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Satellite Study Shows Drop In Ocean's Plankton Level
An anonymous reader submits: "CNN reports there seems to be a dramatic drop in N. hemishpere phytoplankton and a net overall decline in the ocean's overall phytoplankton population. This has very serious implications for the overall food chain and also the scrubbing of CO2 in the atmosphere."
Additional information on the spacecraft that made these observation is available on the SeaWiFS site.
on.
Don't plankton populations drop during the El Nino season? Different temperatures == fewer plankton survive the temperature change?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
But, the plankton can't all dies off. Once it's all gone, then what are we going to make this yummy new soylent green stuff out of?
Here's the original press release from NASA. The actual journal article, in Geophysical Research Letters, is not available on the Web to nonsubscribers.
Note, though, an important sentence in the NASA release that is missing from the CNN account:
"Also, summer plankton concentrations rose by over 50 percent in both the Northern Indian and the Equatorial Atlantic Oceans since the mid-80s. Large areas of the Indian Ocean showed substantial increases during all four seasons."
There's still a net loss, but the real phenomenon appears to be a shifting of phytoplankton from north to south.
Anything to get web hits or sell papers or get more gubment funding.
BC
although the story is a little old, thats still not all http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,69 03,750783,00.html
Righteousness postpones the inevitable
http://burningaureole.caveism.net
In spite of all of this, there will still be people who will be more worried about what would happen if the Earth got hit by an asteroid. click here
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as with most cnn articles, no real numbers, just a pretty picture..though from the picture i would assume they went south..
IIRC
Plankton is sensitive to ultraviolet rays (in the "it kills it" sense), with all the talk of ozone layers and holes in the recent years, I wonder if this might be related.
You can't take the sky from me...
wern't we having the opposite problem with plankton? all the nitrates and crap from farming flowing down the mississippi into the gulf and causing a surge in plankton that was choking off the eco-system, there were dead fish washing up on every beach in the gulf, was the phytoplankton or am i thinking of something else?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Hah... Really offtopic if you ask me...
No.
You are correct to be scared. There seems to be little hope.
"I figure you're here 'cause you need some whacko who's willing to stick his finger in the fan. So who are we helping?
But as long as there's still one Plankton, we'll all have to keep watch over our Krabbie Patties.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
This is potentially very disturbing. However, we don't know that the levels in 1980 weren't abnormally high for some reason (e.g. growing use of fertilizer and increased mono-cropping exacerbating erosion of topsoil into the ocean).
As usual, we read way too much into research findings.
One thing for certain, if we are going to fight global warming we really can't afford substantial decreases in oceanic carbon fixation. We may have to do things like pumping nutrient-laden deep ocean water up to the surface to overcome the increased adverse thermal gradient and slowing winds (both of which tend to let the water stratify instead of mix).
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Of course the Bush administration would rather we pick up the bad package... But hey, we just need to behave like Real Men.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I've always been extremely skeptical of global warming and most all evidence produced to 'prove' its existence.
Why? A simple matter of common sense. You constantly see headlines in the liberal-news media similar to "2001 Average Global Temperature Highest Since 1670" which, of course, begs the question "Who/what was producing all the green house gases in 1670 that caused the Earth's temperature to rise so dramatically?"
The answer is noone/nothing. There was no above average volcanic activity. There was certainly no man-made greenhouse gases. There was extraordinarily little man-made pollution. It was, in fact, a normal cycle in the Earth's temperature. We know that the Earth's temperature goes up and down over the course of hundreds and thousands of years.
Not to mention of course the fact that 30 years ago we were heading into an iceage, and all advised to buy warm clothes. Won't this new global warming simply offset the predicted ice age of 30 years ago?
The fact is these enviro-nuts don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about. There has been good scientific data produced, of course, but the media constantly reports tbe findings of liberal-financed propoganda from neo-hippy enviromental nutsos that will do/say anything to get their point across - that man is bad, and nature is good. It's a typical rage-against-the-machine type attitude.
Anyway, in my ramblings I lost track of my point: If we take the plankton data at face value and accept it as true (Ha-ha) and we further stipulate that global warming is a reality - Maybe 'global warming' is directly attributable to the "dramatic drop" in phytoplankton in the N. Hemisphere. Why does the reverse have to be true? If memory serves, something like 80% of all oxygen is produced from cyanobacteria. I don't have exact figures (I never do:P) but thats a whole fuck-ton of carbom dioxide absorbtion.
Don't get me wrong - pollution is bad. It obviously affects wild life populations (Prince William Sound, anyone:P) It's stinky, it's yucky and I don't want it in my back yard. But this idea that it's going to cause the flooding the world, that it will unleach monster hurricanes upon Oklahoma is rediculous.
- James
On a geological time scale, 20 years is faster than a blink of an eye. It is as quick as can be, and the Earth won't even notice it.
cloning!!! :D
/me ignores anything that states she is wrong on this.
hey, we're doin it to mammoth, plankton are much smaller
-binky.
That's Save Lots Of Plankton... an overlooked advocate of single-celled oceanic life forms, brought to media attention by Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame) during an emotional Saturday Night Live monologue.
Actually, that does not seem so funny anymore.