Other challenges are pollution, degraded coastal water quality, habitat loss, fishing impacts, invasive species, disease, rising sea levels and acidification, it said.
Pardon me for remaining underwhelmed.
NO WHERE does it mention loss of oceanic flora (phytoplankton), regardless of the reasons.
Listen.. my Uncle, who's pretty wired into the scientific community due to his previous duties as a geologist monitoring volcanic activity, had a discussion with me last night. He's pretty well sold on the rising CO2 threat and monitors the scientific traffic fairly closely.
But I finally had a chance to show him some of the stuff related to declining phytoplankton levels and the argument that for a proper scientific analysis, a "baseline" standard has to be arrived. I told him that, IMO, it's critical (and yet to be done) to assess how much of the CO2 increase is due to man-made emissions, and how much is due to decreased oceanic flora and deforestation, and/or tectonic activity.
Even he, as a scientist, had to confess that I had a very valid point and that he'd really never heard about the issue before.
Obama will impress me when he hatches a plan for restoring phytoplankton levels which will coincidentally restore marine fish stocks as well.
It's simple logic.. if phytoplankton levels are declining, then CO2 levels are going to increase. Why people will pay MORE attention to percentage increases in CO2 and UTTERLY IGNORE decreasing phytoplankton levels over that SAME period??
We've seen CO2 increases at Mauna Loa rise from 320 to 380 ppm since 1960:
en.wikipedia.org
That's a 60ppm increase which represents less than a 20% increase.
But since 1980 we've seen 20-30% decreases in oceanic phytoplankton?
seakeepers.org
Coincidence? I think not.
I believe there's a direct correlation.
Hawk |
