[Newsbot]

Title: Phytoplankton vanishing from warming oceans
Category: Environmental
Posted By: Hyack
Date: 2010-07-28 15:26:56
Canadian

[GreenTiger]

This may not sound like it but it is very serious bad news.

[Strutz]

Agreed.

$1:

In fact, some people have proposed adding more nutrients to ocean water to boost phytoplankton growth in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere

No, don't try "adding" anything. These would be man-made additives which have caused enough trouble already.

[Zipperfish]

Good. I was sick of those phytoplankton anyways.

[Proculation]

Strutz Strutz:

Agreed.

$1:

In fact, some people have proposed adding more nutrients to ocean water to boost phytoplankton growth in an effort to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere

No, don't try "adding" anything. These would be man-made additives which have caused enough trouble already.

I agree. At that level, the nature is balancing itself.

They say warmer water tends to stabilize the mixing of the ocean, thus depriving the phytoplankton from nutrients. From that effect, they convert less carbon dioxide to oxygen.

I understand the theory but from my scientific background, I learned that entropy tends to always increase according to the second law of thermodynamics. Forcing a destabilized environment so big could provoke a more rapid rate towards instability that could inverse the situation. That would mean too much phytoplankton and the destabilization of the sea fauna.

[Dragom]

Theres a theory somewhere that green phytoplankton wage unholy and eternal war against a pink anaerobic bacteria that produces Oxygen Sulfide in contact with sunlight that is the bane of all complex life on the planet.

In a way nature might balance as the world grows to hot and then the oceans turn pink and all that oxygen sulfide is released into the atmosphere cooling the planet to frosty level before it becomes to cold for pink and green once again takes the lead.

Of course on a more rational and sane level, all advanced life would be irradiated from above and below the waves and we'll have to rest our mammalian hopes on the sturdy shoulders of the common rat once more.

So ya, letting nature take it's course might be a mistake.

[DrCaleb]

Dragom Dragom:

So ya, letting nature take it's course might be a mistake.

It's too bad we didn't have someone pointing out to us for the last 40 years how our disregard for polluting the environment would come back to bite us in the ass. Someone like David Suzuki for example.

[Zipperfish]

Nature will take its course regardless. That course may not be amenable to continued Homo sapiens domination of the biospehere, but that is not something that nature takes into consideration.

From a biological perspective, what is going on with Earth is similar to what goes on with yeast cells in beer-brewing carboy. The ideal environment is created for the yeast cells--lots of food (sugar), nice and warm. Yeast cells piss alcohol and fart CO2, so as the waste products accumulate in their atmosphere, things get uncomfortable. But they will just continue to expand until all the food is gone and the environment is not longer hospitable to yeast life. On the plus side, we humans get a damn fine beer out of it!

[andyt]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Nature will take its course regardless. That course may not be amenable to continued Homo sapiens domination of the biospehere, but that is not something that nature takes into consideration.

From a biological perspective, what is going on with Earth is similar to what goes on with yeast cells in beer-brewing carboy. The ideal environment is created for the yeast cells--lots of food (sugar), nice and warm. Yeast cells piss alcohol and fart CO2, so as the waste products accumulate in their atmosphere, things get uncomfortable. But they will just continue to expand until all the food is gone and the environment is not longer hospitable to yeast life. On the plus side, we humans get a damn fine beer out of it!

I'm not disagreeing with you or anything. But, unlike the yeast, it may not be our effluents that are primarily warming the oceans. That's the thing with AGW, the A part seems a little harder to demonstrate. But it doesn't really matter, I think we will reproduce ourselves to destruction if all else fails. The capitalist system just doesn't seem to know how to handle a steady state situation. (Better yet, IMO, a decline back to 50's levels of population).

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

The capitalist system just doesn't seem to know how to handle a steady state situation. (Better yet, IMO, a decline back to 50's levels of population).

You're right that capitalism isn't up to that particular challenge. When it comes to the necessity of having to kill off a few billion people there's just no substitute for an atheistic and amoral communist/socialist government.

[Zipperfish]

andyt andyt:

I'm not disagreeing with you or anything. But, unlike the yeast, it may not be our effluents that are primarily warming the oceans. That's the thing with AGW, the A part seems a little harder to demonstrate. But it doesn't really matter, I think we will reproduce ourselves to destruction if all else fails. The capitalist system just doesn't seem to know how to handle a steady state situation. (Better yet, IMO, a decline back to 50's levels of population).

AGW is just one of myriad of existential threats to the species. Personally, I'm worried about the fish, as I've said many times before. The ultimate measure is human appropriation of net primary production (NPP):

$1:

Primary production is the production of organic compounds from atmospheric or aquatic carbon dioxide, principally through the process of photosynthesis, with chemosynthesis being much less important. All life on earth is directly or indirectly reliant on primary production.

As we appropriate more NPP (a necessary precondition of increased human organization and population), we take it from other living things, leading to a decrease in biodiversity and (if you're an alrmist!) local and evetually global collapses and reorganizations of ecosystems (see work of C.S. Holling for example).

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

andyt andyt:

The capitalist system just doesn't seem to know how to handle a steady state situation. (Better yet, IMO, a decline back to 50's levels of population).

You're right that capitalism isn't up to that particular challenge. When it comes to the necessity of having to kill off a few billion people there's just no substitute for an atheistic and amoral communist/socialist government.

Crap. The die off will not be political. I'm sure the military industrial complex will play a big role tho.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

Crap. The die off will not be political. I'm sure the military industrial complex will play a big role tho.

Warnings of over-population have been around for a good two hundred years and where things are right now the global population is expected to peak at around 9 billion in 2050 and then start declining all on its own from there. Meaning that over-population is effectively a non-problem and the best thing to do about something that is not a problem is nothing.

[BartSimpson]

By the way, the decline of plankton in the oceans likely has a hell of a lot more to do with the billions of tons of pollution that get poured into the world's oceans every year than it does with global temperatures going up a fraction of a degree.

If anyone wants to fight to force China, Russia, India, and etc. to adopt the same clean water standards of Europe and North America, sign me up.

Conversely, anyone proposing that Europe and North America 'do something' about global warming while China, Russia, India, and etc. don't do squat can kiss my hairy red a**.

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Warnings of over-population have been around for a good two hundred years and where things are right now the global population is expected to peak at around 9 billion in 2050 and then start declining all on its own from there. Meaning that over-population is effectively a non-problem and the best thing to do about something that is not a problem is nothing.

We've already got the west whining about how it won't be able to support the old people, that we need continued population growth to maintain our standard of living, and various schemes proposed how to deal with that. So what happens when the whole world is losing people - capitalists, nationalists and others will be driving themselves into a frenzy about how we need to take radical steps to keep the population increasing.