Alarmism AMO Bad science

Oh noes! Fishy modeling study says 'Fish and Chips' to disappear in the UK

11 years ago
Anthony Watts

Galleon_Fish_and_Chip_shop,_Conwy._-_geograph.org.uk_-_962443[1]
The Galleon Fish and Chips Shop in Conwy, UK – soon to be doomed by climate change. Source: Wikimedia
I get this daily newsletter from a paid political pot stirrer called “Climate Nexus”, which is actually a Madison Avenue PR firm. They write today of a new paper, Rutterford et al.:

fishy-studyThe punch line from Climate NEXUS:

From Fish and Chips to Just Chips: Some of the most traditional and cherished staples of the English diet may become scarce as a result of climate change, a new study finds. As North Sea waters continue to warm, haddock, the eponymous fish in “fish and chips,” is expected to decline, as well as plaice and lemon sole. Already, the North Sea has warmed four times faster than the global average over the past 40 years.

They claim (using a modeled fish abundance of course) that Atlantic Cod and other species will be significantly affected by “warming seas”.

fishy-study-fig2cThe laughable thing about this study is that they don’t seem to be aware of real-world variables, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), and its effects on fish stocks, either anecdotally from the fishermen, or from the recent peer reviewed literature, “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) modulates dynamics of small pelagic fishes and ecosystem regime shifts in the eastern North and Central Atlantic”, Alheit et al. where it is stated:

  • Abundance fluctuations of fish populations correspond to alternating AMO phases.
  • Regime shifts in eastern North Atlantic ecosystems are associated with AMO dynamics.
  • AMO affects Mediterranean fish populations.
  • European clupeoid populations exhibit synchronous multi-decadal changes in abundance.
  • Contraction of sub-polar gyre assumed to trigger synchronicity in fish populations.

And the correlation from that paper:

Fig. 7. First principal component (PC1) based on the main long-term data sets of small pelagics available in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean between 1945 and 2010. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is superimposed.
Fig. 7. First principal component (PC1) based on the main long-term data sets of small pelagics available in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean between 1945 and 2010. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is superimposed.

They make no mention of the real-world effect of AMO at all in the paper that I can find. It’s models all the way down:

fishy-study-conclusions

At least there’s a small caveat that won’t make into any alarming news story:fishy-study-conclusions2This narrow focus on models over reality might be due to the fact that the lead author, Louise A. Rutterford, is a biologist, and I don’t think the word ‘meteorology’ is in her vocabulary.

Fish and chips are far more likely to disappear due to the actions of nanny-state food police like Bloomberg who think none of us should be allowed to eat fried foods, than to disappear because of human-caused climate change.

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Bruce Cobb
April 14, 2015 10:40 am

Is there any food (or drink) on the planet that people like that isn’t “threatened” by “global warming”? It’s just one more way the climate tricksters use people’s emotions to get them to believe their lies.

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Dudley Horscroft
Reply to  Bruce Cobb
April 15, 2015 9:01 pm

Coffee, tea, perhaps, but if the global warming exterminates the bushes, then there is always hot water. Don’t think global warming will affect that.

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David, UK
April 14, 2015 10:41 am

Good job I can no longer eat such greasy food (the old stomach won’t tolerate it) or else I would be writing an angry letter to my local MP demanding that immediate action is taken. But as things are I couldn’t give a flying fish.

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mikerestin
Reply to  David, UK
April 14, 2015 11:25 am

Had some in Barbados…deep fried flying fish is pretty good.

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Joel O’Bryan
April 14, 2015 10:42 am

Method summary: They tuned their GAM model for a 10 year window 2000-2009, then used a GCM output of sea temperatures (Hadley Centre QUMP_ens_00 model output) from 2050 -2059 to simulate what and how fish population parameters would change.
http://i58.tinypic.com/33k9clw.png
In other words, they simply fed a failed Climate model garbage output as the input into their fish model (GAM), which of course just produces more non-sense garbage.
At that point, I stopped trying to understand what they found out about their results and conclusions on fish population distribution and size changes.
Models-all-the-way-down pseudoscience.

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Alba
April 14, 2015 10:43 am

I have it on reliable authority that climate change is affecting the breeding habits of haggis and that they will soon be extinct.

