Ocean iron fertilization. Source: Woods Hole
From the best laid plans of mice and men department.
In the late 1980’s, the late John Martin advanced the idea that carbon uptake during plankton photosynthesis in many regions of the world’s surface ocean was limited not by light or the major nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus, but rather by a lack of the trace metal iron. Correlations between dust input to the ocean (which is the major source of iron) and past climate changes and CO2 levels, led Martin’s to exclaim “Give me half a tanker of iron and I’ll give you the next ice age”.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute wrote a paper about it Effects of Ocean Fertilization with Iron to Remove Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere Reported April 2004 News Release from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
From Slashdot and New Scientist:
Earlier this month, the controversial Indian-German Lohafex expedition fertilised 300 square kilometres of the Southern Atlantic with six tonnes of dissolved iron.
This triggered a bloom of phytoplankton, which doubled their biomass within two weeks by taking in carbon dioxide from the seawater. The dead phytoplankton were then expected to sink to the ocean bed, dragging carbon along with them. Instead, the experiment turned into an example o f how the food chain works, as the bloom was eaten by a swarm of hungry copepods.
While the experiment failed to show ocean fertilization as a viable carbon storage strategy, it has pushed the old “My dog ate my homework” excuse to an unprecedented level.
h/t to Dan Watts (no relation)
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2) And so some American corporations [with the support of lobbyists to downplay and suppress the truth] are strip mining the local waters of the staple foods that other fish depend on, and ironically, turning them into fertilizer where they back up in our waters to create dead zones.
3) Some Chinese and Taiwanese corporations [with the support of lobbyists to downplay and a huge multi-national black market] are emptying the world’s oceans of sharks and large predatory sharks [the biggest fins get the most money!].
savethesharks
Care about the extinction of homo sapiens in NH. As far as WUWT data transpires you will be under a mile of ice in the next 30 to 50 years.
By the way, we eat sharks down here, specially the more delicious “baby shark” (here called “Toyo bebe” -after Toyo=shark) 🙂
4) Both world powers allow these corporations to treat the oceans as a sort of free and endless supply of goods on which to make a profit and without oversight because most of what happens in the water, we never see.
NOTE: If someone went through a forest with a giant net and captured every living thing….bears, birds, all the wildlife…there would be a great outrage. But this occurs daily out in the oceans and not much attention is given because we are not there to see it.
NOTE II: Omega Protein can just as well manufacture those omega-3 vitamins from soybeans. But they don’t want to do that, because doing so would mean that they would have to spend more money. They would rather rely on their cheap, “free lunch” caught with giant purse-seine nets at sea.
And…there are several sharks (adult ones) lurking around over there: Global warmers..:)
5) So in light of all this, in terms of pollution, nutrient runoff, and overfishing, it can not be said that we as a species are not having a material adverse effect on the oceans.
And, unlike the myth of AGW and the broken Mann hockey stick, the buffonery of Al Gore and James Hansen ad nauseum…THIS is a problem that we can and should do something about.
Yeah I saw that remark Adolfo. And I am not saying that sharkfishing should be banned. it just needs to be regulated.
Natural ebbs and flows of fish populations are to be expected. But we have exacerbated the situation to an almost irreversible degree.
Watch the award-winning movie Sharkwater.
http://www.sharkwater.com
You will be glad you did….
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Shavethesharks:
You know I was just kidding. I have always thought oceans like being earth´s blood and sharks as the leucocites in it…predating bacteria that otherwise would kill us.
Nevertheless “those climate change predators” are like cancer cells, eager to destroy all the social organism through increasing their number
I have just seen a few seconds of the movie http://www.sharkwater.com , beautiful indeed.
Good analogy, Adolfo.
When you get a chance, watch the whole film. I have seen it about seven times (as my screen name might suggest lol).
Chris
Thank you, Chris-savethesharks, for all your posts. I have just sent for “Sharkwater” from Netflix. The ratings were excellent and Aldofo’s recommendation adds to my anticipation. More science for the oceans and seas and more global protection from two-legged predators, whether capitalist, communist, or otherwise — but not the UN’s version of PROTECTION. Your ideas represent what environmentalism used to be about.
Absolutely, pyromancer76.
We live in interesting times. The problems vexing the oceans [some of them] are solvable and the solutions are not driven by some utopian agenda.
They are driven by good science.
The sad part about it is that even some of the terrestrial arguments about coal pollution and otherwise are true (and so Hansen has a point). I am reminded of some of those towns in China where coal dust is around the air 24/7.
