Picking on Pikas

Here's one you might have missed in today's LATimes. Most sane people would.

Pika Rodent Numbers Decreasing in the West

Populations of the American pika, a hamster-like rodent unable to survive in warm climates, continue to decline in the West, apparently due in part to global warming, researchers said.

Local populations of pikas are extinct at more than one-third of 25 sites surveyed since the mid-1990s in the Great Basin region, according to the study conducted by a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey.

What a fantasy! This is about as realistic as a story reading, "Northern Ohio Democrats, unable to survive in warm climates, were unable to reach polls, evidence that global warming re-elected the president."

Global warming, to the extent it exists, is a long-term trend, and temperature differentiations in the Great Basin over the last five years have not been significant, if even measurable as a trend of change. What has been going on in the Great Basin over the last five years is a drought, and population drops of one-third can be expected during droughts. Pika, like all species, will decrease in number in response to drought (or floods, or cold winters), and increase in easier years.

Doomsayers will simply counter that the drought was caused by global warming, I suppose, but that's as hard to prove as the original position, implied by the LATimes, that temperature change is creating this havok.