'Unheard of' Marine Heatwave Off UK and Irish Coasts Poses Serious Threat 84
An unprecedented marine heatwave off the coasts of the UK and Ireland is posing a significant threat to marine species, with sea temperatures several degrees above normal, breaking records for late spring and early summer. The Guardian reports: The Met Office said global sea surface temperatures in April and May reached an all-time high for those months, according to records dating to 1850, with June also on course to hit record heat levels. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has categorized parts of the North Sea as being in a category four marine heatwave, which is considered "extreme," with areas off the coast of England up to 5C above what is usual. The Met Office says temperatures are likely to remain high because of the emerging El Nino weather phenomenon.
Daniela Schmidt, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Bristol, said: "The extreme and unprecedented temperatures show the power of the combination of human-induced warming and natural climate variability like El Nino. While marine heatwaves are found in warmer seas like the Mediterranean, such anomalous temperatures in this part of the north Atlantic are unheard of. They have been linked to less dust from the Sahara but also the North Atlantic climate variability, which will need further understanding to unravel. Heat, like on land, stresses marine organisms. In other parts of the world, we have seen several mass mortalities of marine plants and animals caused by ocean heatwave which have caused hundreds of millions of pounds of losses, in fisheries income, carbon storage, cultural values and habitat loss. As long as we are not dramatically cutting emissions, these heatwaves will continue to destroy our ecosystems. But as this is happening below the surface of the ocean, it will go unnoticed."
Dr Dan Smale from the Marine Biological Association has been working on marine heatwaves for more than a decade and was surprised by the temperatures. He said: "I always thought they would never be ecologically impactful in the cool waters around UK and Ireland but this is unprecedented and possibly devastating. Current temperatures are way too high but not yet lethal for majority of species, although stressful for many ... If it carries on through summer we could see mass mortality of kelp, seagrass, fish and oysters."
Piers Forster, a professor of climate physics at the University of Leeds, said: "Both Met Office and NOAA analyses of sea-surface temperature show temperatures are at their highest ever level -- and the average sea-surface temperature breached 21C for the first time in April. These high temperatures are mainly driven by unprecedented high rates of human-induced warming. Cleaning up sulphur from marine shipping fuels is probably adding to the greenhouse gas driven warming. The shift towards El Nino conditions is also adding to the heat. There is also evidence that there is less Saharan dust over the ocean this year. This normally reflects heat away from the ocean. So in all, oceans are being hit by a quadruple whammy -- it's a sign of things to come."
Daniela Schmidt, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Bristol, said: "The extreme and unprecedented temperatures show the power of the combination of human-induced warming and natural climate variability like El Nino. While marine heatwaves are found in warmer seas like the Mediterranean, such anomalous temperatures in this part of the north Atlantic are unheard of. They have been linked to less dust from the Sahara but also the North Atlantic climate variability, which will need further understanding to unravel. Heat, like on land, stresses marine organisms. In other parts of the world, we have seen several mass mortalities of marine plants and animals caused by ocean heatwave which have caused hundreds of millions of pounds of losses, in fisheries income, carbon storage, cultural values and habitat loss. As long as we are not dramatically cutting emissions, these heatwaves will continue to destroy our ecosystems. But as this is happening below the surface of the ocean, it will go unnoticed."
Dr Dan Smale from the Marine Biological Association has been working on marine heatwaves for more than a decade and was surprised by the temperatures. He said: "I always thought they would never be ecologically impactful in the cool waters around UK and Ireland but this is unprecedented and possibly devastating. Current temperatures are way too high but not yet lethal for majority of species, although stressful for many ... If it carries on through summer we could see mass mortality of kelp, seagrass, fish and oysters."
Piers Forster, a professor of climate physics at the University of Leeds, said: "Both Met Office and NOAA analyses of sea-surface temperature show temperatures are at their highest ever level -- and the average sea-surface temperature breached 21C for the first time in April. These high temperatures are mainly driven by unprecedented high rates of human-induced warming. Cleaning up sulphur from marine shipping fuels is probably adding to the greenhouse gas driven warming. The shift towards El Nino conditions is also adding to the heat. There is also evidence that there is less Saharan dust over the ocean this year. This normally reflects heat away from the ocean. So in all, oceans are being hit by a quadruple whammy -- it's a sign of things to come."
