Borrowing a phrase from NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze, Phytoplankton are now apparently in a “Death Spiral”. See Death spiral of the oceans and the original press release about an article in Nature from a PhD candidate at Dalhousie University, which started all this. I’m a bit skeptical of the method which they describe in the PR here:
A simple tool known as a Secchi disk as been used by scientists since 1899 to determine the transparency of the world’s oceans. The Secchi disk is a round disk, about the size of a dinner plate, marked with a black and white alternating pattern. It’s attached to a long string of rope which researchers slowly lower into the water. The depth at which the pattern is no longer visible is recorded and scientists use the data to determine the amount of algae present in the water.
Hmmm. A Secchi disk is a proxy, not a direct measurement of phytoplankton. It measures turbidity, which can be due to quite a number of factors, including but not limited to Phytoplankton. While they claim to also do chlorophyll measurements, the accuracy of a SD measurements made by thousands of observers is the central question.
From the literature: The Secchi disk transparency measurement is perhaps one of the oldest and simplest of all measurements. But there is grave danger of errors in such measurements where a water telescope is not utilized, as well as in the presence of water color and inorganic turbidity (source: Vollenweider and Kerekes, 1982). I’ll have more on this later. – Anthony
======================================================
Phytoplankton need cap and trade
By Steve Goddard
Yesterday, Joe Romm reported :
Nature Stunner: “Global warming blamed for 40% decline in the ocean’s phytoplankton”
“Microscopic life crucial to the marine food chain is dying out. The consequences could be catastrophic.”
That sounds scary. Does it make any sense? Phytoplankton thrive everywhere on the planet from the Arctic to the tropics. One of the primary goals of this year’s Catlin expedition was to study the effect of increased CO2 on phytoplankton in the Arctic. They reported:
Uptake of CO2 by phytoplankton increases as ocean acidity increases
That sounds like good news for Joe! We also know that phytoplankton have been around for billions of years, surviving average global temperatures 10C higher and CO2 levels 20X higher than the present.
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide.htm
Phytoplankton growth/reduction in the tropics correlates closely with ENSO. El Nñio causes populations to reduce, and La Niña causes the populations to increase.
During an El Niño year, warm waters from the Western Pacific Ocean spread out over much of the basin as upwelling subsides in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Upwelling brings cool, nutrient-rich water from the deep ocean up to the surface. So, when upwelling weakens, phytoplankton do not get enough nutrients to maintain their growth. As a result, surface waters turn into “marine deserts” with unusually low populations of phytoplankton and other tiny organisms. With less food, fish cannot survive in the surface water, which then also deprives seabirds of food.
During La Niña conditions, the opposite effect occurs as the easterly trade winds pick up and upwelling intensifies, bringing nutrients to the surface waters, which fuels phytoplankton growth. Sometimes, the growth can take place quickly, developing into what scientists call phytoplankton “blooms.”
The phytoplankton must be loving life now!
The author of this study (Boris Worm) also reported last year “if fishing continued at the same rate, all the world’s seafood stocks would collapse by 2048”
So we know that phytoplankton have survived for billions of years in a vast range of climates, temperatures and CO2 levels. Apparently they have become very sensitive of late – perhaps from all the estrogens being dumped in the oceans? Or maybe they have been watching too much Oprah?
The standard cure for hyperventilation is to increase your CO2 levels by putting a bag over your head.
—
Mike writes:
“If you read the paper you would see that they did do these sort of things [water samples taken at appropriate depths to analyze plankton species and gain precise counts and to carry out analyses of temperatures and chemical compositions in order] to gauge current Secchi disk measurements.”
Not being a subscriber to Nature and unwilling to suffer the cost of penetrating the paywall put up by the publisher, I had not read the paper. Of direct observation, only the Secchi disk methodology was mentioned in the Dalhousie University press release, and while “satellite measurements” were breezily discussed, my personal “bias” as an individual with direct experience of undergraduate study in marine biology (including one project in which we made ourselves a Niskin bottle and employed it to study plankton blooms in a tidal estuary) gave me good and sufficient reason to express concern that far more significant information had simply not been gathered and reported.
Wouldn’t be the first time that kind of thing had happened, would it?
