Pacific Coast awash with strange happenings

[Judi Lynn]

Aug. 2, 2005, 12:51AM

Pacific Coast awash with strange happenings
Fewer fish, more dead birds and warmer water prompt concerns
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - Marine biologists are seeing mysterious and disturbing things along the Pacific Coast this year: higher water temperatures, plummeting catches of fish, lots of dead birds on the beaches, and perhaps most worrisome, very little plankton — the tiny organisms that are a vital link in the ocean food chain.
(snip)

Few scientists are willing to blame global warming, the theory that carbon dioxide and other artificially produced emissions are trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere and causing a worldwide rise in temperatures. Yet few are willing to rule it out.

"There are strange things happening, but we don't really understand how all the pieces fit together," said Jane Lubchenco, a zoologist and climate change expert at Oregon State University. "It's hard to say whether any single event is just an anomaly or a real indication of something serious happening."

This much is known: From California to British Columbia, unusual weather patterns have disrupted the marine ecosystem.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3291732

[xchrom]

1. yikes -- that's scary.

i wonder if we'll have an el nino -- i know that the set up for one was around last july .

[Peace Patriot]

2. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm sure the Bush Cartel's Environmental Profit

Agency (EPA) is right on it. They'll stop those "strange happenings" on the Left Coast. They'll nuke 'em back to the...uh...Genesis.

It's one minute to midnight. Do you know where your vote is?

[kysrsoze]

3. This is REALLY bad. Haven't seen anything like it before.

[Straight Shooter]

4. Perhaps now the fundies will get a lesson in the value of the food chain.

Just because you're at the top doesn't mean you can ignore what's close to the bottom.

This is a very worrisome development.

[jokerman93]

13. A lesson?

In my experience, fundies don't learn. Certainly in cases like this, they will simply see these disturbing trends in our world ecosystems as signs of the Apocalypse, and I suppose they are in some terribly real and absolute sense.

However, there will be no Deus ex machina to pull their sorry complacent asses out of the disaster our "godly" civilization has made of the planet.

[truth2power]

19. You're right. Fundies don't learn.

They're not troubled by reality or by OBSERVABLE indications of coming catastrophe.

[meganmonkey]

5. Canary in a Coalmine

:scared:

[Betsy Ross]

6. Clearing our coast

for off-shore drilling.

[ananda]

7. now, why is it that..

.. few scientists are willing to blame global warming???

Afraid of committing..

Afraid of their corporate masters..

Afraid of losing their jobs..

Afraid of losing out on those lucrative federal grant dollars...

All of the above.

Sue

[Beam Me Up]

9. "Global warming" may not even be the half of it.

There are deep changes occurring within the Earth's interior. We don't know a whole lot about this but clearly sea temperatures are rising and this may not only be ascribed to changes in the atmosphere. The earth's crust is only 20 to 25 miles thick in most places; thinner under ocean beds. The interior of the planet has its own system of tides and currents.

[wrlwnd]

31. Maybe because they don't know? n/t

[Bigmack]

8. Albacore tuna...

..cought by sport salmon fishermen 12 miles off the coast of Washington.

Waaay too early in the season, and waaay too close to shore.

Albacore love to eat baby salmon, and if they come in close to shore and ambush the salmon going out to sea... there goes the future of salmon on the west coast.

[TrogL]

10. There's been rain every day here for the last month and a half

This part of the world spent the last five years in drought.

[progressivebydesign]

11. Isn't that El Nino?

I've lived through several El Ninos in Southern California, and I know we have one right now, as the rain doused So. Cal and dried us up here in Pacific Northwest.

[sakabatou]

12. Low plankton levels? Say heat wave!

Most of the oxygen in our planet comes from these guys, so with low numbers, comes higher temperature.

[QuettaKid]

16. wait...are you sure about that? MOST

of the oxygen comes from plankton?

[sakabatou]

20. Heard it from my marine bio teacher

So I don't really know myself

[JackDragna]

24. He's right

Up to 70% of the world's photosynthetic products come from phytoplankton. If we screw them, we screw ourselves.

[HeeBGBz]

14. We're all gonna die

Hmmm, maybe a small nukular winter would counteract that global warming stuff.


