Anthony Richardson, The University of Queensland; Chhaya Chaudhary, University of Auckland; David Schoeman, University of the Sunshine Coast, and Mark John Costello, University of Auckland
The tropical water at the equator is renowned for having the richest diversity of marine life on Earth, with vibrant coral reefs and large aggregations of tunas, sea turtles, manta rays and whale sharks. The number of marine species naturally tapers off as you head towards the poles.
Ecologists have assumed this global pattern has remained stable over recent centuries — until now. Our recent study found the ocean around the equator has already become too hot for many species to survive, and that global warming is responsible.
In other words, the global pattern is rapidly changing. And as species flee to cooler water towards the poles, it’s likely to have profound implications for marine ecosystems and human livelihoods. When the same thing happened 252 million years ago, 90% of all marine species died.
The bell curve is warping dangerously
This global pattern — where the number of species starts lower at the poles and peaks at the equator — results in a bell-shaped gradient of species richness. We looked at distribution records for nearly 50,000 marine species collected since 1955 and found a growing dip over time in this bell shape.
So, as our oceans warm, species have tracked their preferred temperatures by moving towards the poles. Although the warming at the equator of 0.6℃ over the past 50 years is relatively modest compared with warming at higher latitudes, tropical species have to move further to remain in their thermal niche compared with species elsewhere.
As ocean warming has accelerated over recent decades due to climate change, the dip around at the equator has deepened.
We predicted such a change five years ago using a modelling approach, and now we have observational evidence.
Read more: The ocean is becoming more stable – here’s why that might not be a good thing
For each of the 10 major groups of species we studied (including pelagic fish, reef fish and molluscs) that live in the water or on the seafloor, their richness either plateaued or declined slightly at latitudes with mean annual sea-surface temperatures above 20℃.
Today, species richness is greatest in the northern hemisphere in latitudes around 30°N (off southern China and Mexico) and in the south around 20°S (off northern Australia and southern Brazil).
This has happened before
We shouldn’t be surprised global biodiversity has responded so rapidly to global warming. This has happened before, and with dramatic consequences.
252 million years ago…
At the end of the Permian geological period about 252 million years ago, global temperatures warmed by 10℃ over 30,000-60,000 years as a result of greenhouse gas emissions from volcano eruptions in Siberia.
A 2020 study of the fossils from that time shows the pronounced peak in biodiversity at the equator flattened and spread. During this mammoth rearranging of global biodiversity, 90% of all marine species were killed.
125,000 years ago…
A 2012 study showed that more recently, during the rapid warming around 125,000 years ago, there was a similar swift movement of reef corals away from the tropics, as documented in the fossil record. The result was a pattern similar to the one we describe, although there was no associated mass extinction.
Authors of the study suggested their results might foreshadow the effects of our current global warming, ominously warning there could be mass extinctions in the near future as species move into the subtropics, where they might struggle to compete and adapt.
Today…
During the last ice age, which ended around 15,000 years ago, the richness of forams (a type of hard-shelled, single-celled plankton) peaked at the equator and has been dropping there ever since. This is significant as plankton is a keystone species in the foodweb.
Our study shows that decline has accelerated in recent decades due to human-driven climate change.
The profound implications
Losing species in tropical ecosystems means ecological resilience to environmental changes is reduced, potentially compromising ecosystem persistence.
In subtropical ecosystems, species richness is increasing. This means there’ll be species invaders, novel predator-prey interactions, and new competitive relationships. For example, tropical fish moving into Sydney Harbour compete with temperate species for food and habitat.
This could result in ecosystem collapse — as was seen at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods — in which species go extinct and ecosystem services (such as food supplies) are permanently altered.
The changes we describe will also have profound implications for human livelihoods. For example, many tropical island nations depend on the revenue from tuna fishing fleets through the selling of licenses in their territorial waters. Highly mobile tuna species are likely to move rapidly toward the subtropics, potentially beyond sovereign waters of island nations.
Read more: Tropical fisheries: does limiting international trade protect local people and marine life?
Similarly, many reef species important for artisanal fishers — and highly mobile megafauna such as whale sharks, manta rays and sea turtles that support tourism — are also likely to move toward the subtropics.
