From the UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER and the department of doom modeling comes this press release that suggests that somehow Earth would lose all (or most of) it’s oxygen due to global warming. However, it seems the Earth has been through this before and life survived, as this graph from Dr. Vincent Gray shows.:
Global warming disaster could suffocate life on planet Earth, research shows
University of Leicester researchers reveal how Earth’s oxygen could dramatically fall due to change in ocean temperature of just several degrees
Falling oxygen levels caused by global warming could be a greater threat to the survival of life on planet Earth than flooding, according to researchers from the University of Leicester.
A study led by Sergei Petrovskii, Professor in Applied Mathematics from the University of Leicester’s Department of Mathematics, has shown that an increase in the water temperature of the world’s oceans of around six degrees Celsius — which some scientists predict could occur as soon as 2100 — could stop oxygen production by phytoplankton by disrupting the process of photosynthesis.
Professor Petrovskii explained: “Global warming has been a focus of attention of science and politics for about two decades now. A lot has been said about its expected disastrous consequences; perhaps the most notorious is the global flooding that may result from melting of Antarctic ice if the warming exceeds a few degrees compared to the pre-industrial level. However, it now appears that this is probably not the biggest danger that the warming can cause to the humanity.
“About two-thirds of the planet’s total atmospheric oxygen is produced by ocean phytoplankton – and therefore cessation would result in the depletion of atmospheric oxygen on a global scale. This would likely result in the mass mortality of animals and humans.”
The team developed a new model of oxygen production in the ocean that takes into account basic interactions in the plankton community, such as oxygen production in photosynthesis, oxygen consumption because of plankton breathing and zooplankton feeding on phytoplankton.
While mainstream research often focuses on the CO2 cycle, as carbon dioxide is the agent mainly responsible for global warming, few researchers have explored the effects of global warming on oxygen production.
###
The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference will be held in Le Bourget, Paris, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11. It will be the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The conference objective is to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world.
The paper ‘Mathematical Modelling of Plankton-Oxygen Dynamics Under the Climate Change’ published in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology is available here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11538-015-0126-0
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Really??? – how are the oceans going to increase temperature by SIX degrees?
25,000 delegates + 15,000 hangers on, all from 190 countries, have been creating an enormous carbon footprint to and from Paris, which no one seems to have noticed. The main object of the Paris convention is to plan the whereabouts of the next one. And the next.
Maybe that would bring it on.
Indeed an estimated 300.000 ton of CO2 and a lot of hot air-
Did they realize that water will remove more heat by evaporation at higher temperatures?
Hangers-on? The word you are looking for is parasites.
Yep – the next conference which will be the last chance ever to save the planet from catastrophic warming due to fossil fuel emissions…
The ocean temperatures are not going to increase by six degrees. Ocean temperatures warm by much much less than air temperatures. Even the alarmists aren’t promoting a six degree increase in air temperatures as a realistic possibility. These guys are idiots. Their paper should be retracted.
Only yesterday I read a post describing how scientists failed to understand how plankton operates for calcification. Do we, or they, think their assumptions for this model are any better?
Real scientists, called carbonate sedimentologists, understand how bio-calcification works in plankton, but climatstrologists not so much.
The paper ‘Mathematical Modelling of Plankton-Oxygen Dynamics Under the Climate Change’,
once I read modelling the only thing I thought of was muddling.
“Really??? – how are the oceans going to increase temperature by SIX degrees?”
By ignoring the fact that water (H2O) is the earth’s “temperature” regulating thermostat.
According to Frank Wentz, et al SCIENCE for July 13 2007 (I think). “How much more rain will global warming bring ? ”
A six deg C. rise in ocean Temperature would result in a 42% rise in ocean water evaporation, and a 42% rise in global atmospheric water content, and a 42% increase in Global precipitation, which probably requires about a 42% increase in global cloud cover.
Since NASA/NOAA claims that the earth currently has about 60% global cloud cover, that would mean an 85.2% global cloud cover.
Or to put it a more useful way, the earth’s global cloud uncover, would drop from its present 40% cloud uncover to only 14.8 % cloud uncover, or about 37% of now.
