It seems the alarming story of “Ocean extinction has started in our time” making the rounds of the alarmist blogs and gullible media is nothing more than an unpublished, unchecked opinion, and some pal review amongst activists at a three day conference.
Barry Woods writes:
Oh for goodness sake (parallels to IPCC 80% greenpeace renewables story)
The International Panel on the State of the Ocean !!! IPSO – modest bunch – see mission statement (front page website)
http://www.stateoftheocean.org/
The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) was established by scientists with the aim of saving the Earth and all life on it.
Another Press release – Gets a shocking headline – the wait for the report (so that it can be checked) so that it is forgotten about and at the end – it is too early to say, but the trends are, etc,etc,etc
Maybe the Oceans are in a shocking state, I’m just getting too cynical to care…
BBC: World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline – Richard Black – 20th June 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13796479
“The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists.”
“In a new report, they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”.
The International Panel on the State of the Ocean !!! IPSO
This is getting beyond satire ‘panel for the State of the ocean’ but no doubt lots more UN jobs and research required, plus urgent action and control of the oceans.
“The findings are shocking,” said Alex Rogers, IPSO’s scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University.
“Its report will be formally released later this week.”
Its worse than we thought (they considered)
”…As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised.”
“We’ve sat in one forum and spoken to each other about what we’re seeing, and we’ve ended up with a picture showing that almost right across the board we’re seeing changes that are happening faster than we’d thought, or in ways that we didn’t expect to see for hundreds of years.”
” These “accelerated” changes include melting of Arctic sea ice and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, sea level rise, and release of methane trapped in the sea bed.”
BUT at the end. – It is too early to say !!!!
“The IPSO report concludes that it is too early to say definitively.”
But the trends are such that it is likely to happen, they say – and far faster than any of the previous five extinctions.
I’m sorry but I have utter contempt for this sort of pseudo-science by press release…
I wonder what the report really says, and how well it holds up to the headline, I wonder if anyone will bother to check…
Seriously though: The International Panel of the State of the Ocean (IPSO)
With a name like that and their mission statement, – “with the aim of saving all life on the planet!” – they are hardly ever going to come to the conclusion, that it might be doing ‘just fine’,
Diagnosing the state of the Ocean’s health
IPSO is currently compiling the Global State of the Ocean Report, which will collate world-wide marine science to give a comprehensive overview of the health of the Ocean. The Report is due to be published in 2012 but we already know that the Ocean’s health is in a critical state.
=================================================================
Thanks Barry, but wait there’s more. Ben Pile, of the website “Climate Resistance” writes:
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…
World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline
Warns Richard Black at the BBC.
The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists.
In a new report, they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”.
They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised.
The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.
The panel was convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), and brought together experts from different disciplines, including coral reef ecologists, toxicologists, and fisheries scientists.
Call me a cynic, but I no longer take claims about ‘expert panel of scientists’ at face value. Sadly, Richard Black of the BBC does.
…
Ok. So who the hell are the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition?
A coordination team works together with a Steering Group that currently consists of the Ecology Action Centre, Greenpeace International, Marine Conservation Biology Institute, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pew Environment Group and Seas at Risk. The DSCC has developed a formidable international team of scientists, policy and communication experts, lawyers and political activists who on behalf of the deep sea have established a strong reputation and profile on the issue at the UN and in other fora.
The ‘panel of experts’ — IPSO — may well be expert. But, look, again, we see Greenpeace’s name up there, steering the research — in its own words — alongside the Pew group, and Friends of the Earth.
I don’t believe a word of it. This is not scientific research, it’s ‘grey literature’, put out by yet another grey institution, the true nature of which is concealed from first appearances. Not far behind, the agenda is revealed.
[Anthony: Ben Pile also located a helpful video:]
From the video description on YouTube:
Dr. Alex Rogers, Scientific Director of IPSO and Professor of Conservation Biology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, gives the overview of the main problems affecting the ocean – and some suggested solutions.
