Download Climate Change - American Wildlife Conservation Foundation

Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
Around Christmas a couple of people asked me if I knew of historical records of ice cover on the
lake. They had observed that once again the water was still open. In mid-January, while
preparing the Oneida Lake Association’s February 2017 issue of the ENews to address ice
history, I got distracted. I swore off Facebook for a few weeks, and instead read some related
science. As I kept reading, it became apparent that I could not put these words out under the
OLA’s banner.
I opine herein that the observed CNY ice issue is but one element of a larger discussion that is
not really happening outside academic and some government circles. Rather it is happening, but
absent most of those giving it something more than lip service, without really looking at how it
relates and interrelates. Explaining climate change so that it relates personally to the ‘man on the
street’ simply is not sexy. Believing that your level of appreciation is a bit higher, I offer this
opus as something you might want to read when you have nothing better to do.
Perhaps this may entice you to ignore some of the social media and complaints with ‘the news’.
Read articles on https://www.sciencedaily.com/ to see if common threads are sewn into aspects
of a life cloak shared with one’s family, where it lives, and where it may in a few decades.
Alternatively, if you don’t have the inclination to explore technical journals, simply check out a
book from your local library and read The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert.
In what I summarize below, understand that my perspective comes from a lifelong fascination
with periglacial morphology and oceanography. My avocational and professional experiences
interrelated the physical and biotic sciences. So today (February 2-17) when I look out the
window and see a largely ice-free lake, and reflect on the climate of my youth, and look at
Darwin’s The Origin of Species on my bookshelf, I am compelled to engage a discussion of
climate change and global warming. My outlook on both is tempered by a career in energy
related natural resources management. Reflecting on what I have learned, it is, in my mind, clear
that history is repeating itself, albeit in an entirely different way.
Change is constant. The mechanism of change is different. This seems to be the fundamental
message of a Kolbert’s really good book. Next I’ll read Tim Ball’s The Deliberate Corruption of
Climate Science (when I finish the exhausting and troubling The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
– a History of Nazi Germany by William Shirer to consider the charm of contemporary ‘leaders’
in a world of alternative facts).
First, let me start with limiting factors. The concept of limiting factors is based on Liebig's Law
of the Minimum, which states that population growth is controlled not by the total amount of
resources available, but by the availability of the scarcest resource. These resources are the food,
water, shelter, space. Limitations on survival are set by waste removal and predation pressure
(humans might think of war or denial of health care as predation). In oceanography (and
limnology – study of lakes) physical limiting factors are light, temperature, salinity, nutrients,
gases – each of which varies with depth and geography. Paul Erlich’s The Population Bomb, a
1968 freshman required reading, wrapped these up for us ‘as we sit on a limb that we are cutting
off’. Erlich overstated “zero population growth”. A reviewer reported (a) the villain is not
overpopulation but, rather, overconsumption. Together these frame the apocalyptic message
1
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
Kolbert and science suggest. A closet optimist, I doubt society can unite sufficiently to curtail
consumption until population numbers, and redistribution thereof, force it to do so.
ICE
For the first time in recorded history Oneida Lake never froze over in 2002. Ice thickness and
duration have trended less ever since. In reality the trend started long ago.
Climate has always been changing. The question du jour is how much is attributed to man, and
is warming natural? I am sure you will not get a simple answer if you finish this opus, and
explore more on your own.
CNY’s landforms and waterways were substantially created by glaciers. We are home to one of
the world’s largest drumlin fields, in which is rising perhaps the largest individual ‘drumlin’
(Seneca Meadow, but its human terraforming is not related to climate change). Our landscape
rests upon 5-7 layers of sedimentary rock that were formed several climate changes, and
hundreds of millions of years, ago. Plate tectonics and crustal stresses cracked these rocks.
Ancient streams followed the cracks, and glaciers from more than one epoch reshaped the cracks.
Did you know that the Genesee River originally ran south?