The movement of commercial and artisanal fish and marine megafauna could compromise the ability of tropical nations to meet the Sustainable Development Goals concerning zero hunger and marine life.
Is there anything we can do?
One pathway is laid out in the Paris Climate Accords and involves aggressively reducing our emissions. Other opportunities are also emerging that could help safeguard biodiversity and hopefully minimise the worst impacts of it shifting away from the equator.
Currently 2.7% of the ocean is conserved in fully or highly protected reserves. This is well short of the 10% target by 2020 under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
But a group of 41 nations is pushing to set a new target of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030.
This “30 by 30” target could ban seafloor mining and remove fishing in reserves that can destroy habitats and release as much carbon dioxide as global aviation. These measures would remove pressures on biodiversity and promote ecological resilience.
Designing climate-smart reserves could further protect biodiversity from future changes. For example, reserves for marine life could be placed in refugia where the climate will be stable over the foreseeable future.
We now have evidence that climate change is impacting the best-known and strongest global pattern in ecology. We should not delay actions to try to mitigate this.
This story is part of Oceans 21
Our series on the global ocean opened with five in-depth profiles. Look out for new articles on the state of our oceans in the lead-up to the UN’s next climate conference, COP26. The series is brought to you by The Conversation’s international network.
Anthony Richardson, Professor, The University of Queensland; Chhaya Chaudhary, , University of Auckland; David Schoeman, Professor of Global-Change Ecology, University of the Sunshine Coast, and Mark John Costello, Professor, University of Auckland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Read that and search for extinction events
Can’t the fish just swim 4 inches deeper to get into 0.6 C cooler water ?
No, they can’t, because climate change made them dumb.
I’m more concerned about what climate change is doing to academia. If we don’t do something soon to curb emissions, a temperature rise of 6°C will mean 97% of papers published will be finger painting.
The bluefin tuna has been spotted in Mediterranean near Nice (south of France).
Is this unusual have no idea, but bluefin is unusual since if it stops swimming it will drown (its breathing depends on swimming) and it can swim as fast as 50 knots (90km/h); theoretically speaking, it could swim from New York to south of France in three days? (check it) .
bluefin is a cold water fish. We catch them off the coast of North Carolina during the winter only and that is about as far south as they go. A hell of a fight and can be really big.
Bluefin tuna were known as horse mackerel early in the twentieth Century and commonly caught in the Gulf Stream from the Bahamas through Massachusetts as the schools moved through.
Bluefin run a circuit in the Atlantic; spawning in the Gulf of Mexico and Western Mediterranean. Bluefin literally circle the Atlantic ocean as they follow their favorite prey species.
Fisheries scientists used to claim there were two distinct Bluefin populations, Eastern Atlantic, Western Atlantic; but, recent DNA analysis proved they’re a single population and not restricted to one side of the Atlantic.
ICCAT, (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas ) has been known to allocate more than 100% of bluefin populations to their member countries while demanding Western Atlantic countries including USA and Canada reduce their bluefin catch.
Many of the tuna caught in the Mediterranean near Spain, Italy, etc. are young bluefin.
Large bluefin tuna are sold for megabucks, per fish.
Mediterranean purse seiners target the larger fish as they gather to spawn in the Mediterranean.
Some very large tuna currently being spotted in my part of the world, the Bay of St. Malo at 49degN, occasionally in shallow water close to shore. If they’re caught, they must be released.
No idea if there are blufin, but tuna is usual to find on the market of Menton (not far from Nice), fresh catched in the region, often saw the fishing boats in the harbor dismbarking tuna.
Not the real thing “There are now over 40 offshore tuna farms in the Mediterranean Sea. Each summer 20 to 30,000 tonnes of fish are caught in vast dragnets and towed to these farms. The fish are regularly fed until they reach the target size of around 250kg.”
I can’t imagine how you could farm a 500 lbs fish while regularly feeding it. What enclosure would you use?
