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.
Geoffrax
June 4, 2011 at 7:49 am
bzzzt, wrong answer.
The portion of the study that will be used to generate the salacious “we’re all doomed” headlines is that portion that uses the two fish sample. It does not matter that the paper cautions against reading to much into the results. Propagandists don’t care. Without this portion, there really is no smoking gun evidence of CAGW caused stress. So all of the hand wringing new reports really are based on a study of two fish.
Its science by press release.
R. Shearer says:
June 4, 2011 at 4:28 am
One was a control, right!?
No. Both were fish.
quote”the sample size of the component of the study which looked at the physiological stress on fish consisted of only TWO fish.”
Correct..but that is at the end of the article and is not the thrust of the main article
Herald quote “To test what they were seeing in the wild, the researchers conducted an additional study to identify the effect of increased water temperatures on spawning behaviour.”
Hendrix/woodman…for some odd reason..appear to be accidently implying that the article/paper is talking about two fish.
I wrote to A.B.Neuheimer who was one of the authors.
In the reply I was told that the article is talking about TWO studies.
One published and one preliminary.
The published link is 1238 fish at 5 sites.
The preliminary is 2 fish.
So, its disingenuous to suggest the authors are talking about 2 fish in their study.
When quite clearly the published paper is not.
I am amazed this post got through fact checking. 🙂
Karoly is a stalwart of realclimate…
Civil Disobedience and Passive Resistance not violence and death threats.Its worked before and will work again.”So long and thanks for the FISH”
John in NZ, what do the experienced guys do, talk them into the point of their spear?
; >)) Reef netting would be fun to watch, kind of like when my fishing net gets caught in the barbed wire fences I have to crawl through on my way down the river bank. I never notice the hole till I try to scoop up a fish.
I have a bad feeling this story is a jumped shark harming WUWT.
Too late to simply pull it, Anthony; but something akin to an apology is very necessary for the sake of group integrity.
Hi Pamela :<) Experienced people watch the moki and shoot other species. eg Kingfish, snapper or tarakihi. Better meat and more of a challenge. The Moki can be very tame. It is very easy to get so close. If you try to touch them they will dart away.
They are normally about two feet long so you get a lot of meat off them, but it isn't very firm. It doesn't keep very well. When I was about ten or twelve years old I shot a few of them but nowadays I'm feeling guilty that I did. I just like to watch them now. Not that I get to go diving these days.
For more on Red Moki see http://www.wildblue.co.nz/fish/nontarget/redmoki/
Note they are regarded as "nontarget".
Mike Williams is almost right, but this is clearly a study of one fish. Red morwong, or red moki (Cheilodactylus spectabilis).
It’s a bogus study but not for the reasons stated. Fish survive all over the world in all sorts of conditions. Geographic variation, seasonal variation, depth variation, salt content etc. Fish can and do seek cooler water just by swimming lower, or warmer water by swimming higher. The premise that a small variation in average temperature over a long duration will somehow adversely affect the world’s fish populations is quite absurd. Fish that like cooler waters might gradually move towards the poles, and some will be able to move towards the centre due to those conditions becoming better suited to them.
Aren’t we a bit surprised that they used any fish at all and did not simply make a computer model?
Why waste all of the resources of keeping the fish alive when you can fantasize the results? It takes much less time and all you need is a laptop and a programmer.
DesertYote says:
June 4, 2011 at 1:24 pm
The portion of the study that will be used to generate the salacious “we’re all doomed” headlines is that portion that uses the two fish sample. It does not matter that the paper cautions against reading to much into the results. Propagandists don’t care. Without this portion, there really is no smoking gun evidence of CAGW caused stress. So all of the hand wringing new reports really are based on a study of two fish.
—-
You are wrong. The smoking gun evidence is there: fish growth rates have decreased
at the Northern edge of the distribution area during the same period that water
temperature has risen. The result based on otolith rings in a larger sample (N =
134) is statistically significant.
That there is more physiological stress, affecting growth rates, at the edges of a species distribution area is not news. But this study shows a correlation between increasing water temperature and fish growth rates, indicating increasing AGW induced stress.
The scientists have done their job and the disinformants at WUT are trying to
do theirs. But, you could do better. This post is just embarrassing.
To Anthony Watts, Marc Hendrix, AND Steve Woodman,
What part of “n=82 fish” do you all not understand?
Woodman, the claim of reduced growth due to warming waters is NOT based on sampling two individuals, it is based on data from at least 82 fish in one of the diagrams THAT YOU LINKED TO IN YOUR ARTICLE.
Watts and Hendrix, what is your excuse for accepting rumours uncritically? Jumping at a chance for some mudslinging at perceived warmists, no doubt.
I don’t care if it is true if these scientists had preliminary findings from only two fish on a related study, that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that YOU all claimed these scientists had published warnings of a species threat based ONLY on a sample size of two, and that is FALSE. They observed hundreds of fish of different ages and locations to show the real temperature and real growth rates roughly fits an inverted parabola, just as would be expected of any homoeostatic variable in any species. This says nothing about the species being threatened with a hot death.
