Our Oceans are Under Attack

myark · Dec 7, 2014

What to Do When You’re Running Out of Time — Hope in a Time of Climate Change

Read more: http://www.utne.com/environment/hope-in-a-time-of-climate-change.aspx#ixzz3LBYrUJPn

There have undoubtedly been stable periods in human history, but you and your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents never lived through one, and neither will any children or grandchildren you may have or come to have. Everything has been changing continuously, profoundly — from the role of women to the nature of agriculture. For the past couple of hundred years, change has been accelerating in both magnificent and nightmarish ways.

Yet when we argue for change, notably changing our ways in response to climate change, we’re arguing against people who claim we’re disrupting a stable system. They insist that we’re rocking the boat unnecessarily.

I say: rock that boat. It’s a lifeboat; maybe the people in it will wake up and start rowing. Those who think they’re hanging onto a stable order are actually clinging to the wreckage of the old order, a ship already sinking, that we need to leave behind.

The oceans are changing fast, and for the worse. Fish stocks are dying off, as are shellfish. In many acidified oceanic regions, their shells are actually dissolving or failing to form, which is one of the scariest, most nightmarish things I’ve ever heard. So don’t tell me that we’re rocking a stable boat on calm seas. The glorious 10,000-year period of stable climate in which humanity flourished and then exploded to overrun the Earth and all its ecosystems is over.

ImaginaryNumber · Dec 7, 2014

Yobarnacle said: ↑

I promised this photo couple months ago.
Foot isn't quite in my mouth. Hurried picture shooter wouldn't wait till my foot reached my chin.
Nearly there though.
Good health from balanced diet.
Click to expand...

If I tried that I would make some chiropractor a wealthy person.

ImaginaryNumber · Dec 7, 2014

A Chronicler of Warnings Denied
Naomi Oreskes Imagines the Future History of Climate Change
New York Times

Naomi Oreskes is a historian of science at Harvard, but she is attracting wide notice these days for a work of science fiction.

“The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future,” written with Erik M. Conway, takes the point of view of a historian in 2393 explaining how “the Great Collapse of 2093” occurred...

Q. YOU ARE A GEOLOGIST AND HISTORIAN BY TRADE. HOW DID CLIMATE CHANGE BECOME THE CENTER OF YOUR RESEARCH?

A. Like many people, I used to think the scientific community was divided about climate change. Then in 2004, as part of a book I was doing on oceanography, I did a search of 1,000 articles published in peer-reviewed scientific literature in the previous 10 years.

I asked how many showed evidence that disagreed with the statement made in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report: “Most of the observed warming over the past 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.” I found that none did. Zero...

It ignited a firestorm. I started getting hate mail. Letters arrived at my university demanding I be fired...

WHAT ACTUALLY WAS HAPPENING?

I didn’t know it, but when I’d used the word “consensus,” I’d hit a land mine. For those who claim that climate change is a myth, the term “consensus” will — boom! — trigger a backlash. That’s because their strategy is based on spreading the idea that the science is still unsettled. Why? Because if you don’t know for sure there’s a problem, you can’t justify doing anything about it...

I did some digging of my own. I learned that my critic was among an informal group of physicists who’d risen to prominence in weapons and rocketry during the Cold War. Though none were climatologists, they became key figures in climate change denial. On the various issues where members of the group had been active — acid rain, ozone depletion and climate change — there appeared to be a playbook drawn from the tobacco wars: Insist that the science is unsettled, attack the researchers whose findings they disliked, demand media coverage for a “balanced” view...

WHAT DID YOU DISCOVER?

That the battle wasn’t about science, but economics. From reading their papers, you could see that these physicists were very strong believers in the unfettered free market. They believed that without free markets, you couldn’t have democracy...
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ImaginaryNumber · Dec 7, 2014

Climate Change: Shangai, Bangkok Could Disappear Next Century | TelesurTV

Scientists from the Oceanographic Institute Woods Hole called for international and national action this week, because they argued that 500 million people worldwide living near river mouths could soon disappear under water.

That includes Shangai, located on the Yangtze River Delta, and Bangkok, on the Chao Phraya delta.

The scientists explained that the extraction of natural resources and hydraulic industry have greatly reduced the amount of sediment accumulating in these areas to form the deltas.

For instance, the Chao Phraya delta in Thailand is sinking by 5–15 centimeters each year because of intense groundwater use, while the Po delta in Italy sunk by 3–5 meters last century, mainly as a result of methane extraction, they explain.