When the predominant practice of the “global warming” cabal has, for three full decades, been suppressio veri, suggestio falsi, a high index of suspicion is at all times the proper default condition to maintain.
—
phlogiston says:
quote
Last time I looked, diatoms were also phytoplankton. (As are foraminiferans, dinoflagellates, microflagellates, radiolarians etc…)
unquote
Sorry, truncation for brevity. I should have said ‘calcium carbonate type phytos’. But that’s only because I can’t spell ‘calcareous’. If you like puzzles, check the recent history of radiolarian skeletons — I don’t understand it.
Dave Springer says:
quote
I know just enough about C3/C4 genotype to get me in trouble.
unquote
Snap!
quote
Hadn’t heard anyone say that C3/C4 photosynthetic pathway is something readily selectable. Interesting.
unquote
I got irritated when I read ‘it must be this because we can’t think of other explanations’ type arguments. I found… I think it was five… different ways that the C isotope might be made to vary, all biological. I don’t think that the research has been done, so it’s all just handwaving like most climate science.
Some phytos (yes, yes, pholigiston, sorry, calcareous phytos) are C3 obligate, some C4, some can switch pathways from one to the other. No mutation is needed to change the populations from one type to another, it’s just population dynamics, with one species replacing another as conditions vary. It should be possible to check historical changes in plankton species, but the way the paper here was written it didn’t need to do that. I wish anyone luck with a grant proposal for research which might show that the anthropogenic isotope signal has been created by nutrient changes in the oceans.
A couple of other things: Secchi is the ‘canali on Mars’ man (I think he was seeing his own retinal veins and I once proposed an experiment which involved a computer screen, a darkened room and two pints of home brew); more on topic, diatoms are described as having a CAM-like carbon system which again is less discriminatory against heavier isotopes, so they, too, should be contributing to the ‘anthropogenic’ signal.
Excuse a little lecture (a general one, not directed at the posts I’ve been replying to), but the reaction of anyone to the ‘we can’t think of anything else so it must be’ argument should be outrage and a determination to do just that, think of some other explanation. It may be bloody-mindedness, but it’s how science should be.
One of the things that got me wound up about climate science was watching a student trying to fund her own PhD research into carbon fixation in a little understood group of phytos. Her grant finished and, while politicians and senior scientists were spouting about the greatest threat ever ever ever to the planet, she was refused an extension and could not get income support because she was ‘not available for work’, ie ‘too busy furthering the sort of knowledge which might end up saving the planet’. It was then I realised that no-one was interested in the real science, just the grandstanding. She was a real scientist, she did it anyway without support.
Similarly with the Gulf oil spill — a perfect opportunity to find out what a polluted sea surface does to the heat budget, aerosol production etc. 20 billion spent, no research that I’ve seen yet. Let’s hope the satellites have got some stuff.
JF
(I will spare everyone the overarching theory, my grand theory of global warming, the Kriegesmarine hypoth… [noises off, muffled thumps, silence])
Hey! There is nothing wrong with estrogen. The problem is testosterone and the ballsy claims that go with it.
Henry Chance: the quote you lifted from the article is a total misread of the source. The source basically says that “dead zones” (marine areas with low dissolved oxygen) have increased over the past half-century. According to the source, increased particulate organic matter can indicate where “dead zones” might be found. Pretty bad reporting by the Examiner on that one.
Gary wrote, but a lot of others here don’t get something:
“The real issue, however, is that there is no way to link that data to phytoplankton density without sampling the water for organisms. Light can be limited by dissolved substances and zoo-plankton.”
This isn’t right. In the open ocean, the only thing that’s out there in sufficient numbers to affect light transmission is phytoplankton and stuff that comes from phytoplankton, i.e., phytoplankton remnants. (Not true near the coasts, where you get colored river effluent and sediments.)
A page from the Handbook of Optics
Also, by having large numbers of measurements, over a long period of time, you get the averaging effect of large numbers of observations that strongly tends toward the actual correct value. A proper Secchi depth is taken with multiple observers, which compensates for differences in visual acuity, and should be taken when the Sun is high in the sky (though that isn’t always done).
