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Oceans Suffocating as Huge Dead Zones Quadruple Since 1950, Scientists Warn (theguardian.com)
Ocean dead zones with zero oxygen have quadrupled in size since 1950, scientists have warned, while the number of very low oxygen sites near coasts have multiplied tenfold. From a report: Most sea creatures cannot survive in these zones and current trends would lead to mass extinction in the long run, risking dire consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on the sea. Climate change caused by fossil fuel burning is the cause of the large-scale deoxygenation, as warmer waters hold less oxygen. The coastal dead zones result from fertiliser and sewage running off the land and into the seas. The analysis, published in the journal Science, is the first comprehensive analysis of the areas and states: "Major extinction events in Earth's history have been associated with warm climates and oxygen-deficient oceans." Denise Breitburg, at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in the US and who led the analysis, said: "Under the current trajectory that is where we would be headed. But the consequences to humans of staying on that trajectory are so dire that it is hard to imagine we would go quite that far down that path." "This is a problem we can solve," Breitburg said. "Halting climate change requires a global effort, but even local actions can help with nutrient-driven oxygen decline." She pointed to recoveries in Chesapeake Bay in the US and the Thames river in the UK, where better farm and sewage practices led to dead zones disappearing.
Mankind alters his environment from the conditions that existed before our explosive population growth. There is no way the world could support 7 billion homo sapiens without side effects. Yawn.
NO WAY!
You realize that there is no such thing anymore as obvious satire.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I hear a lot of politicians blaming producers of fossil fuels exclusively while they are flushing their own crap straight into the ocean or river untreated. Clean up your own backyard first!
Or at least start at home before pointing the finger.
. . . and one that we might be able to solve by better managing our watersheds. It would be expensive, but peanuts compared so some of the issues that get all the press, and would probably have more side benefits. Unfortunately, no one has found a way to use this issue to push their unrelated political agenda, so you don't hear much about it.
We have a GOP trollbot problem that we need to deal with before we can have any kind of meaningful science debate on the merits of saving our planet. These idiots don't care and should be excluded from the conversation on that basis.
dissolved oxygen in the water is what the sea critters consume. basically warm water + ag runoff = algae which use up all this dissolved oxygen, leaving the dead zones.
The molecular bonds in water take quite a bit of energy to crack
It seems the USA's silence on climate change risks backlash from countries like Japan and Korea who might decide that eating is more important than military protection. The USA would have fewer eyes on other countries in the region (mainly China and Russia) but at least the Tweeter in Chief could take credit for reducing the military budget!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I much prefer drinking H2O2. The fish should as well as it has TWICE the oxygen.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Fish aren't breathing H2O with those gills, they're breathing O2 just like you. Only the gills work in water where your lungs work in air.
Please die coward.
Maybe that's an exaggeration, but note that nowhere in the article do they state the actual number of square km affected, only saying that it has increased by millions of sq km. That sounds like a lot, but the earth has 360 million sq km of ocean. "Millions" could be less than 1% of the total ocean by surface area. The piece does indeed read like propaganda, and I think I would count myself as a supporter of efforts to minimize greenhouse gas emissions.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If my weight continues on the current trajectory of about a pound a month increase, in 100 year I'll weigh 36,500 pounds!
Okay then, son. Your ol' Dad is ready to hit the dusty trail.
things have gotten since Trump took over. Just look at the climate change on the east coast. We have more than a dozen employees stuck at airports because of Trump. He is destroying our economy with this. Obama was correct that Trump will destroy the economy in his first year.
I honestly can't tell if you're trolling since your own link says pretty much exactly what OP said... Maybe you're confusing the algae with the rest of the water-dwelling critters?
I didn't realize Mar a Lago was offering deep sea fishing trips now. Got tired of golf after your 90th golf trip since you took office, Donny?
The article directly states that it is dead zones near shore and describes that as happening from run off and pollutants. But then they bring climate change in, which is an entirely different thing. Solving the run off and pollution problems is a demonstrably doable project. Solving warming, would do little or nothing for these coastal dead zones and is not demonstrably doable. But politics...
I much prefer drinking H2O2.
Ah, yes . . . this must be that "raw water" that is all the rage now.