For this reason, and the fact that the sea level is growing under the effects of climate change, thereby eroding the plains of the deltas, people living in these areas are very likely to be flooded over the next century...
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ImaginaryNumber · Dec 8, 2014

How the world’s oceans could be running out of fish | BBC

It has been some time since most humans lived as hunter-gatherers – with one important exception. Fish are the last wild animal that we hunt in large numbers. And yet, we may be the last generation to do so...

Around 85% of global fish stocks are over-exploited, depleted, fully exploited or in recovery from exploitation. Only this week, a report suggested there may be fewer than 100 cod over the age of 13 years in the North Sea between the United Kingdom and Scandinavia...

Large areas of seabed in the Mediterranean and North Sea now resemble a desert – the seas have been expunged of fish using increasingly efficient methods such as bottom trawling. And now, these heavily subsidised industrial fleets are cleaning up tropical oceans too. One-quarter of the EU catch is now made outside European waters, much of it in previously rich West African seas, where each trawler can scoop up hundreds of thousands of kilos of fish in a day. All West African fisheries are now over-exploited, coastal fisheries have declined 50% in the past 30 years, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation...

The policy of subsidising vast fishing fleets to catch ever-diminishing stocks is unsustainable. In Spain, for example, one in three fish landed is paid for by subsidy...

Already, more than half of the fish we eat comes from farms – in China, it’s as high as 80% – but doing this on an industrial scale has its problems. ..

Fish farms are also highly polluting. They produce a slurry of toxic run-off – manure – which fertilises algae in the oceans, reducing the oxygen available to other species and creates dead zones...

Meanwhile, trawlers are netting bycatch that include marine mammals and even seabirds – as many as 320,000 seabirds are being killed annually when they get caught in fishing lines, pushing populations of albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters to the edge of extinction...
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ImaginaryNumber · Dec 8, 2014

Volcanoes may be responsible for most of the global surface warming slowdown | Skeptical Science

A new study has found that when particulates from small volcanic eruptions are properly accounted for, volcanoes may be responsible for much of the slowdown in global surface warming over the past 15 years...

Virtually all research into the climate influence of volcanic aerosols has used satellite measurements of particulates in the upper atmosphere (the stratosphere). These satellite measurements only monitor the volcanic aerosol at heights of 15 km and above. The new paper by David Ridley and colleagues studied the amount of volcanic aerosols in portions of the stratosphere that lie below 15 km...

Although the global surface temperature data have been within the range of model simulations, they’ve been towards the lower end of those model runs over the past 10–15 years.

IPCC AR5 Figure 1.4. Solid lines and squares represent measured average global surface temperature changes
by NASA (blue), NOAA (yellow), and the UK Hadley Centre (green). The colored shading shows the projected
range of surface warming in the IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR; yellow), Second (SAR; green),
Third (TAR; blue), and Fourth (AR4; red).

The measured surface warming has been about 0.13°C less than the average of model simulations since 2000. The estimated volcanic cooling from this new paper (0.05–0.12°C), not included in those climate models, could account for most of that discrepancy.
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myark · Dec 8, 2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/22/climate-change-megadroughts_n_5862032.html?cps=gravity

Climate Change To Trigger Longer, Fiercer 'Megadroughts,' Study Warns

Climate change will unleash megadroughts in the coming decades worse than anything seen in the last 2,000 years, new research warns.

In semi-arid regions such as the U.S. southwest, there is an 80 percent chance of a drought lasting more than a decade, according to a study published in the Journal of Climate.

The paper from academics at Cornell University, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Arizona combines historical data on droughts with new climate models looking at changes to rainfall patterns caused by global warming.

One ominous scenario puts the chance of a drought in the United States lasting more than 35 years at 20 to 50 percent.

myark · Dec 8, 2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/03/inhofe-barbra-streisand_n_6261874.html?cps=gravity

Inhofe Blames Barbra Streisand, 'Hollywood Liberals' For Grand Climate Conspiracy Theory

Sen. James Inhofe. The 80-year-old Republican from Oklahoma is one of the most notorious deniers of human-induced climate change. He has contended that God controls the Earth's climate, not Homo sapiens, and he has quoted the Bible to make this point: "As long as the Earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night." And Inhofe, thanks to the recent elections, is in line to chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when the Republicans assume control of the Senate next month. He has vowed to do all he can to block regulations aimed at cutting emissions.
To troll. Or, as he put it, to be "a one-man truth squad." He slithered in and out of the cavernous media filing center, ever at the ready to speak to reporters looking for the other side quotes denigrating the proceedings, claiming that climate change was no more than a hoax, and celebrating the summit's failure to produce a binding and comprehensive treaty.

pdwiley · Dec 8, 2014

ImaginaryNumber said: ↑

How the world’s oceans could be running out of fish | BBC
Click to expand...

