When the Repugnants took over Congress in the Midterm election, the chairmanships of the various committees where the real work of legislating takes place were handed over by the Democrats. The Senate's environment committee will now be chaired by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), a committed climate denier. His belief that climate change is "the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" is apparently religiously based since he believes he is doing the the Lord's work;
no doubt it has more commercial basis since Okalhoma is one of the United State's largest producers of fossil fuels. Never mind that Pope Benedict has declared that there is a global responsibility to combat the threatening catastrophe of climate change. But then Inhofe could be forgiven for ignoring the head of the Roman Catholic Church since he is a Presbyterian. Even the Presbyterians issued
a resolution in 2008 calling for Christians "to act NOW
[emphasis original] to lead the way in reducing our energy usage", and "aspire to live carbon neutral lives" as part of Christian witness. Perhaps Senator Inhofe would lay aside his deliberate ignorance for a moment to consider the historical record and current plight of the humble Spider Orchid
(Ophrys sphegodes).
England is the home of inveterate record-keepers going back to Roman times. So it was not unusual that biological researchers studying the relationship of an orchid and a miner bee (Andrena nigroaenea) would consult museum records of pressed flowers and bee collections dating back to 1848. What Dr. Karen Robbirt and her colleagues of the Royal Botanic Gardens and University of East Anglia found is that rising temperatures cause both orchid and bee to flower and fly earlier in the spring. Temperature change affects the bees more, which leads to a mismatch sexually speaking. The orchid uses sexual deceit to attract the bee into "pseudocoupulation", thus pollinating it. The flower resembles a miner bee in color and shape and emits a bee pheromone. [photos: Getty images].
The research published in
Current Biology is the first confirmation based on long term data that climate change can disrupt pollination and relationships between species. The orchid now flowers six days earlier for every 1℃ increase in spring temperature, but the male miner bee that does the psuedocopulating emerges nine days earlier. Female miner bees that usually emerged later than the male bees, emerge 15 days earlier. Result: the bees are having real sex and not pollinating the orchid that relies on the "little buggers" for its reproductive success. Not good news because three-quarters of all food crops rely on pollination. In the UK alone the free fertilization provided by pollinators like bees is estimated to be worth £430 million a year.
Science has found disturbing effects of global warming on natural synchronicities in other species such as oak trees, winter moths and great tits; puffins and herring, guillemots and sand eels; the red admiral butterfly and stinging nettle. Are all of these species in on the "great hoax" too, Senator? Or are these creatures of God trying to tell us that as the dominate species of the planet with a Biblical mandate to care for it, we are failing miserably.