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Rhee
Reply to  Alba
April 14, 2015 10:52 am

@Alba, would that be a bad thing?

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Mac the Knife
Reply to  Rhee
April 14, 2015 11:20 am

Rhee,
Don’t have the stomach for it, eh?

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Alan Robertson
Reply to  Rhee
April 14, 2015 4:02 pm

Oh, Mac…

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michael hart
April 14, 2015 10:49 am

Several years ago the national dish was declared by an MP to now be curry, not fish n chips.
I have not heard the change attributed to global warming yet, but it is only a matter of time.

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richard
April 14, 2015 10:51 am

north sea has warmed, spare a thought for Spitzbergen in the 1950s
“In Spitzbergen, one of the places where accurate records have been kept, the local temperature average has risen 18 degrees Fahrenheit since 1910 and the port is now open 200 days a year — nearly 50 days longer than it was back in the early 1900’s”
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/161614751?searchTerm=iceland%20getting%20warmer&searchLimits=

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mikerestin
April 14, 2015 11:08 am

Nice reply but I’m not sure I’d put much stock in this research.
Maybe we need to invest in models.
They seem to make many people lots of money.

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climatereason
Editor
Reply to  mikerestin
April 14, 2015 11:59 am

Just got back home after having had some Fish and Chips (well my wife did, I am a vegetarian)
Cod is the most popular fish and pretty plentiful at the moment. The real problem in all this are the EU fishing rules which makes Fishermen dump ‘non quota’ fish caught accidentally, back into the sea, dead.
Our local port has records of fish types going back 300 years. Nearby Plymouth has records going back nearly a thousand years. Fish come and go. Sometimes they have to be fished all the way in Iceland and at other times the waters are cold and they can be found nearer home. The waxing and waning of fish types over the centuries is well documented.
tonyb

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Goldrider
Reply to  mikerestin
April 14, 2015 2:57 pm

Sounds like rising bilge-water to me.

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urederra
April 14, 2015 11:12 am

You guys should read the book entitled “Useless arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists can’t Predict the Future” by Orrin H. Pilkey and Linda Pilkey-Jarvis.
It this book, the authors tell the story of the deplection of the North Atlantic cod on the Grand Banks of Canada. They put the blame on the government planners in the Canadian Deparment of Fisheries. They used a flawed computer model to calculate a “sustainable” fishing rate. They commited two mistakes (as far as I can recall from reading the book some years ago) First mistake was an underestimation on the amount of fish the fishermen were able to capture. They went out and captured some fish themselves, good for them, they actually started with empirical data, but then they though fishermen were going to have the same results as they did. It turned out that fishermen were better at fishing. Who would have thought.
Second mistake was that they used the wrong growth equation in their computer model. They thought that by capturing more adult cod, it would be more room for young cod to grow, It turned out that the density of adult cod in the banks has to be over certain a threshold in order for the eggs laid by female cods to be fertilized. Too diluted and the eggs won’t be fertilized.
The portuguese and galician fishermen had been fishing on the Grand Banks for centuries, then a computer model projects a sustainable fishing rate and the banks were depleted in a few years. If only we had learnt something.

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JCR
Reply to  urederra
April 15, 2015 8:39 pm

Another good book is Dan Gardner’s “Future Babble”. It’s a lay explanation of Phillip Tetlock’s work or expert predictions. A good economist can tell you about what’s going on in the economy NOW. A good political scientist can tell you a lot about politics NOW. A good ecologist can tell you a lot about what’s happening in the environment NOW. But once they start making predictions about the future (Paul Erlich, James Hansen, Tim Flannery etc), you’d do better with a dart throwing chimp. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many good climate scientists. They don’t seem to be able to draw the connection between the models and the assumptions they programmed into them.

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Walt D.
April 14, 2015 11:13 am

The Global Warming Elite are not going to care, as long as they have their lobster and prawns and someone else is paying for it.

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Kasuha
April 14, 2015 11:13 am

I think the real caveat is in “if populations fail to adapt”.
Because it so much looks like everybody forgot evolution exists and among others all of our domesticated animals are result of it, many of them changing right before our eyes.

