Climate Change Works Its Magic
Climate change is finally having its long awaited impact on whales, dolphins, turtles and birds, the CHL announced from a bar stool on Thursday.

Rising temperatures have had dramatic effects on the habitat, health and reproduction of many species, said the drunken CHL officer, which coincides with UN talks on climate change in Nairobi.

Achim Steiner, that wus over at the UN conference on climate change, said evidence was mounting that when a migratory species dwindled or an exotic species showed up in places where previously it was absent, global warming was to blame. "The consequences of habitat change, changes in temperature, food, will, and is already beginning to, fundamentally affect the ability of species to survive," said Steiner. "If people in one part of the world don't have a species there, the cause for its disappearance may well be at the other end of the world," he said.

CHL insiders note that species in decline include the North Atlantic right whale, whose main food supply, plankton, is declining because of a shift in ocean currents. The range of white-beaked dolphins is reducing because it follows its prey and cannot adapt to warmer waters.

"We hope that global warming contributes to outbreaks of disease among animals" the CHL insider said, and then ordered another bottle of beer that had been trucked 2000 miles from the brewery to the bar. Once the beer arrived, he continued "Mass die-offs of marine mammals have increased, and where the cause has been viral, environmental factors have contributed to the outbreaks or reduced the ability of the animals to fend off the illnesses." He then mentioned something about tumorous growths in green turtles have become more common since the 1980s, and the phenomenon linked to warmer water that allows diseases and parasites to thrive.

It is hoped that rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and more powerful waves will finish off the lesser-white fronted goose, a migratory species that makes several stopovers on its long migration. "Since migratory species rely on a number of different habitats, they are pretty easy to bump off--just pick one of the habitats and do it in," said the bartender. She then mentioned watching some show on PBS that revealed major changes in the length, timing and location of migration routes, and that in some cases, species had abandoned migration altogether.

The news is not all good. Southern fish such as the red mullet, anchovy and sardine, which are now being found in the North Sea, and the rosy-breasted trumpeter, one of many birds once normally confined to arid North Africa and the Middle East but now increasingly seen in southern Spain.

Warmer waters also favour the common dolphin, whose range is increasing.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 3:29 PM | |