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.

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:



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.

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.