Gee that is 1/e if I am not mistaken.
So with 37% of the present clear skies, we can get a 6 deg. C increase in the total earth ocean Temperature.
Who knew ??
g
Give it to some bloke named Karl, he will add what is required to show warming of 6 degrees and hand it back.
They will start pre-heating the buckets to measure the engine inlet water temps.
They won’t bother doibg that, they’ll just give the data to the NASA GISS folk to ‘adjust’. “6 degrees? There you go. Easy”.
XYZZY11 makes a good point. Assuming the hydrosphere would need to absorb and store 1100 times as much heat as the atmosphere to warm by the same amount Earth would need to receive and retain enough energy as heat to warm said atmosphere by 6600 degrees. These clowns missed the decimal point.
More to it, of course, but the energy has to come from someplace. Their model is off. Since all IPCC following models are off maybe just the natural progression of human imagination. Sure be nice if some data intruded in their thought process.
The Gulf of Mexico water temps fluctuate around 30+ degrees F every year. Of course that’s from insolation changes due to Earth’s obliquity.
“””””….. A study led by Sergei Petrovskii, Professor in Applied Mathematics from the University of Leicester’s Department of Mathematics, …..”””””
Wow! Had me worried for a bit.
For a while I thought he was an applied Physicist or an applied Chemist, dabbling in real world observations.
But he’s just an applied mathematician, so he just makes it all up in his X-box; and he’s not observing anything real.
g
Well Vince Gray, would never draw a historical graph that was double valued anywhere along it, so it only looks to be getting really steep at 280 million year BC.
The vertical downdraft of vanishing Oxygen must have been quite an event to observe.
g
Global oceans may need assistance from computer modeler Gavin Schmidt at GISS.
Plants are being destroyed by global warming and co2. The biosphere is ‘dying’ (greening) due to ‘toxic’ co2. Make sense of this and take necessary actions to ‘fight’ global calamity. We must act now!!!!
https://youtu.be/P2qVNK6zFgE
It’s almost like a sickness now, the longing for doom. I wonder do they have enough self awareness to recognise this?
‘End of times’ is an obsession of Homo Sapiens, being the cause of the mass hysteria that we saw in the climate marches around the world last weekend and the gathering of the forty thousand souls in Paris this week.
Oldie
Do politicians actually have souls?
Actually, really, demonstrably?
I can’t suggest what they may have as substitute souls – although others may do so . . . .
But shed loads of politicos flew to Paris, so your “forty thousand souls” may, perhaps, be a bit high.
Auto, with a (non-political) cat o my lap.
Wow… just wow…
…just how far can they push this nonsense?
Dramatic stuff
The team developed a new model of oxygen production […]
Hmmmm…
New and improved oxy-clean!
My first thought was, “Wow! This takes the prize.” But then I remembered Hansen with his “Oceans will boil.” He still holds the crown.
And Hansen is not one to rest on his laurels. Now he brings us ‘flying boulders’ http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/experts-say-climate-change-may-spawn-giant-flying-boulders/60596/ He’s aware of the criticisms of his newest delusion but he’s sticking by his “climate change has magical powers” position.
Did Hansen estimate how far those two enormous boulders floated before being deposited by a big wave on the Bahama shore? Does he have any information regarding huge boulders that are currently floating around the world that would be candidates for wave deposition? So many questions, so few answers.
“Evelyn and Lynn de Rothschild recently purchased over 70% of the Weather Network.”;
http://aangirfan.blogspotdotcom/2014/02/rothschilds-and-weather.html
an addition to Weather.com and Lynne de Forest Rothschild’s geoengineering company – don’t recall the name.
Remarkable how scientific papers now usually commence ‘Assuming a temperature rise of x degrees, our models predict (insert your preferred disaster) in about 100 years time’.
Oh, good for the “team”! The world has been practically starved of “models” ever since those with common sense have been dealing with … wait for it … reality!
And they call all these “model” based “coulds” and “likelies” research?!
Amazing. Simply amazing!
