From the University of British Columbia and the department of eco-nuttery, comes this statement sure to produce blowback. I suspect it is just a matter of time before recreational fishing is targeted too.
UBC’s Rashid Sumaila argues that the high seas should be closed to all fishing.
Fish and aquatic life living in the high seas are more valuable as a carbon sink than as food and should be better protected, according to research from the University of British Columbia.
The study found fish and aquatic life remove 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, a service valued at about $148 billion US. This dwarfs the $16 billion US paid for 10 million tonnes of fish caught on the high seas annually.
“Countries around the world are struggling to find cost effective ways to reduce their carbon emissions,” says Rashid Sumaila, director of the UBC Fisheries Economics Research Unit. “We’ve found that the high seas are a natural system that is doing a good job of it for free.”
Sumaila helped calculate the economic value of the carbon stored by life in the high seas by applying prices—which include the benefits of mitigating the costs of climate change–to the annual quantity of carbon absorbed.
The report argues that the high seas—defined as an area more than 200 nautical miles from any coast and outside of national jurisdiction–should be closed to all fishing as only one per cent of fish caught annually are exclusively found there.
“Keeping fish in the high seas gives us more value than catching them,” says Sumaila. “If we lose the life in the high seas, we’ll have to find another way to reduce emissions at a much higher cost.”
BACKGROUND
The study was commissioned by the Global Ocean Commission and was conducted independently by Sumaila and Alex Rogers of Somerville College, Oxford.
Carbon prices were derived from data provided by the U.S. Federal Government Interagency Working Group.
Source:
It’s always amazing to me that global warming hysteria has so many solutions desperate in their search for problems….
Part of me suspects they are getting close to simply being honest and stating they want to remove 5.25 billion people from this Earth.
“Fish and aquatic life living in the high seas are more valuable as a carbon sink than as food”
I suppose that depends on how hungry one is.
HOLY carp crap…
They need to stop dumping the weed over the sides of ships then.
Or, we could plant a billion or so trees.
rgb
How many rationalizations for statism can fit in a bean-counter pinhead?
And a dead fish releases it again. That’s like calling for ranchers not to graze their land to keep the grass as carbon sink. Where do they get these nitwits? At sales at an asylum?
So why bother closing it to all fishing?
Please don’t speak for me. Pumping out more co2 gives us more value in increased vegetation (references).
Wouldn’t it be simpler if we just got down to the nits and grits of the eco-green alarmist and committed collective suicide?
The ONLY thing that seems to address the “problem” of the natural planet posed by the eco-green is that we are not an insiginificant number (by impact) in the world. Capturing the resources of the world, be it metal or fuel or wild food, whether we build cities or highways or powerlines or dams, or whether we ranch or farm, every aspect brings doom in some eco-greens eyes. The only solution is for us to not be here.
Erhlich and Strong and Suzuki and others say we should only be 1 billion: so 5 out of 6 people should “go away”. Even if we were 1 billion, they would say we could not have a living density of more than, say 20 people per square mile, living in islands in the forests, served only by helicopter to avoid breaks in the migration routes. And if we went to space with the 5 billion, they would say we are raping the Earth for the metal, soil and minerals needed for human habitation in artificial satellite communities.
We clearly have no right nor (God-given?) privlege to be here. We are a pestilence wherever we go.
The only solution, I say, is we “go away”. How, we are not yet being told. But if the CO2 nonsense got full government support, and if globally they started in on all wild game usage, I’ll bet we’d see the true solution they want: population control. Something drastic and permanent.
Except for the eco-green group.
“The report argues that the high seas—defined as an area more than 200 nautical miles from any coast and outside of national jurisdiction–should be closed to all fishing as only one per cent of fish caught annually are exclusively found there.”
Wow. Um….Einstein….if only 1% of the fish caught annually are located in that area…pretty much seems like 99% of the fish caught annually are caught SOMEWHERE ELSE and thus this area….wait for it….doesn’t…..NEED…..protection.
Oh…and you’d better come up with a way to teach the fish INSIDE that area not to swim out of it, because once they cross that 200 nautical mile from shore barrier, they can be legally fished.
Where do these “officials” come from? Is there some kind of warranty on them? Can they be returned?
There may be some confusion here- they talk of 1.5 billion tons CO2 removed by fish and aquatic life (they fail to provide a breakdown) then go on to say that only 1% of the fish caught would be affected by a 200 mile limit.
But removing fish from the ocean makes way for new fish (who may actually remove more CO2 than the older fish, which ruins their logic – hey, it happens with trees, why not fish, I say). If fishing simply more or less replaces old fish with new fish, and if the seas already support all the fish possible (i.e. no overfishing) then in a steady state fish industry, you will always have pretty much the same number of fish down there removing CO2, except for a period after harvesting, if there is such a harvesting period. It would seem that the study should be examined carefully, but that’s about the last thing I would spend my time doing (especially when there are all those 1940’s cliffhanger serials that I have only seen a few times -currently I’m viewing episode 7 of Manhunt on Mystery Island).