I’ve participated in lake Secchi depth surveys on power plant reservoir lakes in the Carolinas. There are even Web pages that test your abilities, to improve results for unskilled observers. It’s a legitimate measurement that provides useful information. So while there’s probably a lot of room for discussion of why this decline is happening, on a prima facie reading this paper doesn’t appear to be nearly as bad as a lot of the commenters here think it is (and as at least one commenter noted, it’s probably always a good idea to read something before passing final judgement on it).
A question for stevengoddard, who wrote:
“We also know that phytoplankton have been around for billions of years, surviving average global temperatures 10C higher and CO2 levels 20X higher than the present.”
Question: are the phytoplankton living now the same types as the phytoplankton that lived under those conditions? The reason I ask is that various places in the ocean (the Black Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Bering Sea) have at times in the recent past had major species shifts in their dominant phytoplankton groups. These shifts appear to be related to temperature and nutrient supply. There have been associated fisheries shifts, partly because apparently the zooplankton that are major fish food items are used to feeding on certain types of phytoplankton. When the phytoplankton change, the zooplankton go elsewhere (or just decline), and the fish populations don’t fare very well when that happens. So merely “survivability” might not be the only important factor when conditions change significantly. What do you think?
I think that sometimes these issues require more examination than “hey, life finds a way”. Yeah, life finds a way to survive major extinction events, but paleontology seems to show that things end up a whole lot different after a major extinction event compared to the way they were before the extinction. If I’m wrong on that, when was the last time you saw a titanothere in a zoo?
Phytoplankton populations are heavily dependent on the amount of soluble iron in sea water.
Unfortunately, man’s fishing activities have reduced the number of fish, sharks and whales in the oceans, so there is less fish, shark and whale poop than a 100 years ago, hence less soluble iron, therefore less of an essential element required for phytoplankton growth and so there are probably less phytoplankton.
Placing dams on our largest rivers probably has not helped much either.
There are many references to this in Google – here are a few:
http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceancolor/additional/science-focus/ocean-color/soiree.shtml
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18807-whale-poop-is-vital-to-oceans-carbon-cycle.html
http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/green_ocean/publications/Colim/SundaHuntsman97.pdf
The solution to the problem of declining phytoplankton populations, if that problem does exist, is to dump a few hundred thousand tonnes of soluble iron each year into those parts of the oceans which support our most important fish populations.
Of course, a few tens of trillion dollars in extra taxes to push our economies back into the Stone Age in the name of CO2 and global warming might also work.
As a scientist, I think the first solution makes more sense – presumably most politicians would opt for the latter option.
RE: Mike: (July 30, 2010 at 10:23 pm) “But a few things have solidified: the world is warming largely due to our GHG emissions; …”
I do not think this is solid at all. All I think we can say is that global temperatures have increased slightly since 1880 in conjunction with a CO2 concentration increase only sufficient to cause about a 0.45 deg K raw temperature increase, as indicated by the MODTRAN online radiation calculator.
As long as no one has been able to explain how and why other much greater pre-technical era climate fluctuations have occurred, such as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age, the proof that the recent CO2 increase has really caused the modest modern temperature rise since 1880 is lost in the noise of uncertainty.
Phytoplankton dying?
Well, if they are worried about the global supply of Soylent Green, then I’m sure that the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement knows an excellent substitute…
Warming means more hurricanes, hurricanes means more mixing, more mixing means “greater than normal” growth of phytoplankton–according to NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/hurricane_bloom.html
A much prettier picture of phytoplankton, also from NASA SeaWiFS:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1193
Oakden Wolf
Do you have any evidence that there has been a “major shift” in temperatures? Even Hansen’s bloated numbers only show 0.65 degrees since 1880. By contrast, ENSO temperatures have changed ten degrees in less than a year.
BillD says:
July 30, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Yours is the first sensible comment since I started down the list and was about to give up. I’ve wondered for a while when the issue of phytoplankton would be raised in this forum in vitriolic fashion.
The “global dimming” phenomenon reported some years ago had the interesting twist that in recent years, in developed nations in particular (Europe, North America) the dimming had reversed due to clean air measures.
It a similar thing possible with the oceans? The reduction on raw sewage dumping could have had a significant effect on water clarity, and apparently this is the main thing measured by this disk thingy that makes them conclude the plankton are dying.