Nah, research would have been putting phytoplankton in a tank in the lab and seeing what its oxygen production is and then heating the tank and monitoring any changes. Models are nothing more than thought experiments at best unless accurately calibrated against a fully-understood reality. Studies based only on unvalidated models are just guesses and the modelers can guess anyway they like – and they do.
Of course such an experiment doesn’t give the plankton time to adapt to the new conditions, they way they do in the real world.
Plankton thrive from the artic to the tropics. A mere 6 degrees, even if it actually occurred wouldn’t bother them.
Most waters have temperature swings way more than that just going from winter to summer.
“. . . somehow Earth would lose all (or most of) it’s oxygen due to global warming.”
Small point but please! “….its oxygen” not “it’s oxygen”.
If science, the Constitution, the law, truth, and reality no longer matter, why should grammar?
…but I feel your pain.
People nowadays bypass grammar (and science) rules for the sake of convenience.
By the way, Alleagra, can you help with my allergies?
(sorry, sometimes I’m compelled to low-grade humor…)
surely you mean “allergie’s”. You know like those signs that say “cantaloupe’s”.
So It’s worserer than we thought?
Worsererer, jones, worsererer.
This will drive you mad. There is a subdivision in Naples, Florida that is named “Blue Sky’s”. It even says so on the entrance. Every time I see it, I want to shout, “Blue Sky’s …. WHAT??”
Forgive the guy. That particular rule in English makes no sense, and lots of people don’t know it.
You mean that Blue Sky’s residential resort place ??
So Sky’s possessive and skies plural can be simplified somehow ??
Do tell ??
Actually the rule is simply that personal pronouns don’t use the apostrophe to form a plural, My, your, his, her, its, our, your their. The thing that’s confusing is that “its” has an “s” at the end. But notice that “his” also ends in an “s” but is not confusing since “hi” is not a pronoun and isn’t pronounced the same as “he’s” the contraction for “he is”.
Wrong! The oxygen is possessed by the earth, therefore the correct form is it’s oxygen.
Wrong again, I truly hope you were jesting there. “it’s” is an abbreviation for “it is”, the apostrophe is NOT used for the possessive “its” No wonder people are confused.
I wonder how the folks in Leicester reconcile the findings of their new model with the observed (but apparently unexpected) phytoplankton overgrowth reported last week?
And why should anyone care about the predictions of some unverified model of a very clearly misunderstood organism? Was it picked up and repeated anywhere but here?
+1 your first para.
It’s a sad day for Northamptonshire.
We have to share a border with Leicestershire.
Any why is a Math guy doing modeling of phytoplankton? And obviously, the guy hasn’t a clue about reality. 6°C ocean warming? I have heard a lot of crazy predictions, but I have never heard that one.
When in climate speak they say ocean warms 6 deg. C, they DO mean the entire global ocean warms 6 deg. C (on average), don’t they ??
Because if they don’t mean that; they shouldn’t say that, because that IS what they are saying.
g
This looks like another case where a scientist ginned up a model where increased temperature causes phytoplankton to reduce oxygen production and then die through the failure of photosynthesis. Phytoplankton are the same temperature as the water that they are in, thus any increase in water temperature would necessarily cause the phytoplankton to warm up as well. There is one little problem with this hypothesis. The Arrhenius equation describe the dependency of chemical reaction rates on temperature. Increasing temperature causes an exponential increase in the reaction rate. Therefore, Dr. Petrovskii seems to have developed a new form of the Arrhenius equation which has an inverse relationship between temperature and reaction rate.
Now certainly there would be a point at which the ocean surface temperatures rise too high for phytoplankton to survive and that would certainly cause a reduction in oxygen production by phytoplankton in those locations. I am not certain that 6 C is the right temperature to cause this to happen. I am certain however, that surface water temperatures are not uniform around the planet, therefore even it the average surface water temperature increase by 6 C, some areas might have water which became too warm for phytoplankton to survive while other parts of the oceans would have warmed to temperatures that phytoplankton would find to be in their optimal temperature zone. Therefore, I hypothesize that higher surface water temperatures would not cause extinction of phytoplankton, but would cause a the phytoplankton to thrive in areas which had formerly been too cold for them.
