Melting Glaciers May Create New Pacific Salmon Habitat, Study Finds (upi.com) 33
UPI reports:
Melting glaciers may produce thousands of miles of new Pacific salmon habitat, a study published Tuesday by Nature Communications found.
As glaciers in the mountains of western North America melt, or retreat, they could produce around 4,000 miles of new Pacific salmon habitat by the year 2100, the data showed. After modeling glacier retreat under different climate change scenarios, the glaciers could reveal potential new Pacific salmon habitat nearly equal to the length of the Mississippi River under moderate temperature increases, the researchers said.
"We predict that most of the emerging salmon habitat will occur in Alaska and the transboundary region, at the British Columbia-Alaska border, where large coastal glaciers still exist," co-author Kara Pitman said in a press release....
"On the other hand, climate change and other human impacts continue to threaten salmon survival, via warming rivers, changes in stream flows and poor ocean conditions," she said.
Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the story...
As glaciers in the mountains of western North America melt, or retreat, they could produce around 4,000 miles of new Pacific salmon habitat by the year 2100, the data showed. After modeling glacier retreat under different climate change scenarios, the glaciers could reveal potential new Pacific salmon habitat nearly equal to the length of the Mississippi River under moderate temperature increases, the researchers said.
"We predict that most of the emerging salmon habitat will occur in Alaska and the transboundary region, at the British Columbia-Alaska border, where large coastal glaciers still exist," co-author Kara Pitman said in a press release....
"On the other hand, climate change and other human impacts continue to threaten salmon survival, via warming rivers, changes in stream flows and poor ocean conditions," she said.
Thanks to Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the story...
Lucky Salmon (Score:2)
That will be so great for them when we're gone.
A silver lining (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe due to rising sea levels, fish inherit the Earth, lets hope that they leave it better than the humans did.
Re: A silver lining (Score:2)
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To get the strand lines much higher than that, you're going to need to increase the volume of the mid-ocean ridges, or somehow (major metasomatism, using material from where?) increase the average density of the continen
Re: A silver lining (Score:2)
Doom and gloom aren't needed (Score:4, Interesting)
For years now, we've been reading doom and gloom scare stories about how horrible the future is going to be because of Global Warming and how horrible the future is going to be.
And the result of all that doom and gloom is that we're fixing the problem. Current estimates from the U.N. indicate that damage from climate change will peak sometime near the turn of the next century, then recede due to mitigation efforts. The effects seen at the maximum will have minimal effect on the planet in general, and humans specifically (again, U.N. estimates). For example, the ocean level will be 8 inches higher than today [climate.gov] (12 inches higher than year 2000), which will not be a problem.
Note that until recently, the U.N. predicted that human population will peak around 2090 and then go down, but this has been updated: peak population is now expected to be around 2050, and many people believe that this estimate is conservative.
Poverty is a big reason why people don't pay attention to climate change: caring about the climate is secondary to caring about survival, and we've made enormous strides in reducing poverty in the last 20 years or so. Something like 1/3 reduction [macrotrends.net].
We're now making electric vehicles, solar energy, wind energy, and grid-scale storage... none of these were a thing 20 years ago.
Productivity increases exponentially, there were about 1 million EVs sold this year, the doubling rate is roughly 2 years, there are about 1.32 billion cars (plus trucks) in the world, so in about 10 years just about all the ICE vehicles will be gone. About 50% of fossil fuels goes to gasoline [eia.gov], about 7% of the energy gen today comes from renewables, and that 7% is on track to double every 8 years [iea.org].
We didn't have any of the items in the previous paragraph 20 years ago, and there are new technologies being developed as well. There's a new method for extracting lithium from lithium clay using common salt (NaCl). Carbon capture is being tested. We're removing garbage from the pacific gyre at a rate of $1 per kilogram. New types of nuclear reactors are being designed and tested.
You can say that we need to be doing more, that we need to be doing everything possible, that we need to act yesterday and take extreme measures...
But without backing it up with numbers, studies, and predictions it flies in the face of numbers, studies, and predictions that we already have that indicate that we're handling the situation.
