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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread
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To: neolib who wrote (20582)2/21/2008 6:19:58 PM
From: Hawkmoon  Read Replies (1) of 36921
 
I have not seen any reconstructions of such. I'd like to seem some, and also have at least a rough understanding of how well they have been vetted compared to temp reconstructions.

NASA Satellite images show that the N. Pacific has experienced a 30% decline in phytoplankton over the past several decades.

Purely coincidence that this is the same period we started seeing CO2 increases and started worrying about global warming??

For the past 20 years (early 1980s to present), phytoplankton concentrations declined as much as 30 percent in northern oceans.

gsfc.nasa.gov

And research into Baleen in Bowhead Whales has revealed substantial decreases in carbon content over the past 5 decades:

One of the ocean mysteries Planktos seeks understand related to the decline in productivity of the North Pacific that has documented to be going on for several decades.

Don Schell is a researcher and director of the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He calculated ocean productivity by measuring the amount of carbon in the baleen of bowhead whales. The carbon comes from the whale's consumption of plankton. Bowhead whales add a layer of baleen each year, much like tree rings. Scientists can examine the layers of baleen and measure how ocean productivity has changed over time.

Shell notes, "The record shows that from 1946 to 1963 everything went along fairly smoothly at a relatively high level of productivity. And then in the mid-60s it increased and peaked at around 1965, 1966. Then ocean plankton productivity began a steady decline and since the mid-1970s it has gone down and down and down. The last samples we have from 1994, 1995 and 1996 show the lowest primary productivity in the Bering Sea over this 50-year period."

The story told in the baleen of bowhead whales is helping scientists explain the decline of species such as Steller sea lions, seabirds and fish that ultimately depend on plankton. Schell says the overall productivity of the North Pacific Ocean has declined some 40 percent. That means the ocean may not be able to support the variety of sea life that it once did.
(www.uaf.edu/seagrant/NewsMedia/98ASJ/08.17.98_SeaChanges.html)

Hawk
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