The dead sea: Global warming blamed for 40 per cent decline in the ocean's phytoplankton

The dead sea: Global warming blamed for 40 per cent decline in the ocean's phytoplankton

www.independent.co.uk

The microscopic plants that support all life in the oceans are dying off at a dramatic rate, according to a study that has documented for the first time a disturbing and unprecedented change at the base of the marine food web.

Scientists have discovered that the phytoplankton of the oceans has declined by about 40 per cent over the past century
They believe the change is linked with rising sea temperatures and global warming.

"If this holds up, something really serious is underway and has

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
en.wikipedia.org
www.elnino.noaa.gov
www.cpc.noaa.gov

Phytoplankton are microscopic marine organisms capable of photosynthesis, just like terrestrial plants. They float in the upper layers of the oceans, provide much of the oxygen we breathe and account for about half of the total organic matter on Earth. A 40 per cent decline would represent a massive change to the global biosphere.

Obviously this is a big deal it seems.

Why do some of you think this is happening?

Keep this in mind though

They found that this decline correlated with a corresponding rise in sea-surface temperatures – although they cannot prove that warmer oceans caused the decline.

It's declining sure, but why
That's the question and what do we do?

One thing is for sure though

"Phytoplankton are a critical part of our planetary life support system. They produce half of the oxygen we breathe, draw down surface CO2 and ultimately support all of our fishes." he said.

Let's not downplay the importance of Phytoplankton,.

www.independent.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

The more time that passes. The more I feel that Global warming was program designed, as a scapegoat, for ecological terrorism.

For decades they have provided data and flooded the world with fear mongering, blame campaigns, green campaigns and general misinformation.

Phytoplankton requires a healthy eco-system to flourish. Pollution from toxic dumping, oil spills, hydrocarbon release, etc; have depleted the oxygen in the ocean.

I am no scientist but I do know that everything is a product of its environment.

reply to post by zroth


You may not be, but I am a scientist but even if I werent I do know that pollution of the seas is a bad thing in general and should stop, simply out of good conservative stewardship, but the global warming profiteers/promoters only solution and desire is to profitably sell CO2 licenses to polluters who transfer the costs to the products that they produce and purchased by the peeps. The real pollutants ie nitrogen and sulfer gases are not being addressed in any of their scenarios because they need to demonize CO2 which is not a functional greenhouse gas, rather, it's beneficial in larger amounts for plant growth. CO2 could rise by a factor of 10 and have no detrimental effect.

reply to post by ModernAcademia


If 40% of phytoplankton have gone missing. Then why hasn't a quarter of the oxygen content of Earth gone with them?

news.nationalgeographic.com...

Now being a Christian, this is not surprising. It is the beginning of the death of all sea creatures. But being scientific, I can't help but question the legitimacy of this article, seeing as I'm still breathing. So either one or the other is wrong, Or something else has filled in the gap.

[edit on 29-7-2010 by Gorman91]

I don't have many threads so I almost never get to reference one of my own but this: www.abovetopsecret.com...
might be interesting.


Crap, link not working.

I'll be back.






[edit on 29-7-2010 by badgerprints]

I glimpsed at sauce (doi:10.1038/nature09268). Man, there's so much statistics in the article. Authors conclude that global phytoplankton concentration (actually mostly bacteria and archaea, not "microscopic plants" like op's sauce declares) has indeed decreased over the past century. A picture is worth a thousand words so here goes:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9c01f850d670.png[/atsimg]

Yellow and red mean increase, blue means decrease (mean overall from 1950's onwards). It looks pretty random to me. Thou, I guess in general coastal regions are seeing increase (probably due to eutrophication). and open waters decrease. In the article they pull really low "P-values" for their hypothesis that decrease in open waters is due to increase in water temperatures (this increases confidence greatly). I don't know statistics well enough to comment the analyses themselves. However I'd like to point out that op's sauce is very dramatic in comparison to the original sauce (shocking, I know). Also I reckon they're giving far too little (almost none) consideration to ecological factors. As an end note I'm pissed off that I didn't do this meta-analysis myself. Man I'd be like an ecology super star scientist

[edit on 29-7-2010 by rhinoceros]

Zooplankton.

They eat phytoplankton, but cannot tolerate cold temperatures as well. In winter, the phytoplankton blooms, because their predators have died back.

This is their big expansion time of the year.

As this gets shorter, due to warmer waters, the Zooplankton keep thriving longer and come back earlier, allowing an increasingly small window for phytoplankton growth.

As years pass, there are fewer phytoplankton to do that growth each year, leading to an even faster rate of decline.

This could, in potential, turn very bad for us, very quickly.

More politically-oriented psuedo-climatology.

One could say there is a direct correlation between the number of oil wells on the sea floor and the decline of the phytoplankton, but that would not be politically expedient to address... (amongst other things)

One could say there is a direct correlation between industrial effluvium (black water waste) in the sea and the decline of the phytoplankton, but that would not be commercially expedient to address... (amongst other things)

One could say there is a direct correlation between the amount of sun-block use by swimmers and the decline of the Phytoplankton, but that would not be socially expedient to address (amongst other things)

Such 'correlations' are "used" as always, to manipulate public opinion.

Bottom line, we are witnessing the decimation of the largest carbon-fixing, oxygen-producing, ecosystem-supporting biomass on the planet.

I suspect the imminent solution will involve all of us being "taxed." Because everyone knows, it the consumers' fault, not the industrialists, not the commercial exploiters, not the inept and politically-motivated, tax-payer funded - faux 'servants of society' who claim to protect and serve the people's interest and well being ...

Just wait for it.... it's what they do.

reply to post by Maxmars

Right, right. Have a look at the original article (don't bother if you don't know statistics well). Their statistics are a lot more than "when x increases, y decreases".

[edit on 29-7-2010 by rhinoceros]

Yet another misleading article title, it should say "Global-warming believers claim..." Such a misleading title is a "speaking-for-all" fallacy and basically arrogant lying.

In case anyone forgot: the current temperature of the world is not higher than usual, so to claim that there is missing plankton based on temperature is absurd. On top of that, it's clear that if there is a decline, it would be due to pollution, including from oil leaking from yachts, sunken ships, oil filled canisters leaking into the sea like is true near Hawaii, and from tankers and rigs.

Fertilizer causing huge algae blooms may also be crowding out the plankton.

Hmmmmm......the first thing that comes to my mind is enviro pollution such as chemicals in ocean, now added thanks to oil leaks, and depeleted uranium used in megatons in the middle east and Gaza.

When i read it believed to be caused by global warming it tells me they don't know but need money.