Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A British article about declining snake populations could spell more bans for US snake keepers. Seventeen populations of snakes from Europe and Africa have shown declines according to a British Journal. The author's conclude global warming could be the cause. The AR agenda leaning academics will be all over this like white on rice. So global warming causes declines in some species but not the burmese python?

They came for your big snakes. They came for your turtles. They are coming for your amphibians. New Mexico and other states are coming for your colubrids. Lizards will be right around the corner too.

Thi is why you should not support any bans of any type. This is why you should not support AR leaning academics and state agencies that appease them. This is why you should not sell out your brothers and sisters in hopes that they might not come for your animals. They will come.

Welkerii

Cliff,

Here's a link to the article:

http://green.yahoo.com/news/afp/20100608/sc_afp/environmentspeciesbiodiversityreptilessnakes.html

That global warming (er, sorry, I guess now the pc term is "climate change" was singled out should automatically cause skepticism, imo.

Thanks,
Ed

Just a quick FYI: the original scientific term has been "Climate Change" all along. For decades now. Cheers!

Oh, what would we do without you!
jsc
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"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer

You say climate change I say an end to the pleistocene ice age. My wife says the space aliens are getting ready to change out their fish tank and dumping the current residents down the toilet.

Ha! Maybe she's right!
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Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG

Breeder of:
Green Tree Pythons
Jungle Carpet Pythons
Pastel, Pinstripe, FIRE, Piebald, Clown, Lavender Albino, Leucistic, and Spider Ball Pythons
Striped Colombian Boa Constrictors
Kenyan, Rufescens, and Conicus Sand Boas
Red Phase Western Hognose Snakes
Spider Western Hognose Snakes
Albino Western Hognose Snakes
Locality Trans-Pecos Mexican Hognose Snakes
Southern Hognose Snakes
Eastern Hognose Snakes
Tricolor Hognose Snakes
Hypo Checkered Garter Snakes
Eastern Blackneck Garter Snakes
Stillwater Hypo Bullsnakes
Patternless Bullsnakes
S. GA Eastern Kingsnakes
Locality Desert Kingsnakes
Albino Desert Kingsnakes
Hypo Desert Kingsnakes
Mexican Black Kingsnakes
Desert Phase, Striped Desert, Newport, and Coastal California Kingsnakes
Locality Mexican Milksnakes
Spotted Mexican Milksnakes
Tangerine Mexican Milksnakes
Locality Alterna
Abbott Okeetee Cornsnakes
Mexican Baird's Ratsnakes
Cape Housesnakes
Tangerine Albino African Fat -Tailed Geckos
Locality Spotted Turtles

BS and you and everyother algor freek knows it! LIE reply i'm sure. Easy to look up. VM

They can come for my snakes (or lizards as that's mostly what I work with.) what they will get is chopped up into tiny little pieces and cooked on my barbeque grill.

Glad to see you back Mike. I'd say you've been right all along.
jsc
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"As hard as I've tried, just can't NOT do this"
John Crickmer

Thanks John but I have been here the whole time. I just don't think debating with closed minded folks on the forums is a good use of my time. I have been working on my Masters thesis which is on the White and Black List regulations in Texas. I used actual natural history data, did real statistics and I have methods in my paper. Needless to say they didn't do a good job on their lists. It is something many of the AR academic agenda pushers should try instead of their feelings, the pre-cautionary principle, their banning agenda, their grant money procurement efforts and scare tactics.

Welkerii

Alarmist crap.

You read a very brief summary of an article and conclude that the authorities here on the other side of the ocean will confiscate your snakes.

You're using the same hyperbolic tactics that PETA uses.

It may be an exaggeration to think this one paper is going to spawn massive bans but this is the sort of thing we hobbyists should be informed about.

Yes, Aaron, they like to take baby steps. A litle here and a little there. They actual state in the paper that this should be a cornerstone for more research. Where do they get research dollars? They sky is falling, the sky is falling! They did the same with box turtles and other turtles. One paper spawns another paper and soon the banning attempts will come. Mark my words. Look at the proposed law in NM already. Brook's kings and SA milksnakes invasives? Ridiculous. Further, the ONE python paper did a lot towards that agenda. And what about amphibians? I mentioned that on the forums a couple years ago.

