At the top of search results today for “climate change,” Google News is promoting a Denver Post article claiming global warming is causing heat-loving tarantulas to disappear from Colorado. The Denver Post article was published this morning as tarantula lovers celebrate tarantula mating season, with thousands of tarantulas leaving their Colorado burrows looking for mates. While the Post article may generate click-bait numbers among tarantula lovers and climate alarmists, the scientific facts clearly reveal climate change poses no real threat to Colorado tarantula numbers.
The Post’s article is titled, “Southern Colorado’s tarantulas are disappearing – and climate change is a big part of it.” Many additional media outlets have republished the Post’s article, as well. The article asserts that global warming is making southern Colorado too hot for tarantulas. “Experts lays the blame on warming temperatures and less rain…,” claims the article’s subheading.
The article’s title unwittingly reveals the glaring flaw of the Post’s article – why do tarantulas live in southern Colorado and not northern Colorado? The answer is tarantulas require warm climate to survive. In fact, Colorado is the northern-most boundary of tarantula range in North America. A warming climate will allow Colorado’s thousands of tarantulas to gain a stronger foothold in the state and even expand their range north. That truth is quite different from how the Post wants to alarm tarantula lovers.
Scientists know that tarantulas evolved 120 million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and temperatures were much, much warmer than today. Yet, climate activists now try to tell us that restoring a small bit of that warmth imperils tarantulas. That is quite a stretch of logic. And that likely explains why the Post article presents no numbers or scientific data to support its assertion that tarantula numbers are declining in southern Colorado.
The closest the Post comes to presenting scientific data isn’t very close at all. The Post’s closest thing to scientific evidence is quoting a research associate at the Denver Museum of Nature of Science commenting on people taking photographs of tarantula mating season. “If you compare pictures, you can tell that there are just fewer males out looking for love,” said the research associate. That is not scientific data or even scientific evidence.
Which brings us back to why the Denver Post, Google News, and other entities are falsely claiming global warming is causing tarantulas to disappear. Late September is tarantula mating season, which excites tarantula lovers to watch for the arachnids leaving their southern Colorado burrows by the thousands and searching for mates. This is straight from the alarmist playbook that we have repeatedly documented here at Climate Realism – identify something people love, then claim global warming is destroying it. No evidence is necessary. Heck, the opposite may be true, but trust the compliant media to amplify the lie as if it is undisputed truth.
Except that here, as is the case for virtually all other global warming scares, the provable undisputed truth is that global warming is either having no impact on the entity that people love or global warming is having a beneficial impact.
