This alarming missive just in from the: University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
As oxygen-deprived waters increase, they emit more greenhouse gasses into atmosphere
Above graphic from NOLA.COM click for details.
Cambridge, Md. (March 11, 2010) – The increased frequency and intensity of oxygen-deprived “dead zones” along the world’s coasts can negatively impact environmental conditions in far more than just local waters. In the March 12 edition of the journal Science, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science oceanographer Dr. Lou Codispoti explains that the increased amount of nitrous oxide (N2O) produced in low-oxygen (hypoxic) waters can elevate concentrations in the atmosphere, further exacerbating the impacts of global warming and contributing to ozone “holes” that cause an increase in our exposure to harmful UV radiation.
“As the volume of hypoxic waters move towards the sea surface and expands along our coasts, their ability to produce the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide increases,” explains Dr. Codispoti of the UMCES Horn Point Laboratory. “With low-oxygen waters currently producing about half of the ocean’s net nitrous oxide, we could see an additional significant atmospheric increase if these ‘dead zones’ continue to expand.”
Although present in minute concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere, nitrous oxide is a highly potent greenhouse gas and is becoming a key factor in stratospheric ozone destruction. For the past 400,000 years, changes in atmospheric N2O appear to have roughly paralleled changes in carbon dioxide CO2 and have had modest impacts on climate, but this may change. Just as human activities may be causing an unprecedented rise in the terrestrial N2O sources, marine N2O production may also rise substantially as a result of nutrient pollution, warming waters and ocean acidification. Because the marine environment is a net producer of N2O, much of this production will be lost to the atmosphere, thus further intensifying its climatic impact.
Increased N2O production occurs as dissolved oxygen levels decline. Under well-oxygenated conditions, microbes produce N2O at low rates. But at oxygen concentrations decrease to hypoxic levels, these waters can increase their production of N2O.
N2O production rates are particularly high in shallow suboxic and hypoxic waters because respiration and biological turnover rates are higher near the sunlit waters where phytoplankton produce the fuel for respiration.
When suboxic waters (oxygen essentially absent) occur at depths of less than 300 feet, the combination of high respiration rates, and the peculiarities of a process called denitrification can cause N2O production rates to be 10,000 times higher than the average for the open ocean. The future of marine N2O production depends critically on what will happen to the roughly ten percent of the ocean volume that is hypoxic and suboxic.
“Nitrous oxide data from many coastal zones that contain low oxygen waters are sparse, including Chesapeake Bay,” said Dr. Codispoti. “We should intensify our observations of the relationship between low oxygen concentrations and nitrous oxide in coastal waters.”
The article “Interesting Times for Nitrous Oxide” appears in the March 12, 2010 edition of the journal Science.
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I’ve already contributed my £10 to these excellent scientists to help them study this potentially huge problem further. Obviously we don’t know enough about this topic to draw any firm conclusions either way at this moment in time, but using the precautionary principle. it would be better if we take firm action NOW to re-oxygenate the water in these dead zones; perhaps by throwing trees into them.
Thanks for listening!
Wayne Delbeke…Latitude..
Great comments Latitude and I hope Wayne read them. He is concerned with man-made pollution and and has the background to comment on it. I think most reasonable people are concerned but, the folks who are trying to make a buck off of fears are now only concentrating on cap and trade. We will have to suffer through it I guess. At least Wayne we have this site to vent our frustrations.
I love this kind of “science”, short on facts and long on “may” and “could” and “might”. They cite the IPCC WG1 Chapter 2, but fail to note that the IPCC said (p. 131):
Reading that, I wondered just what the nitrous trend looked like. Here’s the longest record I could find:
Figure W1. Nitrous record from Barbados ALEGAGE.
I had to make the linear trend line 1 point wide, and the N2O record 3 points wide, just so you could see the N20 record. Yeah, I’d call that linear.
