Plankton Haven’t Been the Same Since the Industrial Revolution | Hacker News Reader

Plankton Haven’t Been the Same Since the Industrial Revolution

smithsonianmag.com

92 pointspseudolus12 comments

At Kyso [1] we are really concerned about climate change and environmental damage in general - one of my co-founders actually started as an environmental scientist. We make tools to make data-visualisations easier using Jupyter but we've been wanting for the last few weeks to really focus the content that we write on climate change, from a data point of view.

I'm wondering does anyone here have experience with this - where do you source data-sets, what kind of charts have the most impact on people - is this even worth doing?

We've made a few studies before going through Co2 rates (https://kyso.io/KyleOS/atmospheric-co2-concentrations-2), which countries are on the most sustainable path (https://kyso.io/KyleOS/environment-ranking) and per capita meat consumption (https://kyso.io/eoin/per-cap-meat-consumption) but we'd love to get some advice on how to really target high impact work in this area

[1] https://kyso.io I'm a founder

Interesting; your meat consumption data seems to contradict what BBC's article on meat consumption in India seems to imply. It makes it out as though Indians are eating a lot of meat. Perhaps it's simply that a lot of Indians do eat meat, but not very much of it (relative to North Americans for example).

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43581122

That is addressed:

> Although some will attribute this to a tradition of vegetarianism, surely this is mostly due to the limited access to meat for the poor. As I note below, meat consumption is highest across high-income countries, and the demand for meat in India is, therefore, expected to grow faster with stronger & sustainable forecasted economic growth and rising per capita income.

Most Indians do eat meat, but from what I've seen eating meat with every meal (as is common in the United States) is pretty rare. Also, note that meat is usually expensive, so a good portion of the country cannot afford to eat meat on a regular basis.

I think climate scientists need to be careful about doing conclusion-oriented research, and climate crusaders should be more careful with their marketing efforts.

CO2 is heavier than air. Most of the human-generated CO2 ends up in the ocean [0]. This changes the pH of the ocean water, making it slightly more acidic. pH changes and nutrient changes (CO2 + agriculture runoff) probably explain the observations of changes in the types of plankton better than temperature changes.

The climate is a complex system with lots of inputs. It is fundamentally dishonest for the climate crusaders to whip up a frenzy (hockey-stick doom prophecies) on incomplete models and data.

Changes is solar activity (sun spot cycles) and underwater volcanic activity aren't really incorporated into the climate scientists' models, because they don't have much/any data. Temperature sensors have only recently been placed on the Juan de Fuca Ridge [1] (just off the coast of Oregon/Washington/British Columbia). The volcanic trenches in the deep ocean have no network of temperature sensors, or long-term activity data.

The Wall Street-owned utility model for the provision of electricity is technically and ideologically bankrupt, but the "green energy" replacements aren't much better. Solar panels wear out after a few decades, and are not easily recycled with current technology. Most people can't put a wind farm on top of their house, so wind-derived electricity is still purchased from a utility company.

I wrote a piece titled use as much energy as possible: "Under our current system of money and finance, Wall Street is trusted to plan for the economy's future energy needs. Wall Street invests where it sees the most potential for payoff, and THEY make more money when the economy uses as much energy as possible.

"Like a rigged carnival game, the energy economy is specifically distorted so that we have little choice but to send lots of money to our financiers' energy companies. [...]" [2]

[0] "The constant atmospheric CO 2 concentrations in the centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution suggest that the oceans released a small amount of CO 2 to the atmosphere to balance the carbon input from rivers. Today, this trend is reversed and the oceans must remove CO 2 added to the atmosphere from human activities, known as anthropogenic (humanderived) CO 2. In the 1980s, the oceans removed an estimated 2.0±0.6 Pg of anthropogenic CO 2 each year. Because humans are producing CO 2 at an everincreasing rate, the average ocean removal rate increased to 2.4±0.5 Pg of carbon each year in the 1990s." - http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Bi-Ca/Carbon-Dioxide-in-the...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_Fuca_Ridge

[2] https://teslabox.com/use-as-much-energy-as-possible/ [I wrote this in 2011 - all my picture links are broken, hmm...]

> Changes is solar activity (sun spot cycles) and underwater volcanic activity aren't really incorporated into the climate scientists' models, because they don't have much/any data. Temperature sensors have only recently been placed on the Juan de Fuca Ridge [1] (just off the coast of Oregon/Washington/British Columbia). The volcanic trenches in the deep ocean have no network of temperature sensors, or long-term activity data.

So you're saying that even though we have a model that works and accounts for the change in temperature BECAUSE it might be something else (of which apparently we have no measurements - no wait, we do [2]), we need to reject it?

Do we definitively not know it's Marvin the Martian firing a heat ray at us waiting for the earth shattering Kaboom? Is there a teapot floating between Mars and Jupiter whose steam is heating up our planet?

[2] https://www.carbonbrief.org/why-the-sun-is-not-responsible-f...

False: > Changes is solar activity (sun spot cycles) and underwater volcanic activity aren't really incorporated into the climate scientists' models

True: The contributions from both solar activity and volcanoes are estimated, and the models do calculate and compare these inputs too. Everybody can see it here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wo...

Conclusion: It's the CO2. And CO2 is contributing with more than 100%. It's true, the other activities add a little of cooling, so without the other contributions, just CO2 would make everything even warmer.

And there are also CVS files on that page:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wo...

As stated there: "The computer model that generated the results for this graphic is called "ModelE2," and was created by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) , which has been a leader in climate projections for a generation."

The link to the scientific paper is:

https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/mi08910y.html

(Miller et al. 2014:

Miller, R.L., G.A. Schmidt, L.S. Nazarenko, N. Tausnev, S.E. Bauer, A.D. Del Genio, M. Kelley, K.K. Lo, R. Ruedy, D.T. Shindell, I. Aleinov, M. Bauer, R. Bleck, V. Canuto, Y.-H. Chen, Y. Cheng, T.L. Clune, G. Faluvegi, J.E. Hansen, R.J. Healy, N.Y. Kiang, D. Koch, A.A. Lacis, A.N. LeGrande, J. Lerner, S. Menon, V. Oinas, C. Pérez García-Pando, J.P. Perlwitz, M.J. Puma, D. Rind, A. Romanou, G.L. Russell, M. Sato, S. Sun, K. Tsigaridis, N. Unger, A. Voulgarakis, M.-S. Yao, and J. Zhang, 2014: CMIP5 historical simulations (1850-2012) with GISS ModelE2. J. Adv. Model. Earth Syst., 6, no. 2, 441-477, doi:10.1002/2013MS000266.)

Your posting and your article contain a lot of words but neither has a point.

You don't think the rapidly increasing global temperatures and co2 ppm are any reason for serious concern?

"heavier than air"

air is a mixture of gases - which gas of the mixture are you referring to ?

A mixture has a density of its own.

and CO2 is part of the mixture which we call 'air' hence the question

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