Thanks to the IPCC, the UN, and Al Gore on one side, and on the other side, the Oil Lobbies, Omega Protein, and Haliburton et.al….the wholesale GUTTING of the public scientific trust with utopian-driven or special-interest-driven agenda is the REAL tragedy [from both sides of the political aisle].
Meanwhile…in the dust of these behemoths….the real problems that WE have created, go unsolved.
Thanks for checking it out. One of the most important films ever made no doubt.
Chris
Norfolk, VA
And your commentary pyromancer76 (08:26:36), was SPOT ON.
The link that I presented above in relation to “Sharks Functionally Extinct in the Mediterranean: was a dud because it was truncated. Here is the actual link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3344301/Sharks-functionally-extinct-in-Mediterranean.html
Roger
One more thing I forgot.
Wave energy devices off shore have a possible benefit-protecting the shoreline against waves- Especially useful where there is vulnerable infrastructure. Where I live there is a railway line runs along a sea wall which since the day it was built in 1850 has been affected by waves. I suspect it is the only one in the country where the locals consult a tide table before the time table!
More to the point, such devices are also thought to be capable of affecting sediment, currents etc and would reduce the wave power that creates surf! That might be a consideration in California.
I think studies on both the above are few and far between so if you can just arrange say $10 million in research we can do a joint project 🙂
Tonyb
As the AGW scare morphs into ‘climate change’ .. and cools by degrees(!) into mere ‘weather’… it seems we need a new scare. So, is it possible to make one up?
A cursory look at all the Global Warming fuss reveals the IPCC claim that man is putting up about +4 ppm/year of CO2 into the atmosphere; and this will increase the temperature at the earth’s surface by 1 degree C over the coming century.. causing untold havoc, melting icecaps, floods, & co., etc.
Now this seems to be junk-science of a most entertaining kind, and so I thought I’d produce some of my own, that would produce exactly the opposite prediction, but based on the same premises, and with simple conversion factors availalbe to everybody.
In this way, my junk-science unlike the IPCC stuff would be repeatable and reproducible by everyone and everyone at home … even by Gran and the Kids. DIY Climatology! Hours of scary fun and entertaining anxiety for all the family! Here are the steps for my ‘end-of-the-world.alt’ scenario:
a) Man-made CO2 = + 4 parts-per-million(ppm) per year. Over 100 years this amounts to + 400 ppm
b) Henry’s Law indicates that the oceans absorb co2 from the air at a ratio of about 50:1. So for the additional 400ppm in the air, there must have been 50 x this amount absorbed in the oceans. So, the actual extra Co2 produced was 400 x 50 = 20,000 ppm over the 100 years
c) Now of this 20,000 PPM, roughly 15,000 ppm was oxygen taken from the atmosphere, so we can say that the atrmosphere must have been depleted by 15,000 ppm ….. or 1.5% over the 100 years
d) A 1.5% reduction of the atmosphere equates to a 15 millibar drop in atmospheric pressure at the surface of the earth … or an equivalent 500 ft increase in pressure altitude at the surface.
e) This average pressure drop/increase in effective height will cause adiabatic heat-loss, and so GLOBAL COOLING at the surface, of around 1 degree centigrade …. which will lead to global cooling, untold havoc, freezing icecaps, sea-level dropping, desertification, & co., etc. ….
f) “Except of course it won’t!”, I hear you cry… “because it will exactly counterbalance the IPCC’s 1 degree warming over same the period!”. And of course you will be kinda-sorta right.
Desert Dust Enables Algae To Grow
Dated Dec 22d, 2003
Maybe they should have tried this in, say, the dead zone south of the Mississippi river delta. Although there, it may be that just oxygenating the water would do the most good.
savethesharks, here is an article about shark population and PDO. They appear to be linked, but the authors then go on to say that global warming could mess the link up. I suppose that is how the study got funded.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/02/020218094758.htm
Huh???
Is that the best that you can put forth Pamela? LOL
There is a whole slew of posts before this that addresses all of this.
Something that I am sure you are NOT doing Pamela, is READING my posts.
(and my name is Chris by the way….and I think you know that)
And if you are, then you are doing the trick of just not responding to them.
Answering with another sub-argument “I suppose that is how the study got funded” is not at all sufficient.
If you did bother to read the posts…you will see that….the problem is complex….and probably a blend of natural/oscillation AND anthropogenic forcing [Ha….that term can DEFINITELY be applied to oceanic species depletion]
(How many times do I need to repeat and shout from the housetops that it is not either/or??)
And if you can not respond directly to the posts….then perhaps there is no use conversing here?? That’s cool. If you want to avoid my questions…then i understand.
But, curiously, if you don’t want to respond, then why are you now??
