Climate Change Headlines

For some reason I enjoy reading the headlines about climate change. Here, without comment, is a sampling of the news headlines that have popped up on my Google News feed:

Climate change makes salamanders shrink, scientists say
In Ranchers Vs. Weeds, Climate Change Gives Weeds An Edge
Feds spent $700000 on a climate change musical
What Famous Old Paintings Can Tell Us About Climate Change
Tragedy in Washington state: Why climate change will make mudslides more common
Climate change will make UK weather too wet and too dry, says Met Office
Climate change: While we fiddle, the world burns ... and floods and parches
Climate Change Art: That Sinking Feeling
Teachers swap climate change scare stories for fun and games
Debunking Myths: Oregonians ARE Worried about Climate Change
Boriskin: Blame Bush for ‘climate change'
Obama: Denying Climate Change Is Like Saying the Moon Is “Made of Cheese”
Three Ways Climate Change Is Going to Ruin Your Beer
8 Summer Miseries Made Worse by Global Warming, From Poison Ivy to Allergies
Climate Change Could Alter the Human Male-Female Ratio
What Do Chinese Dumplings Have to Do With Global Warming?
Mountain Goats Are Shrinking—A Lot—Because of Global Warming
Inventing Climate-Change Literature
Climate Change Is Real. Too Bad Accurate Climate Models Aren't.
Climate Change Threatens to Strip the Identity of Glacier National Park
Texas And Oklahoma, Hotbeds Of Climate Change Denialism, Wracked By Another Year Of Warming-Worsened Droughts JANUARY 14, 2013
Texas, Oklahoma Drought ‘All But Over’ May 21st, 2015
Is global warming increasing the risk of shark attacks? Higher temperatures blamed for record number in North Carolina
What climate change will do to your loaf of bread
The White House Wants Your Doctor To Teach You About Global Warming
Delayed flight? Blame global warming
Mosquitoes, Ticks and Poison Ivy Thriving with Climate Change
2015 and 2016 set to break global heat records (London September 14, 2015)
Obama Seeks Psychological Help with Climate Change
New Study Claims Global Warming Is Producing Massive Swarms Of Killer Mosquitos
CLIMATE CHANGE COULD SHRINK YOUR GRANDKID’S INCOME SAYS NEW SCIENTIFIC PAPER
Gains Of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater Than Losses: NASA Study
Global Warming May Affect Birth Rates: People Less Likely To Have Sex In Hotter Temperatures
Why Can't We Find Aliens? Climate Change Killed Them
Recent improvement and projected worsening of weather in the United States. Nature, 2016; 532 (7599): 357 DOI: 10.1038/nature17441
CO2 is making Earth greener; too bad about the rising seas
Life on Earth-like planets could be impeded by global warming, scientists say
Trees Can Limit Climate Change—Unless It Kills Them First
John Kerry warns your refrigerator is as dangerous as ISIS
Polar bears are totally screwed
Polar bears in Svalbard in good condition – so far

AND IN GOOD NEWS . . .
Climate change could make Middle East 'uninhabitable'


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Note: I haven't tried to screen these headlines in any way--except to select ones that somehow struck my fancy. If you'd like to actually read one of these articles, just enclose the entire headline in quotation marks and plug it into Google Search. That will take you to my source.

JAWS!

Life in the Ozarks can't really compete with the Spielberg movie, or can it?

I guess the answer demands on how closely one is able to observe nature and how fully one uses one's imagination. And imagination was really what caused the horror in Jaws, anyway.

So here we go.

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The Giant Stag Beetle

My first ferocious insect is actually only frightful to see.

Lucanus elaphus, the Giant Stag Beetle, is a huge insect almost three inches long with pincers of about an inch. Fortunately those pincers are mostly for show. Only the male has such large ones, and he uses them only to impress the ladies and to wrestle with the guys. He hasn't actually got the strength to give much of a pinch with them.

The adult beetle lives for about a month, defending a rotten stump from other males and mating when possible. (The male in the two photos above is posing on one of my deck posts, which I hope he is not correct in believing to be rotten wood.) The female lays eggs in the stump and they hatch in due time into the larval form. For the next few years the larvae munch away, growing and molting toward their brief lives in the sun.

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The Ant Lion

Unlike the Giant Stag Beetle, the inconspicuous Ant Lion is a ferocious predator . . . but only in its larval stage. As an adult, it is a pretty little thing (much like a damselfly) and it feeds only on pollen and nectar (except for a few species that also eat small bugs).

