PNW Snow Levels- Warm Ocean Temps Killing Micro-organisms

Not great news. Warmer ocean temps may killing micro-organisms, fish, birds, etc. (Not that anyone really seems to know.) Does that mean another high snow level year for the PNW?

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From CNN.com:

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SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- 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.

Is this just one freak year? Or is this global warming?

Few scientists are willing to blame global warming, the theory that carbon dioxide and other manmade 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."

Scientists say things could very well swing back to normal next year. But if the phenomenon proves to be long-lasting, the consequences could be serious for birds, fish and other wildlife.

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

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What are "unusual" weather patterns?? These types of global warming stories are a bunch of crap. They look at a short term change, link warming to CO2 emmissions, and say the wildlife could be doomed without talking about the variance in ocean temperatures that has been going on for last millions of years.

The most important sentence of the blurb - "It's hard to say whether any single event is just an anomaly or a real indication of something serious happening."

Fuck the plankton. I just want snow.

If Sphinx and Tippster had children, would they be Sphincters?

Nah, snow levels will return to normal----> Funken is moving back to Colorado! :p

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Few scientists are willing to blame global warming...yet few are willing to rule it out.

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What a surprise. :rolleyes: Scientists never give a conclusive answer to anything they haven't studied extensively and all but proven. I hate articles like this... it's just fluff. Nothing of substance whatsoever. Sensationalist media.

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Originally Posted by Samwich

What a surprise. :rolleyes: Scientists never give a conclusive answer to anything they haven't studied extensively and all but proven. I hate articles like this... it's just fluff. Nothing of substance whatsoever. Sensationalist media.

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Exactly... unfortunately i would say most people out there don't understand that.

I believe there's a lot more to the whole climatic change thing than just this one story. I've seen a lot of different articles on various anomalies that all point to the same thing. The depleted salmon runs, the unusual migration of normally warmer water marine life into the PNW, shrinking glaciers & lower than normal snowpacks, polar icecaps melting away at an ever accelerating rate...... It's pretty hard to deny that there is something out of the ordinary going on.

I'm not saying that there's a "Day After Tomorrow" scenario unfolding, but when you look at all the clues, it certainly doesn't look good. And guess who opted out of the Kyoto Accord?

someone should repost that article out of the new yorker.

Yes this is one incident ,& not everything that happens in the world causes this or is affected by this.When it is put into context,it shows a very bleak outlook for the future.While there are always hiccups in the climate of the world, All of these things added up equal big trouble.

Put it this way.If you were gettting laid 4x less than normal (slow pitch for someone),getting 4 x less snow in the winter (PNW sucked last winter & still got 400 " at some places),eating 4x less food, getting paid 4x less than usual,you'd be very concerned.If all these things happened at the same time or in sequence you'd be freaking big time!

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Originally Posted by freshie247

Yes this is one incident ,& not everything that happens in the world causes this or is affected by this.When it is put into context,it shows a very bleak outlook for the future.While there are always hiccups in the climate of the world, All of these things added up equal big trouble.

Put it this way.If you were gettting laid 4x less than normal (slow pitch for someone),getting 4 x less snow in the winter (PNW sucked last winter & still got 400 " at some places),eating 4x less food, getting paid 4x less than usual,you'd be very concerned.If all these things happened at the same time or in sequence you'd be freaking big time!

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If you were getting paid 4 times less, wouldn't you owe money?

I don't even want to think about getting laid 4 x less.

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Originally Posted by Buster Highmen

If Sphinx and Tippster had children, would they be Sphincters?

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If Sphinx had sex with himself, would he still be an asshole?

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Few scientists are willing to blame global warming, the theory that carbon dioxide and other manmade emissions are trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere and causing a worldwide rise in temperatures.

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That's funny, I thought global warming was just the globe getting warmer.
I guess the definition in the dictionary of global warming now is "the effect of hairspray, cow farts and Union Carbide"

So what did the vikings blame global warming on?

(Brett Favre)

The earth is getting warmer. This is a fact. The term "global warming" is the name of a theory which states the earth is getting warmer due to man's release of co2 by the burning of fossil fuels. This has yet to be proven thus its classification as a theory. There are many reasons for the earth to change tempatures, and IMO co2 is one of them. NOT all of them.

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Originally Posted by PacRimRider1

The earth is getting warmer. This is a fact.

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Getting warmer than what? There is evidence to suggest that it has been warmer than it currently is several times during its history. This is why it is so hard to prove the theory of global warming - because there are several times when something other than CO2 from fossil fuel burning caused the Earth to warm up.

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Originally Posted by PacRimRider1

The earth is getting warmer. This is a fact. The term "global warming" is the name of a theory which states the earth is getting warmer due to man's release of co2 by the burning of fossil fuels. This has yet to be proven thus its classification as a theory. There are many reasons for the earth to change tempatures, and IMO co2 is one of them. NOT all of them.