Doom and gloom aren't needed. Stay the course, we'll get there.
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Predictions of the date of the maximum range all the way between 2040-45 to 2100. There isn't much consensus so far.
From your climate.gov link (thanks for the link):
If we follow a pathway with high emissions, a worst-case scenario of as much as 8.2 feet (2.5 meters) above 2000 levels by 2100 cannot be ruled out.
So it could be much worse than 8 inches. It very much depends on emissions pathways.
From your link:
Their experts concluded that even with lowest possible greenhouse gas emission pathways, global mean sea level would rise at least 8 inches (0.2 meters) above 1992 levels by 2100.
So the minimum level (not likely, but minimum) is 8 inches.
Let's hope for the lower end of the range
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Yes; just like with Y2K. It's a shame that more people don't understand that.
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IF AND ONLY IF your species actually carries out the recommended actions to reduce GHG emissions to zero AND increase processes that remove GHGs from the atmosphere. Both sides of the "AND" are facing serious fightback from the "Give ME profit, and hang YOUR children" group.
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And the result of all that doom and gloom is that we're fixing the problem.
350ppm of CO2 is considered by ecologists to be sensible target. We're currently over 415 (annually averaged, and seasonally adjusted) [noaa.gov], with no sign to the increase slowing, much less stopping.
Once it does stop, the warming will continue noticeably for some decades, as the positive feedback loops reach their new equilibrium. (Most significantly on that time scale, Ice cover loss).
This is not what fixing the problem looks like. Fixing the problem would look like stopping the increase in CO2 in the atmosp
Re: Doom and gloom aren't needed (Score:2)
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Sweet, I'll just graft some wheels and a fuckhuge 2-stroke to my stumps. They'll call me hotwheels.
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I'm sorry, I can't hear you bipeds from atop my speedy throne.
Sorry about California Oregon, and Washington (Score:2)
There is no silver lining here if you have any perspective on ecosystems and salmon's impact on them. Warming river water temperatures in the Lower 48 are year over year killing salmon on their way to spawn and while they are growing from eggs. Every part of the ecosystem that rely on the salmon are being hurt in the process, and in the PNW that's a lot of reliant ecosystem.
This is more like a silver pimple.
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For years now, we've been reading doom and gloom scare stories about how horrible the future is going to be because of Global Warming and how horrible the future is going to be.
Extinctions are happening at about 1000 times the background rate. The reality is inescapably gloomy.
Now, we're seeing that like every other cloud, this one has a silver lining in the form of increased habitat for an important and delicious type of protein.
A single species does not make a silver lining. Jellyfish do quite well from climate change too. And generalists in general do okay out of ecological disruption.
The species that we are losing, perhaps every several minutes at the moment, are the loss of a permanent resource.
I can't wait to see what other benefits are going to be discovered in the near future.
Increased habitat for a particular species in a world of massive habitat destruction. Is this some new meaning of "benefits", or are y
Meanwhile, all the dolphins: (Score:5, Funny)
More fish cheaper! (Score:2)
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Some salmon nigiri would really hit the spot now.
By 2100? (Score:1)
Don't worry - humans will have pillaged and plundered the planet long before then.
its highly doubtful we'll even exist the way we are travelling.
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it only takes one of them to come with a solution to address current issues.
As long as that one has access to the button labeled 'missile launch'. I agree.
Disruptive change is inconvenience not doom (Score:3)
The idea current society should be preserved as it is is silly because everything is transient. (The Buddhists got that bit right.)
A warm world will be different and life will adapt to whatever those differences are. What was warm before will be warm again.
The impact on the species (us) that's driving AGW may be inconvenient but evolution already adapted to a one hundred percent mortality rate by exploiting the rapid replacement of individual organisms death offers. Species exist to perpetuate themselves and cannot exist for anything else or different (they may DO other things but that is not evolved purpose).
And one tablet with this news (Score:2)
One lone tablet left exposed with this news on a forgotten beach chair was enough to trigger the most widespread false-alarm migrations of grizzlies and brown bears to the coast.