Climate change kills fish in Bolivia

[off2bed]

Scientists who have visited the affected rivers say the event is the biggest ecological disaster Bolivia has known, and, as an example of a sudden climatic change wreaking havoc on wildlife, it is unprecedented in recorded history.

"There's just a huge number of dead fish," says Michel Jégu, a researcher from the Institute for Developmental Research in Marseilles, France, who is currently working at the Noel Kempff Mercado Natural History Museum in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. "In the rivers near Santa Cruz there's about 1,000 dead fish for every 100 metres of river."

Global Warming?

Nope, it's from Antarctic cold. Sorry, Algore.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100827/full/news.2010.437.html

 

[doctor_insanus]

Wow. It got cold during winter? That disproves everything, all right.

"With such extreme climatic events potentially becoming more common due to climate change, scientists are hurrying to coordinate research into the impact, and how quickly the ecosystem is likely to recover."

But then again...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/warming-coral.html

And a newer source:

http://www.voanews.com/english/news...sia-Dying-Faster-Than-Expected-101064419.html

 

[JustSkye]

Global Warming?

Nope, it's from Antarctic cold. Sorry, Algore.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100827/full/news.2010.437.html

So it's just the blanket of Antartic air? That the climate changes and all that's going, you know, GLOBALLY, wouldn't cause it? You have to have an action in other areas to cause reaction there and elsewhere. It doesn't just happen.

And just to quote the article...

"With such extreme climatic events potentially becoming more common due to climate change, scientists are hurrying to coordinate research into the impact, and how quickly the ecosystem is likely to recover."


If something likely grows in a tropical climate, when a blast of cold air lingers, yes, it's likely to be damaged or killed. Environmentally, even I know this working with plants and wildlife.

"But exactly how the cold temperatures caused such devastation remains a mystery. So far, there have been no rigorous surveys of the ecological damage, only anecdotal observations.

Fons Smolders, a fisheries scientist at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, is one expert who has visited the area and is keen for the phenomenon to receive proper study because such freak climatic events may become more common in the future."

""When fish die, it's usually not a single stressor, but multiple stressors interacting," agrees Steven Cooke, an aquatic ecologist at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, who last year wrote a review of cold shock in fish. "So, if cold shock or cooler temperatures are being implicated in mortality, there's probably something else going on as well.""

Duh.

 

[Sonny Limatina]

If it's ever cold anywhere, climate change is a hoax.

 

[Bert Notorius]

There was a big fish kill in Lake Evergreen last winter.

Experts blamed it on the cold.

 

[trysail]

If it's ever cold anywhere, climate change is a hoax.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/sine_of_the_times.jpg


​

 

[Sean]

Should the Artic ice melt a huge run off of really cold water will run into the Gulf Stream. This will mean London will get the same kind of climate as Moscow. In other words, global warming means I'm going to fucking freeze to death. But don't let your complete ignorance of anything resembling science throw you.

 

[Bert Notorius]

Should the Artic ice melt a huge run off of really cold water will run into the Gulf Stream. This will mean London will get the same kind of climate as Moscow. In other words, global warming means I'm going to fucking freeze to death. But don't let your complete ignorance of anything resembling science throw you.

*prays for Arctic ice melt*

 

[trysail]

Should the Artic ice melt a huge run off of really cold water will run into the Gulf Stream. This will mean London will get the same kind of climate as Moscow. In other words, global warming means I'm going to fucking freeze to death. But don't let your complete ignorance of anything resembling science throw you.

The BBC interviews Professor Phil Jones.

Phil Jones is director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), which has been at the centre of the row over hacked e-mails. The BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin put questions to Professor Jones, including several gathered from climate sceptics.


Full interview:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm

A - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?

Phil Jones: An initial point to make is that in the responses to these questions I've assumed that when you talk about the global temperature record, you mean the record that combines the estimates from land regions with those from the marine regions of the world. CRU produces the land component, with the Met Office Hadley Centre producing the marine component.

Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).

I have also included the trend over the period 1975 to 2009, which has a very similar trend to the period 1975-1998.

So, in answer to the question, the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other...

*****​

B - Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Phil Jones: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

*****​

D - Do you agree that natural influences could have contributed significantly to the global warming observed from 1975-1998, and, if so, please could you specify each natural influence and express its radiative forcing over the period in Watts per square metre.

Phil Jones:This area is slightly outside my area of expertise. When considering changes over this period we need to consider all possible factors (so human and natural influences as well as natural internal variability of the climate system). Natural influences (from volcanoes and the Sun) over this period could have contributed to the change over this period. Volcanic influences from the two large eruptions (El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991) would exert a negative influence. Solar influence was about flat over this period. Combining only these two natural influences, therefore, we might have expected some cooling over this period.

*****​

G - There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global or not. If it were to be conclusively shown that it was a global phenomenon, would you accept that this would undermine the premise that mean surface atmospheric temperatures during the latter part of the 20th Century were unprecedented?

Phil Jones: There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm that today, then current warmth would be unprecedented.

We know from the instrumental temperature record that the two hemispheres do not always follow one another. We cannot, therefore, make the assumption that temperatures in the global average will be similar to those in the northern hemisphere.

*****​

N - When scientists say "the debate on climate change is over", what exactly do they mean - and what don't they mean?

Phil Jones: It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.

*****​

 

[Bert Notorius]

Fish die because they can't go put on a coat.

 

[Ham Murabi]

Should the Artic ice melt a huge run off of really cold water will run into the Gulf Stream. This will mean London will get the same kind of climate as Moscow. In other words, global warming means I'm going to fucking freeze to death. But don't let your complete ignorance of anything resembling science throw you.

It's also true that if a giant sponge landed in the Atlantic you could walk to France.

 

[John Doe]

Global Warming?

Nope, it's from Antarctic cold. Sorry, Algore.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100827/full/news.2010.437.html

How many times do you have to be told before you get it that global warming refers to the global average, and not every place will experience warming? Climatic systems are not nearly so simple that you can point at one part and draw an accurate conclusion.

 

[Bert Notorius]

How many times do you have to be told before you get it that global warming refers to the global average, and not every place will experience warming? Climatic systems are not nearly so simple that you can point at one part and draw an accurate conclusion.

In order to define a 1 degree increase in global average temperature margin of error, you would need accurate global temperature readings to a 1/10 of a degree over every square yard of the earth's surface.

Look it up.