By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Pinky and Perky migrate to the North Pole:
Joe Pinkstone is one of the new generation of journalists who don’t bother to check the facts and naively believe every silly scare story thrown their way. For example, a few years ago, Mr tell us that The price of light beer will double as severe drought caused by climate change will devastate the barley fields.
If he really took the time to read this new report, he would discover that the authors are not saying that turtles will be forced north, but that their range will expand northward. Sure, there could be some regional variation, but these changes will be caused by long-term changes in precipitation. And as the authors admit, forecasts of rainfall trends are notoriously unreliable.
Keeping in mind that the study looked at non-marine turtles, I doubt any of us have ever seen a flock of turtles heading up M1, as we are already 1 degree Celsius warmer than the Little Ice Age. .
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Highlights
- •Non-sea turtles have invaded higher latitudes many times in the past
- •Sea turtles reached their highest latitudes during the Cenomanian and Eocene
- •The occupation of high latitudes is expected under extreme emission scenarios
- •Human occupations at high latitudes may prevent turtles from adapting to climate change
In brief
Past responses to environmental change provide important baseline data for estimating the potential resilience of extant taxa to future change. Here, we investigate the narrowing of the latitude range experienced by terrestrial and freshwater turtles (Testudinata) from the Late Cretaceous to Paleogene (100.5–23.03 mya) in response to major changes in climate. We apply the ecological niche model (ENM) to reconstruct the turtle niche, using ancient and modern distribution data, paleogeographic reconstructions, and the HadCM3L climate model to quantify variation in the range of the turtles. them in the Cretaceous and Late Eocene. We then use the insights provided by these models to infer their likely ecological responses to future climate scenarios at representative concentration pathways. (RCP 4.5 and 8.5 for 2100), predicts increased global temperature and spread of arid biomes at lower to mid-latitudes. We show that tortoise ranges are predicted to widen towards the poles in the Northern Hemisphere, with reduced habitat suitability at lower latitudes, reversing the trend of narrowing in latitude ranges. common since the Eocene. Trionychids and freshwater turtles can more easily track their burrows than Testudinidae and other terrestrial groups. However, habitat destruction and fragmentation at higher latitudes will likely reduce the ability of tortoises and tortoises to cope with future climate changes.
The entire study is open access and available here.
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