Now, the authors cite (“Science” Magazine, subscription req’d)that the “dead areas” have increased over the last quarter century. But this has not had any visible effect on the rate of N2O increase. Doesn’t stop Dr. Codispoti from pushing the panic buttom.
Science Magazine just keeps sinking to new lower lows …
w.
Mooloo (14:05:27) :
“…The only reason for “organic” farmers to oppose GM crops is because they are, at heart, anti-progress and anti-science. No matter how safe and nutritious GM food is, the organic community is not interested in science. Only the bugbear of “natural”. Yet how many natural rice paddies do you reckon there are?”
There are the anti-progress types that you mention but there are also those like me who are not opposed to the IDEA of GMO but are opposed to releasing GMO crops into the market without proper testing to make sure they are safe AND with protection for farmers who do not WANT GMOs.
My big problems with GMO
1. Horizontal Gene Transfer from GMOs Does Happen
“Genetic engineering creates vast arrays of transgenic DNA that could spread, not only through cross-pollination with the same or related species, but also through the direct uptake of the transgenic DNA by cells of unrelated species, a process called horizontal gene transfer….” http://www.i-sis.org.uk/horizontalGeneTransfer.php
2. Stealing genes from third world countries and then suing the farmers who actually developed the strain. See the Global diversity treaty:
http://www.bioversityinternational.org/publications/pdf/1144.pdf
3. Contaminating naturally developed varieties with GMO: see Corn in Mexico http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Outlawed+GMO+corn+shows+up+in+Mexico.+%28Environmental+Intelligence%29-a082014411
4. The progressive encroachment on a farmers freedom to grow food.
1961 – PVP is the Plant Variety Protection: The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants: Gave seed companies a monopoly on only the commercial multiplication and the marketing of seeds. Farmers remained free to save seed from their own harvest to plant in the following year, and other breeders could freely use any variety, protected or not, to develop a new one.
By 1991 the PVP monopoly has applied to seed multiplication and also to the harvest and sometimes the final product as well. Previously unlimited right of farmers to save seed for the following year’s planting has been changed into an optional exception. Only if national government allows, can farm-saved seed still be used, and a royalty has to be paid to the seed company even for seeds grown on-farm. http://www.grain.org/seedling_files/smar2002.pdf
The FAO supports “harmonization of seed rules and regulations in Africa and Central Asia in order to stimulate the development of a vibrant seed industry…”
5. The Terminator gene that can crosses with naturally developed varieties and makes everything sterile.
Gail Combs (15:20:37) :
I scanned the article quickly and it seems to hit the correct points. As a farmer and a chemist I would consider nitrogen a bit more dangerous than CO2. (…)
Thank you.
The article did point out something that I hadn’t made the connection to before. As I had been hearing, crude oil was a feedstock for fertilizer production, thus with fertilizer runoff the theme of “dirty fossil fuels, leave them in the ground” was continued. But in this article it was pointed out that we used to mine the nitrogen, as old guano deposits, however now the nitrogen is extracted from the air, and it is not coming from oil. So from that perspective, ignoring the relatively minuscule amounts involved, we are doing a better job controlling the amounts of nitrogen released than we were.
Of course, come to think of it, with vehicles NOx emissions have been a long-standing issue, yet I haven’t heard of anyone touting new gasoline formulations or completely different fuels that reduce those by having less nitrogen in the fuel. Lack of nitrogen in petroleum products should have tipped me off that they weren’t getting the nitrogen for fertilizer from the crude oil.
Dang those confusing eco-mentalist statements!
One thing that I have always thought a little strange is that so called dead zone of yours (and after all it won’t ever be the Oh zone or the no go zone.)
What ever, but if the so called dead zone is a zone deprived of oxygen or a oxygen deprived zone, it pretty much means the same thing — no friggin oxygen for the fish’.
How come there’s all these various fish’ living in a zone deprived of oxygen? I’m just asking due to me diving experience.
Keith Guy –
There are lots of positive things happening in the world but it doesn’t sell news.