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Peta in Cumbria
April 14, 2015 11:22 am

Please tell me I’m not completely nuts here.
My wonderation is why these people and everyone here (so far) are attributing human like characteristics to fish?
Especially that for some reason everyone thinks that some species of fish just happen to like swimming around in frozen cold water and cannot exist in warmer water.
Surely, the fish go and thrive where the food is and any and all of the food items further down the chain ultimately rely on the fertility of the water.
Cold water, having been trudging along the bottom of the ocean (at what? 4 or 5 deg C) for centuries, picks up a load of all the important trace elements and vital nutrients that make food grow. When it arrives at the surface and some sunlight is available, the ‘ocean blooms’ and a load of critters, fish included move in to harvest it – long before it has had much chance to warm up (hence=cold)
The fish are responding to the food supply, they don’t give a toss how cold it is – a lot like us humans, we live in the cold and nasty north because that is where the only decent fertile soil is left on this planet and hence we can grow sufficient food.

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Mac the Knife
April 14, 2015 11:24 am

Big Ben will disappear from Westminster Palace before ‘global warming’ will eliminate fish ‘n chips in Great Britain!

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DirkH
April 14, 2015 11:27 am

“I get this daily newsletter from a paid political pot stirrer called “Climate Nexus”, which is actually a Madison Avenue PR firm.”
…and PR was the term Eddie Bernays invented for his craft after the previous term he used, Propaganda, fell in disfavour…

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Tom J
April 14, 2015 11:27 am

Aren’t they building a whole bunch of windmills in the seas off the coast of England? I suspect the fish are being electrocuted by the submerged power lines from these wind generators. I also suspect that the flying fish (which provide needed air cover and air superiority for the cods, and haddocks, and whatnots) are being sliced and diced to smithereens by the blades of those windmills. Furthermore, I suspect the windmills are blowing the fish and the fish fleets off course, but of course, on different courses that are off course, of course.

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Charlie
Reply to  Tom J
April 14, 2015 11:40 am

The wind farms act like a massive reef and attract all sort of sea life from barnacles to tuna. Then come all the gannets, sea gulls, pelicans and every other sea bird you could imagine. they then get mowed down by the thousands.

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Bubba Cow
Reply to  Charlie
April 14, 2015 12:08 pm

Least they could have done was to go solar.
Then the baked birds (rather than bird bits) could be collected by out of work fishers,
simmered in curry and served with chips.
That’s environmental and entrepreneurial adaptation.

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RACookPE1978
Editor
Reply to  Charlie
April 14, 2015 12:27 pm

Charlie

The wind farms act like a massive reef and attract all sort of sea life from barnacles to tuna. Then come all the gannets, sea gulls, pelicans and every other sea bird you could imagine. they then get mowed down by the thousands.

Do not the thousands of freshly chopped birds fall into the sea to feed the newly hatches fishes waiting voraciously below the windmills?

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Tom J
Reply to  Charlie
April 14, 2015 4:23 pm

Bubba Cow
With solar we could set up fish & chip operations out in the ocean and then claim it was locally grown. Getting customers to paddle out to the eateries might be a bit tough.

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William Teach
April 14, 2015 11:50 am

Interestingly, prior to the starvation brought on by the Little Ice Age in Europe, potatoes were considered food below even the lowly station of the lowest peasant. Royalty and leaders had to BEG people to eat potatoes, because they were hardy and easy to grow, unlike wheat. Especially in France. Where people apparently preferred to starve to death rather than be caught eating a potato.

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george e. smith
April 14, 2015 12:13 pm

Well fish and chips were destined to become a thing of the past, once the NONEWS on dead tree industry died out.
You’ve got to have paper with ink on it to wrap fish and chips in, so once the nonews is all digital, there will be nothing to wrap fish and chips in.

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PiperPaul
Reply to  george e. smith
April 14, 2015 12:30 pm

Couldn’t we print out IPCC climate model results and use that?

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auto
Reply to  george e. smith
April 14, 2015 1:57 pm

+ Several.
Auto

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Chip Javert
Reply to  george e. smith
April 14, 2015 4:02 pm

We could wrap them in IP packets.
I’m cruising to England in 10 days; sure hope the have some (fish & chips) left.

