Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
Last week brought the latest shocking news about global warming’s horrific effects:Researchers have found that because of a rise in temperature, caused by an increase in greenhouse gas emissions by humans, the common brown butterfly now emerges from its cocoon 10 days earlier than it did 65 years ago. ....Two things are strange about this claim of early-emerging butterflies. First, it relies entirely on modelling the effects on butterflies, using old temperature records, rather than on a history of direct observation.Second, it relies on that temperature record not having been contaminated by any urban heat island effect, so that increasing urbanisation could not be said to have artificially increased the warming. ....Reader Alan RM Jones is puzzled. Here’s Laverton in 1946, around the start of the period covered by the butterfly survey: ...."
Ed : see the comparison....
Presumably the butterfly hatching records by amateur lepidopterists pertain to greater suburban Melbourne where conceivably the urban heat island could be inducing earlier hatchings on average each year. Hence the little danaeids might simply be responding to anthropogenic local warming (ALW). Kinda cute!
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