I guess I didn’t say it but in 40 years in the engineering business, I have seen tremendous improvements all around the world. It used to be that the bay in Hong Kong was BLACK from printers ink flowing out of the streams, the Thames had no salmon, there were people all over the world that couldn’t drink the water out of their rivers. A few sand filters and a bit of education has improved things greatly in a multitude of areas. In 1968 I made a trip across the Atlantic and was shocked at the amount of garbage floating in the ocean. Sadly, this in an area that 40 years later has not improved from what I can see. And it really wouldn’t be that hard to improve things with little cost. Just stop throwing all the garbage overboard at 3 am like they used to in the 60’s.
There are a multitude of items like that and I agree with others who have comment here that David Suzuki (from whom I took classes) and his ilk have accidentally caused HUGE damage to their views on pollution issues by jumping on the AGW band wagon thus deflecting attention from things that we could actually do something about. For example, Bjorn Lomborg might believe in AGW but he is smart enough to know that our money can be better invested elsewhere to provide much more benefit than investing in AGW reduction.
Course that might be my engineering economics speaking – but we should spend the money where it will do the most good, tilting at windmills and end of the world scenarios accomplishes little.
A few simple sand filters to treat drinking water can enhance living conditions in the third world much more than thousands of hours of health care … and AGW is completely irrelevant to those folks (unless IPCC says they can get money to build those filters from claiming damages from industrialized countries.) Oops … falling into my own trap.
We still have a long way to go but I wouldn’t trade living now for living 100 years ago. I live in a wood heated ranch house with geothermal secondary and propane water back up and one foot thick insulated walls. As a child I lived for a while on a ranch in a log building where there was often frost on the inside of the log walls winter mornings and no running water.
Now I sit behind argon filled panes of glass watching the sunset and sending messages out on the Internet by satellite while horses paw for grass through the snow on the fields outside.
I need oil for my tractor, I need fuel for my truck, I am not about to go back to harvesting using horses, and I am not going to let some AGW type tell me I can’t burn wood in my highly efficient masonry fireplace that heats my house for 12 hours on one burn at 20 below C. ( I maintain my own woodlands and have more than I can use to heat two houses.)
Life is darn good.
“Stay calm, be brave, wait for a sign” – Dead Dog Cafe
What, pray tell, is the effect on hypoxic waters of the photosynthesis in the algal blooms?
Oh, for the love of…[sigh].
Whatever next? One can only hope that this truly ridiculous “research” will only add to the growing awareness of the general public that the whole thing is one big multi-governmental con. I thought we’d already passed the point where it could not get any more farcical. Clearly I was wrong.
COMPLETE PJTV INTERVIEW Climategate: Al Gore Doubles Down & Lord Monckton Ups The Ante Against Him
http://www.pjtv.com/v/3174
Took one look at the headline and thought “I have to reread Greg Benford’s Timescape again”.
Published in 1980, dead zones kill everyone by 1998…
Top SF, won a Nebula and a J.W.Campbell.
Good (and humorous) stuff in the posts above!
The only thing that must be killed ASAP is our tax funding of all this CAGW baloney. The sooner the better. The recession/depression has started that nicely already and has partly been brought about by all the massive, mandated public and private “green” investments that do not & will never pay out. Fortunately, hard money economics will force self-correcting results.
When the doomsayers discover (no doubt to their great surprise) that LIFE goes on anyway, the bulk will be forced by economics to snap back to reality (or poverty, one). Perhaps then they will start to do some real productive work that creates true benefits for (gasp!) people!
SENATE EPW MINORITY RELEASES REPORT ON CRU CONTROVERSY
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=fb6d4083-802a-23ad-46e8-c5c098e22aa1&Region_id=&Issue_id=0f038c02-802a-23ad-4fec-b8bc71f1a6f8
Inhofe Releases Climategate Report During EPW Hearing
University of Maryland is always complaining about runoff from the eastern shore of the Chesapeake bay. They mostly blame chicken farms. This is more complete nonsense. The fish on the eastern shore are just fine. It’s the western shore which releases untreated sewage from Baltimore and the surrounding communities where the fish are unhealthy. These guys have a consistent bias of missing the point and blaming rural influences instead of city folk that have money and lawyers.