Unheard of? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously you can find scientists working for the oil companies from the 40s or 50s talking about climate change. One bad stupid article from Time magazine though basically derailed any serious discussion of it for 40 years. And now we have a huge population of Old folks who refuse to do anything about it because deep down they know they're going to be dead before the shit hits the fan.
One of the things I've discovered as I've aged is the majority of people really don't care all that much about their kids and grandkids. They had them because that's just kind of what you were supposed to do not because they actually cared about their long-term futures...
Re:Unheard of? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the things I've discovered as I've aged is the majority of people really don't care all that much about their kids and grandkids
Maybe its just you, seriously most people I know care deeply about their children. If you go around insulting them then perhaps they reply in kind.
Some evidence: https://www.consumer.org.nz/ar... [consumer.org.nz] https://www.smh.com.au/money/p... [smh.com.au]
What does get me is that we have been told this for all my life I am old now, and nothing has happened to fix it, it just seems like a hopeless cause. Every time something happens that could help, there are screems but the economy, quick increase tourisim, like if we all just buy more stuff and fly around the world saying ooh thats pretty something substantial will change.
If they care so much (Score:5, Insightful)
Actions speak louder than words. And the actions of the previous generation, the baby boomers, speak volumes. I could forgive them for being Hoodwinked by Ronald Reagan. Everyone makes mistakes. But they have repeatedly made that mistake again and again and again and again. Fool me once shame on you, fool me again.. you can't fool me again.
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+1 for this. Baby boomers (of which I am just on the border) have had an easy life and now refuse to accept any other reality. Pisses me of badly:
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None of this was done at the expense of their own children. It was obvious that their children would have the same life that they did (because why would it be different - life had worked for them because they were special and worked hard) and if there were negative impacts on other people's children, that was their problem. Sadly, there were at least 3 mistakes in that line of thinking.
They're kids don't have that (Score:2)
One of the reasons they put Trump in charge is the little fuckers though Trump would fix
I wouldn't mind the high taxes (Score:2)
The greedy bastards made having children too expensive so that pensions aren't funded enough and then instead of letting us get the money from the 1% (who they worship as demi-Gods) they want to slash our benefits while keeping their own.
Over and over and over they pull the ladder up behind them.
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Why are they doing so little for them? Why did they allow the federal and state subsidies that paid for their education to be slashed in the early 2000s causing their children to be forced to take on huge amounts of debt and then blame their children for that debt? Why have they consistently ignored scientists on climate change? Why have they blocked any attempt to build affordable housing just so that they are property values for their homes can continue to go up forcing their children to either be crushed by high rent costs or live with half a dozen roommates unable to start a proper family? All while complaining about how back in their day they just worked so much harder.... Actions speak louder than words. And the actions of the previous generation, the baby boomers, speak volumes. I could forgive them for being Hoodwinked by Ronald Reagan. Everyone makes mistakes. But they have repeatedly made that mistake again and again and again and again.
Well said.
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Why are they doing so little for them? Why did they allow the federal and state subsidies that paid for their education to be slashed in the early 2000s causing their children to be forced to take on huge amounts of debt and then blame their children for that debt? Why have they consistently ignored scientists on climate change? Why have they blocked any attempt to build affordable housing just so that they are property values for their homes can continue to go up forcing their children to either be crushed by high rent costs or live with half a dozen roommates unable to start a proper family? All while complaining about how back in their day they just worked so much harder....
Why do they eat unhealthy food and insufficiently exercise? Why do they not save enough for retirement? Why didn't they study harder in school? Why do some of them not even quit smoking?
The problem isn't that people don't care enough about their children, the problem is that it's exceptionally hard to get people to care about consequences that only show up long in the future.
Imagine if people could hop in a time machine, jump forward 50 or 100 years, and spend a few minutes personally experiencing the cons
Like all things in life Balance is Best (Score:4, Interesting)
Why are they doing so little for them?
They are not - they are just not doing exactly what you want which seems to be drop everything and focus on climate change above all else. Climate change is a serious risk to our quality of life which means that those of us with kids are left trying to balance the best way forward between rapid change now that will cause huge economic disruption in the short term vs. doing less now but increasing the risk of long-term economic and environmental disruption.
To make matters more complicated the longer we delay the better the technology we have to convert the economy with less disruption...but it is impossible to predict what we will come up with so we cannot rely on that too much. The result is the situation we have now where we are making slow but steady progress at reducing our impact - faster than some would like and slower than others want - while investing in science and technology with the hope that will give us win-win solutions.