Pile continues:
So, yeah, another NGO lobbying outfit, in cahoots with government and businesses, blurring the lines between activism, scientific research, and so on.
Back to IPSO. Here’s the web-page that relates to the new report. It describes the background to the report:
The 3 day workshop, co-sponsored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), looked at the latest science across different disciplines.
The 27 participants from 18 organisations in 6 countries produced a grave assessment of current threats — and a stark conclusion about future risks to marine and human life if the current trajectory of damage continues: that the world’s ocean is at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.
So it turns out that this report took the scientists just three days of chin-wagging. Says the report:
The workshop provided a rare opportunity to interact with other disciplines to determine the net effect of what is already happening to the ocean and is projected to do so in the future. Over the three days 27 participants from 18 organisations in 6 countries (Annex 1) assessed the latest information on impacts and stresses, and the synergistic effects these are having on the global ocean.
Through presentations, discussions and recommendations the workshop documented and described the cumulative effects of such impacts, how these commonly act in a negatively synergistic way, and why therefore concerted action is now needed to address the consequences set out in this report.
==============================================================
Here’s the team from the IPSO website:
A high-level international workshop convened by IPSO met at the University of Oxford earlier this year. It was the first inter-disciplinary international meeting of marine scientists of its kind and was designed to consider the cumulative impact of multiple stressors on the ocean, including warming, acidification, and overfishing.
The 3 day workshop, co-sponsored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), looked at the latest science across different disciplines.
The 27 participants from 18 organisations in 6 countries produced a grave assessment of current threats — and a stark conclusion about future risks to marine and human life if the current trajectory of damage continues: that the world’s ocean is at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.
Delegates called for urgent and unequivocal action to halt further declines in ocean health. (click for press release)
…
(They seem really upset about this photo, this fish seems happy with his new home though, and anyone who knows anything about aluminum in the ocean will tell you the fish will probably outlive the can – A)
So, the BBC story “World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline” seems to be based on nothing more than some joint opinion at a conference with Greenpeace activists, a regurgitated press release, and no peer reviewed publication yet.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
London Zoological Society appear to have removed Rogers from their webste.
http://www.zsl.org/science/ioz-staff-students/
He’s listed at the bottom of the above page, along with other “Recent leavers”. However unlike the others, his name links to the ZSL homepage. It appears that this link should have been this: http://www.zsl.org/science/ioz-staff-students/rogers,1079,AR.html but it is currently blank. Can’t really understand why though, google’s cache of that page from a few days ago shows him to be very well qualified:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:V0dw4tIFuTsJ:www.zsl.org/science/ioz-staff-students/rogers,1079,AR.html
Can anyone please give names (and maybe afinities) to the people in the group picture? Do they all subscribe to the sensational headlines put out by the BBC?
Rogers is an idiot. Ocean acidification, if any, still has ocean pH within the normal range that has been seen historically. He is outright lying when he says that we know that ocean acidification has caused extinctions in the past.
Also, so what if pH change changes the “taste” or smell of the water? I seriously question if this effect has been defined, but he probably goes by the difference in taste of drinking water and vinegar. It is still something the organisms know how to handle as CO2 has spent the vast majority of the last 600 million years way higher than it is not. Again, he’s a know-nothing.
Acid eats calcium carbonate, as hydrochloric acid would, but there is no way that acidity from the extended equilibrium from CO2/carbonic acid/carbonate/calcium carbonate can affect itself. Again and again, he’s a true idiot.
He’s a talking head with no real marine, chemical, or biochemical knowledge, saying things to alarm the general public. Note how often he qualifies with “chance” and projections, with nothing that we are really seeing now. He points to no known extinctions.
He ignores the fact that , with ocean warming, coral reefs expand. Around the world, during the recent warming coral reefs thrived with the higher temperatures and the higher CO2 , which they loved. Rogers is totally ignoring that life is much more resilient than he would like to pretend it is.
Forrest Gump, “Stupid is a stupid does.” This is Rogers 15 minutes of blame.
