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It's So Cold Outside That Sharks Are Actually Freezing to Death (vice.com)
An anonymous reader writes: As climate change ushers in another year of extreme global temperatures -- a phenomenon President Trump seems a little confused about -- cities up and down the East Coast are facing record-breaking snowfall and subzero temperatures. But while city dwellers might be able to hide indoors and crank up the heat, some animals aren't so lucky. According to the Cape Cod-based Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, it's gotten so cold that sharks in the area have been washing up on the shore and essentially freezing to death. This week, the organization responded to three thresher sharks that likely suffered "cold shock" in the surrounding waters. Organisms suffer cold shock when they're exposed to extreme dips in temperature and can sometimes experience muscle spasms or cardiac arrest. Scientists believe the sharks swimming off the coast of Cape Cod -- where temperatures have dropped to 6 degrees -- suffered cold shock in the water, and then wound up getting stranded on the shore, where they likely suffocated. "If you've got cold air, that'll freeze their gills up very quickly," Greg Skomal, a marine scientist, told the New York Times. "Those gill filaments are very sensitive and it wouldn't take long for the shark to die."
You would think there would be a mention of lasers somewhere in the post. It is Slashdot after all. Sharks, ice, and ... Come ON, it writes itself... how we have fallen.
I thought the missing heat (that which caused the pause for most of the first part of this millennia) was accumulating in the ocean...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It's all the environmentalists fault. If they had simply stuck with global warming, we wouldn't be having this problem. But nooooo, they had to change it to "Climate Change", which opened us up to wild swings in temperature in both directions.
I considered overly hot summers to be an acceptable tradeoff for having mild or almost non-existent winters. But now we have to deal with stupidly hot summers AND stupidly cold winters.
Go back to global warming!
I read the first paragraph of the article - right up to where it berated our President and then I stopped. If this is about real science, and I don't deny climate change, keep the politics out of it and just state the facts. We have plenty of time to do politics here or at the bar or wherever. Also, are these temperatures really record breaking or is that just more hype?
Global Warming doesn't exclude anything.
Nice theory (wait...hypothesis since you have no confirmed experiments) you have there. ANYTHING that happens is accounted for.
OH, but then there is that pesky Falsification thing that Science demands.
Well, maybe you can write a computer simulation and just skip over that part.
Enough said. Living in New England this is really nothing new. Granted its a few weeks earlier than usual. I just feel bad for the ski areas that can't catch a break going from too warm last year to too cold this year.
Saltwater freezes at 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit. How did these sharks get so cold if they were underwater?
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Cold is Weather, Hot is Climate.
Temperature trends that continue for years are climate.
Temperature trends that last for a week are weather.
-- a phenomenon President Trump seems a little confused about --
FFS, I'm no Trump defender, but tossing in random, snarky asides in the summary immediately lowers the quality of the discussion.
It could very well be the case that this IS global warming (AKA "climate change" for those who don't understand averages). A hotter climate can power more extreme weather on both ends of the temperature scale. So those sharks might appreciate *less* global warming.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Is math hard?
Here's four sets of 9 values.
Each subsequent one has a higher average, and also lower low and higher high.
5 6 7 5 6 7 5 6 7 : low=5; high=7; avg=6
4 6 8 6 6 7 5 6 7 : low=4; high=8; avg=6.1
3 6 9 6 6 8 6 6 7 : low=3; high=9; avg=6.3
2 6 10 6 6 8 6 7 8 : low=2; high=10; avg=6.5
How does cold shock not kill if you are wearing a PFD or lifejacket? Either it kills you or it doesn't, the PFD isn't going to keep you dry or warm. The only thing the PFD will do is keep you from sinking under water and drowning if you lose your swimming ability.
The PFD will keep your head above water, thus preventing the muscle spasms and other lack of coordination from causing you to drown. All that still happens, you just are suddenly more buoyant, thus have a higher probability of survival.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
First, I don't see how this is so much of a record. I remember waiting for the school bus in high school in 10 degreeF temps. It didn't happen often, but there were a few mornings. I've been tracking the temperatures here in NC very closely. I'm trying to paint my airplane outside, and I need for it to warm up to finish. We haven't gotten down to 10 yet.
Second, a few days of cold air causes sharks to freeze to death? Why wouldn't it swim a little deeper. A few days of negative temps is not going to cause a significant change in deep water temperatures. Surface temps down to a few feet maybe, but not down at 20/30 ft. Did they just swim to the top, scream "Aaaargh!!" when they hit the cold water at the surface and then roll belly up? I would think there would be more of a gradient where the shark would think, "Damn, it's cold up there. I'm going to go back down this way." Kinda like how we do when we walk outside for our paper in the morning.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Lots of cooking of data
Except that recalabration of data points based on new knowledge isn't cooking data, but rather valid adjustments.