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I was under the impression we've been experiencing global warming since the last ice age. Guess I'm wrong. Maybe I should ask Iceman about the sweet whips he was driving around 10,000 years ago......

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Originally Posted by funkendrenchman

Getting warmer than what? There is evidence to suggest that it has been warmer than it currently is several times during its history.

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The derivative of the average global temperature with respect to time is positive. Ie, tomorrow will be a bit warmer than today, and today is a bit warmer than yesterday.

This is indisputable. The data cannot be argued with.

What we don't know is why. The 'science' of this business has been corrupted to an extremely worrisome degree, according to people who should know. From what I gather, humans as a whole know very little about how our planet works and responds, despite what many like to claim.

However, since our screwing ourselves over would be bad in the long run, I personally think we should minimize our impact whether anthopogenic climate change is a true concern or not.

In other words, I think that people who claim to know that the world is getting warmer because of human impact are full of shit. But since it would suck if they were right, we should try to reduce the amount by which we change the planet.

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Originally Posted by Sphinx

In other words, I think that people who claim to know that the world is getting warmer because of human impact are full of shit. But since it would suck if they were right, we should try to reduce the amount by which we change the planet.

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I concur.

From a paper I wrote:

Logic would also say that if CO2 concentrations are higher than they have been in the last 11,000 years, then global temperatures are higher than they have been in the last 11,000 years. This is where the argument falls apart. Radiocarbon testing has shown that temperatures near the arctic tree-line – an area which is supposed to impacted the most by global warming (Michaels and Balling, 2000)- were upwards of 4 deg C warmer during the Hypsithermal warming which occurred 3000-8000 years ago (Nichols, 1975). In fact, in the past 7000 years there were only approximately 750-1000 years which were cooler in this area than it is today (Nichols, 1975). During this time period, there were no man-made creations, such as cars, planes, or power plants, yet this period was much, much warmer than anything we have experienced in the past 100 years. Not only that, CO2 levels were at least 50% lower than what they are today.

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Originally Posted by BlurredElevens

I was under the impression we've been experiencing global warming since the last ice age. Guess I'm wrong. Maybe I should ask Iceman about the sweet whips he was driving around 10,000 years ago......

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I agree completely. The earth is in a warming trend and has been since the last ice age. Thats all I mean by "the earth is getting warmer."

edit: and at some point it will get cooler again. The only thing it won't do is stay the same, which everyone seems to have a problem with.

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Originally Posted by PacRimRider1

I agree completely. The earth is in a warming trend and has been since the last ice age. Thats all I mean by "the earth is getting warmer."

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Actually there is evidence to show it has been warmer than it is now during a specific period since the last ice age - specifically during the hypsithermal warming which occurred 3,000-8,000 years ago. And as I said above, CO2 conc. were 50% lower than they are now despite it being warmer.

Another interesting point which is heavily disputed is that there has been very little evidence to show that CO2 can affect temperatures. But there is evidence to show that temperatures can affect concentrations of CO2.

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Originally Posted by funkendrenchman

Actually there is evidence to show it has been warmer than it is now during a specific period since the last ice age - specifically during the hypsithermal warming which occurred 3,000-8,000 years ago. And as I said above, CO2 conc. were 50% lower than they are now despite it being warmer.

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So you think we're going down again? I just mean that the trend suggests we are still warming overall but I could be completely wrong. I imagine there is going to be (or was already) a peak and reversal of the trend when the earth starts a cooling trend, but its fairly hard to determine with our severe lack of data. This is another reason why global warming is so hard to make a case for, when we barely have records before the burning of fossil fuels started.

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Originally Posted by PacRimRider1

So you think we're going down again? I just mean that the trend suggests we are still warming overall but I could be completely wrong. I imagine there is going to be (or was already) a peak and reversal of the trend when the earth starts a cooling trend, but its fairly hard to determine with our severe lack of data. This is another reason why global warming is so hard to make a case for, when we barely have records before the burning of fossil fuels started.

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I haven't done enough research to make definitive statements, but if you look at the last 3000 years, since the hypsithermal warming, there has actually been a decline in temperature which could be an indication that we are headed for the next ice age. The last 100 years does show a rise in temperature but 100 years is a very small time period to look at when talking about Earth's temperature cycles. I think it what will be more important is figuring out if CO2 actually can and does cause the temperature to rise. We have the records we just have to dig them out of ice. :biggrin:

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Originally Posted by funkendrenchman

Logic would also say that if CO2 concentrations are higher than they have been in the last 11,000 years, then global temperatures are higher than they have been in the last 11,000 years. This is where the argument falls apart.

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Logic? That assumes a simply coupled system. The earth is by no means a simply coupled system.

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Originally Posted by cj001f

Logic? That assumes a simply coupled system. The earth is by no means a simply coupled system.

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Originally Posted by funkendrenchman

This is where the argument falls apart.

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I think that's what he is trying to say...