1. A government ad campaign to raise awareness of climate change gets flack for “ignoring uncertainties” regarding climate science.  (Green Inc.)
2. Depending on who supplies your water, saving it could actually cost you more (but you should still do it anyway).  (Treehugger)
3. The Christian Coalition backs Senator Lindsey Graham and announces its support for climate legislation.  (Grist)
4. A new report implies that demand for shark fin is getting out of control; group requests tighter regulations on global shark trade.  (Yale E360)
5. How to battle that no-fun cold the eco-friendly way.  (Huffington Post Green)

Dave Mehlman, the director of The Nature Conservancy’s migratory bird program, is blogging all week about the new “State of the Birds 2010″ report, of which he is a co-author. Read all his posts on the report — then go to my.nature.org to learn more about the report and the Conservancy’s work to protect birds.

The 2010 State of the Birds report focuses on birds and climate change — and found that birds of the three primary terrestrial habitat types (aridlands, grasslands, forests) showed relatively the least vulnerability to global warming.

However, each of these habitat types contains species that are dramatically more vulnerable to climate change. Even more notable, most of these species are not currently considered of conservation concern, suggesting that future attention will be warranted if action is not taken now.

Aridlands and grasslands share similar predicted effects of climate change: They will become warmer and drier. In aridlands, we also expect the already variable precipitation regime to become yet more variable, with longer and harder droughts and infrequent spells of heavy precipitation.

Aridlands are also at risk of increased invasion by non-native species of plants which could have major negative effects on our native avifauna. Examples of vulnerable aridlands species are found across the country, including Greater and Gunnison Sage-Grouse of the Colorado Plateau and Great Basin, Bendire’s and Crissal Thrasher of the Chihuahuan Desert, Black-capped Vireo of the Edwards Plateau, and Wrentit of the coastal California chaparral.

Grasslands are at great risk of invasion by woody species — both native and introduced — that can irretrievably alter these systems and affect the birds that rely on them. Although some grassland species, such as Loggerhead Shrike and Northern Bobwhite, are tolerant of some degree of woody plant cover, many other species of grassland birds, such as Chestnut-collared Longspur, will disappear with even a slight increase in woody shrubs. Other grasslands species particularly vulnerable to climate change include resident birds such as the Sharp-tailed Grouse and Greater and Lesser Prairie-Chicken and long distance migrants such as Wilson’s Phalarope, Dickcissel, and Bobolink.

Although birds of forests show relatively the least vulnerability to climate change of all habitats we analyzed, we nevertheless expect change to occur. Northward shifts in tree species’ ranges, increases in the frequency of insect outbreaks, longer and more severe fire seasons, and generally drier conditions will all result in changed bird species distributions.

Some of the most vulnerable forest species include those restricted to isolated, small habitat types in either the breeding or wintering season, such as Kirtland’s Warbler or Bicknell’s Thrush.  Of most concern, however, are a group of species known as “aerial insectivores”, such as Black Swift, Whip-poor-will, and Chuck-will’s-widow, which, in addition to the factors listed above, are at risk from declines in their medium and large-bodied insect prey.

(Image: Bobolink, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Image credit: kellycolganazar/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Nature Conservancy. For more information about our editorial policy and legal terms of use, see our About This Blog page.

Dave Mehlman, the director of The Nature Conservancy’s migratory bird program, is blogging all week about the new “State of the Birds 2010″ report, of which he is a co-author. Read all his posts on the report — then go to my.nature.org to learn more about the report and the Conservancy’s work to protect birds.

The 2010 State of the Birds report focuses on birds and climate change, and shows that birds of Arctic and Alpine habitats are some of the most vulnerable in the country to climate change.

Documented temperature increases in the Arctic are already greater than in other regions — and we expect equally dramatic changes in the distribution of surface-water vegetation and food resources. Given that Alpine habitats are inherently insular in nature, we expect many of the effects of climate change on islands to be duplicated in Alpine areas, including the total loss of these habitats at lower elevations and latitudes.

Species affected by these changes including many of our long-distance migrating shorebirds and waterfowl, plus species restricted to the highest elevation habitats of the interior mountains. These include Surfbird and Black Turnstone, which breed on the Arctic tundra, and Brown-capped Rosy-Finch of the Rocky Mountains.

Melting permafrost may release contaminants into the environment, adding new threats to those faced by Spectacled Eider, Yellow-billed Loon, and Sabine’s Gull.  Changes in the abundance and distribution of small mammals could lead to decreases in Snowy Owls and jaegers or an increase in their reliance on birds and other prey.

