When Pelicans Come Begging

I'm getting bloody tired of climate change denialists, particuarly those shit for brains Tar Sanders. It's here, it's happening and, with the mountains of science that just keep growing, it's effectively proven. Sure there have been a couple of glitches and gaffes along the way but that's like pointing to two suspect trees in a forest. You've got two trees, the rest of us have the entire forest so, for the denialists, it's "put up or shut up" time. You've got an entire multi-trillion dollar fossil fuel industry backing you up so start producing some convincing research to disprove the global warming theory. When the best you can do is claim this is a hoax perpetrated by a global conspiracy of middle-class science geeks, then it's time you shut the hell up.

Want to see the ravages of climate change? Come out to Beautiful British Columbia. Take a leisurely drive through our expansive mountain valleys and marvel at the endless stands of forests with their rust-coloured foliage. Aren't they supposed to be green? Well, only if they're living. Once they've been killed off by the pine beetle they turn that rust colour. What's that got to do with climate change? Everything. Cold winters - the sort we used to have, always - kill off the pine beetle infestations, allowing the trees to live and, well, be green. We don't get those winters much any more and so the pine beetles spread and multiply and kill the forests. The only good part about this is that they've now crossed the mountains into Alberta, the last place on the planet where the inhabitants have any right to bitch about climate change.

Earlier this week we heard about Canada's wolverine and how their numbers are plummeting, again the suspected culprit being global warming. But this isn't about wolverine or pine forests or massive stocks of salmon that simply vanish without a trace or invasive species migrating into our coastal waters. This is about the jolly pelican (jolly, that is, unless you have to walk the same dock they use as their latrine).

The Pacific brown pelican is a magnificent bird. They're something to see when they fly in perfect formation, skimming the ocean surface in search of food. I've watched them plunge, headfirst, like giant hailstones into a placid boat harbour, feasting on a school of small fish. They've co-existed with humans on a live and let live basis. They don't seem to mind us at all when we're at a moderate distance.

Something is going on with the brown pelican. A lot of them have stopped migrating and even those that still do are showing signs of starvation. From the Los Angeles Times:

All along the Oregon coast over the last month, hundreds of brown pelicans have turned up dead, starving or begging for food.As many as 3,000 of the gangly seabirds failed to make their annual fall migration to California, many instead winding up at Oregon's rehabilitation centers.

Those that did head south, leaving the Pacific Northwest winter behind, were battered by California's recent storms. Shelters in San Pedro and the San Francisco Bay Area are also full of emaciated pelicans.

Researchers, at a loss to explain the casualties, are looking at unusual ocean currents and the depletion of fish stocks -- as well as warmer temperatures, toxic runoff and algae blooms -- as possible causes.Meanwhile, pelicans are sitting listlessly on beaches and scavenging outside restaurants and canneries.

...This is the second straight year that a large number of pelicans have remained in Oregon rather than trek to the warmer, quieter waters of California and Baja. From 1918 to 2002, the Audubon Society tallied fewer than 100 pelicans in Oregon every winter. Then the number shot up to 554 birds. In 2008, 3,647 stayed.

Three to four thousand pelicans doesn't sound like all that many but nature tends to give us huge numbers of small birds and only small numbers of really big birds.

I'm starting to think the Pacific coast ecosystem has become North America's miners' canary. Change seems to be overtaking the speed at which flora and fauna can evolve to adapt. Of course that's the real danger of global warming isn't it - not so much change itself but the speed at which change is occurring. We can't outrun it and there's your problem. With the exception of some very nasty things like viruses and noxious weeds, we haven't evolved the ability to evolve quickly or at least not quickly enough to stay a safe distance ahead of ourselves.