Slashdot Mirror
Plankton Can Make Clouds To Block UV
NotWallaceStevens writes "This article on Science Daily describes how plankton can create clouds in response to seasonal variations in UV radiation from the sun by producing a chemical called dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP). This was a long term study based on data going back to the 1950s collected in the Sargasso Sea. One of the researches theorizes that the process could slow global warming."
DMS does get oxidized, eventually, to sulfates (i.e., one of the acids in 'acid rain'). Is this important? Depends on how much is being produced this way, obviously, but according to this estimate the overall sulfur emission from oceanic sources (plankton, etc.) is about 20% of the emission from human activities (globally; it's more like 10% in the N. hemisphere, much higher anthropogenic emissions - mostly coal burning).
So the evil death plankton's sunscreen is some kind of factor in acid rain, but not the biggest one.
Its already known that algae on the ocean transforms 70% of the carbon dioxide produced on earth back to oxigen, and now plancton creates the remaining clouds?. We need a new army of tree huggers and convert them to ocean huggers, seriously i suggest stop coding java algorithms to enhance pr0n webcasts and put ur brains to work on saving the oceans!.
Then why do I get a sunburn even on cloudy days? I can imagine clouds block a certain amout of direct sunlight from reaching the ground which might keep temperatures cooler. Thus the claim of preventing global warming, but what impact does UV have in all this?
Any hope of lessening global warming through plankton activity are about zero. As the oceans are warming the plankton are dying. It may have gone to far to rely on mother nature to help us turn this juggernaught around. And it's not just global warming that is killing the plankton but oceanic pollution as well (info at bottom of article).
Creatures as well as humans have survived through many devistating climate/environmental changes, but these changes took place over hundreds and more often thousands of years. We are at a point where we are seeing major climate change within a single generation. I don't know what the answer to the problem is, and it will undoubtedly take more that one solution to fix this mess, but something had better be done soon or we (as a civilization) are in for a bad hangover.
What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
DMS (a very stinky volatile substance, making rotten cabbage to smell like rotting cabbage) gets oxidized to DMSO (odorless poorly volatile hygroscopic liquid). DMSO likes to stick to water molecules. Tthe resulting clump has lower vapor tension than water droplet - so the wet DMSO droplet starts growing.
DMSO is non-acidic. It may get broken down to methansulfonic acid eventualy (through dimethtlsulfone) but this is oxidative degradation is rather slow process. I think DMSO would rain out much sooner than that. I think the net contributing effect to acid rain is close to zero.