Most idiotic climate claim ever?
I’m pretty sure some people lay awake at night trying to come up with new ways to demonstrate that planet is going to hell in a handbasket. As I pointed out in Why climate change communications is like ‘Shaka, when the walls fell’, it’s all about imagery, not facts.
What better imagery then than turning lobsters into B-movie crustacean cannibals by making a lame-assed “experiment” that you put up on YouTube, complete with movie titles. Of course the non-thinkers are eating this right up, and they don’t even need drawn butter. Watch:
From Climate Desk:
Noah Oppenheim’s plan was simple: Rig a young lobster underneath a waterproof, infrared camera; drop the contraption overboard off the coast of Maine; and see who comes along for a bite to eat. The takers, he expected, would be fish: Cod, herring, and other “groundfish” found in these waters that are known to love a good lobster dinner. Similar experiments conducted in the 1990s showed that apart from being snatched up in one of the thousands of traps that sprinkle the sea floor here—tools of this region’s signature trade—fish predation was the principle cause of lobster death. Instead, Oppenheim, a marine biology graduate student at the University of Maine, captured footage that looks like it comes straight from the reel of a 1950s B-grade horror movie: Rampant lobster cannibalism.
First, lobsters are scavengers, so they’ll take advantage of anything that is stressed, dying, or dead. No surprises there.
Second , the fossil record of clawed lobsters extends back at least to the Valanginian Age of the Cretaceous. So of course, they’ve survived some of the warmest periods of Earth’s history.
Third, it seems there’s a hockey stick in lobsters, all while that warmth induced cannibalism is going on:
![lobstergraph[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/lobstergraph1.jpg?quality=83)
Source of data: Maine Dept. of Marine Resources.
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Thank you for commenting here.
Please take what you read here as “blog-review”. Because of how this will be used by some to somehow blame Man for it (CAGW and all that), you will take some “pot shots”. (And Anthony’s reply is a valid point.)
But there are many smart and educated people here that will have valid and honest questions and/or observations concerning the paper. Consider them.
(And maybe get a chuckle from a few of the “pot-shots”.8-)
However, as I noted above, their abundance and foraging behavior were most likely limited in the past such that cannibalism was not detected in any previous experiments
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So you’re saying that lobster fishermen did not leave smaller illegal lobsters in the traps as bait for larger lobster…..20 years ago
The gulf of Maine had a huge population of cod….which eat small lobsters…..the cod disappeared when the dams were built…cutting off the cods food supply
Either the person/s that did that study 20 years ago are total morons…or they were pursuing a different agenda …
At least this admits the lobster population has rebounded….
Noah Oppenheim says:
March 11, 2014 at 11:01 am
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Thanks for your input, Mr. Oppenheim. It is very satisfying to me and many others that you have chosen to comment here.
40 years ago, I visited a Maine Nat’l Park and was told by a Park Ranger that a lobster’s favorite food is lobster. Every time I see lobsters in a tank at the supermarket, I remember that Ranger’s lecture. It’s interesting that you captured a predation event on video. That Maine lobstermen are having to work harder for less money is a phenomenon shared across the nation. The Climate Change rhetoric used in your video is disconcerting, as the aim of those promoting the entire concept is to further reduce our money and our freedoms through increased government taxation and control.
Noah Oppenheim says:
March 11, 2014 at 11:01 am
Nobody is arguing that lobsters are not cannibalistic until temperatures reach a certain threshold. Nobody is arguing that lobsters will cannibalize themselves into extinction. I am not sure how your or your readers came to those conclusions based on the Climate Desk video.
Nobody here is arguing those things either, so those are just straw men on your part.
I would encourage the debate about this issue to focus on relevant questions that deal with established facts.
What’s to debate? Localized seawater temperatures have risen, and that, combined with a drop in groundfish populations has resulted in higher lobster populations as well as higher incidences of lobster canibalism, which is exactly what one would expect to happen. You can’t come to any conclusions from that as to what might happen in the future, and to speculate is unscientific. Additionally, the focus on lobster canibalism appears to be simply sensationalism, since there is no reason to think it will affect lobster populations, other than perhaps to stabilize them.
I do hope someone is compiling all the craziness to lay out for posterity when the alarmist-opportunists are more fully exposed as in the combined PDO-AMO-solar cycle declines. More detailed historical accounts are always better than summaries and distortions by historians and journalists.
‘Hello, this is Noah Oppenheim, the scientist featured in the Climate Desk video you have reviewed here. I am happy to answer any legitimate questions you or your readers might have about this study.’
What fuel did you use in those outboard motors on your boat?
‘Hello, this is Noah Oppenheim, the scientist featured in the Climate Desk video you have reviewed here. I am happy to answer any legitimate questions you or your readers might have about this study.’
Instead of using the motorboat for your research could you not have used a wind powered sailboat instead? After all, that’s what we’re being expected to use for our electricity.
Since when is a grad student with a BA a ‘scientist’? Noah has a BA from Reed College and is in grad school back in Maine.
He is an author. Not a scientist. My daughter, who is in a Masters program and authors/co-authors papers, would roll her eyes at any pretentious grad student claiming to be a ‘scientist’.
And this paper/cheesy video, misleading people into thinking that lobster cannibalism is new or driven by CO2 is most certainly not science.
I’m pretty confident that I could create a model to predict global warming rates based upon changes in fish and lobster populations. But I would probably add a correction factor using a time series analysis of the dog crap that my springer spaniel left in the yard over the long, cold winter.
Catching Big Fish (or lobsters) for Dummies:
Net a small fish
Stick a hook through its tail avoiding the spine. Use as live bait.
Catch a larger fish.
Repeat.
Works every time. I demonstrated this to one of my sons on a river in southern England. In 20 mins we went from a 1oz tiddler to an 8oz fish. Admittedly we can only do this during the coarse fishing season (i.e NOT between 15/3 & 14/6), so no data available re catch rates versus rising fresh water temps.
Scaled up, the same technique will also work with lion cubs presented to new alpha-male lions. The most appropriate conclusion is simply that nature is cruel.
Good thing that fisherman came up with this idea:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HZK8K_5iAv8/UHW6bMZlAvI/AAAAAAAAAb8/z6FtOPIjYtY/s1600/EmilyLobster2.jpg
Noah: I don’t get your complaint, you claim that warmer waters produce more lobsters, one would think that this would be a good thing, but even if true it can’t go on indefinitely, because here in Florida there are no lobsters because the water is too warm. But then you suggest that too many lobsters is a bad thing because lobstermen are not getting paid enough. First consumers here in Florida sure aren’t under paying for lobsters. Second you totally ignore the effect of market controls. An increase in the supply of lobsters will cause a decrease in the price which will cause an increase in consumption and thus lead to a decrease in the supply of lobsters. I don’t see the problem.
Peter Cook and Dudley Moore fan – we maintain high standards for accuracy here:
It’s Jayne Mansfield with the lobsters in the posterior problem, NOT Raquel Welch.
Perhaps they both swam at Malibu. But Jayne is the victim immortalized by Derek and Clive.
Noah Oppenheim says:
March 11, 2014 at 11:01 am
Now, let’s examine what has happened in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Maine (where young lobsters live) in that same period of twenty years. Firstly, the temperature has increased significantly,
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Are you cherry picking to get this “significant increase”? Twenty years ago..1994.. was almost the exact same temperature…..
Here’s the SST’s for the Gulf of Maine since ~1980
http://www.seascapemodeling.org/seascape_projects/GOMSSTanomaly.jpg
..and summer temps…July-Sept…..have been decreasing for the past 100 years
http://www.coyoteblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/maine-summer1.gif
There has been no significant increase…..unless you cherry pick the past 20 years…which you did
Noah said “I am happy to answer any legitimate questions you or your readers might have”, but he seems to have disappeared. There are lots of legitimate questions here, and we would like to hear Noah’s responses to them.
If Noah decides to answer our questions, he should be aware that this venue is not a kissy-face pal review forum. Here, he must run the gauntlet of true peer review. That is not taking the easy path.
That is entirely a good thing, because whatever remains standing after all objections have been answered amounts to real science. Far too often people like Briffa, Trenberth, Mann, Hansen, and many others get a free pass. That only results in Bad Science. Pseudo science. Really it is anti-science, and it is the bane of honest knowledge.
Noah’s feet are being held to the fire here. That is uncomfortable. Either he will pass muster, or he is just another catastrophic AGW cult member, taking the easy way out by mindlessly blaming human activity for what is most likely natural variability. It will be interesting which path Noah takes. Personally, I hope he decides to engage. He will be a much better man for it.
Right now, the ball is in Noah’s court…
dbstealey,
Noah has no doubt run away.