The ABC headline “Warm waters push fish’s comfort zone” and the Reuters headline are entirely justified by this research on 1200 fish, even if it isn’t surprising nor alarmist. I would disagree that the 10% of the ABC article relating to fatal stress justifies the claim “much was made of the threat of fish dying from hot ocean water”. The bulk of the ABC and Reuters articles reported accurately that fish growth is stunted by water warming beyond a threshold, which is backed up by hundreds of observations.
In any event you can’t hold the scientists responsible for journos and the public jumping to conclusions by reading too much into statements that are literally true.
The correlation between the temperature over time and the fish growth over time is certainly in need of a controlled study to eliminate confounding factors and to more firmly establish causation of temperature to growth. But when these scientists do the right thing by initiating a controlled experiment you respond by chastising them for not putting enough fish through the stress test!
If this scientist is trying to be alarmist, they just flunked. If the journalist is trying to be alarmist, they flunked by reporting this reassurance.
None of you are doing anybody any good, warmists or skeptics, by libelling the scientists of this study. I would recommend this article be scrubbed from WUWT and you post a new story co-authored by all three of you jointly apologising for your combined negligence in fact-checking.
I wish I could get paid for going fishing.
Mikael Pihlström says:
June 5, 2011 at 1:29 am
But this study shows a correlation between increasing water temperature and fish growth rates, indicating increasing AGW induced stress.
—
No comments on the fish study itself but I don’t think you really can link changes in sea temperatures to AGW. Why? Simply because the latter doesn’t exists. Short and long term changes in sea temperature are most likely due to PDO, ENSO, variations in cloud albedo and activity of the Sun.
At the moment global SST is below 30-year average and sst anomalies north of Australia have been negative for months because of strong La Nina.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2011/anomnight.6.2.2011.gif
Other than going extinct, the Morwong may choose to swimm like 15 cm. deeper under the surface or move a block or two to a better neighborhood.
Mikael Pihlström
June 5, 2011 at 1:29 am
###
“But this study shows a correlation between increasing water temperature and fish growth rates, indicating increasing AGW induced stress.”
###
Sorry, but the attempt to show causation failed. Funny that all other studies of otolith growth rates relative to temperature, have found little correlation. As I said before, it does not mater if the study has some valid parts, the conclusion is flawed and the reporting is worse. The whole point is to keep a narrative going that mankind is killing the planet and we need to do something now. And THAT is called PROPAGANDA, and it is that propaganda that many here are ridiculing.
oz juggler…get some reading glasses. Here’s the relevant part of the study. Your cherry picked selection only covering a small part of it, and one not relevant to the alarmist headlines.
“This thermal limit is also suggested by results from preliminary (n=2 fish) activity experiments for fish from the southernmost (coldest) population where we observed fish performance at the species’ typical spawning swimming speed (~1 m s−1; period of highest activity) and temperatures ranging from 11 to 18 °C (thermal range at sampling site, see Methods).”
“Spawning swimming speeds were determined in the field, off the southeast coast of Tasmania (seeSupplementary Fig. S1), using fish fitted with telemetered accelerometer tags. Preliminary observations of swimming performance in the laboratory were conducted at 11–14 °C, 14–16 °C and 16–18 °C for each fish (n=2 fish and >12 trials, weight=1.8 and 2.7 kg), following the procedures described in ref 30.”
Thats n=2! That’s TWO FISH. I bet they even have names. Now what was that about “negligence in fact-checking”? Expect to see YOUR apology posted below.
Firstly, glasses won’t help me read subscription-only material that I don’t have access to. But more pertinently…
If the scientists had never done the study with N=2 the journalists for ABC and Reuters could still have written 90% of those news articles identically… including the headlines. Their theme is supported by the larger samples and has no link with spawning speed.
The only thing the preliminary two-fish study is relevant towards is your cherry picking.
Mudslinging at warmists must be really difficult these days if you have to scrape the bottom of the fish barrel.
Ozjuggler…Here’s an extract from Steve’s letter that might help you understand where the problem lies…
“Preliminary field and laboratory studies suggested that this decline in growth may be related to temperature induced physiological stress, resulting in increased oxygen consumption and reduced ability to sustain swimming activity.” http://www.utas.edu.au/tools/recent-news/news/ocean-warming-detrimental-to-inshore-fish-species
The Commission will be surprised to learn that this conclusion does not arise from the examination of the otolith radii, which is the supposed focus of the research, but of a smaller, seemingly adhoc addition to the study. This was in the form of an experiment, and the sample size of fish that led to the alarming conclusion regarding physiological stress was a mere two fish.
“This thermal limit is also suggested by results from preliminary (n=2 fish) activity experiments for fish from the southernmost (coldest) population where we observed fish performance at the species’ typical spawning swimming speed (~1 m s−1; period of highest activity) and temperatures ranging from 11 to 18 °C (thermal range at sampling site, see Methods).”
Now, since when did exposing poor science count as mudslinging?