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.
This is like an environmental destruction enchilada it rolls the AGW scare, the Ozone hole scare, and the oceans are dieing scare into one delicious meal.
It seems like all these AGW scare studies were in the pipeline before the AGW hoax blew up. We’re going to continue to see these for awhile kinda like how atmospheric CO2 concentration increase lag behind temperature increases.
Anyway it’s always darkest before the dawn.
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Mooloo (13:57:54) :
For example using nuclear power is often considered “carbon neutral”, but it warms the nearby river more than a coal station. It would be worse from the viewpoint of killing rivers, not better.
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The esteemed EPA doesn’t allow major power plants (nuclear, coal, gas, etc) to directly use river-water (open cycle) for cooling anymore — all stations have to use closed-cycle cooling towers that discard the heat to the air (the big steam-plumes from the cooling towers you see).
“If you build it he will come”
Translation – If we allow this issue of ‘pollution’ to be passed off to the Goreistas they will make it their own and nothing will be done to rectify actual dead zones where they do exist and are becoming bigger. Gore&Co. don’t fix problems, they make money off them, and they simply make the problem worse by dropping everything into the toilet of AGW.
The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and Doctor Lou Codispoti, may already be in Gore’s pocket, and only out to get a couple million in tax money to study “something” to death and buy a new boat or two before asking for a lot more money to do it all again, but bigger. I don’t know them from Adam.
I got a real earfull form all the comments. I learned a lot. Thanks!
Pascvaks (12:49:09) :
Note: Not everything is a joke, nor to be made light of without consequence. Think before you laugh too hard, you may just choke to death. AGW sounds like a hoax, smells like a hoax, looks like a hoax, and feels like a hoax. Dead fish and dead seas are not a hoax, don’t smell like a hoax, don’t look like a hoax, and don’t feel like a hoax.
So true. Fish would be living hundreds of years without this problem. Thus the health care costs for fish are rising unsustainably. I believe a government program is in order.
Frank Kotler (13:01:40) :
Does this mean I won’t have to buy balloons in the parking lot at Grateful Dead shows anymore?
Time travel much?
Dioxins – cancer-causing toxic chemical compounds caused by burning plastic, fuel and rubbish – are hard to break down once they get into the food chain. They are also found in dairy products, meat and eggs.”
But wait. Dioxins are also created by forest fires. And fires are supposed to be good for some forests.
It looks like no matter what we do we are doomed.
Perhaps a dioxin capture program is in order. We can pump it into old oil fields.
I looka inna da ocean wita da binoculars and no cod a spoti.
Ita da dooma certain.
From what I understand a lot of GM food has been introduced into my diet in the last few decades.
I do notice over the years that I have been getting older.
I blame GM foods.
Nitrogen has scientifically verified problems.
I’m sorry. I just will not pay for health care for nitrogen.
it would be better if we take firm action NOW to re-oxygenate the water in these dead zones;
Huge fish tank bubblers powered by nuclear power plants on the ocean floor. That is my solution.
RockyRoad (20:10:16) :
I see you got the joke.
Today we face the other unintended consequences of their discovery — massive nitrogen pollution and a growing pandemic of obesity.
Yeah. Rich people used to be fat and poor people used to be skinny. Now it is the opposite. Such a tragedy.
Ref – M. Simon (08:23:19) :
Pascvaks (12:49:09) :
“Note: Not everything is a joke…”
So true. Fish would be…
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As I know you are well aware, George Washington said:
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
I wasn’t talking about government, I was talking about dead fish and dead water. We’re more alike than you know:-)
Pascvaks (10:06:52) :,
Yeah. I like that quote too. But it has been brought to my attention that Washington didn’t actually say it. The earliest reference is 1902.
And I’m not convinced that every natural disaster is a function of man. As some one pointed out up thread. The amounts of N compounds in the water and the amounts used for fertilizer don’t match. And then some one pointed out buffalo. So maybe our fertilizer is just making up in small part for the missing buffalo.
Maybe dead fish and dead water are natural occurrences. And the cause IMO? Sh*t happens. Naturally.
@ur momisugly Pascvaks: So, what, in your opinion, has caused this Deathfish crisis lately then? I mean, we know the world has been very gradually warming century by century since the end of the last ice age. Is it just that we’ve reached one of those “tipping points” then?
Maybe you could offer some thoughts on the Incredible Shrinking Birds too?
Or maybe you could get real, my friend.