Fuzzylogic19
You do realize that there are other disciplines in science, besides the tightly controlled, irrational belief system which has come to typify “climate science.”
>>The standard cure for hyperventilation is to increase your
>>CO2 levels by putting a bag over your head.
Even better if you tie it around your neck with a cord, and leave it there for 15 minutes. It sure cures any worries and concerns you may have about AGW.
.
The idea that less phytoplankton means that the “phytoplankton are dying” is way off base. Rather, production (growth) has been reduced by less nutrient availability (which means nitrogen in most of the world’s oceans). The article is not saying that phytoplankton are dying off or going extinct.
Those of you who have pointed out that El Ninos lead to less phytoplankton due to less upwelling have got the authors’ of this studies mechanisms just right. This also explains why tropical oceans have very low plankton production and are typically clear and blue. The thermal stratification of lakes and oceans is very sensitive to water temperature. Moreover, the change in water density per degree change in water temperature is signficantly greater at warm temperatures (>20oC).
Fish populations through their effects on zooplankton could also affect phytoplankton. However, most of the fish that have been depleted in the world’s oceans are the larger fish that eat smaller fish and not the smaller fish that eat most of the zooplankton (yes I know that whales and a few large fish are plankton feeders).
The results of this study are not really new, but the strength and consistency of the long term trend is surprising. Some of the best scientific work these days is based on summarizing and reanalyzing the work of earlier studies–in this case, taking data from hundreds or thousands of earlier studies. In general, this kind of synthetic work does not require the ship time and grant funding of a new individual oceanograhic study, but it provides an important overview and summary of previous work.
to Mike @ur momisugly July 30, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Mike, thanks for your links.
I agree with you that you can’t just dismiss a study like this out of hand.
I don’t automatically dismiss the science itself (the 40% reduction), although if you read some of the better articles about it, you realize that there are fairly large areas, especially in the Southern Ocean, where there wasn’t enough data, so they excluded the areas from the analysis. That could mean, since sub-Antarctic regions are one major place where major plankton blooms occur, that they have under estimated current plankton growth. So it would be great if we could find a method to verify a loss of plankton by another means. For instance, could we determine whether there have been commensurate losses of oxygen in the atmosphere for the 60 years during which most of the phytoplankon losses are said to have occurred?
My main problem isn’t that secchi disks are bad science per se, or that the readers of the disks weren’t adequately trained. I don’t have a dog in that fight.
My main problem is that the purported reason for the decline didn’t make sense to me. I understand about thermal overlay, and I understand that it occurs in much hotter climates than we have today, and toward the tropics. I googled and couldn’t find any support for the notion that the difference in temps between the late 1800s and today would cause thermal overlay in polar regions. Yet the polar regions are among the areas with considerably less phytoplankton growth. My BS meter was ringing loudly.
The overfishing hypothesis makes much more sense. I hadn’t realized it until reading the BBC account of the study, but zooplankton are major targets of many fish populations. Take away fish, you get more zooplankton. If this happens, you get more zooplankton grazing on phytoplankton. Bingo!
Overfishing is very well accepted. Look at the collapses of New England and California fisheries in the past 40 years, and for a longer term perspective, read “Cod,” which explains that it has taken about 10 centuries to reduce what once was an incredibly abundant fish all over northern waters to one which can no longer be fished, and can barely be found, on the East coast of the US and Canada. The grand banks off Nova Scotia used to be a prime fishing area for cod. It was so fished out by about 1990 that the Canadian government finally was able to institute a ban on fishing cod, so that hopefully they could come back. But they haven’t come back.
And open ocean fisheries have exploded in the last 50 years, with factory ships everywhere it seems.
A moral here is that scientists sometimes get things right – in fact, in my opinion, more often than not. They warned of collapses of fishing stocks for many years before the collapses actually happened. Fishermen only agreed to bans on fishing when they could barely find their target fish. And the bans in some cases have been very successful at bringing back the target fish — striped bass on the mid-Atlantic coast, for example.