The last ice sheet paused after reaching Tully. Retreating in pulses, it once halted along the
Niagara Escarpment, locally seen south of Erie Blvd at Seeley Road. Ice-scoured Onondaga and
Butternut Creek valley’s opened, and water rushed across a meltwater channel aligned now with
what is Rock Cut Road and Route 690 (OCCRA generation plant). Waterfalls plunging from
high atop the glacier excavated plunge pools at are now attractions in Clark’s Reservation and
Green Lake’s state parks. The ice sheet’s southern margin retreated further over several hundred
years, blocking water between the ice and the escarpment, until a breach let water down the
2
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
Mohawk. The inland lake drained, leaving a broad shallow that we know today as Cicero
Swamp and the Chittenango- Canastota muck lands. After a few thousand years the ice retreated
to Canada, and a breach left Oneida Lake and Lake Ontario basins suspended above the St.
Lawrence River. The Adirondack peak tops had been scoured to reveal their ancient core, some
of Earth’s oldest rock.
In this time period, sea level was 300 feet lower. Around 9,000 to 5,000 years ago groups of
Asian’s walked on land and settled in what is now Nikolski, Alaska. Weathered in there for
Easter week in 1981, I was amazed that the huge Chaluka midden is remarkably intact and shows
Aleut use right up to WWII. I find it interesting that these remote peoples are connected easily
with our Mohawks, Onondagas, and Oneidas. The Pleistocene Ice Age was but a blip in time,
and did not result in a global extinction, but indeed represents the first American experience with
extinction of native species that continues to this day. Today, consequent to the International
Geological Congress’s vote in August 2016, we enter the Anthropocene. In time, all of
mankind’s history will be compressed into a rock layer but a few sheets of paper thick. It may be
just as instructive as the iridium content in the clay layer of the “K-T boundary”; that which
identifies the 5th global extinction following the asteroid impact on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Ice gets a lot of attention today, implicated in the rise in sea level. Huge sheets have been
separating from Antarctic glaciers. Alaskan cruise ship tourists learn of increased calving rates,
and Canadian and Greenland glaciers have been moving to the Arctic Ocean at rates
unprecedented since mankind can interpret records. It is suggested that a warming ocean
accelerates polar cap melting moreso than a warming atmosphere (although both are related
destabilizing factors), and that by the end of this century sea level could rise six feet.
INVASION
Many paleontologists and biologists now believe that Pleistocene immigrants and their
subsequent generations hunted the American megafauna to the point of extinction. Europeans
moving across the Atlantic continued terraforming North America buy bringing with them Old
world organisms. These inspects, plants, birds, and diseases evolved in surroundings similar to,
but so physically and temporally isolated from, our climate. But once here, they had no enemy’s,
and many had genetic differences that enable them to outcompete and destroy native species in
that same niche. Have you seen videos of jumping Big Eyed or Silver carp?
At the end of January, USA Today reported that an invasive weed, growing up to 7 feet tall, is
now found in nearly half of Iowa’s counties. Experts say farmers should act quickly if the plant Palmer amaranth - is found in their fields. Around the world a resurgence in the European corn
borer threatens production of this human food staple. Rubber trees are dying at unprecedented
rates from a fungus (recall chestnuts and elms?). Genetic modifications put foods, chickens,
Bayer, and Monsanto in the news regularly, if not for pest protections, for adapting organisms to
a changing climate. For much of the world’s population there is no substitute for corn, rubber –
or fossil fuels. Survival can get personal if you no longer have access to food and shelter
(limiting factors) that you can no longer provide yourself by your own manual labor. Living off
the land is delusional, having paved fertile bottomlands and eliminated the naturally potable
surface water and the likes of chestnuts and acorns (human and wildlife food), elms (longhouse
3
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
siding), fishes like American eels and Atlantic salmon, and other extinct or threatened species
that could provide sufficient refuge for human population usage on this continent. And you
cannot rely on other oceans or continents for sustained sustenance or protection. Commerce, in
the broad sense of human migration, is the biggest threat to our survival, commensurate with
population growth.
Habitat fragmentation is a generally well understood concept. A keystone in endangered species
programs, e.g. western grizzly bears and NYS’s Karner blue butterfly, is reconnecting isolated
pockets of habitat. Canals, such as that of NYS or the Chicago River, reverse this tendency.
