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Huge Phytoplankton Bloom Found Under Arctic Ice
ananyo writes "Researchers have been shocked to find a record-breaking phytoplankton bloom hidden under Arctic ice. The finding is a big surprise — few scientists thought blooms of this size could grow in Arctic waters. The finding implies that the Arctic is much more productive than previously thought — researchers now think some 25% of the Arctic Ocean has conditions conducive to such blooms (abstract). The discovery also helps to explain why Arctic waters have proven such a good carbon dioxide sink."
Because that's what the reporters put on paper?
Okay... so I couldn't visualize a huge phyto-plankton bloom and TFA was no help. Here's something.
http://spiff.ucsd.edu/chaos.gif
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
For the same reason they have such certainty about the things they think they "know". The whole global warming debate is a fascinating study of human psychology.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Photosynthesis CO2 + water + sunlight -> glucose + O2
There's a wide gap between finding out something you didn't know, and finding something contrary to whatever you've known up until now.
They DO get buried away for millions of years. Where do you think petroleum and coal come from?
What typically happens is once the plankton dies, it sinks to the bottom of the sea. If it lands in an anaerobic area (a region of low oxygen, which is not uncommon on the sea floor) then it will not rot. Over time, it could be covered with sediments and blocked off from the rest of the sea. Over the course of millions of years, the dead plankton may be cooked at 70-80 degrees and transform into oil and gas. Once in this liquid or gas form, it can move from this source material. If it is caught in a trap, then it could become an economic oil or gas deposit several dozen million years in the future.
In contrast, most trees fall and rot on the ground. The amazon rainforest is a big area with lots of trees and plants, but there is also lots of organisms actively decomposing the dead material. Some carbon can get stuck in the ground, but it tends to be much less than the sea.
"Sequestering" carbon in any way is about the same as "squestering" trash by burying it in the dump. Just gets it out of sight for awhile, you gotta think about the future.
There's a huge difference between having to deal with global warming now (especially the catastrophes claimed by some) than a slightly elevated CO2 a few millennia or longer from now. Getting it out of sight for a while may well be the difference between being a problem now and never being a problem.
>>>"Sequestering" carbon in any way is about the same as "squestering" trash by burying it in the dump. Just gets it out of sight for awhile, you gotta think about the future.
Disagree.
The carbon was VERY well sequestered for ~700 million years..... until humans came-along and start digging it out of coal mountains/oil wells and burning it. If humans had not done that, the carbon would still be sequestered under the ground and GW not an issue.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Ah yes, it is interesting...tut tut....vis a vis....ergo, ERGO! VIS A VIS!!!
Seriously though, it is interesting. For instance, someone people (maybe you) believe that the "radicals" are the climatologists instead of the people who created these billboards:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/may/04/heartland-institute-global-warming-murder
I mean, that shit doesn't even make sense.
Of course, you'll come back with the lame, intellectually weak "both sides do it" crap. That's how it works these days. You can be on the team represented by millions of dollars of corporate propaganda that in the most nasty of ways paints the entire climatology community as a sinister lying bunch of mooching conspirators--while on the other hand, science can have one or two people who made honest mistakes that don't really affect the big picture of whether AGW is real--and you'll say, uh, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Sorry, you can't split the difference between reasonable and batshit stupid / evil and call it a wash. Face the music. You're a mark. And you did not disappoint the ones who played you. Congrats.
You forgot to add how cool they are.
Most people are full of themselves. Only the unlucky ones need transplants, and then they need all sorts of nasty medicines to keep themselves healthy. Thank you, I'd rather be full of myself than that.
Ezekiel 23:20
Subduction takes care of it pretty well. All that marble isn't going to convert back into co2 any time soon.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
But when the plankton die and rot, the carbon is released back into the air.
Doesn't always happen, especially on a seafloor. Oil and coal come from organisms that didn't rot.
Do you like the smell of smog? I would hazard a guess that you do not. Fine, you don't believe in global warming. I disagree with you, but won't bother to argue the point. Maybe you should jump on the green bandwagon for the better quality environment it provides you? Stuff like smog, acid rain, and the hole in the ozone layer have become less of a problem because we implemented 'sweeping policy changes' and 'engineering measures' to solve the issue.
Oil is going away, shouldn't we figure out what to do next?
Isn't energy efficiency better that waste?
What exactly about the global warming policies do you disagree with that wouldn't lead to a cleaning, smarter, stronger future?
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Because the reporters want to sell headlines, and a scientist saying "huh, that's funny" doesn't sound as newsworthy as "I AM SHOCKED!"
(Also, the scientists probably look a bit googly-eyed during the interview, and the reporter doesn't realise that's just because of the coffee-fueled all-nighter instead of the bemusement.)
You're making a false assumption: that the plankton rot when they die. Not everything does. There has to be the right environment for whatever bacteria or biological processes involved in rotting to take place. In many places, the right environment is not there. In the desert, it is too dry. Corpses mummify instead of rot. In peat bogs, there isn't enough oxygen, so things just more or less lie there. In these cases, the desert and the bog are carbon sinks. In the arctic, the ocean water is not terribly exposed to the air, so I imagine the oxygen content is fairly low. So the plankton may just settle to the bottom instead of rotting, and in the process take some carbon with it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
An organism that's been selected over hundreds of millions of years to survive in the current climate. Like, I don't know, humans.
Sure, nothing is objectively better about an oxygen-rich atmosphere than a carbon-dioxide one. An anaerobic organism of the archean era would likely prefer it. But I breathe oxygen. How about you?
Until we dig it out and burn it... ;)
Rotting tends to mean decomposing by bacterial action - which use the material as a food source immediately and then expel CO2.
He's talking about thermal depolymerisation without bacteria or oxygen. Because it hasn't oxidised, it can be used as a fuel source later.
Those little gomers are 20 - 30% lipids, and those lipids are what gets turned into petroleum crude oil after it settles out and reduces under the seabed muck.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You make a false equivalence here. Both sides have clowns, but one side has the vast majority of publishing scientists and the royal scientific societies in many nations. Only one side, as i have seen it, argues with data. Also, to my knowledge only one side has stooped to using pr firms with ties to the tobacco industry.
The map is not the territory.
Is anyone actually recording the carbon isotope ratios in fossil fuels?
Yes.
From:
http://bgc.mpg.de/service/iso_gas_lab/publications/PG_WB_IJMS.pdf
In contrast, current annual fossil fuel burning amounts to about 6 Gt of carbon. About half of this amount is observed as an increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration. The other half is sequestered by other compartments. Currently, both the oceans and the terrestrial system show a net uptake of carbon [6]. The oxygen and carbon isotopic compositions of individual components, in particular air-CO2 provide a potentially powerful tool towards quantifying the contribution of different components to ecosystem exchange. When this is used in conjunction with concentration or ïux measurements, further insight can be gained into the sources and sinks of CO2 in the ecosystem [7,8].
Plant photosynthesis discriminates against 13 C. In other words, plant carbon tends to have less 13 C than the CO2 from which it is formed (Fig. 1). This discrimination provides a tool for interpreting changes in 13C of atmospheric CO2
Also:
How do we know where the carbon comes form?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-co2-increases-are-due-to-human-activities/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
I had to read that twice. Of course they rotted.
Scientifically, it's called decomposition and it happens in the presence of oxygen and other organisms that reduce the dead organism to basic components. Particularly, with plants it releases carbon dioxide.
In an environment without oxygen, somewhat different processes happen and you can indeed have carbon trapped for useful periods of time.