CG, don’t ask me, Google is your friend./sc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuna_penning
They farm tuna here in Oz. Here we use specially trained Blue Healer dogs to paddle out into the surf and bring them in. Just like free range sheep, only wetter…
Nah – only joking! From what I know of it they have large floating circular pens about 50 or so metres in diameter which I understand to be basically large fishing nets. Only difference from the article Vuk was quoting is I understood they bred the little buggers up from scratch rather than collecting young wild Tuna and ‘fattening’ them.
No, they catch young tuna in the Bight (almost in the southern ocean), tow the drag nets back to Port Lincoln and then feed them up, just like in Vuk’s post. The footage of the divers closing the net in the open seas is quite compelling to watch
No there is a massive amount of overfishing of tuna in the med. The EU has ordered a 25% reduction in catches but I don’t think the fishermen will take note.
Anyone remember the study that tried to claim warming turned fish left handed?
Yeah, they “proved that with the ocean “acidification” experiments where they basically put fish into salted soda water.
The model handlers and politicos said no.
they are trying to say that one ecosystem shifted north….and all the rest of the ecosystems didn’t
they will all shift north equally……the one place with the least diversity on the end will be the one that benefits the most
“Is there anything we can do?”
Yes. Wait 5-10 years and they will all be back.
almost as if there is some cyclical phenomenon occuring …
Careful with those “c” words like cycles and costs. They were banned in the climate theology some time ago.
Wait 5-10 years and even more life will be in the north and south, with about the same in the middle, just like the first shows. (If it keeps warming up, doubtful but hopefully!) (OMG snow in the middle of April!)
The morons that wrote this didn’t even look at their own data. Their dreaded dip at the equator has most recently REDUCED not at all what they falsely claimed. They also seemed to ignore that green data point just north of the equator in their arbitrary over-smoothed fit and the data is all over the map. Here’s another reason to question the veracity of alarmists.
It’s even a tenet of the Warmunists, that the greatest effect of global warming will be in higher latitudes, since the Tropics are more or less steady state, due to thunderstorms and other emergent phenomena.
They can’t get anything right, or tell the truth about it, if they happen to find it..
“If you look at each line in this chart, you can see a slight dip in total species richness between 1955 and 1974.”
As I recall, during those years the earth was cooling – “The Coming Ice Age” was all the rage.
“… didn’t even look at their own data.” You’re right, they didn’t – or any history either. That’s youngsters for you…..
”Our study shows that decline has accelerated in recent decades due to human-driven climate change.”
No empirical evidence of this because there is none.
How does this crap get financed?
Apparently they got their money from the huge pile being distributed by the COP26 crew. What’s worse is that there are more in the same vein to follow!
Democrats
Their study must then also show how human driven climate change, which is measured in the atmosphere, can warm the ocean waters in the tropics worldwide.
I don’t see any evidence of that mentioned anywhere in the article and I still can’t warm my bathwater by raising my furnace thermostat one degree. I tried that and it doesn’t work.
As I was reading this, I was thinking to myself that the tone was that of the usual panic porn of The Conversation. When I got to the bottom, I discovered that my suspicion was right.
The reverse Flynn effect is more apparent each day.
“During the last ice age, which ended around 15,000 years ago, the richness of forams (a type of hard-shelled, single-celled plankton) peaked at the equator and has been dropping there ever since. This is significant as plankton is a keystone species in the foodweb.”
So this has been happening for 15,000 years, and we’re expected to stop it now?
Nothing like a hard break, after all humans can do anything they want to the Earth.
Throw enough money at them, and they’ll research ways to stop it. Expect 20-30 years of testing, with varying results.
Not only that but we must immediately take steps to return to the Ice Age and the peak of foram richness!
With that comment they almost seem to be suggesting that things were better during the ice age.
