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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.
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
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.
It's a more complex problem than you might think. I just listened to an interview with a farmer locally who outlined a problem with watershed protection -- property taxes. At least in this state, there's no way for the farmer to escape property taxes on land they take out of production to limit or inhibit runoff -- it's taxed as if it was productive farmland.
I think another element of this, which is much bigger, is of course commodity agriculture. Farmers don't use any more chemicals than they have to (they're not free), but they do use as much as is necessary to hit yield numbers, and much of this is driven by the prices that Cargill or ADM will pay.
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...
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).
..." 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.
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.
So there are two causes for two different, but related, effects. You didn't even have to RTFA, it was in the summary.