The Ant Lion larva is tiny (less than 1/2 inch) and I've never actually seen one, though their sand traps are common and unmistakable. I have a whole colony of these sand traps just outside my garage door, so today I decided to use Sue's new TG-3 camera to take a close-up photo of the very bottom of such a trap, where the Ant Lion lies concealed and waiting for an unfortunate ant to slip over the edge.

If you look very closely and use a bit of imagination, you can just make out the front-half of the sand-covered beastie. It helps, however, to know what you should be seeing so here is a link to a photo from the of the larva:

Nothing helps the imagination more than a bit of video. National Geographic has a nice YouTube piece about the Ant Lion doing its job: Antlion Death Trap. Apparently, there is a price to pay for being so cruelly predatory: Ant Lions are the most constipated of insects, so much so that they have no anuses!

And that scares even me.

The Gordian Worm

The Gordian Worm youtube video

The Gordian Worm is a very long, very slender insect parasite that gets its common name because it is sometimes found tangled up in what almost seems to be a living gordian knot. It is also known as a Horsehair Worm because of the typically ill-informed folklore that "the long, thin hairs of a horse's mane or tail [can fall] into the water trough as a horse [drinks] and later [come] to life."

The scientific name for this animal is Nematomorphora. In its larval stage it is a parasite of grasshoppers and crickets. What happens is that the eggs hatch into tiny larvae which are then encysted on submerged grass or other plants. When these are eaten by grasshoppers or crickets, the Nematomorphora larvae grow inside the host until they eventually break free into the adult worms. Exactly how these worms grow as long as they obviously do is not explained in my source material.

Interestingly there are occasional instances of Gordian worms infecting humans--though these seem to occur only in the Far East and are apparently instances of pseudoparasitism. I.e., a person accidentally or intentionally eats an infected grasshopper or cricket. This introduces the worm into the human, but the worm is incapable of thriving in its new host.

For a truly fascinating introduction to horsehair worms and similar parasites, watch this YouTube video: Horse Hair Worms: http://youtu.be/so8ScD6m1MI
Sources:
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2012.html
http://www.nematophora.net

The Water Bottle Money Can't Buy`

Cyclists need water. Moreover they often need to drink water while pedaling down the highway at over 20 mph. Yet the design of the usual sports bottle requires one to tilt one's head up sharply, risk taking one's eyes off the road, and both squeeze and suck on the bottle to get a few precious sips of H2O. It's sad. And dangerous.

Enter "The Water Bottle Money Can't Buy." To make this bottle, you need a section of 1/4-inch silicon or poly tubing that is about an inch longer than your water bottle is deep. Drill a 1/4-inch hole through the lid of the bottle and another 1/8-inch hole a little distance away. Now slide the tubing into the bottle and you have a hydration system that is much easier and safer to use.

You can drill your 1/4-inch hole right through the nozzle of a regular sports bottle for a professional-looking bottle. Or you can do what I have done and recycle a 20-ounce Gatorade bottle. Either one is a big improvement on an ordinary sports bottle.

Cell Phone Macro Photography

When I am out and about in nature, I prefer to carry light-weight, minimal equipment. Typically, I'll have a water bottle, a pair of 8x25 close-focus binoculars, and my cell phone (an inexpensive Samsung s390g). The camera on the cell phone takes two megapixel snapshots. When the light is good and I am able to hold the phone steady, these snapshots are adequate.

To photograph insects and wildflowers, however, additional magnification is essential. It turns out that with the aid of an inexpensive loupe such magnification is relatively easy to achieve. Here is a pair of pictures of my cell phone set up for macro photography:

As you can see, the loupe is attached with a rubber band to the phone so that the lens of the loupe is centered over the lens of the cell phone's camera. The only trick to taking fairly decent macro photographs is to hold the phone at the right distance from the object being photopraphed. With this loupe that distance is about three or four inches.

Here is a photo that provides a sense of the degree of clarity and magnification that I can achieve. (I usually set the camera's timer to two seconds so that I can get the distance just right and hold the phone steady enough to eliminate motion blur.)

Click to see full-scale photo

Clearly the loupe does create some distorting curvature along the edges, but the clarity seems fairly good.

Here is a link to a portfolio of pictures of wildflowers on our property that I have taken with cell phone macro photography:

Click to go to Picasa folder

The flower in the center of the first photo is almost unbelievbably small, as is the beetle perched atop the flower!