:sarcasm:

[Media_Lies_Daily]

15. The dead birds may also be dying because of contact with....

...other migratory birds that are carrying Avian Flu.

[H5N1]

30. Damn, never thought of that. Let's hope this is not the case.

[earthboundmisfit]

17. Question from a dummy (me): Don't aircraft emissions account

for a good portion of the atmospheric problem? Why don't we ever see much about cutting back on flights, like we do about cutting back on driving our cars, mowing lawns, etc? I know & appreciate & agree with limiting our emissions down here close to the ground, but I recently read that there are now more flights than ever in the air at one time - and wouldn't you think we should be limiting those, too?
Just wondering - I admittedly don't know much about this...

[Gregorian]

22. Mowing lawns

Not a contributor. How often do you mow a lawn. Once a week? Planes are continuous. And the volume of air that flows through an engine, and it altered, is HUGE. One little problem- who's going to start taking cold showers first? I don't mean that quite literally. I mean, cargo planes make our world as we know it. Everything on ebay is airborne at some point. Almost everything. Much of our food is flown.
There were two smart kids back in the early 70's who saw this coming. More, really. But my best friend and I grew up in a great neighborhood where people were careful, intelligent, thoughtful. There was even an electric car club, back in the early 60's. The greatest contribution to this problem is to have more kids. We are now older, and we have no children. And we don't travel. Most people look down on us for that. But I pride myself in having been one of very few who were responsible. I designed my life so as to not use much. Anyways, I just felt like posting this somewhere, and noticed your post. It's good to see people starting to think about things. A little late, but it's the thought that counts.

[satya]

29. Hats off to you for having the foresight to live simply b4 it was trendy.

:yourock:

[Gregorian]

32. Thanks.

It really sucks to have friends who get to ride with Lance Armstrong. I'm really into bikes, and just to see the respect that bicyclists get in Europe makes me want to travel, or move. The lack of culture here, also makes me want to uproot, or travel. But when my friend says he's meeting Lance to go do training rides up some incredible mountain in Switzerland, I could die. Or my cousin who was the flight surgeon during Clinton's era, was living in Moscow, and I got the email that he'd fly me out. Or my mother's house in Mystic Connecticut that was built in the 1700's, or biking the red rocks of Moab, Utah, or missing out on that incredible drive across America, pre-McDonald's era. And on and on... I could just die. But I never felt right pumping poison into the next generation's air. I paid the price.

[arikara]

23. Aircraft emissions perhaps contribute

but aerosol spraying and fooling around with their haarp array more like. I know what real clouds and contrails look like and they don't get laid down in grids, spread out and whiten the sky.

I don't pretend to know what they are doing to the sky. Ridicule me all you want but I know what my eyes see and it isn't normal too often anymore out there.

[mccoyn]

26. I think its a matter of quantity.

Even with all those airplanes flying around they still don't produce as much CO2 as cars. If you cut the airplane emissions in half you wouldn't have nearly the savings as if you cut the car emissions in half. If you got everyone to use mechanical push mowers you wouldn't even make a dent in our CO2 emissions.

[bonito]

18. Anybody hear of the HAARP project

The science channel had a piece a few months ago, I wonder if theres a relation.

[VegasWolf]

21. Since Bush talks to God all of the time, Bush should just ask him. nt

[earth mom]

34. Sounds like a good idea. eom

[Danieljay]

25. My walk along the Oregon Coast last week

I live in Portland and try and get to the coast as much as possible for a nice stroll. Last couple of times I've gone I've noticed more dead birds on the beach than before. Coincidence, maybe. Not sure. It was enough for me to actually mention it to a friend last week who was visiting me from the midwest as we were walking along the beach.

[RevolutionStartsNow]

27. I walk on the beach...

about 3-4 times per week, in the Monterey Bay, and I have never seen so many dead birds. Really sad.

[Zorra]

28. I live on a Pacific Coast beach. Last year, after a rare rain,

literally millions upon millions of dead clams washed up on the beach all at once.

As far as I know, no one ever explained why this happened.

[supernova]

33. Algae bloom?

:shrug: That's sad. :-(

[Megahurtz]

35. Shit.

:(