Go back (or anyone interested) and please read the posts beginning 11:58:33….and decide for yourselves.
Its pretty easy reading….
CHRIS
NORFOLK, VA
Also the quote from this article: “Sharks, being the more efficient eaters, just may be able to take greater advantage of changes in the food that’s available,” he says.
Heh heh this is very telling. These 450 million year old bastards have evolved a very strong ability to survive whatever crisis is presented before them.
Well they have survived 5 mass extinctions….and they will hopefully survive our overfishing of them…but that still begs the question:
Why are you [and an Obama voter card carrying progressive at that! 🙂 ] trying to prove me wrong when there may actually be issues of entire species destruction here??
Is it for the sake of the argument? For the sake of the PDO? [Hey the great thing about WRITTEN records in this blog is that once written….it is immortalized in words. And I agree about oceanic forcing!]
So I know none other reason as to why you are becoming so EMO here in relation to shark depletions other than….you have been one-upped.
Would be happy to debate this with you in person.
Answer for me (since you seem to know it) the REAL causation of ninety-nine percent depletion (99%)…..[the highest percentage before total depletion… that is NINETY-NINE PERCENT DEPLETION…..]….of some shark species depletions in the NW ATLANTIC??
If you can not….and if you can not take the time to view Sharkwater http://www.sharkwater.com [for you and for your students]…then there is no point in speaking any further on this.
Chris
(that’s my name)
Norfolk, VA
Chris, my only point here is that statistical analysis of any theory should be robust and take into account all known variables when examining complex systems. Then, correlation coefficients should be generated as to the variables at play. Movies just don’t do it for me. Nor do most media reports of scientific discoveries. And neither do studies that simply assign over-fishing without fully examining all conditions present.
Newer studies are beginning to re-discover that oceanic oscillations have tighter correlations to fish counts than fishing practices do. The fact that I can site only a few related to sharks is because the majority of studies that statistically examine fishing practices and oceanic oscillation do not focus on sharks. However, a reasonable mind can deduce that theoretically, based on studies of other fish, shark populations more than likely follow oceanic oscillations tied to the food web more closely than they do fishing practices over the long term.
Fishing regulations should be based on oceanic oscillation with the understanding that as plankton blooms become less frequent, the food web begins to tighten its belt. It will then be up to us to reasonably determine when and where it will be time for humans to tighten their fish take.
Most of the studies you site do not rise to statistical rigor (or the media report is light on said rigor). But again, that does not mean yours are wrong and mine are right. However, at the very least, shark studies discussed here should rise to a level that we wished CO2 studies would, and we should discuss them in a detached objective scientific manner, not with emotional subjective beliefs coloring our posts (as in “It’s the Sun stupid!”).
The ball is still in your court. Let’s discuss a study, pick one, that is of stellar caliber and leave the movies and media to those gullible enough to believe anything that rolls with credits at the end, such as “An Inconvenient Truth”.
So you say that a population of shark has nearly died out. Are there other populations somewhere else? Where does this shark range? Where does it mate? Where does it pup? What kind of food does it prefer or is it a predatory scavenger? What do you know about the particular current temperature and layering of the water it lurks in? What oscillation is its range most tied to? What do you know about the weather patterns in this area? How is it being caught and where?
Sorry Pamela but you are answering more questions with the questions i have raised.
GO back please and address point by point my posts beginning at 11:58:33…and answer those questions first (with real and direct answers) and then I will answer your set of rheotricals in the paragraph above.
It is astounding that you would avoid so much data that i have put before you? And whay will you not address the data set forth in “Sharkwater”?
Is it because it is a movie that you would blacklist it with the same “Inconvenient Truth” label? Ewwww…LOL
But….in the interest of fairness I will attempt to answer the questions you raised….and I am not yelling…but for the sake of clarity they are in CAPS.
So you say that a population of shark has nearly died out. CONTACT DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY AND THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA FOR STARTERS. DON’T ASK ME. THEY ARE THE ONES WHO ARE THROWING OUT 90 to 99% DECLINES:
http://www.lenfestocean.org/publications/Med_Sharks_PR_Canada.pdf
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/01/0116_030116_sharks.html
http://www.livescience.com/animals/070329_shark_decline.html
Are there other populations somewhere else?