But isn't "raw water" difficult to swallow, with all those rough edges, and all . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Unfortunately, they are extremely vocal with their congresscritters and they vote.
flowing of water to extract oxygen from the ocean.
Humans technically CAN breath underwater too, but gaseous versus liquid optimized respiratory systems require a much higher quantity of oxygen in the water than fish are capable of respirating off of.
Go read up on early deep sea oxygen mixes, or go watch 'The Abyss' for a mostly realistic example.
Hint: sufficiently oxygenated water can be breathed just like air. It is not the most effective way to do it and it is unpleasant evacuating it when you return to gaseous breathing, but it is possible. Fish on the other hand have the opposite problem and require a lot of oxygen/fluid flowing into their mouth and through their gills to provide sufficient oxygen to live. I am sure there is some way you could keep fish alive in air, but I am unaware of anyone attempting to do so as a proof of concept.
they have been warned. people will start to get it and change. most people dont want lifetimes of agony and sickness. no need to either. earth can sustain us just fine when we grow the fuck up!
She pointed to recoveries in Chesapeake Bay in the US and the Thames river in the UK, where better farm and sewage practices led to dead zones disappearing
The Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea are not speaking English, so their relative recoveries and regulations that led to those recoveries are left without attention.. sniff, Ineedattetion.. Anyway, the poorer parts of the world really need to have their sewage issues dealt with. Securing their water supply from contamination is a start. Then comes the agriculture, as the monitoring and social development to reduce corruption that destroys such schemes take time. Family before the Tribe, Tribe before the Nation ruins things, every time.
Not the OP you responded to, but did you see this part of your own link?
Although phytoplankton is good from an abundance of natural food and oxygen producing standpoint, it can become too abundant or excessive. When phytoplankton become so abundant that water visibility is limited to less than 12 inches there is a danger of an oxygen depletion. These heavy or dense blooms use large amounts of dissolved oxygen at night and on very cloudy/overcast, windless days causing an oxygen depletion and fish kill.
Your own source reinforces what the OP said. It also describes how fertilizer and runoff can cause this. And how sudden plankton die-offs can also cause oxygen depletion.
..." She pointed to recoveries in Chesapeake Bay in the US and the Thames river in the UK, where better farm and sewage practices led to dead zones disappearing."
So not really CLIMATE related, is it?
Oh, there's a SUPPOSED climate connection, but that's guessing.
It's the same with the Great Barrier Reef - the cataclysmic, sky-is-falling whinging is about ocean warming and coral death (never mind that corals are one of the oldest life forms on the planet, having thrived in both warmer and cooler climes as well as faster-rate-of-change situations) when in fact local changes to farming practices in Australia had an IMMEDIATE impact on the improvement of the reef.
-Styopa
Greenhouse gasses are killing the fish in the ocean? Can we have our nuclear power now?
Of all the energy sources we have available to us today nothing has a lower carbon footprint or lower cost than nuclear power. Oh, and it's the safest. Don't believe me that it's safe? Look it up yourself. What about the next Chernobyl or Fukushima? Modern reactors don't do that. That's like complaining about the safety of a new Ford Mustang because the Ford Model T had no seat belts or airbags.
Even if a new nuclear power plant might blow up like Chernobyl that's still better than the certainty of an ecological collapse if we do nothing.
What of solar power? We can do that too. Wind? Of course. If we are going to shutdown all coal power and old (and supposedly unsafe) nuclear then we'd need to be building a new gigawatt scale nuclear power plant every week somewhere in the world. Again, can we do this with wind and solar instead? No. Because the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine. What of smart grids and battery packs? Sure, and they'd be great if mated with nuclear power too.
An "all the above" energy plan needs to include nuclear power or the lights go out.
From the tamu.edu link you posted:
When phytoplankton become so abundant that water visibility is limited to less than 12 inches there is a danger of an oxygen depletion. These heavy or dense blooms use large amounts of dissolved oxygen at night and on very cloudy/overcast, windless days causing an oxygen depletion and fish kill. This problem is often a consequence of overfertilizing, overfeeding, or excessive nutrients from livestock, fields, or septic lines.
Jesus. Don't post a link unless it supports your argument.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, apparently there is ... H2O is a molecule ... it doesn't like to come apart, in fact it requires a fair bit of energy to do so.