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george e. smith
Reply to  george e. smith
April 15, 2015 12:12 pm

Don’t think so PP. It’s got to be news on there and the output from climate models isn’t either new or news.
Your product is perhaps better suited for lining the bird cage; it already has S*** on it.
G

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Neil Lock
April 14, 2015 12:22 pm

The decline in fish and chip shops in England is mainly due to pub chains – notably Wetherspoon’s – taking away their custom. If you can be served – and drink beer or wine, too – for a similar price, why go to the fish and chippy?
Wetherspoon’s already claim to be “the biggest fish and chip shop in the nation” every Friday night. And they don’t seem to have any shortage of cod.
Where’s the beef?

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DataTurk
April 14, 2015 12:30 pm

I think the writer means “anonymous”, rather than “eponymous”, in the original piece. Nobody mangles English like the English.

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Annie
Reply to  DataTurk
April 14, 2015 5:43 pm

Oh, they do! Just come to Australia!

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Bob Mount
April 14, 2015 12:47 pm

I have just enjoyed a supper of the great English delicacy, “Fish and Chips”, so feel well placed to comment. Firstly, the eponymous fish in “fish and chips” is not haddock, but cod, although both are usually on offer. Tonight I had haddock. Secondly, and most importantly, North Sea fish stocks have been depleted because of:
1. over-fishing by Continental European fishing fleets, especially from Spain, since the UK signed a EU convention that opened all of the North Sea to all EU fishing fleets about 30 years ago. Until then, the UK had managed the fish stocks successfully; and:
2. EU rules about fish types and sizes that may be brought ashore, introduced in the 90’s to help fish stocks recover, exacerbated the problem! Fishermen have no option but to throw much of their catches back into the sea, not only wasting a valuable food resource, but also polluting the sea bed.
As a consequence of our EU membership, our once mighty fishing fleets have all but disappeared.

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John MR
Reply to  Bob Mount
April 14, 2015 1:27 pm

It certainly won’t pollute the sea bed, as the wasted fish and bycatch will provide sustenance for all sorts of sea creatures and birds.
But the rest of your points are taken.

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kokoda
April 14, 2015 1:12 pm

They (as supporter of the political agenda) don’t care about the truth or informing of the complete story/science. It is about the media influencing the weak-minded. Whomever gets the lie out first, wins.

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Gunga Din
April 14, 2015 2:28 pm

Here in the US, we lost “Arther Treacher’s Fish & Chips” years ago. Economic pressures were the cause.
Now, in the future, the UK is going to loose all the rest of the “Fish & Chips” places because the Wizards of COZ’s models have decreed it so.
(Hope all you Brits like Big Macs! 😎

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Alx
April 14, 2015 3:29 pm

I imagine this paper was also impeccably peer reviewed. Perhaps by a council made up of Gypsy fortune tellers and tabloid psychics. I have no idea how science branched from predicting rain a few days out into predicting how much fish you get with your chips in London by the year 2070.
Maybe it’s the computers. Computer entertainment is an opiate for the masses and computer models an opiate for scientists. Opiates dull your mind and make it difficult to make progress in any field, but they sure make you feel good about it.
Which calls for another entry into the list of psychiatric disorders: Obsessed-Model-Deluisionism.

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lee
Reply to  Peter
April 14, 2015 9:24 pm

There are no Grants in others’ research.

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ntesdorf
April 14, 2015 5:33 pm

Fish and Chips will disappear the same year that Hell freezes over.

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Larry Butler
April 14, 2015 6:15 pm

Like whatever causes a problem studied by climatologists MUST, to get funding, be caused by climatology, anything that causes fish to die/disappear MUST be caused by the specialty of whoever is studying the fish problem…fisheries, biology, etc….to get funding, the most important thing any of them do. So, the crap coming out of the end of these nuclear power plant pipes, each element near the most toxic on Earth, couldn’t POSSIBLY be the problem killing the seafood in the Pacific or the Channel, right?
http://enenews.com/tv-plutonium-being-pumped-ocean-miles-underwater-pipes-nuclear-waste-left-lying-beach-kids-playing-sand-machines-scoop-plutonium-day-video-photos

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RACookPE1978
Editor
Reply to  Larry Butler
April 14, 2015 7:21 pm

No.

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