Ref – M. Simon (10:18:44) :
Pascvaks (10:06:52) :,
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Agree. The biggest piece of the mess I see since Katrina was, is, will be NOLA. I more I learned about the city In-The-Way and the once big Delta the more I blamed The Army COE and the Mississippi diversion and flood control system for the biggest piece of the Gulf Dead Zone. I still think Katrina II or III or IV is going to wipe the place out, that it’s only a matter of time (and a lot of taxpayer money down the drain). For my tax money, I’d just as soon rename Baton Rouge or Mobile as “New” Orleans and call it quits in the delta for the next million years.
@Jennifer Hubbard ‘Indeed! Overfishing has largely been a result of government-subsidized fishing industries:’
Personally I think it’s rather what the government didn’t dare to say by law. That industrial size fishing should be subjected to same logic that deforest on industrial size, i.e. replenish with a factor of 10-100 for every single harvest. How expensive can it be, really, to fertilize 100 fish eggs of the most fished species that doesn’t really require any special fishy attention afterwards and still yield a statistical 1-1 ratio?
Usually people think about farmed salmons when they’re thinking about replenishing the sea, but that’s more like the naz- way of doing stuff and at the same time being amongst the most expensive ways. It’d be cheaper to make sure to fertilize 10-100 more eggs up river, and it would employ more people, fishing, in the end as well. For instance the most cheapest way to replenish the north sea from fish to whale, apparently, and at the same time actually doing good by the polar bears, is to up the amount of krills, so how hard is it to make baby krills?
Just thinking out loud here (I am not a scientist – so I guess that makes me qualified to make outlandish claims about the environment) — the “scientists” claim these dead zones are the result of nutrient rich run off from upriver farms. Lots of algae is produced, they die, float to the bottom, leading to the death of other sea life, which then floats to the bottom.
If this has been happening for millions of years (forget the farm run-off nonsense) wouldn’t that be an ideal condition for forming hydrocarbons (i.e oil)? Could that explain why the Gulf of Mexico is so rich in oil?
I am not expert (in this, or anything else, for that matter) but it seems like there might be a connection.
Just curious.
Any experts out there?
” Doug in Dunedin (01:22:21) :
http://www.nongmoproject.org
Tim
That outfit is of no assistance at all. Your reference is just a blog pushing its own products.”
– The Non-GMO Project is a 3rd party verification program that identifies products compliant with a uniform, consensus-based definition of non-GMO and provides labeling for products that pass.
– If you had actually read the page listing the participating companies you would see that most compete with each other. They are not “pushing their own products”.
http://www.nongmoproject.org/consumers/search-participating-products/
More than 75 different companies with 1716 products that compete against each other in the marketplace.
“Anyway you miss the point. All food that has been in cultivation since man began selecting and breeding plants and animals for food has been genetically modified. All that has happened over the years is that the techniques to achieve genetic modification have changed.”
– No it is you who are missing the point. If you think that cross pollination and gene splicing cross species (animal to plant) with a 22 caliber shotgun is in any way related. There are barriers that nature has put up so animal genes and plant genes don’t mix. That you are ignorant of this simple fact is obvious.
“You are just riling against ‘big business’.”
– No I am riling against LIES from any source. Government, scientists or businesses, large or small. If they want to call it science then they need to follow the scientific method. That has been absent from the pro AWG and pro GMO groups so far.
There are barriers that nature has put up so animal genes and plant genes don’t mix.
You are not keeping up. There is an aquatic worm of some sort that is incorporating algae genes for chlorophyll.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/green-sea-slug/
From Tim (20:31:32) (emphasis added):
If you think that cross pollination and gene splicing cross species (animal to plant) with a 22 caliber shotgun…
At this point I see you stringing together two things in a supposedly alarming-sounding way, which ends up describing a rare curiosity used for “miniature” target shooting, utilizing a cartridge possibly suited for killing rats at close range provided they are not the NYC-type behemoths I’ve heard about. Heck, my father had told me how he and his brothers had a target shooting “game” involving .22 shot shells and bumblebees.
If you meant to indicate using a rare device of limited accuracy and questionable efficacy, whose operation really doesn’t match up to the modern gene splicing techniques as I have read of them, then please confirm such. Until then, well, I have grave doubts you know much at all about what you’re complaining about, and are just saying alarming-sounding things you heard that got you worked up.
Here is a story I just found on El Reg that is perfect for this thread.
March 11 2010:
Interesting reading, highly recommended.
