Submitted by Marc Hendrix – correspondence with Steve Woodman, reproduced with permission:
For your reference, today I sent this challenge to the Climate Commission regarding a recent University of Tasmania study on growth rates in the banded morwong and the alarmist promotion of its suspect findings.
In a recent ABC story on the study, much was made of the threat of fish dying from hot ocean water when in fact the sample size of the component of the study which looked at the physiological stress on fish consisted of only TWO fish.
The authors admitted: “This result may reflect the small sample size of our experiments, and further work is needed to determine the effect of increasing temperature on swimming activity in banded morwong.”
(See abstract and full text of study here in Nature Climate Change)
Unfortunately Dr Thresher of the University did not inform the listeners to the ABC of this significant limitation to the study and its findings.
I present three other peer reviewed studies that show that marine ecosystems adapt well to warmer water and that there is no cause for such rank alarmism from activist scientists.
Marc, over the last three months I’ve sent over twenty challenges to the Commission regarding peer reviewed papers that do not toe the party line, apart from the usual automatic acknowledgement of receipt they have not yet responded to me.
Steve Woodman BSc (Hons) Psych
P.S I am a private citizen without any political affiliations or vested interests in coal, nuclear or any other industries or business concerns.
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jcrabb says:
June 4, 2011 at 12:22 am
The other three fish didn’t give them the trend they were looking for.
If they were true climate “scientists”, they would have disregarded the fish and gone straight for computer modelling. Empirical evidence is just not reliable.
From the ABC story:
“In the last 60 years, surface water temperatures in the Tasman Sea have risen more than 2°C. This temperature rise is caused by globally increasing sea surface temperatures and the movement of the warm East Australian Current further south”
Is that for real?
At least they were real fish, and not model fish.
Here is a recent study that showed two species of fish can tolerate water temperatures up to 45C.
http://www.opwall.com/Library/Opwall%20library%20pdfs/Journal%20publications/Eme%20et%20al%202011-JEMBE.pdf
To put 45C into perspective, that is probably the warmest the ocean surface has ever gotten to in Earth’s history – in one particularly enclosed ocean basin at the equator 260 Mya. For most of the Earth’s history, the warmest surface water at the equator would have been about 35C while the warmest ocean surface yesterday was 32.8C off the coast of India.
Most species of fish have a preferred water temperature and will move up and down the water column (assuming food is available) to sustain that water temperature. It is no surprise at all that some are cold adapted and some are warm adapted and won’t survive if the water temperature in their accessible environment goes outside that range. So there is nothing special about this particular study that merits it being published in “Nature Climate Change”. Fish are not going extinct because of a tiny 0.5C increase in local ocean temperatures. It is 0.5C colder just a few metres down.
The ocean is stratified from ice on top, the warmest water next and then colder water at the bottom. The ocean is always going to be colder as you go a little deeper. It is not going to exceed fish tolerance limits until the polar regions are no longer cold in the winter. If the poles warm up to 45C in the winter, then so will the deep ocean. But that won’t happen for a few billion years yet so fish are probably safe until then.
Commission?
So they’ve doubled their sample size. Maybe all this auditing is having an effect.
They caught TWO fish in Australia? Must have been close to NZ territorial waters. Man, you Aussies have shagged your fisheries over there. Hauraki Gulf, hardly out from Auckland, just gets better and better. I go over and fish with mates in NSW – lucky to catch a mackerel. These are real environmental, ecological outcomes. So what’s the story?
So, essentially, if they’d gotten bigger grants, like I know they think they properly deserve, they could have bought, say, three fish’?
All Noah needed were two fish, I don’t see the problem.
“They looked at five different sites, so how can they only have looked at two fish?”
Probably had to exhaustively search five sites to find two specimens in bad enough shape to fit their study conclusions.
I’m sure if you rase the temperture of the water in a tank by one degree for a week. Take the fish out the water to prepare it for study. Allow it to dry a week. Soak it in acid, then run it through a blender to prepare it. And study the cells under a microscope. You’ll see cell damage.
Proof of the harm just one degree will cause.
Roger Carr says:
June 4, 2011 at 3:28 am
Yeah, but it’s still easier than moving the goalposts!
tango water melon head science .what will happen to them all after the biggest FRAUD in our history is dead and cremated . cannot wait for the day
They’ll move on to something else. I remember the trendy tranzy of the 1980s drooling over the Brundtland Report, as it gave them the excuse to continue their attempt at totalitarian rule of the world after communism had patently failed.
Alex,
You raise an interesting question, did Noah have fish in the Ark? I figure not, being as it would have been unecessary.
Maybe I’m stupid but I clicked on all the links and saw no mention of any two fish study. I must be stupid.
At least two fish are better than one tree at Yamal peninsula! LOL
Reading through the ABC article I was struck by this little gem:
“To determine growth rates they analysed the fishes’ otoliths, bony structures that fish use for orientation and detection of movement. Just like tree rings, the bony structures show incremental changes in fish growth over long periods of time.”
Here we go again …
Please read the document!!!
The 2 fishe were used for swimming speed tests – plenty of statements ensuring the reader understands that this is not enough in the report. It research on otolith sizes the swimming is a small part of the document.
This has to be a post-normal fish story.
Usually, its all about bragging over the one that got away.
I couldn’t get access to the full paper, but where does the two fish come into the analysis?
Look at http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n2/extref/nclimate1084-s1.pdf
which contains supplementary data.
The second page talks about five banded morwong populations (which I assume would contain more than two fish in total?)
Page 8 contains this table listing locations and populations;
Location Sample Size
North island, N.Z. (NZ) 49
Victoria, Aus 283
Northeast coast, Tasmania, Aus. 122
East coast, Tasmania, Aus. 474
Southeast coast, Tasmania, Aus. 310
There may have been some doubling up as there is a column also called “# of year classes represented”, but I think it is more than two.
So is the two fish you talk about one small part of this study?
Thanks
Frosty wrote: “Amateurs, any decent propagandist would only need one fish.”
Why did they bother with fish? Why was computer modelling invented?
IanM
Alex you got me laughing so much
All Noah needed were two fish, I don’t see the problem.
Post modern science = Any science conducted and reported without input from an independent statistician.
So here are my comments re: study design 101: Two fish makes for a case study, not a random sample. There is nothing wrong with case studies, and no you don’t need a statistician on board for that. I find case studies to be intriguing. But to extrapolate what might happen to the general population goes way beyond the limits of case studies.
Since we seem to be getting a lot of these kinds of studies, I am left to wonder about the description for the required master’s level “Research Design” course all graduates heading for careers in research are required to take. I’ve taken two (I have two master’s degrees). Looking through my course material, a two-fish study would not qualify as a random sample design.
Case closed. Reprimand the researchers and remove their funding for any further endeavors regarding fish.
@tango Are these exploding Chinese watermelons?