There is a war on Christmas going on. It has been raging for decades. While right wing pundits have started brush fires over coffee cups and imaginary holiday greetings restrictions, our planet has been getting warmer. When I was a wee young lad one of the first things I learned was that heat made snow go bye bye. It was an early lesson in science for me, a lesson that everyone who has ever watched Frosty the Snowman understands. As I have gotten older I’ve learned that things getting warmer change more than just snowballs into water.
Over the past 16 years, the weight of adult reindeer in Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic has dropped by 12 per cent, likely due to global warming, said study findings presented to a meeting at the British Ecological Society (BES) in Liverpool.
By the time they reached adulthood, reindeer born in 2010 weighed just over 48kg, compared to 55kg for those born in 1994.
Why is this happening? Heat.
“Warmer summers are great for reindeer but winters are getting increasingly tough,” Professor Steve Albon, an ecologist at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland who led the study with Norwegian researchers, said.
Less-chilly winters mean that once-reliable snows fall more often as rain that can freeze into a sheet of ice, making it harder for the herbivores to reach plant food. Some reindeer starve and females often give birth to stunted young.
The good news is that there are more reindeer, they’re just smaller. So Republicans in the Senate and House should consider, instead of working on climate change initiatives, are two things: proposing legislation to force Saint Nicholas to diet, and raising the minimum requirements for reindeer pulling sleigh.