Is this the best, overall least disruptive route to take? I honestly do not know but I am very suspicious that radically shifting our economy on a very rapid timescale is going to be better. If the cost of energy and hence goods rises too fast then how do we afford to pay for our kids' education? How will they be able to get a job to start and support a family of their own if the economy tanks? Worse, the political backlash that may well cause might lead to us doing nothing which I also think would be a far worse outcome for my kids.
I know that in today's world of extreme politics seeking a balance is not a popular position but, while I'm not exactly thrilled with the current ugly compromise I don't see a way forward that would clearly lead to substantially better outcomes for my kids and potential grandkids and straying too far one way or the other I think would definitely lead to worse outcomes.
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It wasn't the baby boomers that elected Reagan. Though they did help him by voting a little for the 3rd party candidate. (Everyone makes mistakes.) The youngest boomers weren't even old enough to vote in 1980. The oldest of them were around 34 to 35 years old. 18 to 30 year olds voted [cornell.edu] slightly in favor of Carter.
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Maybe its just you, seriously most people I know care deeply about their children.
Their lack of action speaks wayyyyy louder than their words.
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Response from an old folk (Score:1, Troll)
And now we have a huge population of Old folks who refuse to do anything about it because deep down they know they're going to be dead before the shit hits the fan.
I'm one of those old folks.
Firstly, I have a kid and grandkids, and the drive to make a better life for them runs deep. Most of my generation has kids and most of yours doesn't [prb.org] , so the claim that I don't care or I'll be dead before it matters is just unthinking liberal illogic on your part.
Secondly, you're making the fundamental attribution error [wikipedia.org]. Applied here, it means that you take opposition to your policies and proposals as an indication of denialism at various levels: denying science, denying the evi
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Obviously, you still refuse to see what is actually going on and prefer the nice, calm, _wrong_ predictions that we can still solve all this nicely and certainly without mass-death or at the very least coming close to the end of civilization. People like you are the useful idiots supporting those that simply do not care and will sacrifice the future of everybody for a bit of temporal profit.
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so are we screwed or not?
Yes.
i can never figure out what your point is
Obviously.
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You must not be very smart then.
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Not very smart you mean? I agree.
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Re: Response from an old folk (Score:3)
"An economic solution will work" - yeah, of course. Because 'economic solutions' are known so well to work in favor of the planet, the environment and feeding the world population.
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so the claim that I don't care or I'll be dead before it matters is just unthinking liberal illogic on your part.
Why does someone that disagrees with your position necessarily belong to the "opposite" party. Are all good ideas are from your party and all bad ideas are from the opposite party?
One of the current problems in the US is the polarization of thinking along party lines. Some people would rather go down in flames than work with someone that espouses a different political view. Both parties are guilty of this but one party seems bound and determined to put "anti-science" on their party's platform as a badge
Re:Response from an old folk (Score:4, Informative)
This post is why progress in mitigating climate change is so slow. On one side you have climatologists doing scientific research and publishing papers, and on the opposite side you have political "scientists" sowing doubt, writing books and doing interviews saying that the guy without a science degree is right, ignore those people who are actual scientists.
What is particularly interesting is Lomborg's source of funding. It's entirely business groups and climate change deniers like the Australian government in 2014. He's not an expert or a scientist, he's just a shill for climate change denier groups.
Re:Response from an old folk (Score:4, Insightful)
Why don't we have kids?
We don't have the money, we don't have the physical space. And we're too busy slaving away to afford living.
> People are releasing sulfur dioxide gas into the atmosphere in a desperate attempt to quickly cool the planet,
Not desperately, just within business as usual.
Actually, funny you should mention that: one of the factors that might be at play for this oceanic heatwave is the 2020 regulation of maritime shipping emissions ( see IMO 2020), which drastically reduced the aerosol masking effect. Combined with the reduced traffic from covid... physics is catching up, yet again.
In the event of reduction of industrial production (and thus emissions), say from war (Ukraine), a pandemic, or from reaching global Hubbert's peak (which is presumed to have happened in November 2018 -- Art Berman), things might get wild very quickly.
> All (and I mean *all*) of the high-profile climate mitigation efforts I've seen so far have failed.
Yes, and? Are your ideas better?
> An economic solution will work.
No, it won't. Unless you call poverty from resource unavailability "economic solution"
There are currently 2 countries on track to meet their climate goals: South Africa, and Lebanon. Common point: economic collapse.
CO2 capture : the scale of the industry required would be bigger than the current fossil fuel industry. That took a century to build. Won't happen. (Vaclav Smil)
Electric cars : Those depend on your electricity mix: Norway, France are fine. In Poland emissions-wise its better to keep using an already existing ICE. Also there won't be enough material available to replace the entire fleet. (Simon Michaux) Plus electric cars are heavier, so more maintenance needed on roads.
Don't mistake solutions that haven't failed yet for working.
>Technology uptake is exponential
Oh sure. But what's the rate? at 2% it takes 35 units of time to double. Civilization might not have that amount of time units. Also it usually isn't an exponential, but a logistics curve. The only thing exponential in our economy is the money supply and energy use. Did you know that half of all used fossil fuels have been used since 1990? That's a 2% growth rate.
> The list of breakthrough technologies is staggeringly long.
Current breakthrough technologies will be too late, the solution must come from what we already have.
> We have calmer and cooler heads
Anyone talking about climate change from an economic perspective is not worth listening to. Those guys believe that anything with a roof pretty much won't be affected by a change in climate. (Nordhaus, and got for it a "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel", because economists don't qualify for a Nobel ) . They also cooked up their own climate models, different to those from climatologists. (Steve keen)
Personally the moment I stopped listening to economists was when one uttered that "Agriculture is only 2% of GDP, so it isn't really that important".
> Don't be telling me what I think.
> You don't know.
That doesn't mean what you think is an accurate representation of reality.
I'm in my 50s, I don't share your calmness (Score:3)
You seem remarkably relaxed about this predicament we are in. I'm not at all.
We are facing an almost certain civilisation collapse with very little chance of averting it. Vanishingly low chances.
Extreme weather is already baked in for decades, even if we hit net zero today. We're not hitting that, instead, emissions creep upwards.
Scientists are constantly alarmed that predictions made for decades from now, are actually happening right now. The feedback loops seem almost impossible to truly understand, let
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It does look very much like that is happening, yes. The survival strategy would have been eliminate population growth. Apparently the human race does not have the skills (and certainly not the will)to do that, so like a bacterial colony in a petri-dish, it grows until it reaches the limits and dies from its own waste.
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https://ourworldindata.org/fer... [ourworldindata.org]
Your claim is refuted. Fertility rates are dropping steadily.
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You seem to not understand that there is a pretty massive difference between "no growth" and "the growth rate is declining". You also fail to notice that "fertility rate" and "population growth rate" are two different things. Your reference is bogus. My claim is valid. Yours does not have merit.
Nah, we'll be alright (Score:2)
The people at the top know this and they're trying
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Humanity was doomed the moment it required fossil fuels to meet agricultural needs.
That never actually happened [washingtonpost.com]. What was needed was to process and return human waste to fields. This is kind of happening now with sewage sludge, except sewage sludge is toxic.
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Indeed. Make that "entirely expected".
Agree about most people not actually caring about their kids in the longer term. As soon as the chemical/biological attachment wanes, they basically stop caring, no matter what they pretend. Otherwise we would have had drastic changes in environmental politics a long time ago.
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Not a good conclusion (Score:5, Interesting)
"the majority of people really don't care all that much about their kids and grandkids"
They care as much for their children as any parents in any generation. I think your premise is faulty. The climate crisis shares a lot of similarities to getting fat over time. Intellectually you know it'll happen if you keep eating like you are, but until the day when you look in the mirror and say, "Oh fuck..." it isn't emotionally real. That doesn't mean you care any less.
If that's true why don't they show it with action (Score:2)
It's not that they're hungry it's that they're enjoying the pleasure of having their buttons pushed by politicians who look the way they want them to look and say the things they want to hear and make them feel the way they want to feel. Majority of them know it's wrong. I've talked to them and it's pre
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You might have missed my point, I'm saying that concluding the parents don't care is unsupportable. Conflating concern about the environment to being the defining characteristic of care for a child is... dumb. It's esoteric and ethereal - a hypothetical, until it isn't. The child can be well taken care of, loved, and supported, even if the parent litters and drives an SUV.
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Don't bother, this is rsilvergun, who bleats about bigotry and moral panics(as if that creates CO2) in one breath, then posts all boomers are bastards in the next. The irony is lost on them.
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Re:Unheard of? (Score:4, Interesting)
... people really don't care all that much about their kids and grandkids.
Oh we do!