If with little energy you could split water into hydrogen and oxygen, you would have unlimited cheap energy.
When they talk about oxygen in water, they don't mean the part that makes up the molecules, but actual O2 which is dissolved in the water. You don't have pools of liquid hydrogen, you have pools of water which has no oxygen dissolved into it. Gills don't crack water into oxygen and hydrogen, they absord the oxygen which is dissolved in the water. The actual water molecules are unchanged. No dissolved oxygen, nothing for the fish to breathe.
So, yeah, the splitting of a fucking molecule what you're missing.
If the ocean had a tendency to just break into hydrogen and oxygen, the fucking thing would have exploded by now. Molecular bonds don't work that way.
Do you fucking people not take basic science any more?
1% of total area of the ocean by surface area would actually be A LOT.
Killing of 1% of humans would mean to kill 75 million people.
Get a sense of scale.
If your raw water had enough H2O2 in it you might avoid contracting typhoid.
I love it when these people say, "since..." such and such time, when we had no real reliable measurements to compare against.
Yea, the ocean hasn't warmed more than 0.1 degree in the past 50 years, way less than has happened in the past 10,000-100000 years, and life still exists ! See https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/04/new-study-from-scripps-puts-a-crimp-on-claims-of-recent-rising-ocean-temperatures/
The paltering claim that it is because of oxygen outgassing due to higher temps is laughable.
1. Only 0.1 degrees of ocean warming in the past 50 years
2. Just as you heat water and oxygen comes out, so does carbon dioxide, which can explain some of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere.
The real reason is pollution from fertilizer increasing the BOD of the coastal seas.
But the consequences to humans of staying on that trajectory are so dire that it is hard to imagine we would go quite that far down that path.
Has she been hiding under a rock the last centuries?
Do you fucking people not take basic science any more?
Apparently not.
Fertilizer creates zones near the shore. Warmer water is being tagged as the cause for low oxygen zones further out in the ocean (and larger than the shore zones).
"Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report: 2015 to 2019" -- just as accurate as the trusty Farmers' Almanac.
Two areas: open ocean and coastal dead zones. It's in the article, if you bothered to read it.
All I see is people pointing out real pollution (fertilizer runoff) is the problem, not climate change (and the article supports that).
Just like I have often pointed out CO2 production is not a problem, because it's contributing minimally to climate change and is not a pollutant - plants love it. But since all of the focus has been on reducing CO2 output, a lot of focus has been taken away from real pollution... like fertilizer runoff.
That's right, it's people like YOU that are directly responsible for the unchecked rise in real pollution and therefore the zero oxygen zones. That's why I get a little short with you warming alarmists, because you refuse to see the lasting harm you are doing to the environment. I am a true environmentalist, in that I care more about the environment than looking like I care about the environment.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You do realize that jellyfish thrive in low oxygen right? And that's why there's so many of them vs. fish?
This has got to be poe. Please don't tell me there's people this stupid out there.
This has got to be poe. Please don't tell me there's people this stupid out there.
This has got to be poe. Please don't tell me there's people this stupid out there.
This has got to be poe. Please don't tell me there's people this stupid out there.
This has got to be poe. Please don't tell me there's people this stupid out there.
"Climate change caused by fossil fuel burning is the cause"
I'm all for less pollution and more environmentally friendly everything, and also less global population, however this statement is wildly speculative.
Maybe you could try reading the summary? As it clearly calls out two different types of zone - with different causes.
Being a life long FL resident and environmental activist I can tell you that those abundant quantities of (certain) fish were achieved at great political and economic costs. Large numbers of Jellyfish are generally regarded as an indicator of ocean instability rather than health. There are high numbers of large game fish species which are now difficult to find in FL waters where they were abundant just 50 years ago. Grouper were almost whipped out but through conservation efforts and laws they are starting to recover. FL has few healthy natural reefs left and many of the species that rely upon reefs are rare too.
Look at the issue with Cod in New England where local fisherman use anecdotal evidence of seeing huge schools of Cod to justify expanded catch limits while actual hard scientific research data has proven beyond doubt that there is indeed low numbers of Cod compared to even 10 years ago. Anecdotes from fisherman aren't worth squat when it comes to maintaining and preserving the largest ecosystem on the planet.