Nitrous oxide has a half-life of <10 minutes in biological systems. These guys are so full of crap, it's not funny. The reason nitrous oxide doesn't change much in the atmosphere is that every living organism can metabolize it. What crap. Can someone ask these guys to show some measurements? From their article "Net N2O production in the open ocean is ~1.4 x 1011 mol (6 Tg of N) per year." This is production in the ocean, not how much survives. It was stated in such a way as to mislead and was also unreferenced.
Also, the reference that N2O is a "potent" greenhouse gas comes from IPCC4. Can someone look up pp. 129-234 and see what those jokers give as evidence? Seriously, 100+ pages of a defective review article isn't evidence.
See P. Forster et al., in Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, S. Solomon , Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2007), pp. 129–234.
Another howler from their article: "An increase in horizontal respiration rate gradients toward low-oxygen oceanic eastern boundaries could also increase N2O production. Some models predict a deeper thermocline (lower respiration) as a result of global warming; others suggest the opposite (13)." Well, that science is settled. Either way, it requires more funding. I'm not saying nitrous oxide isn't interesting, I'm saying that they don't make a good case with this short note. Maybe they're serious, but, this article isn't helping their case. Maybe they want to do a guest post on WUWT?
Nature abhors a vacuum. Some algae eating animal who can tolerate freshwater and low Oxygen will come in and “clean up” and within a few years it will be clean for the whole food chain to return. And this time the clean up animals, having found a great new home will not leave but stay and life will continue.
These guys may be right. Atmospheric laughing gas content must have spiked just after the UEA E-mails were released, because I’ve been a lot happier since then. 🙂
Just been assaulted by BBC1 with a long Government advert about how we need to reduce our water usage. From what I could make out, this piece of propoganda was state financed by DEFRA. So much for an advert-free corporation funded solely by license payers and nobody else!
Naturally, the self depracation involving Man Made Catastrophic Climate Change was brought to the fore. My license is up in June. I’ve just cancelled my Virgin Media package. As much as I’ll miss some TV, I just can’t continue funding the despots that have now taken over the asylum.
Isn’t this what is hypothesized as the cause for the spread of Diablos Rojos?
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2009/1215/Squid-invasions-signal-changes-in-the-Pacific-Ocean
Of course, the natural predators for the Humboldts are swordfish, sharks, marlins, none of which would seem to do well in hypoxic water. So, is it really the hypoxic water causing the spread?
Pascvaks (13:10:21) :
Before anyone explodes in sarcasm –
Well put. Excess nutrient runoff does pose a problem for oceans and water tables. These are the problems the billions of climate change dollars SHOULD be going to.
Re: Mike Abbott (12:26:36) :
This research says dead zones contribute to climate change. Previous research says climate change contributes to dead zones. (See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311141213.htm.) Can they have it both ways?
Of they can have it both way! Just look at David Suziki in Vancouver, lack of snow was climate change….Al Gore… large snow in Eastern USA climate change, so of course they can have it both ways!!
It’s worse than you think. The bird are shrinking due to Global Warming, and may disappear by 2035! Really! Dr Pachauri says so.
Story at http://alterednews.com/
I wonder how many of these you would need to make a dent in the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone? Anchor them in place.
http://www.aeromix.com/documents/tornado_eco_brochure.pdf
–Mike Ramsey
[snip]
Try again, without the “deniers.” ~dbs, mod.
JDN (17:40:30) :
“Nitrous oxide has a half-life of <10 minutes in biological systems. These guys are so full of crap, it's not funny. The reason nitrous oxide doesn't change much in the atmosphere is that every living organism can metabolize it. What crap."
THX
I'm glad someone said this! Since I scanned this article at work this morning I've been wanting to post this fact. But, being at work, I did not have the time. My co-workers already think that I'm nuts because I am more interested in fish then my job as a test engineer/software architect.
