If only you would trade in your fossil fueled vehicle for a much more expensive EV, put solar panels on your home, and genuflect to the climate gods
Climate change could quiet prairie birds’ chirping
A bird sings on the prairie and nobody can hear it. Forget whether it makes a sound—biologists want to know why it went unheard. Drier conditions intensified by climate change might be responsible, a new study finds, because birdsong doesn’t travel as far in dry air. That could have harmful consequences for birds trying to defend their territories or find a mate.
The study is one of the first to examine the bioacoustic implications of climate change, says Jacob Job, an acoustic ecologist who was not involved with the work. It is “at the forefront” of this emerging research question, he says.
As global warming progresses, droughts are predicted to become more frequent and severe in prairies and grasslands across the southwestern United States. A team of researchers at the University of Oklahoma (OU) wanted to know how these dry conditions might affect the way birds communicate.
To find out, the researchers simulated a prairie environment inside a computer and populated it with virtual birds. Each bird was given a set territory, within which it was allowed to rest, move, or sing. Their simulated birdsong was governed by real-world acoustic rules, meaning it carried farther in moist air than in dry air. The birds also sang less often in hotter, drier conditions in order to avoid dehydration. Finally, the researchers calculated how many of these virtual birds could successfully communicate with their six closest neighbors under different climate scenarios.
So…..there were no real world birds involved? Nothing other than a computer simulation based on doomy input? No listening to birds over years, doing real world experimentation? Good grief.
So far, these impacts have been explored only in the virtual prairie. The question now, Job says, is whether drought-induced communication problems “actually occur in bird species in the wild and whether it matters to them.” Pandit is now trying to answer that question by analyzing recordings of bird songs collected in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. By comparing these acoustic data with climate predictions, the research team hopes to learn how drier conditions in the future could threaten prairie chirps and cheeps.
They’re coming up with doomy prognostications and they have zero idea if it is actually happen for real? And they call this science? It’s a cult.
Ya. The first “Silent Spring” was so successful, someone thought they would trot it out again. Like Disney remaking all the old classics when they have nothing new.