It seems that global warming is as easy to blame as “the devil made me do it” these days. Almost anything can be blamed on global warming it seems. It has become the new universal evil, replacing the threat of communism as the new global menace. But it doesn’t always deserve the blame for things that happen in our world, and with a little digging, you can often find that blaming global warming for a variety of ills and changes is about as credible as blaming the boogeyman. Consider algae blooms for example.
Earlier this year we saw this story
Harmful Algae Takes Advantage Of Global Warming: More Algae Blooms Expected
ScienceDaily (Apr. 7, 2008 ) — You know that green scum creeping across the surface of your local public water reservoir? Or maybe it’s choking out a favorite fishing spot or livestock watering hole. It’s probably cyanobacteria — blue-green algae — and, according to a paper in the April 4 issue of the journal Science, it relishes the weather extremes that accompany global warming. more…
Now we have this new factual story:
EXCERPT: After a remarkable 37-year experiment, University of Alberta scientist David Schindler and his colleagues have finally nailed down the chemical triggers for a problem that plagues thousands of freshwater and coastal ecosystems around the world.
Fifty years ago, no one knew what exactly caused algae blooms to appear on lakes and rivers. There was some evidence to suggest that carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous, which are associated with agricultural runoff and waste water, were responsible. But small-scale experiments weren’t able to show which were more important.
Schindler seemed to solve the problem when he and his colleagues conducted a number of groundbreaking experiments in northern Ontario in the 1960s and early 1970s. In a famous 1974 aerial photograph published by the journal Science, two portions of their experimental Lake 226 were highlighted. One side was treated with carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous. The other was treated with just carbon and nitrogen.
The side receiving phosphorous rapidly developed a huge bloom of blue-green algae. The side not receiving phosphorous remained in near-pristine condition.
Schindler’s latest series of long-term experiments shows that nitrogen removal completely fails to control blue-green algae blooms. He proved this by manipulating nitrogen and phosphorus levels on Lake 227 for 37 years. Nitrogen control, he found, only encouraged algae blooms.
Conclusion? Phosphates and Nitrogen. Not global warming.
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This article reminds me of something I read a couple of years ago about Poison Ivy. I think this is what gave impetus to my AGW skepticism. When will it end?
Updated 5/29/2006 10:34 PM ET
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Another reason to worry about global warming: more and itchier poison ivy. The noxious vine grows faster and bigger as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise, researchers report Monday. And a CO2-driven vine also produces more of its rash-causing chemical, urushiol, conclude experiments conducted in a forest at Duke University where scientists increased carbon-dioxide levels to those expected in 2050.”
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-05-29-poison-ivy-study_x.htm
Bernd,
It’s too low a concentration and too sporadic to be useful. You can’t continually bloom a lake because the dying algae sucks up all the oxygen and nutrients suffocating or starving everything, including itslef. You have to filter it quickly enough to not get this problem yet keep a high enough concentration to be worth filtering (ie: about twice as much biodiesel can be produced as it takes to operate the filtration, purification, and pond maintenance combined).
The idea is infeasible due to the small amount of algae that can grow before the lake is covered. Sorry, but the production is the wrong order of magnitude.
I detect an error of omission.
I won’t go far to say that it’s your intent to obfuscate, but it’s worth pointing out, from the first article you link to and then go on to mock:
“It’s long been known that nutrient runoff contributes to cyanobacterial growth. Now scientists can factor in temperature and global warming,” said Paerl, who, with professor Jef Huisman from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, explains the new realization in Science paper.
“As temperatures rise waters are more amenable to blooms,” Paerl said.
What I perceive in your post is to suggest that the whole lot of us who harbor concerns regarding climate change would place increasing algal bloom activity squarely and solely at the feet of warming without consideration for measurable, verafiable reality.
Speaking for myself (I have a background in hydrology and watershed studies, fwiw), I’ve long understood nutrient (over)loading to be the primary culprit. I’m not alone. I don’t think it’s a reach worth ridicule to posit that increased temperature would help to facilitate algae’s propensity to feast on the ever larger nutrient buffet.
It’s also worth offering for consideration that nutirent loading itself over and beyond what the systems can absorb and assimilate is not some isolated, happens-in-a-vacuum event, but a byproduct of flawed stewardship of our natural resources–whether intentional or not.
