The danger of global warming became clear as it is blamed for radically declining musk ox populations. From the story:
A team of scientists has discovered that the drastic decline in Arctic musk ox populations that began roughly 12,000 years ago was due to a warming climate rather than to human hunting. “This is the first study to use ancient musk ox DNA collected from across the animal’s former geographic range to test for human impacts on musk ox populations,” said Beth Shapiro, the Shaffer Career Development assistant professor of biology at Penn State University and one of the team’s leaders. “We found that, although human and musk ox populations overlapped in many regions across the globe, humans probably were not responsible for the decline and eventual extinction of musk oxen across much of their former range.” The team’s findings will be published in the 8 March 2010 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
That can’t be right. Humans are the cause of all ills, especially species decline.
Of course, it can’t be left at that. We may not have been the problem way back then, but we are now:
Shapiro continued, “We know from historical data that musk oxen are sensitive to changes in the Arctic environment. While we cannot confirm exactly what climate factors are driving the changes we observe in musk oxen over the last 65,000 years, we can say with confidence that humans are not causing local extinctions. In Greenland, for example, humans and musk oxen arrived and began their expansion at the same time.” According to Gilbert, “We wonder how the current climatic instability will effect the survival of musk oxen in the near future. There’s a lot in the news about the plight of polar bears, but musk ox may be similarly at risk.”
Uh, polar bear numbers have increased in recent decades, not the other way around. Sigh.