Excellent point!
A right on the freaking money excellent point!
isthatright December 1, 2015 at 11:36 pm
This looks like another case where a scientist ginned up a model where increased temperature causes phytoplankton to reduce oxygen production and then die through the failure of photosynthesis. Phytoplankton are the same temperature as the water that they are in, thus any increase in water temperature would necessarily cause the phytoplankton to warm up as well. There is one little problem with this hypothesis. The Arrhenius equation describe the dependency of chemical reaction rates on temperature. Increasing temperature causes an exponential increase in the reaction rate. Therefore, Dr. Petrovskii seems to have developed a new form of the Arrhenius equation which has an inverse relationship between temperature and reaction rate.
Another example of ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’, your application of the Arrhenius equation would be correct if we were considering a single chemical reaction, however natural processes such as photosynthesis involve multiple steps in a network (both parallel and series). In the case of photosynthesis the crucial step is the binding of CO2 to a protein called rubisco (C3 photosynthesis), unfortunately rubisco isn’t very good at distinguishing between CO2 and O2 so a competing reaction with O2 takes place (photorespiration). This competing reaction is favored by increased temperature and therefore the efficiency of photosynthesis goes down as temperature goes up. Some land plants have evolved an alternative photosynthesis mechanism which doesn’t use rubisco (C4 and CAM plants).
As far as I am aware phytoplankton only use the C3 mechanism and therefore their photosynthetic activity will decrease with increasing temperature.
When people went looking for C4 genes in phytoplankton they started finding them. It turns out that quite a few plankton species can do both C3 and C4 photosynthesis. This suggests that land plants using C4 inherited it rather than evolving it.
Tomato vine stops photosynthetizing at around 35C
Those who grow tomatoes in hothouses can attest to this fact.
They actually cool the hot houses to prevent reduction in production.
Just a comment
Depends on the cultivar. Heat resistant tomatoes can be grown in temps exceeding 40C, but the requirements likely preclude large-scale production.
http://www.gardenguides.com/98229-grow-tomatoes-temperature-over-105.html
On further reflection, working out methods to allow for commercial crops of tomatoes in extreme temperature seems to me to be less problematic than large-scale alternative energy production that might result in more moderate temperatures.
Curious to know what is in this model.
Presumably a lot of land would be inundated as a result of glacial melting leading to an increase in shallow seas.
Plankton growth would move to more temperate areas and boom in the warmer shallow seas.
Increased humidity and rainfall would open up huge inland lakes such as Lake Eyre, inducing more bio diverse green plants as well as rich warm water algal blooms.
The tropical zone would not heat as much as the rest of the planet giving time for opportunistic evolution of thermally adapted algae with rich CO2 substrate.
CO2 from burning fossil fuels is going to run out in a couple of hundred years anyway, so even if you believe CO2 can heat the ocean to such an extent, it won’t be from CO2 if it runs out.
I see from the graphic that those super-fast looking oxygen concentration changes in the distant past, the fastest of them, actually take 1 to 3 million years to happen. A 20% drop in oxygen concentration along 2 million years would mean 0.002% per century, that is, 20ppm per century. Color me unimpressed. We are currently losing way more than that, assuming that any ppm gain in CO2 is a ppm lost from O2, And yet it is about impossible to notice because of how much O2 there is.
That should read 0.001% and 10ppm per century
Oh, good. We’re doomed again. That’s comforting to read. I like to know where I am in the scheme of things.
Very good information. One questions, what about human beings?
total BS
So increased CO2 leads to less photosynthesis?
How ever did they get this published?
Ah, they are conveniently releasing it around the hype for COP21 in Paris.
Cunning foxes.
‘Cunning foxes’ – is that deliberate wit or coincidental? ‘The Foxes’ are Leicester City Football Club, and are doing quite well at the moment!
The first point that comes to mind is that one would expect that biologists have been measuring the rate of photosynthesis by phytoplankton genera and species since at least the days of the Challenger expedition .