Because much science in the end is accurate, it took me a long time to come to the reluctant conclusion that a lot of climate change science in various ways is “bent,” it always has the one cause of CO2, climate change, etc. I was instantly suspicious of the conclusions of this article (climate change causes 40% reduction in phytoplankton!) because I’ve seen this movie, this hockey stick, this Himalayan glacier disappearance, this 50% reduction in North African rainfall by 2020 — I’ve seen this all before. And I found it laughable that with all the temperature cycling that has gone before, that phytoplankton are this sensitive.
That’s why I felt I knew that the climate change explanation was wrong, even if the 40% reduction was right (which still needs to be verified, it’s just one study). But I do buy the overfishing explanation, because it comports with science that has not been politically distorted, and which is accurate, in my view.
John says:
July 31, 2010 at 6:44 am
to Mike @ur momisugly July 30, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Mike, thanks for your links.
I agree with you that you can’t just dismiss a study like this out of hand.
I don’t automatically dismiss the science itself (the 40% reduction), although if you read some of the better articles about it, you realize that there are fairly large areas, especially in the Southern Ocean, where there wasn’t enough data, so they
John:
Here is a problem with your “over fishing hypothesis.” Let’s take the cod fishery in the northeastern US and eastern Canada (specifically George’s Bank) that you cite. The collapse of the cod and other demersal fish (e.g., haddock) in that region has lead to strong increases in herring. Cod feed on bottom prey and herring, and it’s the herring that feed on zooplankton. I have not checked on the long term data for zooplankton and phytoplankton production in that area. George’s Bank is a high production area because of shallow depth, strong currents and strong mixing. In many if not most parts of the oceans, declines in large piscivorous fish (fish eating fish) such as cod and tuna has resulted in increases in small, zooplankton feeding fish. If the change is significant, this would lead to declines in zooplankton and an increase in phytoplankton.
The changes in temperature and current associated with el nino/ la nina result in large changes in phytoplankton production. I have not checked out the actual, measured values, but I would expect these changes in phytoplankton to be several hundred percent or even an order-of-magnitude. Thus, a 40 or 50% change in response to warming of sea surface water temperatures over the last 100 years seems plausible.
To BillD at 6:23 am:
Good and thoughtful comments.
You are correct that open ocean fisheries usually target bigger fish, that no longer eat zooplankton. But we also target ever smaller fish populations — anchovies, sardines, menhadden — for fish oil supplements, and for feed for salmon and other farmed fish. And we also take in a lot of non-target fish (“bycatch”) and throw them overboard, dead. The smaller bycatch and the smaller target fish would be the ones more likely to eat zooplankton, wouldn’t you think?
Phyto migrates vertically.
The clearer or warmer the water is, the deeper they go.
The deeper they go, the clearer the water gets……….and they go even deeper.
Using some visual aid, is just going to tell you how deep they are.
Not how many there are.
BillD
I have no opinion on trends in phytoplankton population. My complaint is blaming them (whatever they are) on “global warming.” Phytoplankton are clearly not that sensitive to small changes in temperature.
It was once called “Publish or perish”, but it seems metaphoracally we are doing both, while nature laughs!
A Message in a Bottle
The report on my imminent death is immature. I have been sloshing around in the basins on the crust for more than four billion years. I now cover nearly 71 per cent of the planet. Since the last ice age, I have lifted myself out of the basin by 120 metres and scared the tribes of Noah to the higher ground. During deep time, I became the universal solvent for the volcanoes and the clouds. I have taken up as much salt as required by local circumstances and sometimes give it back in hot shallows and desert areas of my world. I have given man the salt in his blood. I have absorbed as much gas as I need to maintain balance with the organic world within me and on land. Your CO2 output is infinitesimally small. The exchange is so peaceful that science calls it equilibrium. I can absorb more CO2, if the plants do not need it, and it does not give me acid imbalance. My pH will remain basic no matter what you say. The variations you measure have come and gone many uncountable times on the planet and your baseline is too small to know the truth. What you do not get is that warming of the oceans releases CO2 and other gasses from my water, while cooling my water allows me to take up CO2 in vast amounts to nestle with the other molecules in my coldest most remote realms. I can absorb all that man can produce because your impact is feeble compared to my capacity.
