Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Back in 2010 I wrote a post called “Walking the Plank-ton“. In that post I baldly stated that claims of a 40% loss in plankton since 1950 were totally bogus. However, I also admitted that I didn’t know why or where they’d made a mistake, and I really had no data to show that they were wrong.
Figure 1. Global distribution of phytoplankton. Lowest concentration is purple and blue, middle concentration is green, highest concentration is yellow and red. Source
So I was overjoyed today to find an article entitled Ocean’s hidden green plankton revealed by fixing glitch in model. The article totally agreed with me, saying that the claims of a 40% loss in plankton were indeed bogus. The conclusion of the article was:
In other words, estimates of plankton death were previously exaggerated more than sixfold in much of the oceans.
I bring this up for three reasons. First, of course, is so I can say “I told you so”. Hey, I’m not going to deny it, validation is indeed sweet, particularly when it is long-delayed like this.
The second reason I bring it up is to highlight that I made my judgement on the study solely on the basis of a lifetime spent on, in, and under the ocean. I didn’t know why they’d gotten the bad results. Here’s what I said at the time:
So where did the Nature paper go wrong?
The short answer is that I don’t know … but I don’t believe their results. The paper is very detailed, in particular the Supplementary Online Information (SOI). It all seems well thought out and investigated … but I don’t believe their results. They have noted and discussed various sources of error. They have compared the use of Secchi disks as a proxy, and covered most of the ground clearly … and I still don’t believe their results.
If the authors of the study had actually spent the same amount of time observing the ocean that they spent observing their model of the ocean, they might have doubted their own results and saved themselves much grief. So I bring this up to show that sometimes a lifetime of experience may indeed be worth more than a lifetime of study.
Finally, I bring this up to point out that once again, Watts Up With That is not just ahead of the curve—it is years ahead of the curve, five years in this case. My profound thanks to Anthony and the moderators for the creation and maintenance of this marvelous scientific agora, where ideas can get peer-reviewed immediately by some of the best minds in the game.
Best of life to everyone,
w.
My Usual Request: If you disagree with me or anyone, please quote the exact words you disagree with. I can defend my own words. I cannot defend someone’s interpretation of my words.
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Same can be said for oral histories of weather-related hardships from the pioneer days. Sweltering heat, drought, floods, snowmaggedons, good crops, and destroyed crops pepper my family history from 1876 on here in the NE corner of Oregon.
I never bought it at the time. My wife’s family is in the cattle business. It really does not get any simpler than this: If you have half the food you use to, you can only support half the number of cattle you used to, or the same number at a significantly reduced weight.
Phytoplankton is the basic food of the ocean. If you have lost half of your food, then the oceans can only support half the number of fish/etc, and there was zero evidence that was occurring.
And what about baleen whales? Surely these used to eat massive amounts of plankton before they were hunted to extinction. How can we really be sure that this has not affected the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, given that plankton play the leading role in maintaining the O2/CO2 balance in the atmosphere.
While the simplistic view would be that less whales means more plankton and less CO2, this may not actually hold true in the real world. plankton may require the grazing whales to stay healthy, as they are quite possible co-evolved over millions of years. So changes in plankton levels and CO2 may be related to whale hunting.
Nice.
WUWT needs a wall of “told you so” or some organized reference set of overturned studies to look back on, topic by topic.
Thanks, Willis.
If “a) the numbers of phytoplankton have been cut by more than half since 1900”, it follows that
the fish biomass should have done the same.
“I baldly stated ” or “Boldly stated??”
All fishing should have been banned in Oregon if the earlier study at Oregon State had been believed. Was it?
Many folks criticize Willis for a lack of academic credentials. Academic credentials are a product of a “publish or perish” academic atmosphere. Look at Dr. Paul “Always Wrong” Ehrlich of many scientific studies. Common sense is no longer required; actually, it is being sneered at. Thank you, Willis.
At the time, I had the same reaction as Willis did, though for somewhat different reasons.
If a slightly warmer ocean caused a 40% decline in 60 years, that sounds like an even more drastic decline would occur with greater warmth than that circa 2010. And we have seen that greater warmth as recently in geological time as the previous interglacial period, the Eemian, when Greenland was 6 to 8 degrees warmer than today for 60 centuries.
With a plankton decline of that size, we would see reduced oxygen in the atmosphere, since plankton (as plants) are one of the main sources of oxygen in our atmosphere (roughly 50% of oxygen). During the Eemian, as far as I can tell from various articles, there was no reduction of oxygen in the atmosphere, nor have I seen any such trend in the last 60 years (far shorter time frame). When the article came out in 2010, I emailed a leading scientist in this field, and asked his view. He agreed that the 40% reduction was bogus, and he agreed with the notion that we would have seen a reduction in oxygen if there were any truth in the article.