I highly recommend actually participate in scientific efforts to count fish populations, its fun, educational, they need help and you will certainly see that marine biologists love nothing more than spending time at sea. FL has many great university and conservancy programs where you can volunteer and learn, we need you!
The summary consists of 1480 characters. While that is far less than the much quoted 640k, that ought to be enough for everyone, they exceeded your comprehension.
Today you learned nothing.
Unfortunately, cowards tend to live relatively long, comfortable (if unfulfilling) lives.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
I swear these trolls are getting recruited from 4chan
This isn't killing 1% of humans, it is making 1% of the land area uninhabitable.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Do you seriously not recognize a Trump parody when you read one?
Direct the fertilizer polluted waters to peat lands instead and they will bind even more carbon from the atmosphere than before.
If you don't have bogs nearby then create one: choose a suitable area where a few low dams would trap water and create hundreds of sq mi of knee deep lake.
... the statement that "Climate change caused by fossil fuel burning is the cause of the large-scale deoxygenation". There is and has always been "Climate change" for many reasons. In the 1600's the world and its oceans were warmer than they are today and I'm fairly certain that there was less fossil fuel burning that there is today. Let's not perpetuate misinformation. That being said, I am 100% in favor of eliminating fossil fuel burning as a source of energy and all over the world we're making great strides already. Norway crossed the 50% mark in 2017 where there are now more Electric and Hybrid cars than there are gasoline/diesel ("Lillyhammer" anyone?). Petroleum/Oil products are also used extensively in the production of synthetic products (plastics, fabrics, adhesives, paints etc.) many of which wind up in our oceans as well. Mankind is a terrible polluter and destroyer of environments - climate change? It happened before us and it'll happen after us. All the other stuff we do to our environment - not so much.
Never attribute to stupidity what can be perfectly explained by trolling. Or does the latter imply the former ?
TFA says, "the level of oxygen in all ocean waters is falling, with 2% – 77bn tonnes – being lost since 1950."
A 2% world-wide decrease in ocean oxygen driven by temperature rise would require an average temperature rise somewhere around 1.5C - 2C. According to this, ocean temperature has risen 0.1C in the past century.
TFA has a map showing areas of open ocean with oxygen content lower than 2 mg/liter. According to this, heating seawater to 50C reduces oxygen content to about 5 mg/liter. I'm not sure you could heat it enough to get it down to 2 mg/liter before it started to boil.
We have a GOP trollbot problem
Yeah, damn all these GOP trollbots who are shutting down university lectures they don't agree with. Oh wait...
It is the job of government to think long term. Even if that is their job how can they realistically do that as leadership changes due to elections? Businesses would naturally have a much longer term outlook.
and ideally to show their work.
Problem is, they can't even do that. Governments have been among some of the worst entities for being transparent with data or how data is arrived at.
Of course for government to make decisions like that, you first have to get people to believe in the scientific method and related fields.
Why would they when supposed real scientists do not? They are also altering data sets, massaging data to fit conclusions, laughing off people who want to review work. In such an environment you can't just say "trust the scientific method" because it does not apply any more.
Mr Trump has proclaimed thåat he is going to Make America Great Again without really defining what that means in a quantifiable way. In my opinion a great country would do the math, protect the rights of both the majority and the minority
Since when has a politician really been quantifiable? By the way, you and Mr Trump agree that he should be protecting the rights of the majority and the minority. That is what he has been doing...
And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
dissolved oxygen in the water is what the sea critters consume.
The phytoplankton consume oxygen at night. During the day they produce oxygen. Also, if the phytoplankton all die off at once then the fungi and bacteria that consume the phytoplankton also consume oxygen.
Yes, and the areas farther out (and larger) have had their O2 reduced by about 2%.
Much the same effect can be had on land (O2 content reduced by 2%) by going from sea level to ~175 meters above sea level. If you live in a major metropolitan area, you can probably get that by getting in the elevator of a moderately tall skyscraper and going to the top....
Alternately, if you want to find out what it's like to lose 16% (8x as much loss as TFA is talking about) of the O2 you're used to, you can fly to Denver....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Which is pretty scary in itself.
If we randomly pick 1% of the world's land area and make it "uninhabitable" at a stroke, then that will affect, on average, 1% of the world's population. That's 75 million people who are going to be either dead, or urgently looking for new homes.
