Exotic butterflies seek sanctuary in Britain

[Jack Harrison]

Not such a daft article as might be imagined from the headline

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 321224.ece

I already have Fennel planted in my garden to be ready....

Jack

[Padfield]

There was a similar, but less full report in the Torygraph this morning too.

I must say, I treat a part of this with great scepticism. I have a copy of an excellent report by the European Environment Agency called 'Impacts of Europe's changing climate - 2008 indicator-based assessment' but it is notable that most of its data relates essentially to the last 30 or 40 years or so, thus beginning in the cool period and tracking through the late 20th century warming. I've done a lot of research from secondary sources to try and eke out the truth about what is likely to happen in the future and cannot find anything remotely approaching evidence that warming is even continuing now, let alone that it has become a man-made inevitability. The one dataset that does indicate continued warming recently (Hansen's data) is by all accounts radically flawed. I have yet to find a single coherent and persuasive argument that CO2 in particular is to blame.

What does seem clear though is that the disastrous fragmentation and disappearance of the European (and especially British) countryside means that species mobility and resilience to the inevitable short-term shifts in climate are radically compromised. Habitat destruction is the single biggest threat to Europe's wildlife. Around me in the Alps they are talking green and yet building on every available south-facing meadow. The butterflies have no chance while people sign pointless treaties about long-term CO2 emissions and yet go around trashing the places where butterflies actually live.

Guy

PS - There's an excellent series of videos by a 'climate change rationalist' here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI

[Matsukaze]

The predicted butterfly ranges are available online and make interesting viewing:

http://pensoftonline.net/biorisk/index. ... /1/showToc

[Padfield]

This is fantastic! A great download with some fascinating information on recent changes in distribution.

I'm still not convinced of the validity of the basic premise, though, given that there is no evidence of global warming in the 21st century and no good empirical grounds for supposing there will be in the near future. Again, most of the data used for this new atlas relate to the period between 1981 and 2002, during which period there was considerable warming.

Guy

[Matsukaze]

...and habitat destruction is the real problem, warming climate or no warming climate.

European insects have seen all this before, shifting their distribution as the climate warms and cools, and in most cases managing to survive (there is some interesting work on beetles resident in Britain during the ice ages and interglacials - very few species have gone extinct though many are no longer resident here).

However, it's hard to see, say, butterflies at present restricted to Andalusia tracking their ideal climatic zone north to the shores of the English Channel, given the state of the habitats they will need to cross en route.

Some of the predictions in that document are eye-catching and others show signs of having been made by computer. One of the last things I expected to see in it is the Mountain Ringlet spreading south from its Highland fastness and reaching Kent by 2080.

[Padfield]

Yes - very interesting that the climatic niche for epiphron moves south in all the 'storylines'. I don't quite understand this, given the statement in the introduction to this species that it needs snow cover in winter. Nevertheless, I think that is just my not understanding it yet - the modelling of climatic niches has obviously been done very carefully and by experts.

It would have been interesting if they had created models based on cooling scenarios too. Although Martin Warren states in the introduction that warming is 'inevitable', the only thing that really is inevitable is that there will be global cooling at some stage, after peak warming is reached (if it hasn't been reached already). I understood also that some models of global warming included local cooling in north-west Europe as a result of changes to the Gulf Stream. If I understand it correctly, all the storylines in this book involve warming of north-west Europe (at least, an increase in the accumulated growing degree days up to August).

Guy

[chitin]

One thing you will never heard said by a scientist is " global warming has stopped, We don't need grant money now. I was a Research Scientist and when the research station was faced with closure and having to rely on grants before that happened we all looked for something to scare people with. Been there ! In order to bolster their claims Antarctic Scientists are using data from weather stations they do not have but what they would have given had they been there !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! . Also one group said that the antarctic had cooled 1 degree in recent years. Bet you don't see that in the media except it was in the Sunday Telegraph recently.