The Associated Press Leaped To A Conclusion That Just Was Not There

This is not the first time the AP was caught on the wrong side of a story...maybe they ought to get out of the news business and hang out a new shingle called, "The House That Fiction Built" ~ Norman E. Hooben

AP, they found your missing caribou
by Don Surber @ Daily Mail

The story two Octobers ago by Charles J. Hanley of the Associated Press was a sad one. Caribou were dwindling due to mankind’s global warming! A survey found that a quarter-million caribou had disappeared. Wrote Charles J. Handley: “Global warming has boosted temperatures in the Arctic twice as much as elsewhere, and Canadian researchers say the natural balance is suffering.”

Well, now some 25 months later, those missing caribou have been found. In Saskatchewan. From the Canadian Press:

A vast herd of northern caribou that scientists feared had vanished from the face of the Earth has been found, safe and sound — pretty much where aboriginal elders said it would be all along.

“The Beverly herd has not disappeared,” said John Nagy, lead author of a recently published study that has biologists across the North relieved.

Those scientists were shaken by a 2009 survey on the traditional calving grounds of the Beverly herd, which ranges over a huge swath of tundra from northern Saskatchewan to the Arctic coast. A herd that once numbered 276,000 animals seemed to have completely disappeared, the most dramatic and chilling example of a general decline in barren-ground caribou.

But Nagy’s research — and consultation with the communities that live with the animals — concludes differently.

His work springs from recent studies that question the long-held theory that caribou always return to the same calving ground. It holds that different herds use different grounds, and that’s what sets them apart.

“In the past, herds have been defined based on their calving grounds,” said Nagy. “However, it’s been shown that not all herds maintain fidelity to their calving grounds.”

Herds are now defined by which animals hang out together, not by where they give birth.

“It’s actually behavior that structures these herds, not calving grounds.”

It turns out that the Beverly herd has simply shifted its calving grounds north from the central barrens near Baker Lake, Nunavut, to the coastal regions around Queen Maud Gulf. Nagy’s analysis of radio-tracking data showed caribou in the region once thought to belong to the Ahiak herd are, in fact, Beverly animals.

So, it was a false alarm. The herd did not die out. It switched locations. I’m glad. As one scientist said: “Many of the community people reported that elders think this is nothing new. Caribou move.”

Once again, we learn that the Man-made Global Warming alarmists were wrong.

They stated something as fact.  It was a fallacy.  They leaped to a conclusion that just was not there.

Don’t expect a follow up from the Associated Press. the world suffering from the evils of greedy capitalists is a better story than scientists don’t know what they are talking about.

Caribou/climate expert Liv Solveig Vors told the Associated Press two years ago: “Climate change is changing the way they’re [caribou are] interacting with their food, directly and indirectly.” Charles J. Hadley also wrote, “Vors said caribou are unlikely to adjust.”

Apparently they do and they did.