I find it amazing how these ‘chicken littles‘ never tire of humiliating themselves pubically…
I forgot:
Yes, we definitely have to worry about chemical and garbage pollution. Garbage is dropping off very nicely. Now we have to worry about runoff.
BUT, what he says related to “climate change” and ocean acidification by CO2 is totally wrong
(actual e-mail to Alex at the Oxford university)
Hi Alex!
I heard you on the radio here, in South Africa (Radio 702) causing considerable alarm about the oceans.
I am with you 100% on us all doing our best to save our marine life!
However, I am sure you would agree with me that we must just make sure that we do find the correct medicines.
You repeatedly blamed an increase in carbon dioxide for the problem(s), and the failure of countries to negotiate a reduction of carbon dioxide.
As an independent hobbyist, I did an investigation to see if the observed global warming really is caused by the carbon dioxide.
So far, contrary to the popular belief,
I have found in favour for the conclusion that the warming (and resulting climate change) during the past 4 decades was due to natural causes.
My results clearly show that it was increasing maxima (that happened during the day) that caused the warming.
If it had been the other way around, i.e. increasing minima (that happen during the night) I would have agreed with you that it was the increase in carbon dioxide (GHG’s) that had caused it.
The truth of the matter appears to be that the sun got a bit brighter or there were less clouds; there are quite a few different theories about this.
Either way, there was nothing anyone could have done or (still) can do.
I will be happy if you could read my reports and comment on it!
Thanks.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
”…As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised.”
short version: Adrian Monk restores the Audacity of Hope amongst us whilst adeptly avoiding our enslavement by Dora The Explorer:
“Yes, We The Experts had indeed been struck with a Biblical woe of Job-less proportions, and we were sore afraid. Some of us hyperventilated, others got the vapors, “aliens from outer space” were suspected to have taken over Capitalist Societies, and the Wandering Uterus was no doubt about to take a severe toll of our women and Low T men alike….When suddenly as though by the last breath of a nearly exspired miracle, wee Adrian Monk, who had fortunately happened upon our small group of self-anointeds while incessantly seeking his own genetic roots, that particular strain of purely OCD Mutants from which he was sired, cried out, “Wait, Parasites, there’s still the BBC! Let’s go tell Mommy! She knows where the waning Mother’s Milk delivered by the Holy Smart Grid of intelligently designed scarcity is still lovingly stashed within the bowels and fibrocystic mazes of the Public Teat. Your quest for Social Justice need not yet be starved via McDonalds’ malnourishment! Hear me, friend Parasites, I have it on the high authority of Hollywood’s Michael Moore that The Green Soy and Arugula still exists secreted within The Wealth of Nations. We will be sustained or my Uncle’s name is not Kim Jong Il! Until then everybody sing! “Any day now, any day now, I shall be paid”. And so it was that Adrian Monk restored the disasterizing Audacity of Hope amongst us while completely avoiding the entrapping lure and methods of Dora The Explorer.”
Rogers refers to huge changes in coral reefs starting in the 1970s. Coral bleaching never seen before? Does he mean before we really start scuba diving a lot?
Why did they not notice ANYTHING during the cooling from 1938 to 1978? Suddenly things start changing because it stopped cooling and began warming? He is looking and expressing science using very selective blinders to only show what he wants.
Yes, we need to seriously manage our fisheries and the means of catching fish to minimize collateral or direct damage.
So, we have runoff and sewage pollution and fisheries management to address – and that’s it. He should have included COASTAL WETLANDS MANAGEMENT as that is where many of the fish young spend time before moving to the seas. The rest of his discussion is political sewage.
“The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) was established by scientists with the aim of saving the Earth and all life on it.”
At least they are modest in their ambitions.
There is approx. 1.33 billion cubic kilometers of water in the worlds oceans. I seriously doubt there is anything people can do that would result in any significant impact on that mind boggling volume.
Fish breed fast. Enforcement of a moratorium can recover most fish populations quickly.
I once tried to SAVE the OCEAN but when I got in contact with the “Tongue of the Ocean” it gave me a lashing I will never forget…Eventually I was able to beat it into Nassau and escape the onslaught.
