Global Warming Opens Up Antarctic Waterways

[SailOar]

Iceland's Seabird Colonies Are Vanishing, With "Massive" Chick Deaths | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

...On Flatey Island, the once-prolific terns haven't produced viable chicks in a decade. More than half of the region's black-legged kittiwake nests vanished over 15 years.

And on the Westman Islands off Iceland's south coast—home to the world's largest Atlantic puffin colony—breeding has been a "total failure" since 2005, according to the South Iceland Nature Center...

Similar trends are reported in Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, and across the circumpolar north—the principal nursery for Northern Hemisphere marine birds. Most of the biome's species, the 2013 Arctic Biodiversity Assessment finds, are in decline...

These same problems are now being noted in wading birds like the redshank, shorebirds like the red knot, and other waterfowl in the northern United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

"What is happening in Iceland, we see happening in so many other areas in the North Atlantic. And the fact that we're seeing them over such a wide area points to a common factor ... and that is climate change," said Aevar Petersen, a retired Icelandic Institute of Natural History ornithologist.

Winds and currents funneling pollution northward from Europe, North America, and China bring more bad news for seabirds preying high on the food web. Mercury is ubiquitous—and rising fast in some areas. Brominated flame retardants, perfluorinated coatings, pesticides, plasticizers, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and more are contaminating a variety of species and locations. And masses of chemical-laced microplastics could be released by melting ice sheets.

Seabirds "are critical for detecting changes that are happening even more rapidly than we suspected," said Jennifer Provencher, a doctoral student at Carleton University in Ottawa who examines colonies in Arctic Canada. "We are getting basically a year-to-year-to-year update of the health of the oceans and the health of the environment through these seabird studies..."

[LakeSuperior]

Mass Bird, Fish Deaths Occur Regularly

The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated.

Federal records show they happen on average every other day somewhere in North America. Usually, we don't notice them and don't try to link them to each other.

"They generally fly under the radar," said ornithologist John Wiens, chief scientist at the California research institution PRBO Conservation Science.
Since the 1970s, the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin has tracked mass deaths among birds, fish and other critters, said wildlife disease specialist LeAnn White. At times the sky and the streams just turn deadly. Sometimes it's disease, sometimes pollution. Other times it's just a mystery.

In the past eight months, the USGS has logged 95 mass wildlife die-offs in North America and that's probably a dramatic undercount, White said. The list includes 900 some turkey vultures that seemed to drown and starve in the Florida Keys, 4,300 ducks killed by parasites in Minnesota, 1,500 salamanders done in by a virus in Idaho, 2,000 bats that died of rabies in Texas, and the still mysterious death of 2,750 sea birds in California.

On average, 163 such events are reported to the federal government each year, according to USGS records. And there have been much larger die-offs than the 3,000 blackbirds in Arkansas. Twice in the summer of 1996, more than 100,000 ducks died of botulism in Canada.

"Depending on the species, these things don't even get reported," White said.

Read full article at:
Mass Bird, Fish Deaths Occur Regularly

[Tensen]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

Mass Bird, Fish Deaths Occur Regularly

Read full article at:
Mass Bird, Fish Deaths Occur Regularly

From your article:

The irony is that mass die-offs – usually of animals with large populations – are getting the attention while a larger but slower mass extinction of thousands of species because of human activity is ignored, Wilson said.

[Group9]

Would anyone whose mind has been changed by these 82+ pages, please speak up. (just wanting to see if my hunch is correct).

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by Group9

Would anyone whose mind has been changed by these 82+ pages, please speak up. (just wanting to see if my hunch is correct).

Oh yes, instead of Ben&Jerrys Strawberry Cheesecake I want Chocolate Fudge Brownie

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

Mass Bird, Fish Deaths Occur Regularly

The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated.

Federal records show they happen on average every other day somewhere in North America. Usually, we don't notice them and don't try to link them to each other.

"They generally fly under the radar," said ornithologist John Wiens, chief scientist at the California research institution PRBO Conservation Science.
Since the 1970s, the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin has tracked mass deaths among birds, fish and other critters, said wildlife disease specialist LeAnn White. At times the sky and the streams just turn deadly. Sometimes it's disease, sometimes pollution. Other times it's just a mystery.

In the past eight months, the USGS has logged 95 mass wildlife die-offs in North America and that's probably a dramatic undercount, White said. The list includes 900 some turkey vultures that seemed to drown and starve in the Florida Keys, 4,300 ducks killed by parasites in Minnesota, 1,500 salamanders done in by a virus in Idaho, 2,000 bats that died of rabies in Texas, and the still mysterious death of 2,750 sea birds in California.

