New studies show that as much as 40 percent of the ocean's critical phytoplankton have disappeared. Who wants to guess why that might be?
But in the long-term, nothing predicted the numbers of phytoplankton better than the surface temperature of the seas. Phytoplankton need sunlight to grow, so they’re constrained to the upper layers of the ocean and depends on nutrients welling up from below. But warmer waters are less likely to mix in this way, which starves the phytoplankton and limits their growth.
No doubt our crack media will either not report theses alarming trends. Or they'll resort to industry shills like Junkman Steve Milloy, one of many energy funded rentboys who regularly carpet bombs newspaper editorial pages with climate change disinformation, to present a 'balanced' approach. Speaking of skeptics and assorted ignoramuses, whatever became of all those clowns yelling about global cooling last winter? Oh, yeah:
An in-depth analysis of ten climate indicators all point to a marked warming over the past three decades, with the most recent decade being the hottest on record, according to the latest of the U.S. National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration's annual "State of the Climate" reports.
If the first studies are borne out, put them together with the latter and do the arithmetic. Hint: Soylent Green is people.
continued at Daily Kos...