Balderdash! This study does not either take into account the observational techniques employed during their different time intervals nor the totally insignificant effect of 0.6 C in ocean waters. The End Permian Extinction was probably caused by the large igneous province event in Siberia, but not due to atmospheric aerosols. Sure, these volcanic aerosols produced acid rain and oxygen consumption. This event was marked by an outpouring of basalt flows over a huge area, and the basalt was hot, around 1,000 C. Then it doubled down on atmospheric heating by this effect: once while working inthe Panamint Mountains in Kalifornia, on the side opposite Death Valley, we stopped by a hermits shack and asked if he needed anything from town? He said yes, two frozen pizzas and two six-packs of beer. When we returned he said thanks, and then said “I’ll fix us a pizza and we can have a snack, and drink some beers in the process”. He then took one of the frozen pizzas over to a large , black, basalt boulder, which had a strange smell and flies buzzing around it. He plops the frozen pizza down on the black rock and it starts sizzling. We drink one beer and the pizza is cooked in 10 minutes. This black basalt boulder was a nearly perfect black body, and was absorbing photons and heating up dramatically (you couldn’t keep your hand on the rock for very long). It is not likely that 0.6 deg of ocean heating can compete with a good basalt pizza rock. Expand the pizza cooking to the entire area of the Siberia Large Igneous Province and you have a problem.
Not enough pizza and beer.
THAT problem has persisted at least back to the Permian extinction event!
The low Permian CO2 levels were probably the cause of the beer and pizza shortage, and thus the extinction!
Shortage? Nah, there was over abundant beer, soft drinks and pizza so the Permian’s got obese and died, en masse. Deadly stuff, this CO2.
These days, those large black Basalt provinces are being artificially re- created by square miles of black solar arrays. Oh well.
There will be a pass for the 200+ boat teams of Chinese fishing fleets with their tanker-sized refueling vessels.
Is there no end to this pap?
I’m reading this as I watch the snow come down in mid Missouri on April 20, the irony is wonderful, God bless.
Wow, this paper is loaded with crap.
“Although the warming at the equator of 0.6℃ over the past 50 years is relatively modest compared with warming at higher latitudes, tropical species have to move further to remain in their thermal niche compared with species elsewhere.”
Any proof of any species currently driven north or south due to a .6 C change? Do any species have such a tiny “thermal niche”?
It always slays me that assertions like this are made based upon “climate change” or “global warming” with not a shred of evidence about a study on how a species actually reacts to various temperatures.
I fall back on my bass fishing. The warmer the more active fish are. When colder, they cease activity. I wonder how many of these folks have ever left the office to actually explore the out of doors.
The whole world does, according to the warmists. Apparently, all current life evolved in a metastable, Goldilocks environment that is now being tipped into runaway heating due to the delicate balance of atmospheric gasses being perturbed by trace level increases in a trace component.
Total absolute rubbish! What does a Professor of Global-Change Ecology actually do? Is that a real field of study or is this from the Babylon Bee?
And what becomes of him if the globe doesn’t actually change?
I find that each fall, I migrate to Arizona from Canada….due to climate change, however I need a research grant to figure out why….
I can tell you right now that you don’t migrate because of a 0.6 deg C change!
“Claim: Marine life is fleeing the equator to cooler waters.”
Extreme exageration should disqualify any published paper as science. Fleeing?
What their data shows is that life on the planet has adapted countless times to changing conditions. The signs of adaptation are proof that everything is working correctly as it has done for eons.
“History has shown…” citing examples from pre-history that occurred without human intervention
Extinction Event — hypothetical term for a paleontelogical concept that describes the absence of fossils for multi-million year eras, never demonstrated as either instant, nor definitive, nor established fact.
“Artisinal fish” artisinal is supposed to refer to the fisherman, not the fish species.
Paris Treaty — shown to be ineffective against both reduction in CO2 emissions and warming of the atmosphere and ocean surfaces.
“protected oceans” — the coercive use of maritime and land based military and police forces and licensing to prevent poor people from obtaining food.
Dead coral reef — subjective opinion about an arbitrarily selected, remote, seldom-visited deep water environment with a cyclical natural life cycle.
Warming surface water — an unverified, less than 1 degree C increase over a small area, inconsistent with neighboring areas, using questionable historical data and little or no repeatable observational gathering.
I’ve had too much experience in my own work of graphical tricks to try and highlight a trend whose existence is dubious. So I took their graph and re-drew it.
While reading this I thought “at last, someone looking at the real picture of natural climate change”
Then I came to “human-driven climate change”.
Massive disappointment.