On average, 163 such events are reported to the federal government each year, according to USGS records. And there have been much larger die-offs than the 3,000 blackbirds in Arkansas. Twice in the summer of 1996, more than 100,000 ducks died of botulism in Canada.

"Depending on the species, these things don't even get reported," White said.

Read full article at:
Mass Bird, Fish Deaths Occur Regularly

The mass die-offs mentioned in your article are randomly scattered throughout all of the US with no apparent common cause, while many of the die-offs mentioned in the National Geographic article are located in a particular biome (the Arctic) which is undergoing some of the most rapid climate changes on earth.

And the puffin article notes that the change of fish stocks, apparently driven by changes in ocean temperatures, are directly affecting the ability to feed puffin chicks.

So, yes, even apparently mobile animals like birds are having trouble adjusting to changes in their environment, because certain phases of their life is very much tailored to particular locations and particular circumstances. So those who argue that Climate Change is not having a discernible negative effect on the world just aren't paying attention.

The biggest problem may be that climate change has huge momentum built in to it. It's taken a century or more to get it rolling, and even if we humans stopped producing CO2 tomorrow it would take many decades for Earth's temps to peak and then cool back down to current levels.

[LakeSuperior]

Originally Posted by SailOar

The mass die-offs mentioned in your article are randomly scattered throughout all of the US with no apparent common cause, while many of the die-offs mentioned in the National Geographic article are located in a particular biome (the Arctic) which is undergoing some of the most rapid climate changes on earth.

And the puffin article notes that the change of fish stocks, apparently driven by changes in ocean temperatures, are directly affecting the ability to feed puffin chicks.

So, yes, even apparently mobile animals like birds are having trouble adjusting to changes in their environment, because certain phases of their life is very much tailored to particular locations and particular circumstances. So those who argue that Climate Change is not having a discernible negative effect on the world just aren't paying attention.

The biggest problem may be that climate change has huge momentum built in to it. It's taken a century or more to get it rolling, and even if we humans stopped producing CO2 tomorrow it would take many decades for Earth's temps to peak and then cool back down to current levels.

And yes, there are many reasons why there are 160 some average mass die-offs occur per year in the US. All the die-offs have a reason just like the Arctic. One probably needs to peal back the layers to really do an apples-to-apples study.

Other articles I googled attributed the prime reason for extinctions and die-offs are the 7 billion heads crowding out the various ecosystems (climate change was not mentioned as a reason in one of these articles.)

If you think about it, we wouldn't be having this discussion if there were only 1 or 2 billion heads on planet earth. What discussion do you think we will be having on CF when there are 13 or 14 billion or 20 or 25 billion people on the planet. Even if we can feed them, which I am sure we will be able to, warming will be down on the discussion list. I am guessing the prime topic on CF will be building more marinas to handle the increased number of cruisers.

[mdiederi]

Ocean acidification and the Permo-Triassic mass extinction
Ocean acidification and the Permo-Triassic mass extinction


The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast, 96% of Marine Life Went Extinct
The Last Time Oceans Got This Acidic This Fast, 96% of Marine Life Went Extinct | Motherboard

April 9, 2015

By BRIAN MERCHANT

The biggest extinction event in planetary history was driven by the rapid acidification of our oceans, a new study concl​udes. So much carbon was released into the atmosphere, and the oceans absorbed so much of it so quickly, that marine life simply died off, from the bottom of the food chain up.

- The biggest die-off in history, the Permian Extinction event, aka the Great Dying, extinguished over 90 percent of the planet's species—and 96 percent of marine species. A lot of theories have been put forward about why and how, exactly, the vast majority of Earth life went belly up 252 million years ago, but the new study, published in Science, offers some compelling evidence acidification was a key driver. --- A team led by University of Edinburgh researchers collected rocks in the United Arab Emirates that were on the seafloor hundreds of millions of years ago, and used the boron isotopes found within to model the changing levels of acidification in our prehistoric oceans.

- They now believe that a series of gigantic volcanic eruptions in the Siberian Trap spewed a great fountain of carbon into the atmosphere over a period of tens of thousands of years. This was the first phase of the extinction event, in which terrestrial life began to die out. --- The study explains that the second phase of the event happened much more quickly. “During the second extinction pulse, however, a rapid and large injection of carbon caused an abrupt acidification event that drove the preferential loss of heavily calcified marine biota," the authors write.

- So does this study mean we should be especially worried about the phenomenon taking hold today? --- "Yes," said Dr. Rachel Wood, a professor of carbonate geoscience at the University of Edinburgh and one of the paper's authors. --- "We are concerned about modern ocean acidification," she told me in an email. "Although the amount of carbon added to the atmosphere that triggered the mass extinction was probably greater than today's fossil fuel reserves, the rate at which the carbon was released was at a rate similar to modern emissions." --- In other words, the Siberian Traps probably spewed out more carbon in total, but we're spewing out just as fast. And that's overwhelming the planetary equilibrium.

