EnviroSpin Watch

Ah! Is the British government adapting at last?.... and chiropteran climates.....

Good old Alex K. tells it all: 'UK works for climate adaptation' (BBC Science/Nature Online News, January 27):

"The British government says it is now working on a strategy to adapt to the effects of increasing climate change.

Efforts have till now been focused on trying to avert the prospect through reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases scientists say are responsible.

The environment department says it is committed to publish the adaptation strategy before the end of this year."

And clearly we should be expecting more bats in the belfry: 'Bat evolution linked to warming' (BBC Science/Nature Online News, January 28):

"A sharp rise in global temperatures about 50 million years ago may have been responsible for the evolution of bats, Science magazine reports.

This warming is linked to an explosion in the diversity of other mammals, but little was known about bat evolution.

New DNA data traces the origin of four major bat lineages to a brief period in the Eocene epoch when the average global temperature rose by about 7C.

Bats make up 20% of mammals, yet their evolutionary history is poorly known."

Well, one always knew that some aspects of current climate-change theory were distinctly batty! No doubt we'll soon be hearing about the dangers of more vampires from chiropteran climate change!

Philip, apologies for the short blog today. Off to speak to a bunch of lively students at Brunel University. "Have a nice day!"