Invasive species like gobies and carp find their way into new habitats. Once established, they
have displaced native species from that isolated pocket of habitat that sustained the original
inhabitants, and in turn those other species that depend upon those in decline. {Amazon army
ants have some 300 other species from birds to mites that depend on the ant army. “Dark
Synergy” Kobert, page 189.}
Small populations go locally extinct all the time. Small populations are virtual islands. A pond
dries up, or is turned into a development; there go the spring peepers. The importance of small
populations is intrinsic to the overall population. For instance, over the last 10,000 years
individual stocks of sockeye salmon adapted to individual streams. Some spawn late, some
early, some in warmer tributaries, others incubating in colder water. If one run is poor, the
others compensate for the overall number returning to, for example Bristol Bay, Alaska. But put
a big mine in its headwaters, and a number of the individual runs could disappear, thus
destroying the integrity of the entire bay’s annual returns. Loss of those fish in turn affect orcas,
sharks, birds, and even terrestrial vegetation that uses nutrients of the salmon’s decaying body.
Brook trout now inhabit only 5% of their native range. Islands are physically isolated, as are
many populations. Once “islands” are no longer reasonably connected, a species may or may not
be able to recover once a number of populations is lost. Developing first order streams, or
altering the cover and temperature thereof, if not the water itself, will likely cost NYS its state
fish - absent mas$ive intervention. I opine that 99% of residents will not embrace when facing
other issues for which household incomes, taxes and fees must be allocated. So the fish be
dammed and damned.
Locally, CNY’s regional population has been essentially static for a few decades, despite the
appearance to the contrary consequent to urban sprawl. Today Global human population growth
amounts to around 75 million annually, or 1.1% per year. The global population has grown from
1 billion in 1800 to 7 billion in 2012. Amazingly, 50,000 years ago there may have been less
than 10,000 humans migrating out of Africa. We grow like weeds. But circumstances of the last
~50 years are slowing our rate of growth.
Is it too late? Marine biologists document worldwide declines in most ocean species, from coral
to whales. 200 years ago catching ocean fish was not difficult. Cod of Cape Cod have nearly
gone the way of California’s salmon; repeated around the world. Is it due to the human weed?
Kolbert repeats that every day American pump 7 pounds of carbon into the sea via atmospheric
exchange. The calculated pH decrease proceeds at a rate 30% more than 200 years ago. (Colder
water holds more oxygen, warmer water increases carbon dioxide uptake.) Is oceanic
4
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
biodiversity, and “islands” within, sufficiently diminished to become intolerant of recovery? The
geologic record indicates that decreased biodiversity of lower species that were formerly
‘tolerant’ to change actually induced an increase in nutrient uptake by other species, that, in turn,
depressed other species when food became unavailable; i.e., extinction.
The end-Ordovician extinction of 444 million years ago was due to glaciation. Holocene
records suggest glacial intercessions have a periodicity of about 23,000 years. The Pleistocene
recession was about half that ago, so are we in a naturally warming era? Researchers from
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis reconstructed and analyzed 2,100 years of
temperature and precipitation data -- and point the finger at climate change -- drought,
specifically. Lake-sediment evidence during the period known as the Little Ice Age, from 1300
to 1800, shows there was a profound change to colder and drier conditions, which would have
negatively affected the growing of maize in and around Mississippian villages. As well as those
in the Southwest, the Native American agrarian culture that lived in the two centuries preceding
the European settlement of North America suddenly disappeared.
Then the boats crossed the Atlantic, bringing ashore a variety of bacteria, invertebrates,
vertebrates and seeds that transformed this and other continents. Actually it happened with the
first migration out of Africa, but you should see and acknowledge today’s consequences.
Roadside fences and forest edges are blackened and obscured by invasive honeysuckle,
buckthorn, and multifora rose that choke out native shrubs and trees. Invasive reeds, loosestrife,
and garlic mustard dominate and eliminate native grasses and flowers that cannot compete for
space when the nonnative plants germinate earlier, capturing nutrients, sun and water, and stay
vibrant long after traditional plants have gone dormant in autumn. Even deer are complicit with
changing the ecosystem(d).
