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This is very, very bad. Seriously, this is definitely among the worst environmental news I've ever seen. This is going to have a huge impact; that ecosystem forms the base of so many others.
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Are they just "gone" or have they migrated? Let's hope they've just "moved" to a different place. Let's also hope that "evolution" helps those that feed off of them to find alternative food sources.
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What do krill feed on? You could try 'seeding' the ocean areas where krill are prevalent with it, but I can see things like that causing altogether different problems.
Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
It is not necessarily lack of food. Many invertebrates are very sensitive to temperature changes.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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They feed off of algae and that kind of thing. I'm not at all sure, though, that the problem is a lack of food. In fact...I wonder if we'll experience more toxic blooms in the area without sufficient krill the keep the algae populations in check.
Chad--there's no question that nature will bounce back from this. Conditions change, and life adapts. I don't for a second think that this will be too big a change for life to bounce back from. It's not the Earth I'm worried about so much as it is the web of ecosystems of which we are a part. Those could unravel, and it wouldn't be a particularly fun thing to experience.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
This seems like a good thread to ask in. Anyone know where reliable information on the following issues can be found?
1) What is the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere now compared to 200 years ago, and what methodology was used to determine this? How many [pounds, tons, moles, whatever] of CO2 in the atmosphere does this equate too?
2) What is the capacity for CO2 absorption by plant matter compared to what it was 200 years ago?
3) How many [pounds, tons, moles, whatever] of CO2 have been released by the burning of fossil fuels?
quote: CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have been measured at an altitude of about 4,000 meters on the peak of Mauna Loa mountain in Hawaii since 1958. The measurements at this location, remote from local sources of pollution, have clearly shown that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are increasing. The mean concentration of approximately 316 parts per million by volume (ppmv) in 1958 rose to approximately 369 ppmv in 1998. The annual variation is due to CO2 uptake by growing plants. The uptake is highest in the northern hemisphere springtime.
quote: Atmospheric CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial concentration of about 280 ppmv to about 367 ppmv at present (ppmv= parts per million by volume). CO2 concentration data from before 1958 are from ice core measurements taken in Antarctica and from 1958 onwards are from the Mauna Loa measurement site. The smooth curve is based on a hundred year running mean. It is evident that the rapid increase in CO2 concentrations has been occurring since the onset of industrialization. The increase has closely followed the increase in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.
[ November 04, 2004, 12:33 PM: Message edited by: St. Yogi ]
Posts: 739 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
There's a whole question of how the Earth has evolved as a Carbon sink and that industrialization and just the spread of mankind has released huge amounts of carbon back into the system.
The trick is that the carbon we are releasing (mainly in CO2 emissions) by the burning of fossil fuels is natural carbon that has been present in the past and naturally ebbs and flows to and from the environment. It's just that we have massively sped up the process.
That's not all as bad as it seems on the surface, though. While we are releasing more carbon into the atmosphere, we are also by the products we make packing more of it into new kinds of carbon sinks. A wood table, maintained by its owner, traps the carbon in it for longer than the tree would have if left wild in nature. There are many other examples as well.
Now, the trick may be to find new ways to put more carbon into long-term or temporary sinks to help re-establish the balance. The best answer would be to do it on the sly, by adding a bit here and there to durable good products.
Think high-carbon steel evolving into "slightly even higher-carbon steel" or a heavier use of cinders in construction concretes and materials.
But the krill, they will need a bit of protection there as they adapt. Sometimes the simpler the organism, the faster it can adapt.
And there is always the chance that what has caused the recent die-off may be something we have yet to perceive or understand.
Posts: 472 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Looks like it's not their food source per se that's suffered, but their habitat. Well, kind of both at the same time. They feed on algae that grown under the ice floes. Because of the warmth the ice floes are melting, which means less habitat and food for the krill. Since krill are the main staple for so many other animals' diets, I fear the repercussions of this loss in the rest of the food chain. What happens when you destroy most of the bottom layer in a pyramid?
Posts: 957 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote: Think high-carbon steel evolving into "slightly even higher-carbon steel" or a heavier use of cinders in construction concretes and materials.
We are storing stuff in giant carbon sinks... known as plastics. But we are still burning more than we are using that way and one of these days we are gonna run low.
But you don't mess around with the carbon content in high-carbon steel. That stuff is balanced extremely delicately, and a minute change can throw off the material properties pretty horribly. You can get steel brittle and snapping and all kinds of nasty stuff. The ASTM wouldn't approve at all.
And they already reuse complex hydrocarbons like used tires, in road building.
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I also wonder if we are going to have whales dying of starvation or not. It may not just be global warming but the imbalance of krill feeding whales due to the massive overwhaling a century or so ago that could be throwing stuff off too. The whale population rebuilds very slowly despite the lifecycle of the krill.
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This is just like the Cod fish... once the most plentiful fish on Earth... now almost extinct.
And the Krill and Cod will not come back... their core population centers have been taken over by much less edible animals. Some kind of jellyfish in the Krill areas, and some kind of icky crab in the cod areas. This jellyfish and this crab are not that good for anything.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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regarding CO2 levels - i don't have a source for this but i remember clearly watching a show on discovery about a scientist who was conducting core sample studies in the arctic as a way of researching the environmental conditions of the past few million years. obviously, each year snow in the arctic traps air bubbles and as it compresses turns into layers of ice with intrained bubbles. so you can melt the ice and analyze the air to see what was going on at that time.
anyway, the scientist in the show was basically finding that while the concentrations of various gasses in the atmosphere (methane, C02, etc) have gone drastic swings in concentration due to normal environmental change, the rates of change we're currently experience are absolutely unprecedented and the levels of certain greenhouse gasses were by far the highest ever recorded.
sorry i don't have a source for all that...
Posts: 380 | Registered: Mar 2003
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OTOH, thanks for posting this topic today, Noem! This article was EXACTLY what I needed for my biology class today. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Man, reading this at ten thirty at night right before taking an astronomy test whose subject certainly seems to be the end of the world is not a good idea.
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