1DandyTroll (16:11:56) :
@Jennifer Hubbard ‘Indeed! Overfishing has largely been a result of government-subsidized fishing industries:’
Personally I think it’s rather what the government didn’t dare to say by law. That industrial size fishing should be subjected to same logic that deforest on industrial size, i.e. replenish with a factor of 10-100 for every single harvest. How expensive can it be, really, to fertilize 100 fish eggs of the most fished species that doesn’t really require any special fishy attention afterwards and still yield a statistical 1-1 ratio?
Usually people think about farmed salmons when they’re thinking about replenishing the sea, but that’s more like the naz- way of doing stuff and at the same time being amongst the most expensive ways. It’d be cheaper to make sure to fertilize 10-100 more eggs up river, and it would employ more people, fishing, in the end as well. For instance the most cheapest way to replenish the north sea from fish to whale, apparently, and at the same time actually doing good by the polar bears, is to up the amount of krills, so how hard is it to make baby krills?
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If only it were that easy. What you describe – either placing fertilized eggs or hatched fish into waterways or even the ocean – is the Victorian era solution to overfishing. Unfortunately, this method is expensive and not terribly effective. For the northern cod, the average mature female (over 8 years old – lays 5 million eggs each season – it takes that many to have one or two cod survive into the next generation.
Problems with seeding fertilized eggs into streams and oceans include the fact that hatchery eggs and fry are somehow less ‘robust’ than naturally hatched fish. The real problem is that you would need to capture enormous numbers of fish to create enough eggs to make a difference. I note that there is some idea of releasing eggs in locations where mature fish of the same species are not present, so as to improve the chance of survival. However, any improvements to fish stocks would be incremental, when what is needed is a massive increase in fish populations – in many cases over one hundred fold, to begin to approximate even the heavily-fished populations that existed in the 1960s, before most of the major stock collapses occurred.
Another problem is with the loss of species such as cod, haddock hake, etc as the top predators, other, less desirable species have replace them (e.g. jellyfish) and so the ‘ecosystem’ has been altered to (possibly) become less favourable to the survival of the more desirable species.
Fish hatcheries have worked well for ponds and localized fish farming, but are not viable for open ocean species. Historically, the only way that overfished populations have been restored is through the restriction of fishing. So much is still unknown about fish life-histories, natural mortality rates, responses to changing environmental conditions, or even what oceanographic conditions favour successful spawning to create a strong year class, that there is not enough information to create any sound policy for open sea fish population augmentation aside from restricting access to the fish stocks.
I’m surprised no-one seems to have mentioned the Black Sea, the bottom of which is apparently anoxic, with large amounts of Methan Hydrate and Hydrogen Sulphide.
There are some funny things that live down there. See:-
http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/08_02/without_oxygen.shtml
Curiously, this piece forgets to mention that all this is 90% certainly the fault of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. Perhaps we now all know to take that as read, seeing that everything else under the sun is also the fault of Catastrophic etc etc etc…..(Yawns, Falls asleep)
“”” vigilantfish (09:38:01) :
1DandyTroll (16:11:56) :
@Jennifer Hubbard ‘Indeed! Overfishing has largely been a result of government-subsidized fishing industries:’ “””
Well I think overfishing has been the result of people eating more fish; and in addition the “Omega-3” snake oil scam.
These shysters go out and net thousands of tons of bait fishes; like menhaden for example; not to use for people food; not even for cat food; and they certainly then aren’t available for the food chain of game and food fishes; no they are the modern substitute for Cod-Liver Oil; the Omega-3 idiocy. In some areas, they simply catch everthing they can of any kind or species, and use it for fertilizer; maybe to grow corn (maize).
It oughta be illegal to fish for any species of fish, that is not sold as fish either whole or filleted to consumers for human consumption. So this doesn’t impair sardine or anchovy fisheries that end up in cans; or even tinier fishes like “white bait” that are used to make white bait fritters.
But killing bait fish stocks for voodoo “medicine” for people with more money than sense, is what is disrupting the ocean food chain.
There are other examples of course. The killing of Bluefin Tuna over 500#; even over 1000# ; in other words, the big spawning females necessary to replenish the stocks, to satisfy the sushi fad; just makes no sense.
Well I’m not going to waste time on other examples; but if you eat fish; don’t look for any culprit to replace yourself; until you have cleaned up your own act.
And as for fish hatcheries in fresh water; they are not the panacea, they are cracked up to be. Those brain dead hatchery fish get loose to crossbread with wild fish, and the whole population goes downhill in a hurry.