On the plus side, the oceans are now experiencing a lot more precognition.
With the sort of stupid you see out on social media... It's really really really hard to tell nowadays.
It is the very existence of humans in growing numbers that is changing the environment and changing this or that is only a patch.
E Proelio Veritas.
nihilists and propagandists to come out of the woodwork.
My house is full of bottles and jars of Chlorella. I started playing with it a few years ago when I read a soviet paper that said 8 square meters was sufficient to keep a person alive (O2 + CO2 removal). It seems to like baking soda a lot.
Does this mean we have vast seas of liquid hydrogen at the bottom of our oceans? By what chemical process is the oxygen extracted from the water?
What makes you think it is random? Are you arguing that the piece didn't deliberately slant the information towards alarmism? You think it is not biased?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I think all of you should send your money to that guy.
I think it's called anerobic decomposition...well, after stuff rotting faster than fresh water brings in more Oxygen.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The problem is that the fertilizer related dead zones are in some of the most productive parts of the ocean. River estuaries, continental shelves, inland seas etc.
History has shown over and over that excessively shitting in your water leads to bad results but there are always people screaming that it is OK to put the outhouse beside the well and it would cost too much to move it and then going into denial about accepted science such as the germ theory of disease.
'Tis all a conspiracy of the soap manufacturers, sewage digger unions and besides it is too hard to wash my hands, little well think about where my shit is going.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Nope. In fact, most businesses are hindered by a lack of long-term perspective
Actually I don't think that is true of MOST companies. Many companies are in fact thinking 10-20 years out.
Even the ones that are not are easily thinking more than two years out though; and that is a longer term than governments are really capable of thinking about these days.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is it dire enough to make energy decisions that aren't market competitive? Certainly not going to happen on this administration's watch
It's been scientifically proven those big cargo ships from China, that pump their emissions directly into the water, are the undisputed cause of this mess.
All of that would be wonderful knowledge for the article to impart.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I, of course, did not read the article but would think that for anyone educated and curious would be aware of these problems caused by excessive shit going down stream and poisoning lakes and oceans. The problem is that any fixes are going to take some sacrifices, slightly more expensive food, fewer lush green lawns and golf courses, housing development that takes into consideration runoff and I'm sure other stuff.
It's an old problem, people dump stuff and think it goes away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If you had it your way, both 02 and CO2 would be regulated as pollutants. Then they can get us coming and going.
You have to do a bit of work for your data.
"these dead zones have expanded dramatically, increasing by millions of square kilometres since 1950, roughly equivalent to the area of the European Union"
Area of the European Union = 4.5 million sq km
Area of the oceans = 360 million sq km
So an increase of 1.3% since 1950.
I didn't even have to look. If it's green it eats CO2 and shits O2.
"In coastal regions, fertiliser, manure and sewage pollution cause algal blooms and when the algae decompose oxygen is sucked out of the water. However, in some places, the algae can lead to more food for fish and increase catches around the dead zones."
As for the rest, Guardian readers can generally be assumed to understand that excessively shitting in your water leads to bad results. Fans of Fox News, maybe not so much.
There is more than one cause for the decline in the oxygen content of the water; it's not just oceanic warming. Read the article.
You have made the idiotic assumption that land and sea animals absorb oxygen in the same way.
There are a surprising number of comments here which show a lack of reading comprehension, a lack of understanding of basic science, or both (not that I would expect any Slashdotter to go as far as to read the paper in Science, let alone be able to understand it).
Quality troll, there appear to be a lot of people taking it at face value.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It eats CO2, and grows quickly. But when it dies, quite quickly as well, dissolved O2 is used up in the decay process. If it shits O2, there would be extra O2 not a lack of it...
The quoted part of the article does not say the same thing that you said. In fact, the part you just quoted makes it sound like a wash.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Roughly :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm not arguing with any of that, I'm arguing that the article is shit. You are wise to have not read it.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
0/10 for arithmetic. Please see me.
In other words, we need to keep the article from becoming runoff?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So climate change is listed as the culprit in the face of, "The coastal dead zones result from fertiliser and sewage running off the land and into the seas."
*raises hand* How does climate change produce fertilizer and sewage?