“If the authors of the study had actually spent the same amount of time observing the ocean that they spent observing their model of the ocean, they might have doubted their own results and saved themselves much grief.”
This is just what I’ve said about the IPCC Himalayan glacier debacle. They had a scenario which envisioned melting them by year 2350, and somehow it became 2035 in the report. If any of the authors or proof readers had actually spent some time on Himalayan glaciers, they would have realized the ludicrous error in an instant.
Here is a read on C02 levels and how we missed the bullet
http://www.thegwpf.org/patrick-moore-should-we-celebrate-carbon-dioxide/
nc
In the link you just gave, Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, states that :
“When that H-bomb exploded in November 1971, it was the last hydrogen bomb the United States ever detonated. Even though there were four more tests planned in the series, President Nixon canceled them due to the public opposition we had helped to create. That was the birth of Greenpeace.”
That is not true. The U.S. continued, very regularly, to conduct nuclear (nucular, G. W. Bush style), tests underground until 1992. He sure takes some undue credit for his protest successes with Greenpeace. I believe all of the further tests were done at the Nevada test site.
Patrick Moore made some rather radical suggestions to the effect that so much limestone (i.e. accumulations of the shells of calcareous shellfish, subsequently compacted and lithified) is being deposited that it would have depleted the CO2 content of the atmosphere/hydrosphere at a rate that would make the earth unliveable in a few million years, but we have saved the day by burning fossil fuels. I accept that a competent sedimentologist could make a meaningful estimate of the mass of CaCO3 deposited each year, but the other side of the account, destruction of limestones by weathering once they exposed, plus impure limestones being subducted and metamorphosed to calc-silicate rocks, would appear to be exceptionally difficult to quantify without massive uncertainty. I have to say he’s on dangerous ground there, making that kind of assertion, because it could be potentially proven false.
Unless anyone knows if those numbers come from a comprehensive and reliable study of the matter? (Me being too busy hustling a living from a comatose mining industry to investigate the literature).
Willis, isn’t this the logic that leads to the global warming bandwagon?
Scientists that reach results that show global warming is not a problem, well they just ‘know’ that’s wrong.
MikeN November 9, 2015 at 11:34 am
Thanks, Mike, interesting question. No, in their case (if I understand you) they are ignoring their own results because they “know” they are wrong.
This is different in a couple of ways. The original paper made a clear and testable claim about the ocean, that plankton had fallen by almost half since 1950. Since that claim was about the past history of the real-world ocean, I could compare it to my own extensive past history of observing the real-world ocean. For a half-century now, I’ve been around the ocean as a commercial and a sport fisherman, as a coastal and trans-oceanic sailor and seaman, as a commercial and sport diver, and as a surfer. I based my disbelief on that lifetime of experience.
The people you refer to (again if I understand you) are dealing in theories and hypotheses, not with observable historical facts. Their disbelief is not founded in extensive practical experience regarding the question, as is mine. Their disbelief is based in theory.
Regards,
w.
dbstealey November 9, 2015 at 11:33 am
Hardly the “resident expert” … but you are right, it will just postpone the annual harvest. As soon as the levels of domoic acid in the crabs drops, they’ll open the season.
Haven’t heard that. It could be true.
w.
The scientists publishing in Nature spent all their time and all their budget tweaking their models to give the result that they required and so there was no time left over for any field work or observations of what was really happening.
Congratulations, and let me aboard the bandwagon, ahead of the Great Retraction of 2020.
I declare the the atmospheric models and climate projections are wrong and overstate CO2 sensitivity six-fold. Anyone who has examined basic satellite and weather data knows they’re wrong.
This video shows exactly what Willis is talking about when it gets too hot somewhere on the surface of the earth. Notice the cloud like formation and how the heat rises in order to cool the area.
This must be ’emergent phenomenon”.
The claim of a dramatic decline in plankton was not credible even at first glance. Planktonic productivity underpins most of the world’s marine fisheries and global fisheries production has remained on a similar level for the past quarter century.
It was peer-reviewed, therefore it must be true. The peers are still active.
I wonder if their defective study was similar to the polar bear investigation conducted by some academic “experts”, the results of which was heartily disputed by the Eskimos – reported by Jim Steele in his excellent book.
Very good, Willis.
You might find this interesting as well…
http://www.standeyo.com/NEWS/06_Earth_Changes/060625.Greenland.html
“…Zwally joined his colleagues there on May 8 in the regular spring migration of scientists to the Arctic.
He has been coming to Swiss Camp every year since 1994 and has been studying the polar regions since 1972, monitoring the polar ice through satellite sensors.
Eventually he realized he had to study the ice firsthand…”
Zwally studied polar ice for over 2 decades before he actually went too take a look at it for himself. Unbelievable.
http://mohawknationnews.com/blog/2015/11/08/sewer-river/
it starts in the rivers
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
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Paying careful attention usually results in correct observations.