Best,
dmb
I’ve been screaming for years that CO2 emissions are the least of our environmental concerns, and even if anthropogenic global warming were a concern, we should be more concerned about agricultural run off.
There are rivers and streams in Mississippi (the state) that are so polluted with pesticides and fertilizers that the fish are unsafe for human consumption. These same streams feed into the Mississippi River, and eventually the Gulf of Mexico, causing that nice Gulf Dead Zone.
<scaremongering>The quest for higher yields in farming will kill us all.</scaremongering>
Global warming affects nutrients (increased runoff during more frequent heavy storms), ….. and quiescent, stagnant water (more frequent droughts).
That is the kind of global warming causes everything statement that is regularly lampooned here.
Otherwise, I concur with the statements about agricultural runoff being our most serious pollution problem.
Resources are always finite (although somewhat elastic for governments). Putting (more) resources into one problem, necessarily means putting less resources into other problems.
Global warming does cause algal blooms, not through rising temperatures, but by taking resources away from solving the algal bloom problem. A real inconvenient truth.
Doesn’t sound very scientific, taking a study of cyanobacteria blooms focused on a small area of one country and extrapolating the results to “thousands of freshwater and coastal ecosystems around the world.”
If all the worlds water bodies had the same watershed, climate and farming practices as northern Ontario, then they might have a point.
This is bad science from academics with illusions of grandeur, exaggerating the implications of their findings.
I want to reinforce what Zeke Hausfather wrote above. There is no contradiction between the two studies. Here is a quote from the article in Science, which anyone who follows the link can read:
“It’s long been known that nutrient runoff contributes to cyanobacterial growth. Now scientists can factor in temperature and global warming,”
Like many posters have pointed out, scientists have been aware of the role of phosphates for a long time. Mr. Watts, really, when you rush onto the Internet with stuff like this you only make it clear that real scientists generally do know what they’re talking about, and climate skeptics don’t.
REPLY: The point is that GW is not the trigger, phosphates and nitrogen are. The story is about the clarifcation of the role of the trigger as being chemical in nature. Do you dispute it?
So then, show me how global warming, by itself, triggers algal blooms. Be sure to show known examples of this cause and effect where it can be said with absolute certainty that “global warming caused this algal bloom”.
There could be a link. If warmer temperatures make us sweat more, we wash our clothes more often, making more P laden runoff that causes…
Nah. Rube Goldberg I aint.
MarkW (09:44:04) :
It was probably both. IIRC, phosphates in fertilizer encourage root growth.
This is really interesting, considering here in northeast Florida the Department of Environmental Protection is requiring point sources (wastewater plants) and nonpoint sources (stormwater and ag runoff) to remove nitrogen prior to discharging to the St. Johns River to alleviate algal blooms. The cost of nitrogen removal will be close to $1 billion. I’m interested in finding out more about this study.
DMB
What piety. The old chesnut. If you don’t buy AGW you don’t care about the environment. That is nonsense. Most life forms benefit from a warmer environment. When I hear the word “stewardship” I know which bible is being quoted. Someone give me a bucket.
Joy
>> If you don’t buy AGW you don’t care about the environment.
I did not say that. At all.
Best,
dmb
Our editor (Anthony?) responds that “REPLY: Algal blooms don’t happen without the chemical triggers, the point being that the temperature alone is not a trigger.”
However, unless my reading of the initial article under criticism is incorrect, it never argued that temperature an trigger algal blooms in the absence of a nutrient trigger, but rather that temperature can exacerbate the resulting blooms.
I’ll admit that the news blurb is far from the model of lucidity (the Science paper that it is based on is much better), but it does say that:
“”It’s long been known that nutrient runoff contributes to cyanobacterial growth. Now scientists can factor in temperature and global warming,” said Paerl, who, with professor Jef Huisman from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, explains the new realization in Science paper.”
Note that temperature “contributes to growth” rather than “triggers growth” which is an accurate way to phrase it, since higher temperatures are conducive to algal growth.
Except there’s no evidence of increasing, heavier, or more frequent anything (storms, droughts, floods, take your pick).
Drew Latta:
The Gulf hypoxia issue is mostly due to freshwater intrusion into the Gulf. The density gradient is stratified by lower-density fresh water runoff, blocking oxygen getting to the deeper waters.
This year’s dead zone is larger mostly due to the flooding of the Mississippi.
That is how I interpreted what you said, in summary. If that is not your opinion then sorry for that.