Comments on: Eating the seed corn

By: Phytoplankton Numbers Are Phalling « Around The Sphere

Phytoplankton Numbers Are Phalling « Around The Sphere — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:39:22 +0000

[...] Michael O’Hare: What makes human life worth living? Content, obviously: news, art, music, conversation – social intercourse in all media. What makes it possible? Food and drink, broadly defined: fresh water and all the plant and animal products we eat and use. [...]

By: TallDave

TallDave — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 22:30:13 +0000

No, Steph is right. Secchi disks probably aren’t that great a proxy for phytoplankton health.

Anyways, Michael, I feel I owe it to your mental health to allay your worries. Phytoplankton has seen much higher temps and much higher concentrations of CO2 in its tenure here on Earth. The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of them being fine.

I might also suggest a leisurely stroll down memory lane, through the thousands of articles from last 100 years that extrapolated trends and concluded we would all be dead by now, most based firmly in Science (cue trumpets). Guess how many of them were right?

By: Michael O'Hare

Michael O'Hare — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 05:41:24 +0000

Steph, maybe read the paper before drawing conclusions. They do it the same way they do now: the Secchi disc was invented in the 19th century, and it’s so easy and cheap to take readings that the authors could draw on almost half a million data points going back more than a century.

By: Steph Houghton

Steph Houghton — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:38:59 +0000

How the F*** do they estimate the level in 1899? I call bullshit.

By: Joseph Hertzlinger

Joseph Hertzlinger — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:02:32 +0000

If true, this clearly calls for prosecuting anti-nuclear activists for treason to humanity.

On the other hand, the world was warmer in past eras with apparently stable ecosystems … so it seems unlikely.

On the gripping hand, this might explain declining fish stocks.

By: Things that are useless

Things that are useless — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:19:32 +0000

Oh, surfing the net the other day, I found an article about the thermosphere contracting the year before last. I don’t know if this was a peer reviewed material or not, but it is not good news if it is happened.

More information: Emmert, J. T., J. L. Lean, and J. M. Picone (2010), Record-low thermospheric density during the 2008 solar minimum, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L12102.

By: MobiusKlein

MobiusKlein — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:55:44 +0000

I have learned to always take the latest, greatest breaking science news with huge grains of salt. Media reports are always hyped, conclusions always sound more certain in the article than in the actual research paper. Projections for the future are make too many assumptions about continuing present trends.

so Don’t Panic!

Study the f___ out of the problem, add it to the known possible future risks, and do the steps we know we have to do, even if this piece of research proves incorrect. I’m looking at you, coal power plants.

By: dave schutz

dave schutz — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:02:30 +0000

It’s very puzzling that these results would be world-wide – there’s been a sort of sweet spot in temperate waters (as opposed to the near sterility of the tropics, shown by the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean, eg) for lots of plankton. Not that much warming has gone on, so far, we mostly have dire predictions for the future. So, just thinking about it, I would kind of expect that if there were an effect like this, the waters off Newfoundland would be like Boston fifty years ago, Boston like North Carolina fifty years ago, etc. A world-wide decline doesn’t make intuitive sense. Intuition isn’t worth a lot, though, if there’s data.

By: tehm0bru1z

tehm0bru1z — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:04:27 +0000

Get a grip man. This is a meta-analysis of past data with modeling predictions for future trends. At best, this is an excellent springboard with which to one can design future experiments around in order to test this hypothesis, determining which parts of the model hold up, and which parts need adjusting (as the authors correctly state). This is the purpose of these types of analyses.

Also note that it is the median value of the 10 ocean regions that is estimated to be falling at 1% per year. This is not the same as average values or total values. Averaging these 10 regions would be meaningless because they are not all the same size. Your are incorrect in stating that “the earth’s production of organic material is going down half a percent per year” for this reason. It is not possible to estimate the earth’s total reduction of organic matter per year from the numbers presented in this abstract. It is also not possible to estimate global reduction of organic matter, due to phytoplankton, per year from the numbers presented in this abstract.

The inaccurate conclusions that you present in this article make be breathe a sigh of relief that the main stream media didn’t pick this up and butcher the inferences that can be drawn from this study even more (they usually do, for most science stories).

What the hell do I know, I’m just a professional scientist …

By: NCG

NCG — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:40:21 +0000

I ditto the complaint about the news. But you haven’t even seen the LA Times recently, if you think the NYT is looking anemic!! The LAT buried what happened to Lynne Stewart last week.

By the way, why no Lynne Stewart here? Did she or did she not get much too harshly punished? Where are you guys on this?

By: paul

paul — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:21:50 +0000

A couple points about this. First, decreasing plankton productivity also means decreasing carbon uptake by the oceans, so that future CO2 reductions will have to be that much greater (and at some point there could be a crossover where ocean uptake is no longer sufficient to balance non-anthropogenic carbon sources, which would be really bad). Second, if some of the mechanisms proposed for this are accurate (increasing stratification, less turnover) all of the cheap avenues for geoengineering increased productivity are foreclosed.

By: Tim Gier

Tim Gier — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:47:12 +0000

ScienceMag.org posted this article on Wednesday at 2:01 pm http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/07/critical-ocean-organisms-are-dis.html

By: Tweets that mention Eating the seed corn « The Reality-Based Community -- Topsy.com

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:25:11 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Nigel Mark Dias, JeremySJ. JeremySJ said: "This finding is not far down the scary scale from discovering a small inbound asteroid." not, I fear, exaggeration… http://j.mp/98bZoM [...]

By: joel hanes SP4

joel hanes SP4 — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 07:15:28 +0000

There’s a story by Chad Oliver, “King of the Hill”, in Again Dangerous Visions, that is sufficiently cynical to describe the situation we’re in.

By: CharlesWT

CharlesWT — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:10:33 +0000

There's plankton farming, but it may have drawbacks: CO{-2} study: Plankton fertilization may backfire

By: wmd

wmd — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 03:42:22 +0000

This showed up at Sullivan's place earlier today. 1% per year compounded over 110 years gives 33.1% remaining. I've not looked at the source material (cited at link). Curious if this is an accelerating trend. Also if any causal mechanisms have been proposed.

By: FuzzyFace

FuzzyFace — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 03:41:05 +0000

Where does the estimate come from? Is it averaged over all data since 1899, suggesting that the total decline is about 50% since then? Or is it based on extrapolating from a short snapshot in time, assuming that some rate that occurred recently is our ongoing rate?