Disclaimer: Unbiased, agenda free science is needed. The problem is most doing the research have an agenda. Whether it is research dollars or the AR agenda it is there.

Welkerii

There is much irony here as well, given that global warming/climate change (or whatever you want to call it) is probably the biggest example of "alarmist crap" in the history of mankind.

I disagree, josh. If we're wrong about this, has much negative been done? But if we're right....it's bad. Too many changes have come about in the last 20 years to NOT reflect major climate changes. Why are glaciers melting....and they really are. And in the next year or two, there will be ice-free passage across the north pole. NOT normal.

Whether you believe climate change is man mad or not is irrelevent the bottom line is we need to stop dumping so much stuff into the atmospher and the environment. We are using up the buffer zone (the planets ability to make fast corrections) and if a really big volcano or something blows alot more stuff into the air what would have been a "cold" for the planet will be Pnumonia and it will be a long and painful recovery for us and everything else. At our rate of use and abuse future generations will suffer and look back at us like we look at the people who lived on Easter Island and say how could they be so dumb to cut down the last tree!!
Rob

actually it is very normal if you look at the evidence out there. most of the southwest was at one time underwater. Then the dinosaurs died off and they couldn't drive their cars anymore and the climate cooled back down.

>>actually it is very normal if you look at the evidence out there. most of the southwest was at one time underwater. Then the dinosaurs died off and they couldn't drive their cars anymore and the climate cooled back down.

Exactly. The earth has been warming and cooling for billions of years, and the evidence that man has some control over the temperature is extremely weak. The entire eastern half of North Carolina was under water several times. I find fossils there ranging from 65 million to 2 million years old.

One of the big problems with this type of hysteria is the opportunity cost. There are a lot of other activities we can do to make humanity and our planet better such as addressing overpopulation, creating drinking water for the millions who don't have enough, (ironically) providing warmth for the homeless during cold winters, focusing laws on those who pollute, protecting habitats of our animal and plant life, building technologies to control things like oil spills... all of which address known problems and could actually have some tangible results.

Besides, when my weatherman can actually get the 5 day forecast right, maybe I'll be less skeptical.

This guy is predicting a mini-ice age:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/01/11/years-global-cooling-coming-leading-scientist-says/

I guess I should keep my truck for the next 30 years, then buy a Prius??

There's a good website on junk science. Here's the page on global warming:

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

Thanks,
Ed

I remember back in the '70s when they were all screaming the "Ice age" thing because of the pollution. We were supposedly putting so much stuff in the air it was blocking the sun.
They were closing schools up north all the time and warning everyone to stay inside because it was so cold. Then it started to trend toward warming a bit and they started screaming global warming.
We have 100 to 150 yrs. of actual climatological data and probably only a bit more than a third of that is accurate given the comparison of technology between when we started taking temperature readings and now. Even if you went by biblical standards which put us here between 6 and 8,000 yrs ago we would only have that data for 2 to 3% of the time we have actually been on the planet. I won't even bother to go by paleontological standards which puts the planet here for how many billion years???? and they are claiming global warming based on 150 years of actual climate data at best.
Not to mention all of the paleontological and geological evidence that indicates that the planet has heated up and cooled down all on it's own several times.

We all know the earth heats and cools and oceans rize and fall and continents moves. I have posted many times here about the evergades being a transient ecosystem that is only several thousand years old. 8 to 10 thousand years ago native americans could walk from Orlando past Key West and there was not even a hint of the everglades. The only issue is is it hapening faster or slower because of man maybe yes maybe no but my earlier point is valid we are putting up tons of carbon that has taken millions of years to store and will take millions of years to store againand putting it into the sky and I don't think you need to be very smart to realize that that all that "stuff" in the air is probobly not a great idea and we need to start now because it has only taken 100 years to get this far. Do you want to wait another 100 years when it is doubble and find out for sure its not good and now its going to take housands of years to fix.
Climate change will happen no matter what but I for one would like clean air and and envoronment that is not destroyed for me and future generations.
The overpopulation issue is another thing but no one will make hard choices and humans are very selfish. It seem we are dumber than rats they over populate there environment and then bust but they don't understand it, we understand it but refuse to accept it, our belief we are not part of the natural world or maybe god will step in and save us or just plan heads in the sand. We just want to leave our mess for future generations to claen up because we only care about ourselves. When you see some trash dumped in the woods because someone was to lazy to claen up after themselves what do you think of that person? This is what future generations are going think of us!!!!!!!
Rob

Actually you're wrong-we have VERY reliable climatologocal data going back many hundreds of thousands of years-in some cases many millions- from a variety of sources. Glacial ice cores, ocean and freshwater sediments, fossil isotope ratios, just to name a few. There are many more. And the striking thing is that these are all INDEPENDENT lines of evidence, yet they all point to the same conclusion.