How to become a grifFter(3 simple steps):
1) Find a time trend in anything on this planet. Literally anything. Adjust/fudge/model to create a trend, if necessary.
2) Write a paper on it connecting it to ‘Climate Change’ (easy – ‘Climate Change’ causes everything!), and say everyone needs to “aggressively reduc[e] our emissions.” for hope of stabilizing/reversing this trend. Make sure you include “We now have evidence that climate change is impacting [thing you found trend in, from #1]” as your last sentence.
3) Profit.
Example
Trend: Children have been playing increasing amounts of video games.
Connection to ‘Climate Change’: Hopelessness/despondence because they realize we’re all doomed. OR too many heatwaves to go outside OR too many extreme weather events OR [possibilities are endless]
You’re welcome.
This should be self explanatory.
Do I see much of a trend here?
The story may not actually be about temperature per se. When we look at El Nino / La Nina events, we find that the warmer water of El Nino is because there is less upwelling of cold deep nutrient laden water.
link
So, the story isn’t just that equatorial waters warm up and the fish decamp to cooler climes.
I was listening to a biologist’s podcast the other day and heard this interesting nugget.
Or something like that.
Like most things I read, I din’t save references or links, so I don’t have these but about 10 years ago a article provided links to two papers written around 1950 to 1952 (both papers were online). One was about all the Mediterranean species, from single cell to large fish, that were at that time being discovered in nordic waters. The other was about fish species that were becoming scarce around equatorial South America. Both of these trends reversed as the cooling of the next few decades advanced.
There have been a number of papers on this in the Atlantic, as Lauzier, L. M. 1972. Climatic change in the marine subarctic. Transactions Royal Society of Canada. Series 4,10:297-307. Before the Anthropocene was taught in college.
All we have to do is close nuclear plants. Oops, I don’t do advocacy.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0232065
Tropical fishes vanished after the operation of a nuclear power plant was suspended in the Sea of Japan
“This abrupt change in fish assemblage may be due to the lowest lethal temperatures of tropical fishes being only slightly higher than the winter temperature in this area. Relatively poor ecosystem structure in the local warming area may also have contributed to low resilience of tropical fish species to this temperature change…….Therefore, even with a warming trend, it is of paramount importance to focus attention on the maintenance of a healthy ecosystem that will include ecological engineers, such as corals and echinoderms, and top predators…….Decision makers should, therefore, consider the ecological impacts of NPPs and base decisions regarding the operation of NPPs on long-term perspectives.”
How do you count all of the fish?
Easy, as per Dr. Seuss: one fish, two fish, red fish blue fish.
Dr Seuss was canceled
You take a square km and create a model.
When I try attaching images to a comment, they always seem to come out too small, even after I increased the number pixels and the notional size in inches. Oh well.
but if you click on the image, they become big
“Is there anything we can do?”, They ask…
Yes, there is: Stop publishing BS!
Today at the EGU – European Geosciences Union General Assembly
https://www.egu.eu/egutoday/2021/1/tuesday/
Meanwhile at Footlocker, they’re swapping out their inventory with work boots. (Minneapolis joke)
FICTIONAL history you mean.
So you’re saying warmer is preferred by marine life.
Same as tropical rain forests, I suppose.
The highest biodiversity in the world is in the Coral Triangle off Southeast Asia!
How can this be? Those silly fish and corals just don’t really know what’s good for them! They apparently didn’t get the memo about deadly global weirding!
I love all the scare-phrases in this article. “Dangerously warping”, “ocean warming has accelerated”, “ecosystem collapse!” There must be a guidebook somewhere about how to sprinkle these punchy phrases throughout your press releases. Oh, and wrapping things up with a way out of these terrors, ie. we must do what they tell us (and send more money). 🙂
It’s hard to believe that water temperature increasing by 0.6 C (about 1.1 F) would induce fish into swimming 30 degrees of latitude (about 3,300 km) north or south just to find slightly cooler water. Is it possible that fish populations are declining because of over-fishing near the equator?
Also, during an El Nino, warm water accumulates in the eastern Pacific along the equator, and during a La Nina, warm water accumulates in the western Pacific, and the water is colder in the east. If the temperature fluctuation is more than 0.6 C between them, do the fish have to swim clear across the Pacific every time an El Nino flips to La Nina or vice versa?