But the number one culprit is what Wake and Vrendenburg coined “the weedy species” during
the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium of the National Academy of Sciences, “In the Light of
Evolution II: Biodiversity and Extinction,” held December 6–8, 2007. One-third or more of the
6,300 amphibian species are threatened with extinction from a virulent, emerging infectious
disease, chytridiomycosis. This fungal pathogen is implicated in serious declines and extinctions
of >200 species of amphibians, and poses the greatest threat to biodiversity of any known
disease. Their statement “A general message from amphibians is that we may have little time to
stave off a potential mass extinction” lead to Elizabeth Kolbert‘s excellently lucid 2014 book
“The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”.
Larisa DeSanti of Vanderbilt University states that “Climate change clearly has been in the past
and will continue to be a major cause of extinction into the future”. Many experts argue that the
ancestors of the Australian aborigines, who made an appearance approximately 50,000 years
ago, either hunted them into extinction or gradually destroyed the habitat they required by
practices such as fire-stick burning. Others argue that the gradual drying out of Australia and
weakening of the Australian monsoon played a major role in the demise of ice-age megafauna
like 500-pound kangaroos, marsupial tapirs the size of horses and wombat-like creatures the size
of hippos. A new study has compared the diet and concluded that "If climate change was a
primary or contributing factor in their demise, as it appears, we need to pay more attention to
how current levels of climate change are affecting animals today."
5
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
Today’s boreal megafauna are stressed, but perhaps not from hunting that killed off the
mammoth and mastodon. Moose are laden with winter ticks and brainworm; populations are in
decline. Across Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia, and Siberia caribou and reindeer are individually
stressed smaller, and herds diminutive in comparison with tens of thousands migrating but a few
decades ago. In the same period snowshoe hare numbers are down, as are the ruffed and spruce
grouse that share northern woodlands. Indeed, the spruces of the southern boreal forests are
dying. Spruces shade understory on which herbivores depend. Loss of shade induces litter
decomposition thus making nitrogen available. Permafrost thaws, releasing methane, a
greenhouse gas.
MOUNTAIN NUTRITION
For at over 100 years SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry researchers (and others) have
been monitoring changes in the Adirondacks. Years ago some conjecture related to studies of
acid rain implicated alpine soil changes due to ‘releases’ of nitrogen and phosphorus were being
manifested in spruce dieback. [Recall from 2016 OLA’s ENews articles that P – phosphorous –
(a) is a nutrient of concern in Oneida Lake’s algal growth, (b) is banned in detergents, and (c)
unnecessary in most CNY lawn fertilizers.] Now British researchers(c) have found was
remarkably consistent across the different mountain regions of the world. Our results not only
suggest that warming could impact the way that plants grow in mountain ecosystems, but also
that these changes are linked to effects of warming on soils, especially the cycling of key
nutrients that sustain the growth of terrestrial plants.
Climate warming could change the functional properties of mountain ecosystems and potentially
create a disequilibrium, or mismatch, between plants and soils in high mountain areas. Studying
bioclimes from valley to mountaintop elevations as a surrogate for temperature, the authors
believe that mountain biodiversity and biogeochemical changes are influenced by climate
change.
Using elevational gradients in seven distinct mountain regions of the world, the researchers also
found that plant phosphorus availability was not controlled by elevation in the same way -- and
as a result, the balance of nitrogen to phosphorus availability in plant leaves was very similar
across the seven regions at high elevations, but diverged greatly across the regions at lower
elevation. This means that as temperatures become warmer with climate change, the crucial
balance between these nutrients that sustain plant growth could be radically altered in higher
mountain areas.
Increasing temperature and its consequences for plant nutrition were linked to other changes in
the soil, including amounts of organic matter and the make-up of the soil microbial community.
Effects of warming on ecosystem properties will occur irrespective of whatever shifts occur in
the migration of trees up-slope due to higher temperatures.
Dendrochronology is the study of tree rings. Core sampling the oldest trees around the globe
science has established long term climatic cycles dating back thousands of years. These cycles
6
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
can be seen in recurring periods of tight and open rings. So it is not just geologic or glacial
studies that confirm natural climate change.
