Ocean News

Discussion in 'All Things Boats & Boating' started by ImaginaryNumber, Oct 8, 2015.

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  1. ImaginaryNumber
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    Venomous sea creatures on the rise thanks to climate change | National Geographic

    Poisonous or venomous aquatic animals, dangerous species whose ranges might shift polewards due to warmer water include lionfish, sea snakes, crown-of-thorns starfish and a number of different types of venomous jellies.

    Species may not necessarily see an increase in abundance, but will see their ranges shift as waters become too warm closer to the equator, pushing them northwards or southwards following their ideal temperature niches.

    One group of animals that are most likely to increase both in range and abundance due to warmer waters and changes in the acidity level of the ocean are jellyfish, including both the deadly irukandji and the box jellyfish —possibly the most venomous in the world pound-for-pound.

    The news isn't all bad. Researchers report that the abundance of some of the most poisonous snakes in the world, on land or water, is decreasing worldwide.

    The study was published in Wilderness & Environmental Medicine.

    Another study, published earlier this year, focused on the effect climate change might have on poisonous and venomous land creatures.
     
  2. SamSam
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  3. ImaginaryNumber
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    Climate change is exacerbating world conflicts, says Red Cross president | The Guardian

    According to Peter Maurer, who is head of the International Committee of the Red Cross:

    “When I think about our engagement in sub-Saharan Africa, in Somalia, in other places of the world, I see that climate change has already had a massive impact on population movement, on fertility of land. It’s moving the border between pastoralist and agriculturalist.”

    The impact of climate change in the Pacific was “enormous.”

    “It’s very obvious that some of the violence that we are observing … is directly linked to the impact of climate change and changing rainfall patterns.”

    “When [populations] start to migrate in big numbers it leads to tensions between the migrating communities and the local communities. This is very visible in contexts like the Central African Republic, like Mali and other places.”

    Maurer says it is up to governments, not humanitarians, to develop the policies needed to deal with the “root causes” of climate change.
     
  4. ImaginaryNumber
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    Why Southeast Asia and Australia’s Coral Reefs Became So Rich in Species | New York Times

    Why is it that for every one species of fish in the Caribbean coral reefs there are three or more species in Southeast Asia’s Coral Triangle or Australia’s Great Barrier Reef?

    Scientists have found that biodiversity in a region today is highly related to the age and number of colonizations it has experienced. The Central Indo-Pacific is so diverse largely because many old lineages have settled there. The Caribbean region has not been as stable over geological time, so it is does not have the same abundance of diversity.

    Due to climate change, over-exploitation, and pollution, many reefs are under severe pressure.

    If/when we loose our reefs it could take them an enormous amount of time (by humans standards) to recover.

    The paper was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
     
  5. ImaginaryNumber
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    Trump administration sees a 7-degree rise in global temperatures by 2100 | Washington Post

    The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued a statement saying they expect the planet to warm 7°F/4°C by the end of this century, assuming business as usual.

    At those temperatures many coral reefs would dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans, parts of Manhattan and Miami would be underwater, and extreme heat waves would routinely hit large parts of the world.

    The report was written to justify President Trump’s decision to freeze federal fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. While the proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says that the policy would add just a very small drop to a very big, hot bucket.
     
  6. ImaginaryNumber
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    Climate change is moving fish around faster than laws can handle, study says | Washington Post

    According to a new study in Science, in response to climate change, vital fishery stocks such as salmon and mackerel are migrating without paperwork.

    Fisheries are critical to food security, jobs and economic stability, and many are assigned to specific nations by international treaties.

    The study concludes that on average commercial fish are moving into new territories at a rate of 43 miles per decade, a pace expected to continue and accelerate.

    The study predicts that areas with unclear international jurisdiction will be targets for conflict. Earlier this summer, in the South China Sea, fishing rights were contested by Filipino officials who say the Chinese coast guard is confiscating fish catches in disputed areas.
     
  7. ImaginaryNumber
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    New study reconciles a dispute about how fast global warming will happen | The Guardian

    A critical question has been how sensitive is the climate to being forced by increases in CO2 in the atmosphere.

    Alarmists say that a doubling of CO2 from per-industrial levels (from 280 ppm to 560 ppm) might increase temperatures by as much as 4°C; skeptics suggest 2°C is a more reasonable figure.

    If the deniers are correct, we still have a large carbon budget to play with; if alarmists are correct we could blow through our carbon budget by 2030.

    There are two critical flaws in the contrarians’ preferred so-called ‘energy balance model’ approach: they doesn’t account for the fact that Earth’s sensitivity can change over time, for example as large ice sheets continue to melt, or that the planet responds differently to different climate ‘forcings’.

    A recent study, published by the American Geophysical Union, took those questions into consideration. It concluded the Earth's energy equilibrium will be reached long after carbon dioxide levels have stopped rising. Meaning that once our carbon pollution levels decline close to zero (hopefully by mid-to-late century), the planet will start to reach that new equilibrium. The slower feedbacks like melting ice will continue to kick in, and temperatures will rise by 1.9–4.6°C, most likely 2.9°C, consistent with mainstream climate science estimates.
     