That he did not bother to address things like lobster men knowing that lobsters eat juveniles, or that water temps are not actually rising much at all (much less connect this to CO2), or address other fishery issues, or do experiments in colder waters means he is just riding, however peripherally, the AGW academic rent-seeking gravy train: Connect a study of cheesy fries to AGW, and you can get funding for it.
wobble asked Noah Oppenheim for references to the two tethering studies, one 20 years ago which Noah stated did not show evidence of lobster cannibalism. Not my field but if you have only two studies which give significantly different results, you cannot say which one is the anomaly.
It would be helpful if Noah could produce the requested links.
This is not my field, so I make no representation this is anything other than a cursory search, but it seems lobster cannibalism has been noted for some time, even by research scientists:
Apparently lobsters’ tendency to eat fellow lobsters is one of the obstacles to producing them in a farm setting. It is not clear from this brief description whether lobster cannibalism was noted when work on crab culturing began at “the end of the 19th century”, or observed later when this report written in early 1999. In any case, it is relevant to note we have farm-raised catfish, trout and other fish species, but all lobsters and crabs are wild-caught. Must be some reason the obvious economics of farming don’t work for lobsters and crabs.
I also came across a reference to another study done by Patrick Meyers at the University of Miami which seems to have some overlap with Noah’s work:
I do not see where the results of this study were published, but presumably if lobster cannibalism were observed as part of a larger predation study, it would be reported.
The link to Patrick’s page is here .
First, from the graph it does not look like prices are getting that squeezed. About 2-2.5 per pound over the last 20 years.
Second, Darden restaurants buys half of the lobster out there. If these guys are squeezed, it’s by a large organized buyer, who is also driving demand. Too many lobster-fests. Darden is even starting their own lobster farm in Malaysia to increase supply (could mean even lower prices).
The lobstermen may be in a squeeze, but it’s not climate change. A ridiculous story by someone who knows nothing about the industry.
[yup ~ mod]
Mods, this one probably should be snipped. LOL
All you had to say was U Maine… This is another sad moment and I am certain that Unity College and Bill McKibben (Have a good McDay), will back it up with more bullshit. I was born and raised in Maine and have a reasonable background in the technical sector.
Here are some of the follies that are notable:
http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1990/Maine-Caribou-Restoration-Effort-Ends/id-427d074bd86ce430a8d6e343dc38cb6a
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While they blamed predators, a certain problem cropped up that was the main reason for the end of the project…
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10370_12150_12220-26502–,00.html
I would also mention the failed attempt at introducing a certain species of fly that would eat spruce budworm larvae, all it bit was us humans and all the other critters in Maine.
Last but not least is the offshore wind thing….
http://www.deepcwind.org
________One more…
https://bangordailynews.com/2014/01/18/news/hancock/state-closes-six-scallop-grounds-for-season/
But here is the rub…
https://bangordailynews.com/2014/02/13/news/down-east/cobscook-scallop-fishermen-bemoan-emergency-shutdown-of-season/
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Look, the fisheries are just fine and the problem lies with those who want to take over the fisheries. Keep an eye on the wind guys and Harvard.
Alan Watt, thanks for referencing my question to Noah. You articulated a couple of my suspicions. I’m wondering if the 20 year-old study failed to detect cannibalism because of flaws in the methodology. For example, a lower lobster-to-food ratio in any given area might make cannibalism more difficult to test. Inferior imaging systems 20 years ago might make any such cannibalism more difficult confirm. Fewer tetherings might make statistical acts of cannibalism less likely to occur. Etc.
Overall, since Noah’s claims rely on the disparity between the outcomes of the two studies, it’s imperative for us to compare the disparity in methodologies.
I wonder what’s the primary predator for cheese in the Gulf of Maine. A control experiment is needed with a helpless piece of cheese tied down to the seafloor, subsequent events being recorded by a hitech camera.
Let me get this straight. Warmer waters (caused by climate change) results in more lobsters which reduces the price. So climate change is at fault. For sure greed has nothing to do with hauling up all those extra lobsters thus reducing the price over time. Surely.
Climate Desk knew the alarmists could relate because they are also hard-shelled bottom feeders who tend to go red.
According to Noah Oppenheim: “The fact that other, extinct clawed lobster species have been capable of surviving in higher temperatures in the prehistoric past is completely irrelevant.” However, in the waters surrounding the Philippine Islands, where the water temperature can push 30°C, there are a number of species thriving today which sport some rather impressive claws as evidenced here:
%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.21food.com%252Fproducts%252Flive-lobster-717636.html%3B468%3B521