Gentlemen, please, your cynicism eclipses your skepticism. When groups of scientists convene to discuss their work, they enter the conversation with worlds of experience. There are hundreds of research papers available to inform their discussions, and these inform the conclusions, which you dismiss or trivialize. You can consult these same research papers if you choose, and should you enter this exercise with an objective and skeptical mind, you might come to similar conclusions.
“The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) was established by scientists with the aim of saving the Earth and all life on it.”
And the BBC has these people on speed dial, an instant critical analysis free worldwide MSM platform from which these “saviours of all life on earth” can air their views at any time. The real question is just who is allowing and facilitating the MSM access?
Wow these people have no shame do they? Set up a grand sounding organisation and make outlandish and outrageous claims imminent doom, siphon off as much funding as they can for as long as they can and then disappear into the night. Lavish on the scares and pump up the volume, its not just worse than we thought, not far worse but really really much worse than we could have possibly imagined and all with no evidence to back it up. Well they actually did imagine it didnt they? Ramp up the scares, tell ever more lies, up the stakes. Just how long has this institution been in action as it saves all life on earth?
Faked up grant vampires are as common as sand on the beach or fake charities in a tax haven but what is new and dangerous is the direct connection between these fake fronts and the MSM, the fact that these fake fronts have instant access to the groups like the BBC, an uncritical, unquestioned platform to the world where their propaganda is aired around the world.
Groups like this are really laughable but they have a direct line to the planets news rooms and that is the danger, its not the silly gang of rent seekers and buffoons and grant vampires who worry me, most rational sceptics can see the fraud a mile away on a foggy day but these people have something that other groups have no chance of ever attaining, a prime time uncritical worldwide MSM platform.
About the headline, the media isn’t duped, Anthony, they are complicit in the fraud and people know it which is why the major media is in decline.
The estimated vol of the oceans are 1.3 billion cubic meters. If the population of the world is 7 billion people there is a cubic meter of sea water for every five people. So each person on the planet has the equivalent of a private swimming pool of seawater that is 1kilometer by 1 kilometer and 200 meters deep.
Throw all you used CO2 and weekly rubbish into that pool and see how long it takes before the water begins to get poisnous enough to kill the sealife.
Hugh Pepper,
Read the last sentence in the article. There are no research papers supporting this scare story.
Seem like a cheerful bunch to me. Do they believe what they are prepared to put in print I wonder?
I recall reading a blog about some research on the acidity of the oceans which proved that the acidification scare was proven to be just a scare and had no foundation in reality. Does anyone recall where that research came from in order that we might confront the Richard Black of the BBC and others with scientific research which is contrary to his and and his scaremongering associates
No, no, it’s worse than they thought.
To be honest, I’m beginning to get the feeling that anyone working in any branch of science relating to animals was a conservationist activist first and then looked afterwards to science as a means of obtaining a salary whilst they looked at coserving animals. Self-selecting bias, before you’ve even started.
If this is the case then we will have little choice but to take monitoring of the land and oceans out of their hands and put into the hands of engineers that can construct means of counting numbers of ocean species without bias. At the moment anyone can say that there were trillions of a species yesterday and only 5 today and thus extinction by tomorrow and no-one is in a position to gain-say it.
James Reid
Thanks for the heads up on the ABC Poll. I see also that Auz has a novel method of greening its coal plants.
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/UnNews:Australian_coal_power_to_go_green
Why didn’t I think of that?
IPSO ABSENTIA FACTO
Ben Pile broke down the expertise of the people at the conference.
Of the 26 listed, 18 were activists or members of activist organizations. Ben was generous in giving 8 the credentials to study marine life.
Can one guess beforehand what any conference would conclude, if it was put on by an activist organization; sponsored by other activist organizations; and attended by activists outnumbering scientists by over 2-1?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/climate-resistance/wCKX/~3/8Yyo2DkUQcg/the-fishy-wishy-washy-ipso-report.html
Hugh Pepper says:
June 21, 2011 at 9:06 am
====================================
and you fell for it……………