Although wetlands birds in general show relatively lower vulnerability to climate change compared to other habitat types, it is clear that even small changes in precipitation and temperature can degrade or eliminate wetlands over broad areas. This is especially true of the shallow wetlands of the Prairie Potholes, Americas “duck factory.”  Examples of species particularly vulnerable include Western and Clark’s Grebes, Northern Pintail, and Black and Clapper Rails.

(Image: Snowy owl against snow in Alberta, Canada. Image credit: BugMan50/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Nature Conservancy. For more information about our editorial policy and legal terms of use, see our About This Blog page.

1. Make today’s green beer greener by using gentle, eco-friendly dyes.  (Planet Green)
2. Some greenhouse gases contributing to ice sheet melt might actually originate from underneath ice sheets.  (Wired)
3. If everyone adopts it in their homes and businesses, LED lighting could save Americans $120 billion over the next 20 years.  (EcoGeek)
4. Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld: the official climate skeptic of Paris Fashion Week.  (Fast Company)
5. A new study indicates that not all carbon emissions are created equal.  (The Vine)

Dave Mehlman, the director of The Nature Conservancy’s migratory bird program, is blogging all week about the new “State of the Birds 2010″ report, of which he is a co-author. Read all his posts on the report — then go to my.nature.org to learn more about the report and the Conservancy’s work to protect birds.

The 2010 State of the Birds report focuses on birds and climate change. Of all the habitat types examined for the vulnerability of their birds to climate change, oceans stand out: all of the 67 oceanic birds we considered had medium or high vulnerability to climate change. Two other habitat types also defined by their connection to marine environments showed high vulnerability to climate change: coasts and islands (including Pacific and Caribbean islands).

Birds of the nation’s oceans — which include species such as Laysan and Black-footed Albatrosses, Black-capped Petrel, shearwaters, puffins, Common and Thick-billed Murres, and auklets — have numerous traits which make them slow or unable to adapt to climate change:

• Most of these species have what scientists call “low reproductive potential” (they do not breed until several years old, produce one egg every year or every two years, and/or have very high mortality of young birds).
• Many nest in highly concentrated colonies on islands and forage long distances for food, which is in itself very vulnerability to climate change.

This combination of factors makes all ocean birds vulnerable — and argues for increased conservation attention for this group.

Birds of coastal habitats are almost equally at risk, primarily from rising sea level, but also from increased flooding and erosion. These species occur across the country in an array of habitats, including Black and American Oystercatchers, whose low-lying beach nesting habitat may disappear; Seaside and Saltmarsh Sparrows, which are exclusively dependent on low lying salt marshes that may be the first to go; and seabirds such as Ivory Gull, Aleutian Tern, and Kittlitz’s Murrelet, which depend on coastal marine food webs that are at risk of disruption.

Island birds, particularly those from Hawaii, showed marked vulnerability to climate change, paralleling a finding from the 2009 report.  A variety of factors combine to produce this effect, including:

• Rising sea levels and temperatures, which reduce both coastal and terrestrial habitats;
• The small size of islands generally; changes in precipitation amounts and patterns; and
• Potential increases in frequency of natural disasters.

High elevation forest birds, such as the Puaiohi and ‘Akiapola’au of Hawaii, Elfin-woods Warbler of Puerto Rico, and Rota Bridled White-eye of the Northern Marianas face numerous challenges due to constriction or outright loss of their habitat and (in Hawaii) loss of previously malaria-free refuges.  Coastal nesting island birds, as in the rest of the country, are at great risk; examples include the Laysan Finch of Hawaii, American Flamingo in the Caribbean, and Micronesian Megapode in the Northern Marianas.

Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Nature Conservancy. For more information about our editorial policy and legal terms of use, see our About This Blog page.

(Image: American Flamingoes. Credit: cliff1066™/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

Dave Mehlman, the director of The Nature Conservancy’s migratory bird program, is blogging all week about the new “State of the Birds 2010″ report, of which he is a co-author. Read all his posts on the report — then go to my.nature.org to learn more about the report and the Conservancy’s work to protect birds.

The 2010 State of the Birds report, released last week by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, is a follow-up to last year’s groundbreaking report by the same name. This year’s report focuses on climate change, perhaps one of the most critical issues to our nation’s birds.

The report, again a product of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative and an array of federal agencies and private conservation groups, starts with the assumption that birds are sensitive indicators of the effects of climate change on our environment. It looks at how birds are doing and might fare in a changing world.

The team developing the report, of which I was a member, assessed each species in the United States for its vulnerability to climate change, based on its biological sensitivity to climate and the exposure of its habitat to short-term climate change.