Please watch me with humility for you cannot change me. I am the ongoing sink for the planet, and I am huge and my heat content is beyond your estimation. Measure me here and there with your microscopes but know that I will never be that way in that place again. Open your mind to the infinite cycles of chemistry and physics and kneel on my beach. You can only hurt me by not respecting my infinite ability to change chemistry and temperature in all the corners of the seas. My CO2 feeds your plants and your plants provide all the oxygen you breathe. Your base line is infinitesimally small yet your mouth is wide open. Stop sending me your plastic water bottles.
Poseidon, the King
__________________________________________________________
I am Aeolus
I am mostly invisible, but not space. I am the wind you breathe, the 20 km thick shell around your sphere. I am bigger than Poseidon’s realm by many times. I am oxygen, and I am 80% nitrogen. I am both water vapour and humidity. I am carbon dioxide, methane, laughing gas and ozone. Argon, neon helium, and hydrogen make my fireworks in the lightening. I heat you by convection like an oven, cool you with my wind chill, and bury you in my microscopic hexagonal crystal frost. From the poles to the equator and from your caves to Kathmandu, I cover you, feed, and water you and your plants: no wind, and there is no food worth eating, for plants or man. Over four billion years and more, I practiced my cycles. My ozone protects you from your sun’s blue rays; my methane warms your coldest nights. Your green plants whirl out my oxygen all night trading it for my CO2 in the sunshine. When you walk in your forest, be thankful for the bargain.
Without my parts per million CO2, you would choke. Without my parts per million CO2, you would freeze. As your people grow in numbers and size, I need more CO2 to fertilize your food. In my opinion, the more fat children, the merrier, because the earth does not laugh enough. Do not pump my CO2 underground or earth will quake from the wrong as it did under Denver on August 9th1967. When you sequester, be prepared to scavenge for food, and perhaps burn your oxygen for warmth
___________________________________________________________________________
Vulcan – god of fire said, “All the gasses from the mantle of the earth drive my fire and push up my liquid rock. Water affects my temper. When I foam, I am deadly. My carbon dioxide is colourless, and difficult to detect. It is heavy. It sinks and has killed many camped near Lake Nyos, in Cameroon. My sulphur dioxide is a killer too. At more than 20 ppm, it irritates, burns your eyes and is dangerous to breathe. When inhaled, most becomes sulphuric acid. My hydrogen sulphide is easy to smell, like rotten eggs. People are generally able to notice the odour; it can kill you at 50 ppm. My radon is colorless, odourless, tasteless, and radioactive. It can creep into your basement. My hydrochloric acid is colorless, but with an ‘acidic’ odour and taste, My HCl is common around blowholes and in eruptions. It can and will destroy the ozone when it blows to the top of the atmosphere. Just like the liquid acid, my vaporous acid will burn anything it touches – especially the breathers. My sulphuric acid comes in shades of brown and is odourless; exposure results in quick burns and dissolves the outer layers of the teeth. However, my worst most painful acid is hydrofluoric. It is also invisible and will cause deep burns and permanent blindness if not flushed with water. Death by hydrofluoric acid is horrible. Ask the ghosts of Iceland in 1783.
My chimneys are scattered around the planet and one big puff like Krakatau or Pinatubo can ruin your air and cool your world. Between expulsions, my gasses are usually scattered. You will never know when I will speak and kill you because your lives are too short. My CO2 is my most benevolent gas, and I have given you parts per million for you to feed your plants. Use it carefully and do not abuse it. It is weak to fear me and not prosper. I come when I want.
I do not respond to human sacrifice.”
__________________________________________________________________________
Finally, Gaia – the earth element said:
“Among the ancient elements of Aristotle, the earth element was both cold and dry. He thought I occupied a place between water and fire. Aristotle lived a short span, just a moment ago in universal time, and he did not ask me. I am wet and dry, hot and cold, light and dark in all the rainbow colours. Gaia is rich and overflowing with goodness. My sphere vibrates with the gravity of the solar system. I ring like a bell when I quake, and if gravity dropped me, my sphere would splash like a tear. When my skin slides, I create wealth and prosperity in your copper mines. You dress to match me at your atomic scale with treasures from your tiny mines.
