Gah! Oceans dying!

[RepoMan]

Every now and then I see another one (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/20/MNQNV50EU.DTL) of these stories and it frankly keeps scaring the piss out of me.
Peering into the murky depths, Jane Lubchenco searched for sea life, but all she saw were signs of death.
Video images scanned from the seafloor revealed a boneyard of crab skeletons, dead fish and other marine life smothered under a white mat of bacteria. At times, the camera's unblinking eye revealed nothing - a barren undersea desert in waters renowned for their bounty of Dungeness crabs and fat rockfish.
"We couldn't believe our eyes," Lubchenco said, recalling her initial impression of the carnage brought about by oxygen-starved waters. "It was so overwhelming and depressing. It appeared that everything that couldn't swim or scuttle away had died."
Upon further study, Lubchenco and other marine ecologists at Oregon State University concluded that that the undersea plague appears to be a symptom of global warming. In a study published in the journal Science, the researchers note how these low-oxygen waters have expanded north into Washington and crept south as far as the California state line. And, they appear to be as regular as the tides, a cycle that has repeated itself every summer and fall since 2002.
"We seem to have crossed a tipping point," Lubchenco said. "Low-oxygen zones off the Northwest coast appear to be the new normal."
Although scientists continue to amass data and tease out the details, all signs in the search for a cause point to stronger winds associated with a warming planet....
To make sure the phenomenon was actually new, Oregon State marine ecologist Francis Chan reconstructed data from water sampling at 3,100 stations dating to 1950.
He found that low-oxygen areas have long existed in deeper waters, but there was virtually no evidence until recently of hypoxic waters in prime fishing waters, which extend down to 165 feet.
"It's pretty clear this is unprecedented," Chan said. "It's never been detected since we began to measure oxygen levels."
Put this together with the really bad oceanic anoxia (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=30159&highlight=anoxia) scenario and you've got nightmare city. Uggghhh.

OK, cue the global warming naysayer chorus.

[Ben Sones]

Ha! My ridiculously circuitous plan is one-quarter complete!

[Demon G Sides]

Repo, no offense man, but...

Holy shit the sky is falling Chicken Little.

[Bill Dungsroman]

(Psst nobody tell RepoMan mostly everyone agrees that global warming is occurring, just that it's not decided if humans have caused it or not, it's funnier this way)

[wildpokerman]

If you've lived in the Northeast this winter you can safely be a global warming skeptic.

[Jon Rowe]

If you've lived in the Northeast this winter you can safely be a global warming skeptic.

Actually global warming is what is causing the severe weather. It is messing up the jet stream and bringing the cold air down farther south.

[BobJustBob]

Didn't you ever see The Day After Tomorrow?

[Jon Rowe]

I saw the south park parodying it.

[Jason McCullough]

No one replied to mine (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=42337). I guess I should have added the magic keyword.....

[Drastic]

The self defense forces are using oxygen destroyer weapons more and more often. The Godzilla attacks are really getting out of hand.

[Nellie]

No nono no no nooo.
GLobal warming and the decimation of the oceans are totally separate. While it is possible to grudgingly admit that global warming might be occuring [but naturally], the oceans are AOK, the demise of wild salmon as a viable "crop" is just some kind of commie, greenpeace conspiracy to trick us into giving a shit.

[Nathan Phoenix]

I thought that in a lot of seafloor areas in the pacific, life was dependent on volcanic activity below the crust, and when that volcanic activity stopped, it often caused entire reefs to die. Now I'm not saying that this has nothing to do with global warming, but could this simply be a 'normal' scenario here?

[Moore]

My bad, I've been peeing in there on vacations.

[Johan O]

Now that the oceans are dying those that dwell below will have to go live somewhere else.

"Some of the animals far under the sea grow to unusually large sizes, a phenomenon called gigantism that scientists still do not fully understand.

"Gigantism is very common in Antarctic waters," Martin Riddle, the Australian Antarctic Division scientist who led the expedition, said in a statement. "We have collected huge worms, giant crustaceans and sea spiders the size of dinner plates."
...
"They had fins in various places, they had funny dangly bits around their mouths," Riddle told reporters. "They were all bottom dwellers so they were all evolved in different ways to live down on the sea bed in the dark. So many of them had very large eyes — very strange looking fish."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hIiwv2nRo-eUt2NgxGLnrD-Fnr0gD8UTL23O0

[Nellie]

Maybe the beeb can persuade Attenborough to do one last Life.... series

"there isn't any"

Fin.

[Hanzii]

I thought that in a lot of seafloor areas in the pacific, life was dependent on volcanic activity below the crust, and when that volcanic activity stopped, it often caused entire reefs to die. Now I'm not saying that this has nothing to do with global warming, but could this simply be a 'normal' scenario here?

You're right of course.
What would the marine biologist quoted in the article know...

