Dr. Charles R. Blem This is Me

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1. 1. CCAN - Ominous Spring

   www.chesapeakeclimate.org/news - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/22/2006   Last Visited: 11/7/2007

   It's changing "just about anything that people have kept records on," said Charles Blem, biology professor emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University.
   ...
   While Darwish and Blem say global warming's effects present a danger -- "It decreases the stability of the system," Blem said -- Virginia state climatologist Patrick Michaels isn't sure.
   ...
   Blem suggested environmentalists abandon their old metaphor of a canary in a coal mine. A more appropriate metaphor, he said, may be how to kill a rat. If a poison acts quickly, it doesn't kill many rats, because the eating and the death happen close enough together for survivors to associate the two. If the poison acts slowly, it kills more rats, because they never make the connection. Some people seem to have that ratlike approach to global warming's effects, Blem said. "I guess they're going to have to learn the hard way," he said.

2. 2. Events

   connections.fredericksburg.com - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/4/2002   Last Visited: 9/28/2002

   With guest speaker Charles Blem, an ornithologist from Virginia Commonwealth University. 7:30 p.m. Free. 540/654-1420.
   
   THEATER
   
   Annie Get Your Gun, Riverside Center Dinner Theater. See Sept. 26 listing.
   
   Events at the college
   ...
   October 3 Lecture, "Aspects of Natural History and Conservation of Prothonotary Warblers," by Dr. Charles Blem, a distinguished ornithologist at Virginia Commonwealth University; Jepson Science Center, Room 100; 7:30 p.m.; free; 540/654-1420.

3. 3. Silent Spring: A Sequel? - National Wildlife - National Wildlife Federation

   www.nwf.org/nationalwildlife/a - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/22/2002   Last Visited: 2/1/2003

   In swamp forests along the James River, Virginia Commonwealth University biologist Charlie Blem has been inventorying this species for nearly two decades. He reports that the birds, golden orange beacons in a gloomy forest, have been arriving from their Caribbean and South American wintering grounds an average of one day earlier each year since 1987. (Last spring the first male warblers were sighted on April 3 compared with April 21-23 in the project's early years.) During the same period, the average springtime temperature at Richmond's airport has increased nearly two degrees. "I predict that if this trend keeps up, the species will become a year-round resident of North America," Blem says.
   
   The warblers also are thriving. Blem has erected 316 nest boxes for the birds along a 19-mile swampland trail that takes his team of students and volunteers a week to cover by canoe-counting eggs, banding nestlings and capturing adults. Though the species has been declining in many of its Southeast strongholds, James River warblers are "nesting earlier, incubating more eggs, raising as many as three broods and surviving longer," says Blem.
   
   The downside of early migration and reproduction, of course, is that a species' breeding cycle could get out of sync with its food supply.