  8. ImaginaryNumber
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    Oil Companies in Alaska Refreeze Melting Permafrost to Keep Drilling | EcoWatch

    It is ironic that climate change is making oil exploration harder on the increasingly less-frozen permafrost.

    Warming temperatures cause challenges for the oil industry because it builds pipelines and buildings on top of permafrost, and those structures become less stable when that permafrost melts.

    Arctic Foundations makes thermosyphons, which are metal tubes filled with a refrigerant. These are partly buried in permafrost, where they pull heat from the ground to keep it frozen.

    Beaded Stream makes a thermometer that can be stuck into the permafrost and attached to a solar-powered box that sends temperature readings to the Internet via satellite, so that oil companies can start work in the autumn as soon as the ground is cold enough.
     
  9. ImaginaryNumber
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    Coastal Pacific Oxygen Levels Now Plummet Once A Year | National Public Radio

    West Coast waters now have a hypoxia season, or dead-zone season, just like the wildfire season.

    A hypoxia event will kill everything that can't swim away—animals like crabs, sea cucumbers and sea stars.

    The hypoxia season hits Oregon, Washington and California waters in the summer and can last from a few of days to a couple of months. Some years it only affects a few square miles of ocean; other years it's thousands of square miles.

    Hypoxia was rarely seen throughout the 20th century, but it's been seen almost annually since the year 2002.

    Two major reasons: The first is that the ocean is warmer now, and warmer water holds less oxygen. And the second reason is that warmer surface waters acts as an insulating blanket, inhibiting colder low-oxygen water from rising up and mixing with oxygen in the surf.
     
  10. ImaginaryNumber
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    How Humans Caused Climate Change On The Moon... And Why We Can't Stop It | Outer Places

    The Apollo 15 and 17 astronauts discovered the Moon was heating up more quickly than anticipated.

    Temperature probes showed higher heat increases in the area surrounding the Apollo landing sites. Even stranger, the anomaly has persisted for years after the Apollo missions returned to Earth.

    After looking at video recordings of the lunar surface taken during the missions and comparing the heat data from the probes, researchers realized that the heat increases were happening first at the surface, then deeper in the ground.

    "Images of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera over the two landing sites show that the regolith [loose, unconsolidated rocks] on the paths of the astronauts turned darker, lowering the albedo. We suggest that, as a result of the astronauts' activities, solar heat intake by the regolith increased slightly on average, and that resulted in the observed warming."
     
  11. ImaginaryNumber
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    Bitcoin’s popularity has a downside: It’s an energy glutton that could hurt Earth’s climate, study finds | Washington Post

    Because bitcoin is a currency not maintained by banks but by a network of individuals, it relies on a technology called blockchain that is decentralized and depends on a vast number of users, called miners, to compute a record of transactions. The computer users who do the laborious calculations are paid in bitcoin.

    The way bitcoin is set up, mining each subsequent bitcoin becomes computationally more difficult, requiring more powerful computers and, thus, more energy use.

    According to a study published in Nature Climate Change, bitcoin use probably releases about 69 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions — comparable with the emissions of a country like Austria, which has a population of nearly 9 million people.

    Projected increase of bitcoins could release enough CO2 to push global temperatures over 2°C.
     
  12. ImaginaryNumber
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    Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds | The Guardian

    Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970.

    “If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done.”

    A report produced by World Wildlife Fund finds that the growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life.

    Other recent analyses have revealed that humankind has destroyed 83% of all mammals and half of plants since the dawn of civilisation and that, even if the destruction were to end now, it would take 5-7 million years for the natural world to recover.
     
  13. ImaginaryNumber
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    Startling new research finds large buildup of heat in the oceans, suggesting a faster rate of global warming | Washington Post

    Over the past quarter-century, Earth’s oceans have retained 60 percent more heat each year than scientists previously had thought.

    The new research does not measure the ocean’s temperature directly. Rather, it measures the volume of gases, specifically oxygen and carbon dioxide, that have escaped the ocean in recent decades and headed into the atmosphere as it heats up.

    Because of the increased heat already stored in the ocean, the maximum emissions that the world can produce while still avoiding a warming of two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) will have to be reduced by 25 percent.

    The study was published in Nature.
     
  14. ImaginaryNumber
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    Climate change could trigger volcanic eruptions across the world | Independent

    Volcanic eruptions alter the climate by spewing smoke and ash into the atmosphere, but scientists now also think the opposite might be true – changes in climate could actually cause volcanic eruptions.

    As the climate becomes warmer, ice melting from mountains removes support from their slopes, potentially leading to landslides and collapse.

    Volcanoes are a pressurised system, and if pressure is removed by ice melting and landslides, volcanic activity can increase.

    Two papers on the topic were published in Geophysical Research Abstracts.
     

  15. SamSam
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