They do it under cover of darkness so nobody knows!
Perfect. I’m hoping this means for some better fishing closer to my home.
This would be due to the whole water column boiling, I presume?
“We predicted such a change five years ago using a modelling approach, and now we have observational evidence.”
Of course you do! NASA just published a study on impact on vegetation of human activity and global warming. They threw out 90% of the only palpable evidence of climate change due to CO2 emissions and its fertilization of tropical and temperate zones that has
produced the Great Global Greening. Instead they discuss the piddling plant growth on the tundra so they can falsely attribute the overall greening to warming temperatures – no mention of an 18% expansion of forests, all other plant growth, plankton, etc. along with a doubling of harvests on lesser acreage.
The only way to get Lysenkoists neutralized is with such citizen data collection as the Anthony Watts’s surface stations project that looked at and catalogued the conditions at every weather station used in developing temperatures in the United States. Jennifer Morahasy’s surveys of the GBR in areas pronounced dead or declining was another one that caused Aussie Lysenkoists to publish a broad regional Pacific study of corals that was the first upbeat report on the ‘regional’ state of coral health. Like NASA’s tundra greening focus, they neglected to mention the GBR which they have been autopsying for decades.
Maybe Jim Steele and Susan Crockford would agree to manage teams to replicate this ‘fish story’, count the polar bears, caribou, etc funded by crowd sourcing, the GWPF, …
Oh. My. Gawd. The stupid, it burns. Like napalm.
Bruce,
You have to wonder just WHAT greenhouse gas they were speaking about. Permian CO2 levels were about 300ppm; the lowest level ever until the Pliocene!
And yet more lies from the lying liars.
The bell curve is warping dangerously…. “I’m giving her all she’s got, Captain!”
ocean warming in perspective
Fred
How did you make your graph so big? Most of us that aren’t editors have only been able to get postage-stamp sized graphics.
Dunno.. just happens. ! I use “PostImages” and link to those images.
They can “model” anything they like, but their observations can only produce minimal results without the actual dynamics, causes and projected results, including extinction level events and their specific causes, which all have to do with the latest in astrophysics, astronomy, climate related issues and long-term trends with the planet, which can be found here:
.https://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers
Just put “We predicted such a change five years ago using a modelling approach, and now we have observational evidence” at the lede, and put “Confirmation bias” in the title. They cite data for three types of fish, one of which lives partly near the surface, then claim many decades of evidence, but cite “plateau or decline” as a trend for fish population “richness” living at latitudes with surface temps at 20 degrees C or higher — cherry picking at its finest.
Introducing the oceanic version of ManBearPig: Meet SharkCrabSquid! Enough to make any sea creature, no matter how big or small tremble with fear, and yes, flee for their very lives.
There you go, getting the free divers that fear no fish all excited! They’re hoping it’s as big as a shark, but tastes like crab legs!
Sounds like the geneticist that tried to cross an abalone with a crocodile. He was hoping for an abadile, but ended up with a crocobalone!
To the authors,
You make so many assumptions and suppositions in your study that you should hang your heads in mortification!
As the planet goes through a natural warming cycle, the tropics expand and push the temperate regions closer to the poles. The tropical species aren’t fleeing from the minor increase in warmth; they are expanding their territory! For you PC social justice scientists that’s like imperialism, but without the evil, raaaaaacist humans involved!
Then you try to correlate the Permian extinction with the rapid rise of temperatures after the Karoo Ice Age. But Permian CO2 levels were the lowest of ANY geologic period until the Pliocene! The elevated temps continued on well into the Cenozoic except for a dip around the Jurassic- Cretaceous boundary. Why didn’t that affect the abundant and flourishing life of the Mesozoic? The jury is still out on the cause of the Permian extinction, but assuming high temperatures to be the cause brings the usual result of when YOU ASSume!
Please do a complete rewrite and this time try to include more relevant facts and data! You should rejoice in the miracle molecule, CO2, instead of trying to tarnished it with your self-hatred and nihilism!