The one that many of the doubters trot out is the adjustment that was made to the global seawater temperature data sets. For decades, sea surface temperatures were measured by ships, using a temperature sensor on the seawater intake used to cool the engines. As ships crisscrossed the ocean, they would record the temperature and location as part of their normal record keeping, and these have been compiled into large data sets.
In more modern times, the sea water temperature measurement has been supplemented by data recorded by buoys, which in turn report their data automatically. The trouble is that the two data sets didn't jive. The buoy data was showing things were slightly cooler (I think on the order of 0.25 to 0.5C) than what the data from the ships showed. If you took the temperatures at face values, it would make it appear that there had been a slight global cooling of the oceans rather than an ongoing increase, the so-called "Pause."
So what happened? Well, the scientists went back and looked at how the data was collected on ships, and realized that even with properly calibrated thermometers, they would read slightly high due to factors from the ship itself as it travels through the water. The ship's hull, engine room, plumbing, etc... slightly warms the water before it hits the temperature sensor, causing them to read high.
Once these factors were calibrated out, the "pause" largely disappeared. Is this cooking the books? I don't think so, but many people claimed it was.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
True. That's because before then, people were overhunting them. So we're not killing them as badly with global warming as we were with bullets. Their populations are still expected to fall to 2/3rds of today's levels by 2050 at the current rate of course. But since we've switched to murdering them with gases instead of solids, I'm sure they'll be fine!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Because our whole civilization is based off of a VERY narrow band of world level weather patterns. The cost to adjust to even a moderate change is in the generations of world GDP. Chances that climate change will wipe out humanity? Low. Chances that unchecked climate change will set the quality of life back to the 1400's fairly possible.
You are ignoring this because you are apparently terrible at weighing the costs of long term major change. Don't feel bad this is a common human problem well documented by sociologists. For personal "proof", look at any major corporate change you have been part of or witnessed. I am guessing you are dealing with at least one of these incorrectly estimated costs in your day job right now
Even a moderate change in climate will result in about 50% of the worlds population being relocated due to our settling in low lands near water sources. Just imagine the cost of needing to move the whole of cities like Miami, New Orleans, San Fransico about 3mi inland because the sea level rose a modest .5 feet. Or the cost of the agricultural band that enables the whole economy of many southern states moving about 300 miles north. Those southern states will simply have no economy in about 40 years.
Meanwhile in Europe we have been having much too warm temperatures for this time of year. Last week it was 15C (59 F) in central Europe where I live, which is practically spring temperature today it was 8C (46F) when it should be around the freezing point.
It's not the first time that Northern America receives all the dose of winter cold from from Europe. A couple of years ago we had the same situation - record lows in the US, much too high temperatures across Europe and Eurasia.
Nevertheless, global warming is a scientifically proven fact regardless what happens in Northern America, which is only a relatively small area of our globe. The oceans which cover two-thirds of our planet are warming, this is fact. The polar ice caps are melting, also fact. The glaciers are retreating, another fact.
Please just check this website of one very credible, US agency for the details if you still feel like denying it because Trump says so:
https://climate.nasa.gov/
First of all, it is dew point, not 'due point'. Second, climate is weather trends over decades. One weather event that is outside of the norm, regardless of how many standard deviations, is not climate. It might become a data point that in time can point to a change in overall climate, but you obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
I'm sure you're just a troll, Russian, uneducated, or all of the above and this response is a waste of time. For those modding you up, the claim is the mean temperature goes up, the standard deviation goes up, hurricane strength goes up (not so much frequency), region climates will change, and temperature volatility goes up.
If science is right, we will have dramatic shifts in temperature, we will have record cold recorded, and the average temperature will be warmer. We will also observe dramatic shifts in climate per region. We're observing all of these effects.
What makes you anti-science is not that you disagree with science, but that you don't even know what the argument is.
Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
Also remember that an average global temperature rise of 1 degrees for several years is highly worrisome, and 2 degrees would be major. Those seem like such small numbers because the short term averages vary so much in comparison. The oceans are like big buffers of energy, or capacitors, they totally dwarf the affect of a short term weather event on the north east US coast and balance out the averages over time. If those ocean temperatures go up even slightly it can mean serious effects everywhere.
