Doom
(Time) It’s easy to forget that global warming doesn’t just refer to the rising temperature of the air. Climate change is having an enormous, if less well understood, impact on the oceans, which already absorb far more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere. Like so much of what goes on in the vast depths that cover more than two-thirds of our planet’s surface, the effect of climate change on the oceans remains a black box—albeit one that scientists are working to illuminate.
And something like 96% of CO2 released yearly comes from natural processes, including the oceans, which release 16 times the amount all of Mankind does.
Here’s one way: fisheries. Wild fish remain a major source of protein for humanity—as well as a major source of reality TV shows—and for some coastal communities, fish mean even more. Scientists aren’t clear about what climate change, including the warming of the oceans, will have on wild fisheries. As Mark Payne of the National Institute of Aquatic Resources writes in a new piece in Nature, ocean researchers “tend to view climate change as a dark cloud on the horizon: potentially problematic in the future, but not of immediate concernâ€â€”especially compared to the much more pressing threat of simple overfishing.
Oh, so we don’t really know. Gotcha.
But now a new study in Nature makes the case that climate change—including the warming of the oceans—is already having a direct impact on global fisheries. Researchers led by William Cheung at the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre created a new model that took the known temperature preferences of different species of commercial fish and compared those figures to global catch numbers from around the world. They found that species comfortable in warmer waters have been replacing fish that are more accustomed to cool temperatures. That means climate change is altering the makeup of fisheries around the world—and that could be particularly bad for the tropics, which may eventually become too hot for even for fish that tend to prefer it on the warmer side.
First, fish evolved in much, much warmer waters. Second, this in no way proves anthropogenic causation. Third, I love how Warmists become flat Earthers and discard Darwinism for the sake of their pet cult-like hypothesis. Fourth, another frigging model. These people are nuts. Oh, and fish seemed to have survived just fine during the previous warm periods. And an ice age beforehand. And they still refuse to practice what they preach.