The truth is I have always been more interested in aquatic ecosystems then electronics, so much so that I have spent a great deal of time studying it. And by studying I mean experimenting with real data collection and analysis, not just relying on some whack-jobs lefty-biased papers for knowledge. I got interested in estuary ecosystems during the late 80's. I had a house full of brackish tanks that I worked with. I also spent a lot of time stomping around in the delta. I learned a lot of stuff that you will not read in any peer-reviewed paper. I could go on and on about the nitrogen cycle (and other cycles for that matter) in estuaries. The bottom line is that for them to be healthy, they need a lot of fluctuations.
This article had no supporting research, no data, nothing that could be called science, just some guy with a PhD. talking out of his aspirations. He is trying to use natural phenomena to scare the greenies, just like some B movie witch-doctor convincing the protoliberals to sacrifice the virgin in order to bring the sun back from a total eclipse.
I am going to try to restrain myself, but it will be hard in the face of such a poorly conceived idea …. I will try, but it won’t be easy – I have had my fill of these political activist scientists which are ruining all of science & are becoming a net drag on society as a whole.
So, we get algal blooms…. and algae are made of what ??? largely CO2 sequestered via photosynthesis- and the CO2 comes from where ??? the ocean / atmosphere system – and it is safely sequestered where ??? – the bottom of the ocean. (see the provided illustrations at the top of the post)
And given these facts, no attempt was made to quantify the benefits of CO2 removal from the system, only the harm done by emission on N2O. And what would that equation of balance look like? Is it possible that there may even be a net benefit by removal of CO2, in terms of GHG forcing? Evidently, we’ll never know from this work. We’ll just jump to the conclusion that Mankind is bad & should be punished. Folks, This is religion, not science!
The fact alone that the net GHG effect was not addressed is astounding. Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of atmospheric science would have thought to address this, but evidently it did not occur to these authors. Only 2 conclusions can be reached – either they didn’t have the talent to figure that out (in which case this paper should be dismissed out of hand) or the idea that Mankind must be negatively impacting the World was a foregone conclusion (in which case the paper again must be dismissed in that this is not how true science is conducted).
Clearly the authors have no concept of where CO2 from human emissions is coming from – fossil fuels ! The process described in the paper is basically how oil generating source rock shales are formed – yes, we are recycling carbon by this process back into the form it originated – as an organic rich ooze on the sea floor. Evidently it is OK when Nature does this (which Nature has done abundantly since the Cambrian , 540 million years ago) it is OK, but if mankind helps create the same events, it is then an evil act.
Evidently they also aren’t familiar with those who suggest we should induce algal blooms via iron fertilization of the ocean – with the explicit purpose of sequestering carbon at the bottom of the ocean. ….or maybe they are familiar with this & aren’t really interested in doing good science at all – but are really just politicos disguised as scientists… or maybe they are just desperate scientists trying to extort a grant from the government. How much so-called “research” falls into this category? Having been through a graduate level science program, I would say much more than the academics would care to admit. The bottom line – None of the scenarios have any redeeming qualities.
As I stated at the top, people like this are literally ruining science. As a society which depends largely on science & technology, we can not afford to have science ruined. Authors like this need to get a conscience & publish unbiased, high quality research. The same goes with all organizations which publish research. The standards for unbiased research need to be raised much higher for the benefit of all in society.
BTW, Nice pitch at the end “We should intensify our observations of the relationship between low oxygen concentrations and nitrous oxide in coastal waters.” Why dont you just come out and say “I need a research grant” & get rid of all the BS? I will answer that – probably because the reality is this research has no value to society & you would have no chance of getting funded without some good scare tactics & appealing to the green politicos which would be happy to hand out some more unearned government money (which I worked my ass off for, paying the taxes where that money came from) for a worthless cause. You wonder why people are riled up about paying taxes? This is a prime example why.
…. sorry for the rant – I knew it would be hard to control myself on this one…