[WarrenM]

Actually global warming is what is causing the severe weather. It is messing up the jet stream and bringing the cold air down farther south.
This is the most annoying part of the global warming arguments - no matter WHAT the weather is doing, it's because of global warming. There's no way to argue the other side.

[BobJustBob]

Why would you want to argue the other side of a fact?

[Aeon221]

Why would you want to argue the other side of a fact?

Because it'd be nice if global warming wasn't happening?

[SlyFrog]

This is the most annoying part of the global warming arguments - no matter WHAT the weather is doing, it's because of global warming. There's no way to argue the other side.

Bingo.

Don't get me wrong, I actually believe that we are fucking up the earth, and that we are doing bad things to it (possibly including "global warming," whatever the hell that is). I say this without having the scientific background to make an intelligent decision one way or the other (it's just "feel" based off of what I've read and seen).

But the global warming people are not doing themselves any favors with the hilarious changing of theories on a daily basis. I mean, I know it's science and all, but it is humorous to the layperson to see it be global cooling in the 70s and 80s, then global warming, now global warming refers to "bad weather of any sort."

I mean, how can you go wrong there? Any shit that happens that's bad, be it Hurricane Katrina or dead fish, is "global warming."

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Most articles I read refer to it as "climate change" for that very reason. "Global warming" is a somewhat misleading shorthand for what's actually going on.

[RickH]

PANIC NOW!

[Morkilus]

Acidification of the oceans is much more likely to be a direct effect of raised CO2 levels than reduced oxygen levels. It's also just as likely to be a huge change to the flora and fauna of the ocean. I've been to a couple lectures on this and it's of course astronomically complicated. But if you think changing the atmosphere as much as we have is not going to have an effect on the oceans or the weather, you are an ignorant fool.

[RepoMan]

(Psst nobody tell RepoMan mostly everyone agrees that global warming is occurring, just that it's not decided if humans have caused it or not, it's funnier this way)
It's also pretty funny when you decide not to argue (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?p=1066271#post1066271) against world scientific consensus, and then you backpedal!
Hmm. Well, after reading that and a few other links, I respectfully decline my position. If the world's scientists are going to convene and declare us at fault, I'm certainly not going to argue.
Which is it, Bill? You're a regular laugh riot, you are :-)
Didn't you ever see The Day After Tomorrow?
You know, I was in Half Price books selling some shit, and I ran across the Whitley Streiber / Art Bell book (http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Global-Superstorm-Art-Bell/dp/0671041916) that The Day After Tomorrow was based on. And I AAAALMOST posted a "HOLY SHIT CHICKEN LITTLE" thread about it. Fortunately Dr. Jeff Masters (demigod of weather blogging) thoroughly debunked (http://www.wunderground.com/education/thedayafter.asp) the whole "overnight ice age" scenario.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any serious debunking of the "encroaching ocean anoxia" theory... killerinourmidst.com (http://killerinourmidst.com) has quite a lot in support of it, in fact, and stories like the above are exactly why I give it credence.

[Nathan Phoenix]

You're right of course.
What would the marine biologist quoted in the article know...

Right... because we've NEVER seen an article with a quote from a bona fide SCIENTIST turn out to be incorrect in any way. I'm not saying that he's wrong either. I was just throwing it out there.

[Demon G Sides]

And I AAAALMOST posted a "HOLY SHIT CHICKEN LITTLE" thread about it.

And you didn't?! I need solid answers as to why.

To Science!

[MrFrump]

Right... because we've NEVER seen an article with a quote from a bona fide SCIENTIST turn out to be incorrect in any way. I'm not saying that he's wrong either. I was just throwing it out there.

A Bush Administration supported SCIENTIST?

[RepoMan]

And you didn't?! I need solid answers as to why.

Um... didja read the link (http://www.wunderground.com/education/thedayafter.asp)?

You didn't?! I need solid answers as to why.

[RepoMan]

No one replied to mine (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=42337). I guess I should have added the magic keyword.....
Nah, you don't have the "paranoid freak" amusement value that I do (as far as Qt3 knows, anyway). Better work on it.

Edit: Oh yeah, and you posted in P&R. Don't do that.

[Jason McCullough]

That "everyone through there was global cooling" shit just won't die no matter how many times its refuted, will it?

[RepoMan]

"everyone thought there was global cooling"
Fixed that for you?

[Velvet Elvis]

Actually global warming is what is causing the severe weather. It is messing up the jet stream and bringing the cold air down farther south.

Global warming brings more cold air? Amazing!

[SlyFrog]

That "everyone through there was global cooling" shit just won't die no matter how many times its refuted, will it?

I don't know, the guy in the office next to me who still has the original Newsweek articles talking about global cooling thinks it is pretty funny.

[Jason McCullough]

Because, you know, some tentative theories that didn't have mainstream scientific acceptance and got way overhyped are exactly the same as today's situation.