By hoarding as much resources as we can - land, property, anything of value -, for our children to use in their future.
This is part of the problem. If I would only care for myself - I would stop all work immediately and enjoy my life to the fullest. But I work and invest for my kids' education and future life. We are all trying to grow the resources controlled by our direct offspring, as compared to the offspring of our friends and peers.
That's why I deeply admire the childless population. They have no internal pressure to inflate the economy for private reasons.
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And probably more reasons.
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Great link. A civil engineer is the perfect person to refute years of scientific consensus on climate change, because civil engineering and climatology are such closely related disciplines. Climatologists regularly build bridges and civil engineers regularly do climate research. You'd use a bridge built by a climatologist, wounldn't you?
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Makes sense (Score:2, Interesting)
But, you know, this whole climate thing is not about actually 'fixing' the climate, it's a cudgel to get more political power. People sense this and are unwilling to support it for that reason. Lack of humility, for one. As if they actually know why the Earth is heating up. But AGW people claim it's some boomer resistance. Mostly resistance to people having unearned hubris.
What you propose is a component of an actual solution, which is not wanted. I personally don't see the issue with using more intell
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time to move Earth away from the Sun (Score:1)
Pierson's Puppeteer species moved their planet away from their star. Of-course we never found the Outsiders to sell us a reactionless drive (we probably couldn't pay for it anyway).
Maybe we can just scorch the skies, Matrix style...
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That's Elon's next Super Secret Master Plan.
He *says* he wants establish a colony on Mars but that would be silly, going to a planet with no water, air, soil, or even magnetic field.
Not to mention the much lighter gravity, where you'd need special equipment just to take a dump.
But, think about it, he's putting together all the pieces - the Boring Company, the Alien Dreadnaught factories, the humanoid robots, the ever larger Starship rockets!
He's not going to leave the planet - he hasn't even ridden one of h
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Not to mention the much lighter gravity, where you'd need special equipment just to take a dump.
It's called Taco Bell, you can expel feces into a toilet under any level gravity, and with a specially designed suit even propel yourself in zero-G.
Now I can script a crossover with Demolition Man where all restaurants in the future will be Taco Bell.
Thanks!
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But you probably didn't read that far.
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Worse, it's their masters, the alien lizard kings.
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Well, they live in the earth and are very sneaky. I can see why you'd forget about them.
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Trump.
Cleaning up sulfur from shipping lanes (Score:2, Interesting)
This only got a one-liner in the summary "Cleaning up sulphur from marine shipping fuels is probably adding to the greenhouse gas driven warming."
I'll repost a comment I made from a few days ago here:
One of the many factors involved in how CO2 and other compounds affect climate and weather, is also around aerosols, particularly those created by cargo shipping, mostly in the Northern hemisphere.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/e [nasa.gov]...
https://www.science.org/doi/10 [science.org]... (2016)
https://prospect.org/environme [prospect.org]...
There's b
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Rescind the law, at least temporarily. Easy choice, not hard at all ... ends justify the means.
Also, some of the RECENT effect may be from stratospheric water vapor injection from the Hunga Tonga eruption.
Cleaning up sulfur from shipping - double whammy (Score:2)
In 2020 international maritime law changed to mandate low-sulfur fuel on ships, which 'instantly' reduced the amount of aerosols created. It is surmised that average temps will jump quickly now, especially in the Northern hemisphere.
Just in the last few days I've seen an article claiming that the drop in sulfur and particulate pollution from the COVID-sequester driven drop in international shipping HAD ALREADY caused a sudden jump in global temperature. It speculated about the possibility that anti-polluti
Say goodbye to lobsters (Score:2)
When my Dad was young, Loch Laxford in north-west Scotland supported 14 boats fishing for lobsters (thus 14 families). When I visited in the 1990s, there was one boat getting half an income out of fishing for lobsters.
Insufficient understanding? (Score:1)
So, "we don't understand what's happening, certainly not well enough to avoid counterproductive policies, but you definitively have to implement radical policies that change the way you live anyway."
Summertime... (Score:2)
panics and a-hole, most of you (Score:1)
For a supposedly smart bunch of tech peeps, you remain surprisingly uninterested in finding information about this sea surface temperature anomaly and some reasons that might explain parts of it.
here, let me help you a little: https://theethicalskeptic.com/... [theethicalskeptic.com]
Surprise! there might be another heat source showing up
and for all the political and agism crap thrown around, foad