Consequences for marine life
…recent ocean heat in the Mediterranean Sea has been so intense that scientists fear potentially devastating consequences for marine life.
The temperature of the sea surface regularly passed 30C off the coast of Majorca and elsewhere in late June and early July, in places six or seven degrees above usual…It has been the western Med’s most extreme marine heatwave ever recorded for the time of year, affecting large areas of the sea for weeks on end.
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“What is different this year is that 30C sea temperatures have arrived much earlier, and that means that we can expect the summer to be more intense and longer,” said Marta Marcos, associate professor at the University of the Balearic Islands in Spain. “I grew up here, so we are used to heatwaves, but this has become more and more common and intense.”
We’re all familiar with heat, but more and more of it where it shouldn’t be is still a bad thing.
Nonetheless, I am sure that there are plenty of fossil-carbon shills around who are happy to testify that it cannot possibly be due to alleged anthropogenic glowal warming due to an alleged excess of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; CO2 is plant food, etc, etc, etc.
https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/net-zero-agenda-is-economically-and-technologically-utopian/video/b37c9173c9ba46a4778b84094f0edcde
Also: https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/video-interview-of-ian-plimer-at-sky-news-falsely-claims-that-a-new-study-announces-an-incoming-ice-age-partly-based-on-an-incorrect-daily-mail-headline/
Proceed with business-as-usual.
CO2 is plant ‘food’ (sorta), yes, but when there is increased CO2 present, plants will reduce the number of stomata on their leaves, because to much CO2 is bad for them. A small increase in CO2 might be useful, if the plant growth is limited by CO2 and nothing else (hint: that isn’t often the case), but the increased CO2 also increases temperature, which is often disastrous for the plant community.
“plants will reduce the number of stomata on their leaves,”
I *thought* that was because the plants lose water through the stomata & if they are getting enough CO2 with fewer stomata the optimum trade off is fewer stomata. Correct me if I am mistaken.
I recently listened to this
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/105-leon-simons
In which much of the discussion is how aerosols reflecting sunlight back to space has offset the warming from extra CO2 blocking thermal infrared from going into space. A lot of the aerosols have been sulfuric acid droplets from burning sulfur rich fossil fuels. In recent years ocean going vessels have been obliged to cut the amount of sulfur in the fuel oil they burn, so now we get faster warming.
So what is the least bad option? It will take time to replace fossil fuels with zero carbon energy sources, and find ways to pull CO2 out of the air. In the mean time should we *deliberately* put sulfur aerosols into the air?
I’m more interested in the open sea algae bloom guys like Quico Toro have been advocating (iron sulfate I think).
Sulfuric acid will fall as acid rain. Particulate matter of all sorts often leads to (temporary) cooling, but it doesn’t last as long as carbon dioxide. As the carbon increases in the air, the other pollutants remain the same, and eventually they get overwhelmed.
While the optimum trade off may be fewer stomata, it makes it foolish to say that plants will gain that much from increased carbon dioxide. Which is what I was saying earlier – unless the plant growth is limited by carbon dioxide, and ONLY carbon dioxide, you will not likely see great increases in plant growth. Since nitrogen and water are the two greatest limitations on plant growth, and there are only certain conditions where CO2 is limited, the overall increased growth of plants will likely be minimal. The death of plants from increased heat, and from increased insects (insects reproduces better when its warmer) will more than offset that.
The answer? At this point, I would say there isn’t one. Every answer has a downside, yes, even nuclear. But…the answer would be a combination of wind, solar, and nuclear, with limited use also of hydropower. The real answer is to reduce the population, because every single possible answer will be met with, yes, but it will hurt the poor. Yes, but we have to feed eight billion people. Yes, but….
There are excuses floating around in the ozone, and whenever something is suggested that might lead to a change in lifestyles, someone just grabs whichever one is floating by at that moment and deploys it…wham!…to smash your argument to smithereens. We really need to get off our buts.
The truly real answer, though, is the one NOT written on the front of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – panic. But that won’t solve anything, so we say not to, and we still don’t solve anything, because no one thinks it’s worth panicking about. Both solutions are non-starters, and so we don’t start.
It’s sort of like peace in the Middle East.
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