[SlyFrog]

Because, you know, some tentative theories that didn't have mainstream scientific acceptance and got way overhyped are exactly the same as today's situation.

That's not exactly "refuting."

You don't have to win everything. They can be right today, and have fucked up in the past. They did. We don't have to pretend that it was only some tiny lunatic fringe that ever got anything wrong before. It's just a good reason not to go hyperbolic nutso over things RWAWWWRRWRR the end of the world is coming. Reason is needed, on both sides. But where have we heard that before, and what types of people need to see things in black and white?

[shift6]

That "everyone through there was global cooling" shit just won't die no matter how many times its refuted, will it?
Science is supposed to be self-correcting, and is rarely right from the beginning. "No matter how many times its refuted", I've never personally read a point-blank refutation of the claim that global cooling was all the rage in the 70s, nor seen someone so intent on making this claim as you are. The wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling) (HUR HUR) seems to make the case, with supporting citations, that it briefly had some traction in the scientific community before further study delved more deeply into it. I like how the wiki article summarizes these ideas, that they were "simplistic".

I can't understand why it's such a big deal to you. This hypothesis existed, briefly, and was promoted to the public. Then further study found it was wrong and it was put away. What exactly is the problem? We've always been at war with Eastasia?

[Aeon221]

I went back and read your Scientific American article, and, well, this line stuck with me:

At the end of the Triassic, CO2 was just above 1,000 ppm. Today with CO2 around 385 ppm, it seems we are still safe. But with atmospheric carbon climbing at an annual rate of 2 ppm and expected to accelerate to 3 ppm, levels could approach 900 ppm by the end of the next century, and conditions that bring about the beginnings of ocean anoxia may be in place

I'm not too worried about this because I plan to be dead before the end of this century. I believe I speak for all red blooded humans when I say "fuck the people who are going to be alive two hundred years from now." If our children's children can't solve this problem, they all deserve to die anyway.

The other article has this little gem in it

The phenomenon, he said, is complicated by decades of heavy fishing that has reduced schools of sardines to a tiny fraction of their former abundance.

So, basically, this could be solved by adding more sardines that could eat all the phytoplankton before it dies, rots, emits nasty gas, and creates dead zones. I support fertility drugs and free booze for these small fish, that they may reproduce with extreme prejudice.

I'd also support making fishermen aware of the potential issues and rewarding them for taking action to increase sardine numbers. How about a giant tax on sardines for the consumer coupled with caps on quantities brought to market and a generous subsidy for fishermen who choose to help with repopulating the ocean by fishing less?

[Drastic]

I'm not too worried about this because I plan to be dead before the end of this century.
Not me. I plan to mainline stem cells to maintain, until such time as I can upload my mind into a giant walking deathbot that shoots laser beams from its eyes.

It'll run on cold fusion to minimize its ecological footprint, though.

[Quaro]

Science is supposed to be self-correcting, and is rarely right from the beginning. "No matter how many times its refuted", I've never personally read a point-blank refutation of the claim that global cooling was all the rage in the 70s, nor seen someone so intent on making this claim as you are.

Because it's misleading to compare global cooling and the articles in the popular press to global warming which is supported in the scientific press.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/

[Qenan]

That's not exactly "refuting."

You don't have to win everything. They can be right today, and have fucked up in the past. They did. We don't have to pretend that it was only some tiny lunatic fringe that ever got anything wrong before. It's just a good reason not to go hyperbolic nutso over things RWAWWWRRWRR the end of the world is coming. Reason is needed, on both sides. But where have we heard that before, and what types of people need to see things in black and white?

"They" aren't a monolithic group. The number of scientists who supported the global cooling theory wasn't comparable to the number who support global warming today. None of which "proves" global warming -- it just gives you some idea of where working scientists see the preponderance of evidence.

[Jason McCullough]

SI can't understand why it's such a big deal to you.

It's a terrible analogy and analysis of the scientific method that gives people ammunition for their excuse-making, that's why. The way the rhetoric always goes is that "well, if the scientists were wrong then, maybe they're wrong now!" Which is either a bad faith attempt to shut down debate through distraction (lobbyists), or its a sign the speaker is operating under a misinformed view of how this sort of stuff works.

Global cooling was an overblown trend based on a few non-consensus ideas about climate change in the 1970s. By contrast, global warming is the mainstream consensus of the scientific establishment and has tons of supporting data; it's really, really unlikely they're just going to go "whoops, sorry!" next week.

The implication any time this comes up is that global warming is just some crazy theory of scientists that can't make up their mind - last week they thought it was cooling! Ho ho ho, clearly we can continue doing what we are right now.

[RepoMan]

I'm not too worried about this because I plan to be dead before the end of this century. I believe I speak for all red blooded humans when I say "fuck the people who are going to be alive two hundred years from now."
Do you actually have kids? And no, you don't speak for all red blooded humans, believe me.