I must admit, your choices of where to cluster astonish me. I guess you do not know me yet.
I condensed more than four billion years ago as stardust gathered at my core. In all that time continuing tomorrow, I am sorting out the stardust into separate useful solids and liquids. I give most of the vapours to Vulcan and Aeolus and most of the fluids to Poseidon and they all share.
So far, you have found only enough gold to fill one house and enough diamonds to fill one truck. There is more where that came from. Find where I have hidden it in the mountains and under the waters. It is good for you to quest – good luck.
Man is late to the life that began in the salty wet clay. You have the salt of Poseidon, the gills of fish, and the brains of monkeys; you have the muscles of babies and the lips of giants. Your eyes magnify everything and what you see scares you. You must place your optical illusions in the perspective of prosperity, health, food, shelter, and clothing. Please listen to your science and not your demagogues . Your footprint is light. How many of you have seen a mine or a well? None! They are rare like diamonds.
Do what you need to do. Make all your people happy. You have wit enough to do it cleanly. Dig my coal and burn it; make it into plant food again and water. Pump my oil and burn it. There is more where you have not looked. There is much where you have already looked in trillion tonne layers of rock in Colorado. It is for man to use and recycle. Do not hesitate to scratch me; I do not bleed; I give.
I do not want to be alone. Gaia and man belong together, and you do not know why. Much of my surface is empty of man. Perhaps illusions are the answer to the riddle. There is always more room for the children. Oh yes, the sunspots may be back when the lying stops.
Demagogue – a political leader who gains power by appealing to people’s emotions, instincts, and prejudices in a way that is considered manipulative and dangerous.
RE: stevengoddard: (July 31, 2010 at 8:23 am ) “My complaint is blaming them (whatever they are) on “global warming.””
I find the use of the phrases ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ as cause for alarm in any scientific paper now tends to give me the instant impression that it is only tract of modern environmentalism.
Comments have been made relating to the use of the Secchi disc referring to its size, the number of tests and the size of the oceans. Statistically, the size of the population does not matter (in this case the area of ocean). What counts is that randomness of samples and the quality of samples. Any sampling needs a base level of the number of samples, usually about 5000+, and this will be a good guide to the whole population provided you have obeyed the key rules of randomness and quality. Your survey will give you a result accurate to 95% (which means 5% of surveys are simply wrong). I would quarrel with the historical data of the Secchi surveys in that they were not random and their quality is in doubt (not least because they depended on the eyesight function of the observer, never mind any pollution in the seas). This is true of most climate science and especially climate history which is why we have to rely on proxies, be it frost fairs on the Thames, agricultural records or fossils.
OT, still wondering how next winter will turn out. Anyone got some hard data to give us a prediction that is 95% certain? Oh well, I thought not, but it does no harm to ask.
says:
July 31, 2010 at 8:23 am
BillD
I have no opinion on trends in phytoplankton population. My complaint is blaming them (whatever they are) on “global warming.” Phytoplankton are clearly not that sensitive to small changes in temperature.
Steve:
Phytoplankton are clearly not so senstive in a physiological sense to the observed small increases in temperature. However, small changes in temperature could easily have strong effects of mixing depth. The fact that the greatest changes in temperature have been in late winter and spring can easily lead to larger changes in mixing depth and shallower stratification during the crucial spring months. At least that is what is happening in large deep lakes, such as Tahoe, Constance, Baikal, etc. where small amounts of warming result in shallower mixing. Perhaps the best way to check this would be to search for historical data on the spring mixing depth in various oceans.
Just a thought …
If it’s true that the places the researchers have been looking for the species in question have turned up a paucity of the species they’ve been evaluating, then there are more questions than have been answered by their findings.
Merely looking and not finding is only a part of the answer.
Consider: Has ANYONE collected samples of the seawater and analyzed those samples to see how they differ from places elsewhere?
Is there a chemistry which differs?
Hey, how about this: The chemical constituents of those ‘ship tracks’ is affecting the oceans over which it precipitates.
Ref.:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/22/ship-tracks-what-do-they-do-to-albedo/
Question: IF those ‘tracks’ are happening in places where the species are diminishing, then what about what’s happening –or not– in those places where said tracks are NOT happening?