The earth is definitely warming, and some proportion of said warming is clearly derived from human sources. What is not 100% clear is just how far it will go.

But not to worry, the morons in charge of our congress as well as the rest of the world will do nothing but bicker about this subject until it is far too late to do anything substantive. It's a big experiment we'll be performing on our kids and grandkids. We'll see how it comes out.
-----
Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG

Breeder of:
Green Tree Pythons
Jungle Carpet Pythons
Pastel, Pinstripe, FIRE, Piebald, Clown, Lavender Albino, Leucistic, and Spider Ball Pythons
Striped Colombian Boa Constrictors
Kenyan, Rufescens, and Conicus Sand Boas
Red Phase Western Hognose Snakes
Spider Western Hognose Snakes
Albino Western Hognose Snakes
Locality Trans-Pecos Mexican Hognose Snakes
Southern Hognose Snakes
Eastern Hognose Snakes
Tricolor Hognose Snakes
Hypo Checkered Garter Snakes
Eastern Blackneck Garter Snakes
Stillwater Hypo Bullsnakes
Patternless Bullsnakes
S. GA Eastern Kingsnakes
Locality Desert Kingsnakes
Albino Desert Kingsnakes
Hypo Desert Kingsnakes
Mexican Black Kingsnakes
Desert Phase, Striped Desert, Newport, and Coastal California Kingsnakes
Locality Mexican Milksnakes
Spotted Mexican Milksnakes
Tangerine Mexican Milksnakes
Locality Alterna
Abbott Okeetee Cornsnakes
Mexican Baird's Ratsnakes
Cape Housesnakes
Tangerine Albino African Fat -Tailed Geckos
Locality Spotted Turtles

Bingo
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1.0 Albino American alligator, "Smoke"
1.1 American alligator,"Al Bite Ya & Molly"
1.1 Purple Albino Reticulated Pythons, "Gumbo & Abita"
0.1 Eastern Gaboon Viper, "Gabbie" Recently passed away at 24 years old
Help me find this snake!

Yes, climates change...but not THIS fast.

Disclaimer: Unbiased, agenda free science is needed. The problem is most doing the research have an agenda. Whether it is research dollars or the AR agenda it is there. Welkerii

100%, absolutely, dead on the money. No two ways about it. Its true most doing the research have an agenda and when asked, all will give you a nice politically correct sounding answer about how they are only interested in the facts, finding out the truth,,,,,, blah blah blah. Even the ones who are on to the game some of thier colleagues are playing refuse to step up and tell it like it is. They all step lightly, attempt to justify each others (mistakes) and sugar coat the truth. The sad thing is how many people fall for it.

They love to blame "the media" when a situation gets hyped out of proportion or when information that is not supported by the facts becomes public. Agenda takes on many forms and in some cases its simple arrogance. The ones who feel they are justified in making the data fit the problem, because they know better and their vision of how things are or should be is the right one.

Real scientists and real science ....Yep, Scientists are people. They make honest mistakes and some do a lot more then that. A point that should not be discounted or forgotten. The constant justfication/excuse making on the part of some academia and their wannabe groupie supporters is tiresome. Heres the real of it.

Giving someone you don't know the benefit of the doubt often ends up with you taking it right up the butt. It doesn't matter who they are or what you think they represent.

.........Asking questions, addressing counterpoints, taking a hard-line when putting an issue that's important to you under the microscope is what constitutes a cool-headed and well thought out approach, its the only smart approach. I agree you shouldn't paint all scientists with the same brush. Like any one else. They all need to be carefully scrutinized on an individual basis. If a person is on the up and up, he/she should understand the reasons behind this scrutiny.

Ernie Eison
WESTWOOD ACRES REPTILE FARM INC.