Do you actually *read* any of this crap that you post?

"One-quarter of the EU catch is now made outside European waters, much of it in previously rich West African seas, where each trawler can scoop up hundreds of thousands of kilos of fish in a day."

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF KILOS OF FISH IN A DAY?????? Really?

Just how big are these trawlers? I didn't realise people were building trawlers bigger than supertankers.

IOW, this article is rubbish if that's the standard of accuracy. And your credibility for posting it is about the same.

Pity because the basic thrust is spot-on. The oceans are over-fished and fish farming is generally highly polluting.

PDW

ImaginaryNumber · Dec 8, 2014

pdwiley said: ↑

Do you actually *read* any of this crap that you post?

"One-quarter of the EU catch is now made outside European waters, much of it in previously rich West African seas, where each trawler can scoop up hundreds of thousands of kilos of fish in a day."

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF KILOS OF FISH IN A DAY?????? Really?

Just how big are these trawlers? I didn't realise people were building trawlers bigger than supertankers.

IOW, this article is rubbish if that's the standard of accuracy. And your credibility for posting it is about the same.

Pity because the basic thrust is spot-on. The oceans are over-fished and fish farming is generally highly polluting.

PDW
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I know very little about trawling, so have had to research a bit. Here is what I've found:

Will Super Trawler Deplete Ocean Fish Stocks?

...The difference between this Super Trawler, named the AV Margiris compared to other trawlers is that it’s a really big ship and it has the capability to catch and store (4000 tons) a lot more fish than a regular trawler (about 100 tons), which means the ship can stay out longer than a smaller trawling ship. The ship does not have to make as many back and forth trips to the dock to unload its catch so that it can go back out to sea to catch more fish...
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Can Australia’s shores cope with a super trawler?

...The arrival of the controversial 142 metre-long Dutch super trawler Abel Tasman (previously named Margiris) on Australian shores has caused a wave of heated protest and opposition around the country. The vessel, which is capable of catching 250 tonnes of fish a day, docked at Port Lincoln, South Australia, on 30th August and is set to fish for jack mackerel and red bait in the waters stretching from New South Wales to Western Australia for Seafish Tasmania...
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Fisheries Policy Issues

..To meet the demand for more fish, the fishing industry has turned to larger, more efficient ships, the most important being the factory trawlers and ships.

Vladivostok-registered Kapitan Nazin, [is] one of the largest factory trawlers in the world. The Russian ship is one of three identical craft - each 347 feet (105 m) long and 10,000-tons displacement - built in Spain in 1993. They are classified by Det Norske Veritas (DNV) to withstand ice to Class 1B and operate year-round off the Siberian coast in the Sea of Okhotsk. The Kapitan Nazin and its 165 crew can process 125 tons of frozen product per day and store up to 3,200 tons in its refrigerated hold before off-loading at sea to a freighter.
[Thousands of such trawlers are fishing at sea, but not as many as conventional trawlers.]
From Cascade General, Portland Shipyard press release from 1999.

But what the factory trawlers lack in numbers they more than made up for in catching power. So awesome was this power in the early years of their prime (and so good was the fishing) [about 1965-70] that it is perhaps best describes by hypothetical analogy to dry land. First, assume a vast continental forest, free for the cutting or only ineffectively guarded. Then try to imagine a mobile and completely self contained timber-cutting machine that could smash through the roughest trails of the forest, cut down the trees, mill them, and deliver consumer-ready lumber in half the time of normal logging and milling operations. This was exactly what factory trawlers did – this was exactly their effect on fish – in the forests of the deep.
From William W. Warner, 1983, Distant Water, The Fate of the North Atlantic Fisherman, page viii.

The largest factory trawler is the $65 million American Monarch, 340 feet long and displacing 6,730 tons. It can net and process about one million pounds (500 tons) of fish per day...
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Thanks for fact-checking and keeping us on our toes.

ImaginaryNumber · Dec 9, 2014

Virus linked to mass die-off of sea stars | The Seattle Times

ABOVE: Drag the middle bar left or right to view before and after images.
[you have to go to linked site to be able to move "middle bar"]
Left: On Aug. 22, dozens of mottled stars were still clinging to pilings while the
ground below the Coupeville wharf on Whidbey Island showed the ghostly
white remnants of stars. Right: A photograph taken Nov. 12 shows that the
sea stars have now disappeared completely.