“Large sharks have been functionally eliminated from the East Coast of the U.S., meaning that they can no longer perform their ecosystem role as top predators,” said study team member Julia Baum of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
OK lets look at the Mediterranean:
http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=26157394010
HOW ABOUT THE WHALE-SHARK SIGHTINGS IN THE FAR EAST? 97% DECLINE (INTERESTINGLY…THE BIGGER FINS…FETCH MORE MONEY. WHALE SHARK FINS FETCH $10,000 ON THE BLACK MARKET)
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=9E7918BE0E91CDABF8EA9F8CBEC83FD7.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=467947
AND IN THE INDEAN OCEAN…
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0960982206023761
OR LET’S JUST TAKE ONE EXAMPLE….PICK AND CHOOSE HERE…POINT AND CLICK: THE DUSKY SHARK
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/species/duskyshark_detailed.pdf
Where does this shark range? WHICH ONE? THERE ARE SO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM. POINT AND CLICK PAMELA.
Where does it mate? Where does it pup? YOU KNOW AS MUCH AS ME THAT WE KNOW LESS ABOUT THE OCEANS THAN WE DO THE SURFACE OF THE MOON. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A GREAT WHITE BEAR FORTH LIVE YOUNG IN CAPTIVITY? THEN DOUBTLESS WE KNOW MUCH ABOUT THAT.
What kind of food does it prefer or is it a predatory scavenger? COME ON…PAM…. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD ASK THE NEXT GREAT WHITE (NOW ON THE ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST BTW) AS TO WHAT HE/SHE PREFERS??
What do you know about the particular current temperature and layering of the water it lurks in? WELL DEPENDING ON THE SPECIES. BUT A GOOD GENERAL RULE: THEY ARE GOING TO BE WHERE THE FOOD IS. AND WHERE THE FOOD IS THOSE GREAT FISHING AREAS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, AT THE CONFLUENCE OF COLD/WARM CURRENTS. YOU KNOW THE DRILL…
What oscillation is its range most tied to? WELL MY GUESS IS THAT IF YOU WERE ABLE TO TAKE A VOTE TO ASK THE SHARKS IF THEY PREFERRED THE THE WARM CYCLE OF THE ATLANTIC MULTDECADAL OSCILLATION, THEN YOU WOULD PROBABLY GET “HANDS-UP” FROM THE TIGERS. THE COOLER PHASE: THEN THE GREAT WHITES WOULD CHIME IN
What do you know about the weather patterns in this area? NOT TOO SURE ABOUT THE CHANGE OF FLUCTUATION OF THE NAO OVER THE PAST FIVE MASS EXTINCITONS, BUT ONE THING WE ARE SURE OF IS THAT SHARKS SURVIVED ALL OF THEM (THE EXTINCTIONS).
How is it being caught and where?
MORE LIKE….HOW IS IT NOT BEING CAUGHT.
GOOGLE IT, PAMELA.
And I will say again….that you (and your students) would benefit viewing Sharkwater. Please do not relegate it in the same “Inconvenient Truth” category.
You are a scientist. And you owe it to yourself to digest the data.
I tried to respond in CAPS for clarification but it did not work…..so please allow me to respond point by point to your questions:
The ball is still in your court. Let’s discuss a study, pick one, that is of stellar caliber and leave the movies and media to those gullible enough to believe anything that rolls with credits at the end, such as “An Inconvenient Truth”.
Well it would seem, after many posts on this thread, that the ball would be in your court to address them.
Nonetheless I forward to you a few studies. Take your pick because there is a whole array:
Northwest Atlantic:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/299/5605/389
http://mhest.com/spotlight/underthesea/pdf/SN_TooFewJaws.pdf
Carribbean:
http://www.physorg.com/news3688.html
South Atlantic:
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/species/duskyshark_detailed.pdf
Pacific / Sea of Cortez
http://www.bbc.co.uk/oceans/locations/cortez/el_bajo.shtml
Pacific (near Thailand) RE: Decline in Whale Sharks (the biggest fins fetch the most money…..a fin of a whale shark is worth $10,000!
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=467947
And on and on ad nauseum ad infinitum…
So you say that a population of shark has nearly died out. Are there other populations somewhere else? Where does this shark range? Where does it mate? Where does it pup? What kind of food does it prefer or is it a predatory scavenger? What do you know about the particular current temperature and layering of the water it lurks in? What oscillation is its range most tied to? What do you know about the weather patterns in this area? How is it being caught and where?
“So you say that a population of shark has nearly died out.”
You tell me if 99% depletion in some NW Atlantic Species or “functionally extinct” in the Mediterranean is a good definition of “died out”!!
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2008/06/30/Sharks_disappearing_from_Mediterranean/UPI-69901214880387/
“Are there other populations somewhere else? “
If a species has been functionally eliminated from the Atlantic and Mediterranean, then you tell me if other poplulations in other oceans really matter in the short run?
I supposed that we could transfer new specimens from other oceans, but tell me when the last great white you ever heard of, surviving for any time during captivity??