Google scholar reveals many such investigations , that indicate , as one might expect , that light levels and nutrient concentration are also critical parameters .
One paper (from the UEA interestingly ) , 1972 vintage is readable online for free:
http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/green_ocean/publications/Nano/Eppley72.pdf
and shows that there is a temperature optimum which varies from 10C to >40C for different species.
Did the paper referred to above mention the species of most concern?
Did the authors quote any reference to experimental biological work , of which there seems to be plenty.
From the UNIVERSITY OF ‘yes its steaming sh*t but right now there is funding to be had from the production of steaming sh*t , so why not grab some’
I have made a model which shows everything is going to be fine unless we do something stupid at Paris, like sign up to CO2 reductions based on zero evidence. But I need a few million to perfect the model just in case. Where do I apply? Bill Gates has that in his back pocket surely.
This is beyond parody. What would we have to burn to use up all the oxygen after they stopped recycling it?
Does the model have a provision for collecting the oxygen from the atmosphere, bottling it and putting it into landfill? If not, I can’t see where the oxygen could go.
Apparently is a journal of such low prestige that they have to beg for articles. Certainly no reputable journal would publish such bulsh.
Right? Please?
s/b Apparently Springer is
a must-watch:
multiple links below the video. mention of Strong dying 3 days prior to COP21 is somewhat incorrect, as he apparently died 28 Nov and COP21 began a day early on 29 Nov:
Youtube: 21mins06secs: James Corbett: Maurice Strong is Dead
https://www.corbettreport.com/maurice-strong-is-dead/
1 Dec: NYT: Sam Roberts: Maurice Strong, Environmental Champion, Dies at 86
Maurice Strong, a former industrialist and confessed ecological sinner who was in the vanguard of placing environmentalism on the world’s agenda as a high-ranking United Nations official, died Saturday. He was 86.
His death came on the eve of the United Nations negotiations in Paris on global warming, attended by President Obama and other world leaders.
Achim Steiner, United Nations under secretary general and executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, announced the death but did not say where Mr. Strong, a Canadian, died or give the cause.
He credited Mr. Strong with making “history by launching a new era of international environmental diplomacy.”
For years Mr. Strong, a self-made oil and gas billionaire, sounded the alarm on climate change and tried to goad the governments of developed countries to take responsibility for the ecological degradation wrought by industrialization…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/world/americas/maurice-strong-environmental-champion-dies-at-86.html?_r=0
Mr. Strong was put in charge of raping western canada of its oil and selling it through Petro canada. Created by Trudeau Sr. the result was 20 years of depression in Alberta. We are about to go through it again this time it will be Trudeau Jr. and his NDP allies. He was self made by the the Canadian Liberal party and the UN/Club of Rome
…A study led by Sergei Petrovskii, Professor in Applied Mathematics from the University of Leicester’s Department of Mathematics, has shown that an increase in the water temperature of the world’s oceans of around six degrees Celsius — which some scientists predict could occur as soon as 2100 — could stop oxygen production by phytoplankton by disrupting the process of photosynthesis….
That’s NOTHING!
I’ve used my superior Applied Maths skills to work out that if the world’s oceans increased in temperature by around 96 degC (which could happen as soon as 10 minutes from now) we’d all be boiled.
Only if you go swimming !!!
If oxygen depletion is a problem, carbon capture must be out of the question.
I made a brief look-up of the historic ocean temperature and found this graph:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/100Myr.jpg
on the web page:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/temperature.html#4600Myr
referenced from:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/
So, to me it looks like oceans are cooling in a long term perspective, and according to that graph, we are very far away from anything that even in upper ocean temperatures can be serious, compared to the past.
I am more into electronics and the thermal resistance in small subjects. However, I presume that there is a certain thermal resistance, degrees/watt, between surface and deep ocean temperature, and that this is of a value in relationship to capacity and heat source from over the surface, which makes up a time constant in the order of 800years or there about.
The above may be ignorant crab from my side, but logically thought: Is it really realistic that a few degrees increase in the above surface, will cause any significant increase in upper ocean temperature within such a short period as 100years?