Is the ocean broken?

Just to let you know, the pheromone that bees use to signal a swarm attack smells like bananas, so be careful what you eat before handling bees.

-Will (Dragonfly)

 

Allergic. I didn't think they attack when swarming. They will if they feel threatened.
Swarming bees: what’s that all about, and why do they do that? https://www.buzzaboutbees.net/swarmingbees.html

 

Another version.

 

Yet another way to verify that the oceans are warming.

Climate change: Earthquake 'hack' reveals scale of ocean warming

A team of researchers has developed a very different approach to measure ocean temperatutre that exploits the fact that the speed of sound in seawater depends on temperature. The new approach involves using the naturally produced sound waves that occur when an underwater earthquake strikes.

By measuring how long these slow-moving signals took to travel across the waters from Indonesia to a monitoring station on the island of Diego Garcia, they were able to work out the changes in temperature for the whole of the ocean over the 10-year period.

 

Now that's cool. (No pun intended, but the pun is kinda funny, right?)

-Will (Dragonfly)

 

Any spotted owls left after all the arsons? Doubt it.

 

I found that video a peeling!

 

This one hits the spot.

 

Good for removing lime deposits and hard water stains. Dissolves coral reefs?

 

Climate change impacts on banana yields around the world https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6774771/
Climate change impacts on banana yields around the world
(Varun Varma and Daniel P. Bebber)
"Bananas are widely cultivated in tropical and sub-tropical regions around the world, where they can provide a substantial proportion of affordable calories, dietary diversity and income9–11. Bananas are also ubiquitous in their availability in non-producing regions through international trade, which accounts for 15% of global production12. This international trade supplements nutritional diversity in non-producing countries, while making a large contribution to local and national economies in producing countries. For example, bananas and their derived products constitute the second largest agricultural export commodity of Ecuador and Costa Rica13. Globally, bananas (together with plantains) are amongst the top ten crops in terms of area of cultivation, yield and calories produced10."

"Firstly, the small number of published studies, coupled with small sample sizes within them and the limited breadth of environmental conditions assessed, are inadequate to derive generalisable estimates of optimal conditions for a crop so widely cultivated across the world. Second, estimates of productivity-climate relationship parameters have not been rigorously validated against large quantities of observed production data. Consequently, the representation of bananas in existing crop models is likely to be based on abstractions derived from shared plant characteristics1, which may not accurately predict effects of climate change on productivity."

"Our hindcast analysis, which utilised the regional climate-yield models, suggests that climate change over the recent past (1961 to 2016) has had a net benefit on global banana yields (Fig 2a), which have increased at a rate of 0.024 T.ha-1.y-1 (95% CI = ± 0.006 T.ha-1.y-1). Over the 56 years of the hindcast assessment this translates to an average global yield increase of 1.37 T.ha-1 (95% CI = ± 0.33 T.ha-1)."

Some interesting stuff here. Also, some ingesting word play. The article is trying to show how continued warming will harm banana production by 2050, but they say, thus far, banana yields have continued to increase since 1961 due to warming global climate. However, if it continues to warm, it will pass the optimum and "Regional model based forecasting revealed that by 2050, past positive effects of climate change on average global banana yields, though likely to continue, will be of lower magnitude. Yield increases could decline to 0.59 T.ha-1 (95% CI = ± 1.38 T.ha-1) and 0.19 T.ha-1 (95% CI = ± 1.86 T.ha-1) under the RCP 4.5 and more extreme RCP 8.5 climate scenarios, respectively, relative to yields modelled using long-term climate averages for 1970-2000 (Fig 2b and 2c; Supplementary tables S5 and S6)."
Note that the researchers expect increases in production to continue, just increasing at a slower rate. They do not expect production rates to decrease, only the rate of increase will decrease. Follow what I'm saying? Bad news for the banana? I think not.

Good news, however, for the prickly pear cactus, as a third rate competitor with bananas. If production rates begin to slow in the banana industry, perhaps the prickly pear cactus has a chance to break into the market and grab hungry market shares. Just a thought. The prickly pear cactus is delicious.
Saguaro cactus trap carbon. Can we use them to fight global warming? https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/883348002
"Garvie says all common species of cacti remove carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it in the earth as calcium carbonate.

You may have come across some of it when gardening. It’s called caliche and the desert plants have been producing it for millions of years."

“Our desert cacti are just like a coral reef,” says William Peachey, a saguaro researcher who discussed Garvie’s research during the annual meeting of the Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society earlier this year."

-Will (Dragonfly)

 

Prickly pear is abundant here; not on my property but throughout most of Florida. Served in the Mexican restaurants.

 

Caliche - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliche