Thread: Global Warming - I Was Wrong

Strange things are happening in the North Sea. Cod stocks are slumping faster than over-fishing can account for, and Mediterranean species like red mullet are migrating north.

Actually Cod stocks have improved massively since the fishing quota was enforced on UK boats.

Yesterday it was reported on Sky news that they are having to throw back massive amounts as they are catching too much for their quota.

Sky news summarized by saying forget haddock and hallibut expect cheap and freely available cod to be in a chip shop near you soon.

Originally Posted by Plan B

Originally Posted by Hootad Binky

Since when is CO2 not a greenhouse gas?

Don't know, did anyone say it wasn't?

If CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that means it is responsible for the Greenhouse Effect, which has been proven to warm up the planet, therefore CO2 is warming up the planet.

Not jus CO2, of course, but many other greenhouse gasses, many man-made and more powerful in their Greehouse Effect than CO2, like methane, much of which will be released as a result of global warming itself:

Methane Burps: Ticking Time Bomb | EnergyBulletin.net | Peak Oil ...

There's 400 gigatons of methane locked in the frozen arctic tundra - enough to start this chain reaction - and the kind of warming the Arctic Council ...

Originally Posted by Silent Orchestra

Plankton takes it all to the bottom of the sea. It doesn't stay in the atmosphere.

I'm an expert in these matters now.

At the present time, approximately one third[4] of anthropogenic emissions are estimated to be entering the ocean... However, ocean acidification by invading anthropogenic CO2 may affect the biological pump by negatively impacting calcifying organisms such as coccolithophores, foraminiferans and pteropods. Climate change may also affect the biological pump in the future by warming and stratifying the surface ocean, thus reducing the supply of limiting nutrients to surface waters. Although the buffering capacity of sea water is keeping the pH nearly constant at present, eventually pH will drop. At this point, the disruption of life in the sea may turn it into a carbon source rather than a carbon sink.

Carbon dioxide sink - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by Silent Orchestra

The scorpion & the spider do okay, too.

Mankind's days are numbered, regardless of what we do.

Reminds me of this. Ironically, the thing thrived in the "high oxygen content"atmosphere.

Giant scorpion of the sea discovered


Markus Poschmann with the fossil of the scorpion's claw


a scale picture of how the creature would measure up to a human being.

November 22, 2007

Ancient sea scorpion was 8 feet long

November 21, 2007
One of its claws might feed an entire family, but this sea creature would be more likely to eat the family.

British researchers said Tuesday that they had discovered a foot-and-a-half-long fossilized claw of an ancient sea scorpion, a species that would have been 8 feet long, making it the largest arthropod ever discovered.

"We knew the sea scorpions were among the largest creepy-crawlies ever, but we didn't realize just how big they could get," said paleontologist Simon J. Braddy of the University of Bristol, the primary author of the report in the journal Biology Letters. The fossil was found in a quarry near Prum, Germany.

Sea scorpions became extinct about 250 million years ago, but they were precursors of modern land-based scorpions. Smaller varieties are common in the fossil record, and evidence suggests that they ventured forth onto land for at least brief forays.

But "there is no way this thing could have crawled out onto land," Braddy said.

"This is simply too spindly. Its legs would break under its own weight."

And what does an 8-foot sea scorpion eat? Pretty much anything it wants to, Braddy said. The creature would have been the dominant predator in its environment, feasting on armored fish, early vertebrates, other varieties of arthropods and even on smaller sea scorpions.

The lack of predation may have been one factor that allowed the scorpions and other ancient species to grow so large, he said. The high oxygen content of the atmosphere then -- 35% compared with 21% today -- also probably was a factor.

But the sea scorpions were doomed. When vertebrates evolved to large sizes, "the tables were turned," Braddy said.

"The only way they could cope was by downsizing and hiding away. That's why all of them today are very small."

I'm sure our activity is accelerating global warming and it will have lots of effects.
Book I read said the real effect to worry about from global warming was not the short term warming by a couple of degrees, but the fact that that warming was then likely to push the climate to a tipping point medium term and the earth would slide back into an ice age. Also said we've actually been in an ice age for about 3 million years, with cycles of about 14,000 years related to the extremes of orbits of the earth and sun, and the current warming is about the warmest its been during that period. There are riverbeds which go 40 metres BELOW the current ocean water level, showing that all that water was once frozen on the earth during the ice ages.
So, its not me getting warmer that worries me, its the idea my kids and grandkids might have to buy snowshoes to live in Australia.

Originally Posted by hooter

Strange things are happening in the North Sea. Cod stocks are slumping faster than over-fishing can account for, and Mediterranean species like red mullet are migrating north.

Actually Cod stocks have improved massively since the fishing quota was enforced on UK boats.

Yesterday it was reported on Sky news that they are having to throw back massive amounts as they are catching too much for their quota.

Sky news summarized by saying forget haddock and hallibut expect cheap and freely available cod to be in a chip shop near you soon.

I think either you misheard that or Sky misreported it

I saw another program showing that boats were catching a lot of underage (small) cod and were having to throw them back, but dead already. It was all about how the laws to conserve stocks were not working properly. They want the laws changed so that the small cod need not be thrown back, and maybe restrict the number of days fishing allowed instead.

On a serious note, though - this whole debate of whether CO2 affects global warming reminds me of the debate 20 years ago regarding the link between the release of freons and hole in the ozone layer .

Even when pretty much the whole scientific community were in favour of phasing out freons, there were still people stuck in denial mode. A bit like today, perhaps?