- "The rate of release is critical because the oceans absorb a lot of the carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, around 30 percent of the carbon dioxide released by humans," Wood said. "To achieve chemical equilibrium, some of this CO2 reacts with the water to form carbonic acid. Some of these molecules react with a water molecule to give a bicarbonate ion and a hydronium ion, thus increasing ocean 'acidity' (H+ ion concentration)." --- Marine animals whose skeletons are comprised of calcium carbonate—and that’s a lot of them (think snails, coral), which form a crucial part of the food chain—dissolved or couldn’t form in the first place. And that is what’s happening today.

- Much of marine life is already in grave danger from acidification. It's contributing to the bleaching of coral reefs around the world, and, as mentioned before, it's killing sea snails in the Pacific. If it worsens, acidification could threaten the whole of the marine biosphere, and, obviously, the land-dwelling creatures that depend on it too. --- In 2013, marine scientists released a "State of the Oceans" report that found that the rate of current acidification was “unprecedented.” They noted that the seas were acidifying faster than any point in the last 300 million years. That study didn’t take into account the new data, of course, but that’s the timeline we’re dealing with: The last time the oceans were so acidic was in the midst of the greatest extinction in the history of the world.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Group9

Would anyone whose mind has been changed by these 82+ pages, please speak up. (just wanting to see if my hunch is correct).

Unable to comply, I'm afraid. 82 pages and no evidence to change what seems to be a rock solid conclusion. Almost everyone posting on this particular hugely complex subject really doesn't begin to grasp that they know almost nothing about what they are talking about and have no option but to listen to the latest science. Which is not at the top of the internet pile , most prefer the media.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by SailOar

The mass die-offs mentioned in your article are randomly scattered throughout all of the US with no apparent common cause, while many of the die-offs mentioned in the National Geographic article are located in a particular biome (the Arctic) which is undergoing some of the most rapid climate changes on earth.

And the puffin article notes that the change of fish stocks, apparently driven by changes in ocean temperatures, are directly affecting the ability to feed puffin chicks.

So, yes, even apparently mobile animals like birds are having trouble adjusting to changes in their environment, because certain phases of their life is very much tailored to particular locations and particular circumstances. So those who argue that Climate Change is not having a discernible negative effect on the world just aren't paying attention.

The biggest problem may be that climate change has huge momentum built in to it. It's taken a century or more to get it rolling, and even if we humans stopped producing CO2 tomorrow it would take many decades for Earth's temps to peak and then cool back down to current levels.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/eart...-a-puffin.html

Sent from my SGP521 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Iceland's Seabird Colonies Are Vanishing, With "Massive" Chick Deaths | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&s...ljeZ4EjigMCXWg

Sent from my SGP521 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Warming Ocean Puts Puffins in Peril

https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&s...Y7Up-OMnIsMkEw

Sent from my SGP521 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by conachair

Unable to comply, I'm afraid. 82 pages and no evidence to change what seems to be a rock solid conclusion. Almost everyone posting on this particular hugely complex subject really doesn't begin to grasp that they know almost nothing about what they are talking about and have no option but to listen to the latest science. Which is not at the top of the internet pile , most prefer the media.

Climate change is irrelevant to the underlying problem.





Listening to the science and worrying about how many Puffins are dying or how much zinc and iron is in wheat is nothing more than fiddling while Rome burns.

[lordgeoff]

Originally Posted by SailOar

The 'highs' keep getting higher, and the 'lows' keep getting higher. What part of "it's getting warmer" don't you understand?

You need to research more widely Sailoar. There is considerable angst in the warmist camp re the fact that temp changes recorded for the past 15-20 years are less than the margin of error so statistically are not significant. As the climate models haven't predicted this temp plateau there are many red faces.
But then again we are told daily .....the science is settled.
The biggest problem for the serious scientists is the warmist debate gets hijacked by those who start with a warmist conclusion then scratch around for absurd theories from research twitterati.....then copy and paste as proven fact. Some glaring examples amongst posts here...........
Suggest you research more widely and search with an open mind.

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by lordgeoff

You need to research more widely Sailoar. There is considerable angst in the warmist camp re the fact that temp changes recorded for the past 15-20 years are less than the margin of error so statistically are not significant. As the climate models haven't predicted this temp plateau there are many red faces.
.

You need to look at the WMO standard for climate which is 30 years.

Wood for Trees: Interactive Graphs

The long term temperature increases are over 10 times that of the PETM which lead to mass extinction. That is significant.

PETM: Global Warming, Naturally | Weather Underground