Posted on 06/09/2012 4:21:59 AM PDT by Zakeet
NASA has revealed its discovery of a massive algae bloom under the slowly diminishing Arctic ice -- a finding that made scientists' eyes pop. But does this never-before-seen phenomenon change the fate of this microscopic algae?
Not long ago, this crucial plant life -- which produces much of the world's oxygen -- was reported in a century-long tailspin.
Here's the back story.
The same year that NASA researchers launched the Icescape expedition to the Arctic -- the project that resulted in NASA's astounding new discovery -- there was a dire report on the world's phytoplankton.
A Canadian team said in the journal Nature, as The Times reported in July 2010, that the world's phytoplankton had been disappearing at a rate of about 1% a year for the previous 100 years.
"A global decline of this magnitude? It's quite shocking," Daniel Boyce, Dalhousie University marine scientist and lead author of the 2010 study, told The Times.
Phytoplankton -- the basis of the marine food chain -- "are key to the whole ecosystem," he said. "In terms of climate changes, the effect on fisheries, we don't know exactly what these effects will be."
Could his latest discovery of a mass of phytoplankton in the Arctic signal a turnaround for this crucial organism?
The jury's out.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
You right wing nuts need to realize that this is undoubtedly bad news ... because even though plankton reduces carbon dioxide ... this newly discovered batch is emitting its own toxic gasses ... and increasing global warming ... and are killing fish ... and enlarging the hole in the ozone layer ... and destroying rain forests ... and causing a hydrocarbon spill in the fragile arctic environment ... and leading to mass extinctions ... and it's all because you selfish pigs continue to drive your SUV's and use power lawn mowers ... which is why we need much more government funded research ... and a carbon tax!
As for myself and some others I speak to, science has lost it’s credibility. The cataclysmic rise of the oceans did not happen, the significant loss of Himalayan ice didn’t happen. Now we are not surprised that we are not all doing to die from the loss of phytoplankton. Global warming extremism and a few pharmaceutical disappointments have caused a bit of distrust.
” ... because even though plankton reduces carbon dioxide ... this newly discovered batch is emitting its own toxic gasses ... and increasing global warming ... and are killing fish ... and enlarging the hole in the ozone layer ... and destroying rain forests ...”
You could be Gore’s press secretary!
You right wing nuts need to realize that this is undoubtedly bad news ... because even though plankton reduces carbon dioxide ... this newly discovered batch is emitting its own toxic gasses ... and increasing global warming ... and are killing fish ... and enlarging the hole in the ozone layer ... and destroying rain forests ... and causing a hydrocarbon spill in the fragile arctic environment ... and leading to mass extinctions ... and it's all because you selfish pigs continue to drive your SUV's and use power lawn mowers ... which is why we need much more government funded research ... and a carbon tax!Excellent!
Obama gave a directive to NASA head, its mission is ‘moooooslem outreach’.
Keep JPL as academic affiliate, shrink 90% of rest of NASA, the work they do nowadays doesn’t amount to a lot of beans.
I was watching the Michael Jackson documentary “This Is It” the other night and I had seen it before but just caught it the other night when he was standing on the stage in a pep talk and prayer with his dancers and crew telling them “We have 1 year to turn it all around and save the world or there is no going back and we will be finished”
Hey Mike...Mike? Mike? Still here? No?
We are.
Yes! warned aged 1960s spoiled brat Al Gore
Here’s another, I think more informative, link to a ScienceNow article printed in the Anchorage Daily News: http://www.adn.com/2012/06/08/2496664/scientific-expedition-discovers.html
Greenland, man, GREENLAND. Its glacier had been receding.
/Uh hummmmm. Switch off my imitation of GW alarmist mode.
Please don’t lump science and scientists in general with ambitious people with political agenda (a small fraction of science community).
Those studies weren’t ‘science’ and the methodology/application not ‘scientific’.
At the end of the first year you have 1 dollar AND 1 cent. The next years interest is earned on the 1 dollar and 1 cent so you make a bit MORE.
Now do the same thing but in reverse.
My head hurts.
Far be it from me to defend this drivel but, it could be the writer means each year the count is down 1% from the year before - a geometric progression that does not end in zero - kinda like walking half way to the wall with each step.
But a projection like this requires that you accurately measure the phytowhaterver count every year. To my knowledge, there was not/is not a yearly plankton census commencing in 1912.
These people are so unhappy when the sky isn’t falling.
What a dismal life.
See!
Electing O'bama was the right thing to do!
He TOLD us it would stop if he was elected!
Never seen before is NOT the same as never happened before.
You’re right. Science IS going through a crisis of credibility. I’m sure you’ve read about the staggering numbers of peer reviewed journal articles filled with made up data, hidden relevant data, and articles filled with just plain junk.
Science as seen through the dirty lenses of Big Media is even more trashy.
OMG, OMG, Mother Nature did something we didn’t predict and don’t understand but it is bad and we are all going to die if we don’t get a huge grant to study it. /algore rant
George Walker Bush
Global Warming Believers
Coincidence? I think not.
Did anyone notice that losing 1% of photoplankton a year for a hundred years adds up to 100%?
1% a year for a hundred years equals damn near gone.
The best part of the article is the picture of al with a tree growing out of his head. The photographer knew exactly what he/she was doing.
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