If you fall in the water with a PFD on, you take a breath of water and are to confused to do anything productive for half a minute or so. During that time, your PFD brings you to the surface, and after that you're very unhappy, but probably alive, and quite likely near your boat.
If you don't have a PFD on, you go further underwater, take a breath of water, and are confused for half a minute or so. During that time if you manage to actually swim, it's very unlikely it's towards the surface. In the meantime, you're breathing water like a madman. Welcome to the afterlife. Cold shock doesn't kill you: it makes you unable to prevent yourself from drowning.
The Canadian and US coast guards did a bunch of experiments with volunteers (and proper medical and dive support) in moderately cold water. Even though the volunteers knew they were going to hit cold water, so a lot of the shock was reduced, the results were pretty dramatic. Since then, both coast guards have added the concept of cold shock to boating safety and certification courses in addition to hypothermia.
If you don't know history, then STFU. History proves that science is cabalistic and prone to bias. That's why science is hard and also why eminent scientists like Freeman Dyson are not part of your stupidly concocted 97%.
In the 1970s, the theory successfully predicted a reversal of a three decade aerosol-driven cooling tend before it happened. That was the result of sufficient computing power becoming available to run detailed models, which successfully excluded the continuation of cooling.
It's also worth noting that by the mid 90s scientists were predicting that "global warming" would also include extreme cold weather events as well as heat waves -- thus the preference for the term "climate change".
Finally, if you actually look at global temperature anomaly map, it's quite evident that the cold snap we're in is a highly localized phenomenon. Almost the ENTIRE PLANET is ANOMALOUSLY HOT, except for parts of North America and Greenland.
It's easy to say a theory has no consistent predictions when you use a straw man.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't think you're familiar enough with what science actually says to be anti-science.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Nothing disproves it. Because it is not falsifiable.
And therefor not science — Trump is a heretic.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I can make 6 different predictions about a dice falling. One of them will always be "spot on".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Japanese have been eating shark fin just fine for thousands of years.
Far too often "food safety" is just "I don't remember what we did before refrigeration was invented"
I remember from History class that folks died from eating bad food or illnesses which where carried in food. We've come a long way.
Refrigeration isn't all that necessary, but other means of preserving food can be inconvenient or involve large quantities of salt, sugar, or processing to keep it safe to eat.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The Canadian and US coast guards did a bunch of experiments with volunteers (and proper medical and dive support) in moderately cold water. Even though the volunteers knew they were going to hit cold water, so a lot of the shock was reduced, the results were pretty dramatic. Since then, both coast guards have added the concept of cold shock to boating safety and certification courses in addition to hypothermia.
2 summers ago, I helped a friend deliver a 46 foot sailboat from Los Angeles to Seattle. As a recreational sailor from the Pacific Northwest, it shocked me how lax people were down there when it came to safety and safety equipment. We're used to being out in the foulest of weather, always being in proper PFDs and clothing, and tethering ourselves to the boat on anything other than a nice day. As we pulled into the fuel dock before heading north, it really shocked me that we were the only people in sight wearing any kind of reasonable safety equipment.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
New England is not the entire planet.
I strongly disagree with your assertion. I've lived in New England for nearly 40 years, so I should know.
That's an issue with Slashdot. The  characters above are degree symbols. Slashdot doesn't encode them correctly.
Now you're telling me the impact is less than half a degree ON AVERAGE over a year? What disaster exactly do we have coming from all of this??
Here's an interesting exercise I worked out last year.
Take some amount of temperature change -- say half a degree. Work out how much energy per liter that is -- there are some HVAC sites with the information you need. You'll have to make some assumptions about the humidity and air pressure, which means that your results are likely going to be off by an order of magnitude, but that's fine for our purposes.
Now here's the good bit: multiply the change in energy per liter by the number liters in the troposphere. The answer you'll get is a half a degree equals a shit-ton of energy. As in it makes humanity's entire nuclear arsenal look like a damp squib.
Here's the thing: which scale is the ideal one for thinking about this in? The one liter scale or the troposphere-wide scale? The answer is neither. It's the effect of continent-wide pressure and temperature gradients we need to be worrying about. Even a half degree's worth of thermal energy/liter can on the meso-scale alter patterns of prevailing winds and precipitation, and those are very big things indeed.
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The problem is this topic is so politicized - as is evidenced even in the commentary here - that any data comes with baggage.
It is politicized, but so what?
The solution to politicized scientific issues is to look at the consensus of the experts, plus any dissenting experts. In this case, pretty much every expert says one thing, and the dissenters are not climate experts. Seems mighty clear and apolitical to me.