“…global temperatures warmed by 10℃ over 30,000-60,000 years as a result of greenhouse gas emissions from volcano eruptions in Siberia…” I knew then that this whole paper was a crock of shit, since climate change in response to changes in greenhouse gas levels has never been demonstrated in the data, as far as I’m aware. Rather, we get a post hoc, ergo procter hoc type of “justification” for continuing the CAGW charade. This nonsense has really messed up science in general, hasn’t it?
“…We predicted such a change five years ago using a modelling approach, and now we have observational evidence….” They even proudly confess their confirmation bias.
“…Our study shows that decline has accelerated in recent decades due to human-driven climate change….” Also never demonstrated in the data.
“Designing climate-smart reserves could further protect biodiversity from future changes. For example, reserves for marine life could be placed in refugia where the climate will be stable over the foreseeable future.” But… but… but… We were told at the beginning of this dreck that the oceans are warming worldwide, and many species can’t hack the rise in temperatures, thus the migration of species. But aren’t “climate reserves” anchored to geography? So picking a place on the map and designating it as a “reserve” will do no good if the temperature will continue to rise anyway, into ranges some species, we are told, cannot endure. So really, this is just a ploy to lock-away portions of the ocean floor under a global controlling authority, and revoke any authority of local governments to determine the uses for that ocean region.
Furthermore, the whole thing is pointless anyway: “This has happened before…” and yet this old Earth is still spinning away, supporting life and having a good old time doing it. The weather is going to do what the weather is going to do, and as King Canute demonstrated so long ago, there is nothing even the greatest among you can do about it. I label the entire paper nothing but naked propaganda.
If you really want to destroy the oceans, just put the UN in charge of protecting them.
Or, as Milton Friedman observed:
guess what
the fish now have a much larger habitat to swim in
maybe they should think slightly warmer waters away from the equator allow the fish to expand to new territories
https://theconversation.com/marine-life-is-fleeing-the-equator-to-cooler-waters-history-tells-us-this-could-trigger-a-mass-extinction-event-158424
“ Although the warming at the equator of 0.6 over the past 50 years is relatively modest …..This has happened before….”
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/15/e2015094118
“We analyzed data on 48,661 marine animal species since 1955, accounting for sampling variation, to assess whether the global latitudinal gradient in species richness is being impacted by climate change. We confirm recent studies that show a slight dip in species richness at the equator.” Slight dip, modest, but extinction! Who edits these?
I thought it is cold waters that have the most life, all those nutrients
Whales go to tropics in winter to give birth but in summer they head north to gain weight because that is where the food is?
Or it’s diversity not quantity in tropics?
Upwelling, nutrient rich, cold waters are like a Kansas wheat field compared to a tropical forest!
“Although the warming at the equator of 0.6℃ over the past 50 years is relatively modest compared with warming at higher latitudes, tropical species have to move further to remain in their thermal niche compared with species elsewhere.”
So their thermal niche is only 0.6C wide?
How are they measuring that change across the major oceans ? When are they measuring that across the major oceans ? What was the condition of ENSO, amo etc and how did they measure their effect ?
Look at the first graph – they are whining about a teensy, statistically irrelevant drop at the equator and ignoring the huge increases at the tropics (21° N or S). Any positive news they focus only on the bad – seen similar hatch jobs re: the greening of the world, increased crop yields, the tree line moving north, etc.
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.” – Mark Twain
“They are just making shit up!” – Me
Just to be clear: there was 10C warming 252mya, and rapid warming 125,000 years ago. And the last item is they’re complaining about the migration due to warming from the ice age.
So all this mass extinction didn’t really destroy life on earth, did it?
GreenNazis twisting the data again! Their own graph shows ‘richness’ hugely increased in the Tropics since 1955, offset by a tiny drop on the Equator. Any real scientist would be happy about the huge gain in life that resulted possibly from the slight increase in temps in the last few decades.
“During the last ice age, which ended around 15,000 years ago, the richness of forams (a type of hard-shelled, single-celled plankton) peaked at the equator and has been dropping there ever since.”
We are in an interglacial period of the Pleistocene/Quaternary Ice Age. The current Ice Age has not ended.