Using this assessment, we were able to analyze all the major habitat types that we used in the 2009 report to determine the relative vulnerability of habitats to climate change. We were also able to explore how various subgroups and species of birds within habitat types might vary in their susceptibility to climate change.

We found dramatic differences between habitat types in their birds’ vulnerability to climate change:

• By far the most vulnerable are oceanic birds and those found in Hawaii.
• Birds of coastal, arctic and alpine, grasslands, and on Caribbean and other Pacific Islands showed intermediate vulnerability.
• Lower levels of relative vulnerability were shown by birds of aridlands, wetlands and forests.

Across all habitat types, birds species already considered of conservation concern (such as those listed under the Endangered Species Act, on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Birds of Conservation Concern list, or on the American Bird Conservancy/Audubon Watchlist) showed higher vulnerability than those not already considered of concern.

This finding clearly implies that climate change will exacerbate the currently precarious status of these species. However, this same analysis also clearly points out certain species which are likely to become of concern in the future, even though they currently are not.

I’ll outline some of those species in my follow-up posts this week.

(Image: Red-footed booby at Palmyra Atoll. Image credit: Jonathan Reed/TNC.)

Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Nature Conservancy. For more information about our editorial policy and legal terms of use, see our About This Blog page.

1. What’s killing the great forests of western North America? (Yale Environment 360)
2. Who’s growing more skeptical of climate change in the United States? (The Vine)
3. Why is Japan frightened of China’s green tech investments? (GreenBiz)
4. Who has the world’s first skyscraper with built-in wind turbines? (Inhabitat)
5. What’s the carbon emission toll caused by a single page view of Treehugger? (Treehugger)

1. Deep sea creatures — what do they eat down there? Wood, heat and spinach…on a bed of whale carcass, natch. (Blogfish)
2. Europeans love a new green toilet that separates #1 and #2. (CNET News)
3. Just how tight are some U.S. Senate offices and the anti-climate action lobby?  (Solve Climate)
4. A new UN climate change group is (surprise!) all white, all male. (Dot Earth)
5. A U.S. Congressman wants all federal buildings to become bird friendly. (Mongabay)

1. Watching “The Oprah Winfrey Show” might make you greener.  There is actually science behind this.  (Planet Green)
2. A bike commuter does the math and finds that a year of regular rides keeps 3,260 pounds of carbon out of the atmosphere.  (Treehugger)
3. How green is the dentist working on your pearly whites?  (GreenBiz)
4. Big news in plastic recycling:  scientists have developed an organic catalyst that can “build up and break down plastics over and over again“– and on the cheap, too.  (The Vine)
5. Your diet soda habit might not be so good for the planet.  In related news, I now feel like a horrible person.  (Huffington Post Green)

If there is one thing I am really bad at, it’s holding my own in a debate

When talking to people on the opposite side of an issue I care a lot about, I get…upset. I get flustered and red-cheeked. I don’t like confrontation, and when people try to turn something I’ve mentioned into a debate I’m not prepared for, I freeze like a deer in headlights.

I’m not dumb or uninformed, but I guess I don’t consider myself “an expert” on any topic — even those topics that I know quite a lot about.  But I think the biggest problem for me is that I refuse to spit out facts and figures that I’m not 100 percent sure are accurate.

I know a lot of people — and they tend to be the same ones who always want to argue — who will have read an article about something one time a month ago, and then tell you what they think they remember from the article as pure fact.

I don’t do that — I guess I’d rather look ignorant than be wrong. But there’s finally something out there for people like me! A new iPhone app from John Cook of the Skeptical Science website lets you use an iPhone to view a list of skeptic arguments as well as what the science says on each one.

The app includes rebuttals to 90 often-heard arguments from climate change skeptics — including “The climate’s changed before,” “Antarctica is gaining ice,” “It’s just a natural cycle” and (my favorite) “It’s the sun.”

I can’t tell you how many times this app would have saved the day.  When someone says that man-made climate change isn’t really because the Earth has warmed and cooled before, I know that current climate change is a different phenomenon, but I wouldn’t have been able to recite from memory the reasons why. Now, I could just show them this.

Sure, I know that this app isn’t going to change anyone’s mind. Nor would it change anyone’s mind if I could recite these rebuttals without having to look up the information. But it sure would be nice not to let the next loud climate change denier get away with it just because I can’t articulate an appropriate response.

Maybe for once I’ll get to look like the winner in an impromptu climate change debate.

Now all I need is an iPhone.

(Image credits: Top: Kennymatic/Flickr through a Creative Commons license. Bottom: Neil Boyd/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Nature Conservancy. For more information about our editorial policy and legal terms of use, see our About This Blog page.