Climate Change Sceptics

You won’t find climate sceptics
Near the thinning ice
Or on low island atolls
Vanished in a trice

The dire real world picture
That should be plain to see
Is sadly out of focus
When filtered through TV

Comfortable and powerful
Men in caves of steel
Decree the truth illusion
And climate change not real

I am always interested when apparently educated and intelligent people deny the reality of climate change.  I listen carefully to what they say and usually discover that they are not particularly well informed.  They often believe what they have read in the newspaper, seen on TV or even read on blogs and with no real world context have accepted opinion as fact. But being well informed is not a prerequisite to having a strong opinion. When you work in a central city office with regulated heat and purchase your food from a supermarket it is unsurprising that your real world view will be blurred.

On the other side of the ledger are those on the front line. You won’t find climate change sceptics amongst the marine biologists and climate scientists who are daily confronted with the reality of massive changes in climate and ecology and particularly with respect to marine ecology which is changing rapidly. You also won’t find too many climate change sceptics among the Pacific islanders who are watching their atolls disappear beneath the waves or the Inuit in their rapidly warming Arctic homes.  It is ironic that the opinion of native peoples, who are such careful observers of the weather, is of such little worth in comparison with the opinion of highly articulate but often profoundly ignorant men of power in their caves of steel.

Toads of Karragarra

Today on Karragarra
When walking down the road
I saw a kookaburra
Ignore a dead cane toad

Who was it that taught him
That it's bad to eat a toad
Looking fresh and tasty
Squashed upon the road

Perhaps when he was younger
He ate a little toad
And never has forgotten
That bitter poison load

There is plenty of evidence of kookaburras dying after eating cane toads but it looks like they are learning. It may be that mother kookaburras are teaching their young to avoid them but it is also likely that they have become ill after getting a sub-lethal dose from a small toad and avoid them ever after.  Let’s hope they continue to learn.

Toads are very destructive and not just because they poison the large predators. They breed like crazy and consume the insect and other resources needed by other wildlife. So the toads become fat and plentiful while everything else declines. They are bad news!

They are almost impossible to eradicate and it is easy to exacerbate the problem. We live on Karragarra Island on Moreton Bay. It is a long skinny ridge of an island flanked with mangroves and has little of the natural surface water necessary for toads to breed.  So how come it is teeming with toads? I discovered part of the answer on the western end of the island a few weeks ago. Someone had excavated a shallow depression, presumably as a source of fill for the adjacent road and rainwater had pooled in the depression. The shallow pond was teeming with distinctive jet black toad tadpoles and countless baby toads were swarming through the leafy surrounds and heading for the forest. With a large female toad capable of laying 30,000 to 40,000 eggs at a sitting it is a dire situation.