More wildlife fun with The Guardian

As a follow up to Bayard's beaver post (see below), I'll up the ante...

From The Guardian:

The study by University of Sussex researchers raises fears that bees and other flying pollinators may struggle in the higher and more frequent winds caused by global heating.

The bees, which usually feed on wild flowers after leaving their hives in the campus gardens, were lured into the shed with sugar water feeders. Only one bee was allowed in at a time, and their visits to artificial flowers were videoed and timed under different fan speeds, which mimicked calm and windy days.

With no wind, the bees on average took nectar from 5.45 flowers during their 90-second time trial. When wind speeds were increased, this fell to an average of 3.73 flowers. Over the course of a day, a bee’s capacity to supply its colony with food would be significantly curtailed.

Yes, bee and insect numbers have plummeted over the past few decades, as anybody who can remember scraping dead flies off the car windscreen (or in my case, watching my Dad do it, I'm not that old) will confirm. This is perhaps something we should be worried about, and maybe we could slow or reverse this trend.

But...

a. Bees evolved quite a while ago, I'm sure they know how to handle a stiff breeze or two.

b. There's no reason to assume that 'global warming' will increase wind speeds. Wind speeds and turbulent events like tornadoes are caused by temperature differences between regions, or cold air meeting hot air, and not absolute temperature.

We are told that 'global warming' is reducing temperature differences - from Wiki: Presently, the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.

In contrast, it's bloody hot in the Sahara in the day time, but it's not subject to gale force winds from sunrise to sunset. On average, winds are stronger in Antarctica, even though it's much colder (the opposite of the claim in the article).

And apparently, there is barely any wind on the surface of Venus, which has fallen victim to 'runaway climate change' (in truth, it's that hot because atmospheric pressure at the surface is ninety-three times higher than on Earth).