The Health Impacts of a Changing Climate

What the future will look like – without all the doomsday prophecies.

It’s hard to go through the day without hearing someone mention climate change, how you should be reducing your carbon footprint, or noticing the cute sustainability slogans on t-shirts at the mall.

What’s even harder is trying to wrap your mind around what climate change could really mean for us. The ice caps are deteriorating, and the annual average temperature is on the rise, but it’s hard to gather what that means for regular people.

Boidz!

In the last 20-plus years, birds that feed on flying bugs have taken a huge hit - and no one really knows why.

I set out with my standard story-buddy Steve Howard to try to figure what's going on with the birdies. We talked to some pretty knowledgeable people on the matter. 

Mike Cadman works for Canada Wildlife Services, and was the head of putting together the Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario. 

Dr. Silke Nebel is an ornithology at the University of Western Ontario's Advanced Facility for Avian Research. She was looking into population trends for aerial insectivores over geographic and temporal regions. 

Katie Marshall is a UWO PhD student who is looking at how climate change is affecting freeze-tolerant insects. We were hoping she would give us an idea as to whether something was going on with the prey populations which could in turn negatively impact the birdies.

Anyway, I tried to take a "behind the scenes" or round-table approach to putting this piece together. Just a bunch of experts trying to sort out a problem. This is something far different from the proclamation being handed down from the ivory tower that we're so used to seeing in science/science writing.

Won't someone please think of the.... bats

A lot of people are scared of bats. I think they're awesome.

One time, while working as a maintenance staffer (bathroom cleaner and lawn mower) at Brant Conservation Area, a bat flew into the women's washroom. I got in there with my rubber gloves, grabbed the fuzzy little guy, and helped him find the door.

This has almost nothing to do with this video, except that we caught a bat in the video too.

As part of an environmental journalism course I just wrapped up, I got a chance to meet a lady who devotes her life to bats. I never knew bats were big on migration, but apparently they are. Anyway, the government wants to build a wind farm in the middle of Lake Ontario, and wind turbines are bad news for bats.

The loss in wind speed on the back-end of the turbine apparently creates a drop in pressure big enough to make bats' lungs asplode. Juliette Nagel (the researcher) is trying to figure out bat migration patterns, so we don't make 'em all pop.

This story is about her, and the bat we caught.