But you do make a good point, I'd forgotten the critical 900ppm level was quite that far away. That does make me feel better because by then we'll have some seriously bodacious carbon sequestration technology. Thanks :-D

(The real worst-case scenario is one in which the rate of greenhouse increase goes up substantially, perhaps due to melting permafrost (http://www.alaskareport.com/news11037.htm) or some other positive feedback loop. We can't assume that we've definitely got 200 years before we get into rotten-egg-ocean territory. But that's all I'll say about that.)

(And on the other hand, let's everyone remember that I'm also known for wild-eyed best-case scenarios (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?p=867372#post867372). Why are you planning to be dead before the end of this century? Think big (http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1), fercrissakes!)

I'd also support making fishermen aware of the potential issues and rewarding them for taking action to increase sardine numbers. How about a giant tax on sardines for the consumer coupled with caps on quantities brought to market and a generous subsidy for fishermen who choose to help with repopulating the ocean by fishing less?
That might help (or perhaps some more market-friendly mechanism, like "sardine caps"?). Other things that would help would be reducing levels of nitrogen-rich effluent (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=33538&highlight=anoxia), and of course just plain getting greenhouse gases more under control to try to get us back to wind patterns that don't cause dead zones.

[Bill Dungsroman]

I believe I speak for all sufferers of Asperger's Syndrome when I say "fuck the people who are going to be alive two hundred years from now."

Feexed.

[Aeon221]

Feexed.

SHUT YOUR FUCKING FACE!!!

[Aeon221]

Do you actually have kids? And no, you don't speak for all red blooded humans, believe me.

But you do make a good point, I'd forgotten the critical 900ppm level was quite that far away. That does make me feel better because by then we'll have some seriously bodacious carbon sequestration technology. Thanks :-D

(The real worst-case scenario is one in which the rate of greenhouse increase goes up substantially, perhaps due to melting permafrost (http://www.alaskareport.com/news11037.htm) or some other positive feedback loop. We can't assume that we've definitely got 200 years before we get into rotten-egg-ocean territory. But that's all I'll say about that.)

(And on the other hand, let's everyone remember that I'm also known for wild-eyed best-case scenarios (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?p=867372#post867372). Why are you planning to be dead before the end of this century? Think big (http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1), fercrissakes!)


That might help (or perhaps some more market-friendly mechanism, like "sardine caps"?). Other things that would help would be reducing levels of nitrogen-rich effluent (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=33538&highlight=anoxia), and of course just plain getting greenhouse gases more under control to try to get us back to wind patterns that don't cause dead zones.


No kids -- I almost got pulled into one of those situations, but I escaped!

And as to dying by the end of the century -- I'd like to think I'll be dead well before then, because you can be damn well certain that I don't want to end up an old person in a nursing home shitting himself and praying the cute nurse cleans it up.

I suggested regressive taxes on sardines as one option, but I'd agree that they wouldn't be the best option. Punitive taxes (in the case of cigarettes especially) and outright abolition (drugs in general) tend to encourage illicit activities aimed at getting around the law. Subsidies encouraging fishermen to cut production would probably be a better option, as well as encouraging people to cut consumption as a matter of choice.

[shift6]

Because it's misleading to compare global cooling and the articles in the popular press to global warming which is supported in the scientific press.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/
It's a terrible analogy and analysis of the scientific method that gives people ammunition for their excuse-making, that's why. The way the rhetoric always goes is that "well, if the scientists were wrong then, maybe they're wrong now!" Which is either a bad faith attempt to shut down debate through distraction (lobbyists), or its a sign the speaker is operating under a misinformed view of how this sort of stuff works.

Global cooling was an overblown trend based on a few non-consensus ideas about climate change in the 1970s. By contrast, global warming is the mainstream consensus of the scientific establishment and has tons of supporting data; it's really, really unlikely they're just going to go "whoops, sorry!" next week.

The implication any time this comes up is that global warming is just some crazy theory of scientists that can't make up their mind - last week they thought it was cooling! Ho ho ho, clearly we can continue doing what we are right now.
I just didn't see any of that in this thread. I suppose I should have asked why it's so important to you here in the context of this thread.

[Jason McCullough]

I told you (http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-02-20-global-cooling_N.htm).


The supposed "global cooling" consensus among scientists in the 1970s — frequently offered by global-warming skeptics as proof that climatologists can't make up their minds — is a myth, according to a survey of the scientific literature of the era.


The '70s was an unusually cold decade. Newsweek, Time, The New York Times and National Geographic published articles at the time speculating on the causes of the unusual cold and about the possibility of a new ice age.
But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.


The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.


"A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales."

"I was surprised that global warming was so dominant in the peer-reviewed literature of the time," says Peterson, who was also a contributor to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report.