[HN Gopher] The effects of a warmer world are visible in animals...
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The effects of a warmer world are visible in animals' bodies
Author : jkuria
Score : 57 points
Date : 2021-09-11 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| ScaryBashGhost wrote:
| https://archive.is/ozASI
|
| Does anyone else find the Economist's lack of bylines and
| complete author anonymity to be off-putting? It's scary how much
| influence they have and how no one seems to mind that they don't
| feel comfortable putting their names on the stuff the advocate
| for and report on.
|
| Great article!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > no one seems to mind that they don't feel comfortable putting
| their names on the stuff the[y] advocate for and report on
|
| The first-line accountability is _deliberately_ on the editors
| rather than the reporters.
| kortilla wrote:
| First, journalists shouldn't be "advocating" for anything.
| Second, a byline only serves the purposes of allowing ad
| hominem attacks rather than focusing on the content.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| > no one seems to mind that they don't feel comfortable putting
| their names on the stuff the advocate for and report on.
|
| This is a really weird interpretation of "it's editorial
| policy". The journalists aren't declaring anything about their
| confidence in what they're reporting. It's not their choice.
|
| So why are they working at the Economist? Because (1) it's hard
| to get a journalism job, and (2) the Economist is a prestigious
| place to work.
|
| I wouldn't read too much into it.
| sjtindell wrote:
| The way they do it is significantly better than almost any
| other magazine out there in my opinion.
| Darmody wrote:
| In a paper published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution, a team
| led by Sara Ryding, a PhD candidate at Deakin University, in
| Australia
|
| I think that's the author we should care about, not who wrote
| the article in The Economist.
| TheCowboy wrote:
| While I can understand the point of view, focus on the content
| not who the writer is, I'm not really a subscriber. I like to
| have some sense of a person's background on a subject the less
| I follow it. It also sets a ceiling on the amount of trust you
| can develop with readers IMHO.
| dryd wrote:
| I personally like it. They comment their rationale for this
| choice here, under "Author anonymity":
| https://www.economist.com/frequently-asked-questions
| ramphastidae wrote:
| Quite the opposite. I appreciate that the focus is on the
| content of the article and not the author.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| It's hard to prove that these mutations are adaptations to the
| global warming specifically, but events like mass die-offs of
| Australian flying foxes are pretty conclusively caused by extreme
| heat waves - and since there is a 100+ years of historical
| records we know for sure they're happening now at much higher
| frequency than before.
| [deleted]
| jonplackett wrote:
| I can only read the first part because of the paywall. How do
| they know that a bigger beak is cause by higher temperatures?
| What's the cause / effect there?
|
| NB. just curious / not a climate denier!
| pineaux wrote:
| No paywall: https://archive.is/ozASI
| dryd wrote:
| Unfortunately the title makes a small logical leap.
|
| From the article: "Her team combined data from different species
| in different places. Since they have little in common apart from
| living on a warming planet, she says, climate change is the most
| plausible explanation."
|
| While climate change may indeed be the most plausible
| explanation, this headline seems to transform from "most
| plausible" into a causal link.
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| > this headline seems to transform from "most plausible" into a
| causal link.
|
| One of big alternative explanations why animals/humans get
| smaller closer to tropics is not because of lack of food, _but
| because of too much of it_
|
| The quicker the species can grow to maturity, the more food
| calories can be spent for procreation.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Why do you think this is a relevant critique to the
| article/paper? The study is about a global trend in
| increasing _appendage_ size within populations due to warming
| ( "Allen's rule"), not whole body size ("Bergmann's rule").
| Secondly, the role of food is acknowledged as a potential
| factor in the section on causality, but justifiably rejected
| as the sole factor.
| yosito wrote:
| Animals bodies evolve to adapt to changes in the environment.
| This is nothing new. It's literally the process that has driven
| life forward since life first appeared. And given that the planet
| has so far only warmed an average of 1.1 degrees celcius due to
| climate change, isn't it a bit overzealous to blame animals'
| adaptation on climate change?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > And given that the planet has so far only warmed an average
| of 1.1 degrees celcius due to climate change, isn't it a bit
| overzealous to blame animals' adaptation on climate change?
|
| The worldwide average doesn't really tell the full story,
| because there can be significant local extremes that are far
| greater.
|
| See, for example,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lytton,_British_Columbia, a town
| that broke the all-time temperature record for Canada and then
| burned to the ground the next day.
| kortilla wrote:
| It burned to the ground due to a wildfire caused by sparks
| from a train, not from the heat.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lytton_wildfire
|
| Wildfires don't spread much better in 90F vs 121F. The big
| thing that causes uncontrollable spreads is lots of fast
| wind.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Wildfires don't spread much better in 90F vs 121F.
|
| That's missing the point a bit. That said, vegetation sure
| does get dry fast in a 120 degree heat wave, though.
| [deleted]
| porb121 wrote:
| this comments are like bingo for climate science
| misunderstanding
|
| evolution doesn't happen on time scales of 100 years
|
| +1.1 avg temperature implies much larger localized changes
| tejtm wrote:
| Evolution happens on the time scale of "birth" to
| reproductive age for the organism in question. I know of no
| corporeal entity still considered adolescent after a century.
|
| I have never even worked with an evolutionary biologist but
| the concept of "punctuated equilibrium" has been around for
| quite a while.
|
| [] my sloppy use of "birth" includes cells budding, seeds
| sprouting and the rest of the messy details.
|
| [] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium
| Zababa wrote:
| > evolution doesn't happen on time scales of 100 years
|
| Evolution may not, but selection may happen on that time
| scale, especially for animals that live short lives.
| andi999 wrote:
| What is the difference between selection and evolution?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Selection is a process by which evolution works, so this
| is a false distinction. Modern definitions of evolution
| are usually something along the lines of changes in a
| population over time. There's no inherent time scale over
| which those changes can be observed, except for that of
| the generation time itself.
| dvt wrote:
| > evolution doesn't happen on time scales of 100 years
|
| Phenotypic selection _does_ happen on this timescale.
| Industrial melanism[1] has been pretty well studied.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_melanism
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Yeah - and on top of that, the commenting user seems to
| underestimate the gravity of "only" a few degrees:
|
| > The study also calculates extinction risks at different
| warming levels. It finds that 2% of endemic species are at
| risk of extinction if warming is limited to 1.5C, and 4% are
| at risk at 2C. However, the risk rises to 20% for land-based
| ecosystems, and to 32% in marine ecosystems if warming hits
| 3C.
|
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/04/climate-change-
| will-h...
| patcon wrote:
| Agreed. Yes, some animals will handle it, and we'll hold them
| up as examples. But the crash in diversity from all those who
| don't is tragic. The genetic diversity that is the bounty of
| millions of years of iteration and "learning" in ecological
| systems is a huge loss to our planet's resources and (by
| proxy) our own future wealth.
| [deleted]
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