Grisly sea-star deaths are continuing to litter the tidelands with decaying, ghostly goo, but scientists now believe they, at least, may have identified the culprit.

New evidence suggests a mysterious wasting disease killing sea stars by the millions may be the result of a virus that has been found in starfish since at least the 1940s, according to new research published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

But it remains unclear if the pathogen’s current deadly spread is part of a complex natural cycle — or whether blame for this massive die-off is linked in some way to climate change, souring seas or other harm humans have inflicted on the ocean...

Sea-star wasting produces white spots on starfish and causes their limbs to curl, writhe and contort. Their bodies then appear to deflate or dissolve, their arms dripping away or breaking off until the animals disintegrate into goopy white smears on the seafloor...

In fact, divers enlisted to monitor sea stars report places once home to thousands of the creatures now are often home to just five or six. Where divers used to see dozens of steering-wheel-sized 24-armed sunflower stars, they recently surveyed 17 sites and saw just two...
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ImaginaryNumber · Dec 9, 2014

NSW [Australia] to become hotter, more fire danger days | Sidney Morning Herald

Sydney and the rest of NSW can expect more hot days, shifting rainfall patterns and more extreme fire danger weather as a result of global warming, according to the first high-resolution modelling of the future climate.

The NSW and ACT governments combined with researchers at the University of NSW's Climate Change Research Centre to generate scenarios for 100 square-kilometre grids out to 2030 and 2070 for all of eastern Australia stretching from south-east Queensland down to the east half South Australia...

For maximum temperatures, the increase will be about 0.7 degrees by 2030 – on top of the 0.5 degree increase during the 1990-2009 period.

Assuming greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current path, average maximum temperatures will jump by 2.1 degrees from current levels by 2070, the regional climate modelling – dubbed NARCliM – shows...

Australia was singled out by China's top climate negotiator on Thursday for failing to contribute to a $US10 billion ($11.9 billion) Green Climate Fund – one of few rich nations to opt out. The fund will help poorer countries adapt to climate change impacts already under way and help them cut carbon emissions.

The NSW climate assessment also follows the state's warmest spring on record, with average maximums 3.2 degrees above the 1961-90 average. Sydney had its third warmest spring and posted 13 days of at least 30 degrees, equalling the record tally set in the spring of 1926, the Bureau of Meteorology said...
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myark · Dec 9, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...rforming-industrial-country-on-climate-change

Australia named worst-performing industrial country on climate change

Australia has been named the worst-performing industrial country in the world on climate change in a report released at international negotiations in Peru.

The climate change performance index ranked Denmark as the best-performing country in the world, followed by Sweden and Britain.

Among the world’s top 10 emitters, Germany was ranked the highest at 22. Australia was second bottom overall, above Saudi Arabia – which was not classified as industrial.

The report states: “The new conservative Australian government has apparently made good on last year’s announcement and reversed the climate policies previously in effect. As a result, the country lost a further 21 positions in the policy evaluation compared to last year, thus replacing Canada as the worst-performing industrial country.”

China, the world’s biggest emitter, was in 45th spot – one below the US, which is the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

myark · Dec 10, 2014

http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...-for-climate-change-report-finds-9911976.html

Australians bury their heads in the sands of Bondi Beach to send a message to Prime Minister Tony Abbott about the dangers of climate change

Mr Efficiency · Dec 10, 2014

pdwiley said: ↑

Do you actually *read* any of this crap that you post?

"One-quarter of the EU catch is now made outside European waters, much of it in previously rich West African seas, where each trawler can scoop up hundreds of thousands of kilos of fish in a day."

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF KILOS OF FISH IN A DAY?????? Really?

Just how big are these trawlers? I didn't realise people were building trawlers bigger than supertankers.

IOW, this article is rubbish if that's the standard of accuracy. And your credibility for posting it is about the same.

Pity because the basic thrust is spot-on. The oceans are over-fished and fish farming is generally highly polluting.

PDW
Click to expand...

I suspect 100 tonnes (100,000kg) per day would not be that remarkable, though ?

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Our Oceans are Under Attack

myark Senior Member

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Mr Efficiency Senior Member

Kids facing the Oceans Plastic Cleanup Problem

what if I got stuck in a thunderstorm ?

Any RIB owner/operators willing help an undergraduate engineering team?

There's a Depreciation Schedule for Underwear...

Russia sees huge arctic oil fields under the sea.

painted battery box and underwater extensions

Understanding Wave Height, Swell height and Fetch.

Question for friends down under.

Underwater logging?

Benelli lift theory under question