Doug,
I have always refused to follow anyone who is unwilling to do the thing they are asking me to do. If the Eco Greens REALLY believed their own words, if they REALLY wanted to save the planet and future generations, they should lead by example. They go first, we observe the results of their mass suicide, and if they prove to be correct, we’ll follow right along. Planet Saved!
Um, fish don’t take up carbon dioxide, they produce it. It’s the plant life at the bottom of the food chain that “sequesters” CO2. If we’re really worried about CO2, we should harvest more of these satanic CO2 factories and reduce the ocean’s unconscionable “carbon footprint”! 🙂
And if we give the seedlings CO2 hoodies, they’ll grow faster. Wait until the personal weed growers in Washington and Colorado discover this trick.
The study found fish and aquatic life remove 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, a service valued at about $148 billion US. This dwarfs the $16 billion US paid for 10 million tonnes of fish caught on the high seas annually.
Carbon prices were derived from data provided by the U.S. Federal Government Interagency Working Group.
So maybe the Working Group has extremely overpriced the value of CO2.
The nonsense just goes on and on and on and on………………………………………
Where do these idiots come from with their statistics pulled out of thin air, their irrational and illogical statements and their holier than thou mentality that makes me want to punch them!!
Doug Proctor @ur momisugly 11:17 a.m.
I agree with your take on things. Food rationing is on the UN agenda.
Krill and Copepods certainly fall in the category “aquatic life” and must be part of his co2 removal estimate. They seem to be the heavyweights for co2 removal. With fish being just a small part of the equation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copepod
Why don’t we just stop fishing for Copepods and Krill? Oh, wait …
I do know beyond any doubt Canada’s East coast fishery collapsed from over fishing. Foreign trawler factory ships are still dragging off Canada’s 200 mile offshore limit. Fact – I traveled that coast up to Labrador for 2.5 days on the ferry. You travel out into the Atlantic Ocean during that run – you could see the foreign trawlers like cities in the far distance, especially at night, working the sea out there. Today Newfoundland/Labrador fishermen are severely restricted in their fishing yet the cod stock are not recovering as they hoped. The same off Canada’s west coast – the fishery is virtually destroyed. For some species fishermen can fish for one day, only. Salmon stock are very low. There is a huge problem in the fishery, and the EU and Russia are directly at fault on the east coast. For instance, Iceland and the UK had a nasty fish war with ships ramming each other every other day on the high seas, yet little Iceland did not back down. They eventually won their struggle, as all North American countries should do to protect their fishery. The fishery collapse put tens of thousands out of work and livelihoods in Newfoundland/Labrador, destroying settlements in the process. Hundreds of towns and villages were wiped off the map. The cost is still reverberating on the east and west coasts of Canada. However, the BC study itself is another matter entirely.
I wonder how long before someone comes up with a “Soylent Green” solution … for all but the selfless ruling elites …
They aren’t going to be satisfied until we’re eating Soylent Green.
My new thesis: Higher CO2 value does have negative influence on the human intelligence.
I think I’ll try to evaluate the stupidity-value in scientific studies during the last 50 years. Any volunteers?
Thanks for bringing this up, Bob! One “carbon mitigation strategy” that has been proposed has been to seed the oceans with some form of iron in order to stimulate the growth of plantonic algae, under the theory that they will sink & drag all of that evil carbon into the abyss (where the heat is hiding). However, the researchers were mightily embarrassed when their experiment was devoured by copepods!!
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/27/ocean-iron-fertilization-experiment-a-blooming-failure/
Forget the carbon, perhaps we should fertilize the oceans for the same reasons that we fertilize our croplands, i.e. to stimulate food production? More copepods would mean more productivity up the food chain = more baitfish, more high-value predators (tuna, cod etc.).
The high seas should be protected, no doubt….from garbage dumping, toxic waste releases, overfishing etc. Leave carbon out of the argument entirely.
@sven10077 –
Yes, Obama’s “science advisor”/sorcerer in chief wants to forcibly reduce the Earth’s population to 1 billion,
@Gary Young Hladik –
Yes, fish do produce a good deal of CO2 – a substantial portion of the 500 to 700 billion tons emitted by animal respiration (we humans emit 3.5 gt!)
Isn’t the article backwards? Wouldn’t harvesting the fish be “emptying the sink”? Correct me if I’m wrong here: Algae removes CO2 from the atmosphere and releases O2. Small fish eat Algae. Bigger fish eat smaller fish. We eat bigger fish, the bodies of which are made (partially) of the carbon which was removed from the atmosphere by the algae. Without harvesting, the fish die, and carcasses sink to the bottom of the ocean. With harvesting, the fish die, the carcasses (eventually) go into waste treatment. If fish are harvested faster than their natural rate of demise, it would increase the rate of CO2 absorption, wouldn’t it?