female who are able to produce offspring but had the ZZ chromosomes of a genetic male.
“Most mechanistic models of transitions invoke a role for sex reversal. Sex reversal has not yet been demonstrated in nature for any amniote, although it occurs in fish and rarely in amphibians,” the study said.…
Analysis: Claim that ‘melting’ Antarctica threatens Penguins is ‘Climate Fraud’
http://realclimatescience.com/2016/06/climate-fraud-threatens-science-population/
Had the author actually done any research, she would have known that Antarctic sea ice is increasing, not decreasing.
She also would have known that Antarctica is not warming.
RSS / MSU and AMSU Data / Time Series Trend Browser
Facts and scientific inquiry have no place in climate science. It is 100% junk science and fraud, 100% of the time.…
More computer model hype: Adelie penguins face disaster by 2100
http://www.examiner.com/article/more-computer-model-hype-adelie-penguins-face-disaster-by-2100
A new study published yesterday saysAntarctica’s Adelie penguins could face a disastrous population decline if global warmingwere to affect the continent. When? By 2099. There’s two big problems: Antarctica’s ice cover isactually growing in size, making the continent larger. And it’s based on computer models, which are notoriously prone to error and rarely, if ever, give accurate results. Imagine shooting a bullet from New York to Los Angeles and hitting a pin-sized bullseye on the side of a moving truck. That’s the difficulty with forecasting a region’s climate 83 years from now. Let alone a particular penguin’s population.
Jason Auch, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Adelie_Penguins_on_iceberg.jpg
Because Adelie penguins populate the continent’s entire coastline, the researchers focused only on West Antarctica, which has seen marginal warming since satellite tracking began in 1979. Interestingly, Adelie penguins rely on bare-rock locations for breeding and chick rearing, so increased sea ice is actually more detrimental to their well-being.
The study used various computer models and the UN IPCC’s climate computer simulations to come up with these new results. In its latest assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) created numerous scenarios, from not too bad to the very worst. The new studyshows that there might be a 60 percent loss in penguin populations when the IPCC’s Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 was fed into the simulation. But as another study pointed out, global warming is not progressing at the rate suggested by even the worst-case scenarios released by the IPCC.
But Antarctica, like other land masses surrounded by water, isn’t melting like the IPCC predicted or scientists assumed. It’s actually growing. That can also be a problem as Adelie penguins like to breed on rocky outcroppings. Warming periods in the past have actually helped the Adelie populations to grow as more bare rock was exposed.…