Recently one set of researchers tied a pattern of tree growth to solar flares 7000 years ago (k). In
another project US Geological Survey scientists(e) seeking an oceanic counterpart to tree rings
that record past weather on land found one in Dry Tortugas National Park, where corals contain
chemical signals of past water temperatures. Researchers found coral core evidence that the 60to 85-year-long cycle called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) has taken place since
the 1730s, influencing mainland rainfall, droughts, hurricanes and Gulf Stream flows. AMO, is
linked to rainfall over most of the US, Midwestern droughts, hurricane intensification and
landfalls, and the transfer of ocean heat from the tropical Caribbean Sea to the North Atlantic
Ocean by way of the Gulf Stream. The Dry Tortugas corals show that after a cold spell during
the 1960s, sea surface temperatures in the region have warmed by about 1 ½ degrees Fahrenheit
(0.8 degrees Celsius) between 1970 and 2012. They also show two sets of oscillations in sea
surface temperatures: a shorter cycle lasting 28 to 30 years, and a longer cycle of 80 to 90 years,
consistent with the AMO.
LAKE NUTRITION
Sapna Sharma(b) and other researchers from York University in Toronto in 2015 presented a
database of 25-year (1985–2009) lake surface water temperatures from 291 lakes around the
world. The opine that their data set could be used by other researchers to examine i) What are
the global and regional patterns of water temperature changes over the past 25 years and are they
coherent over spatial and temporal scales?; and ii) Which climatic forcing variables and
geomorphometric factors are most important in driving changes in water temperature? Lakes
are sentinels of climate change and are an effective indicator of a limnological response to global
climate change, as they integrate climatic and landscape factors. Reporting that between 1986
and 2005, global air temperatures have increased by 0.61 °C or 1.1°F, they found that water
temperatures tend to coincide with regional air temperatures. However, in some regions, such as
around the Great Lakes region of North America and northern Europe, bodies of water are
warming more rapidly than ambient air.
Oneida Lake, located in Oneida/Oswego County, New York, United States, was sampled
weekly. Surface temperature was measured at eight standard locations throughout Oneida Lake,
although the Shackelton Point site approximately 0.7 km from the south shore of the lake
consisted of the longest time series. Water temperatures were recorded between 8:00 and 12:00
using a YSI profiler from 1975–1994, a Hydrolab Datasonde II profiler from 1995–2010, and a
Hydrolab Datasonde 5 profiler in 2011. Complete water temperature profiles are available
https://knb.ecoinformatics.org/#view/kgordon.35.49.
Ice-covered lakes are typically warming faster than ambient air temperatures, a trend noted
worldwide. However interpretation of the data set diversity prevents simple statements about
surface water trends. It appears that large lakes have characteristics that can strongly mediate
regional and local climatic effects (think “Lake Effect Snow” and how spring and fall near
onshore temperatures vary). Lakes with high rates of surface temperature change may appear
more likely to experience major ecosystem changes, but even lakes with low rates of change may
7
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
be under ecosystem stress if the initial water temperatures are already near physiological
maxima. Excellent graphs and representations can be viewed in a companion technical paper
found at O’Reilly, C. M., et al. (2015), Rapid and highly variable warming of lake surface waters
around the globe, Geophysical Research Letters., 42, doi:10.1002/2015GL066235. These papers
demonstrate that change is happening, but do not conclude that human activity is causative.
The worldwide increase of inorganic nitrogen deposition via fossil fuel combustion, fertilization
and forestry has been intervening drastically with the Earths' natural nitrogen cycle (j). It is
possible that fertilizer plants produce more nitrogen than is fixed naturally by plants. We know
that phosphorous accelerates algal growth, has been banned in detergents, and should not be
added to most CNY soils because it merely runs off to lakes. Nitrogen deposition caused by
human activities can lead to an increased phytoplankton production in boreal lakes.
Swedish researchers predicted organic carbon to increase with future warmer and wetter climate.
Results show that the response of boreal lake food webs to enhanced nitrogen deposition is
strongly linked to the organic carbon concentration within each lake. In turn, it also means that
global change and its effects on the global carbon cycle will strongly determine the response of
boreal lakes to changes in nitrogen deposition. In clearer lakes with low organic carbon content,
phytoplankton became so enriched in nitrogen that they became poor quality food items for
zooplankton. Thus, although food resources increased with nitrogen addition, its decreased food
quality resulted in reduced growth of their consumers and less energy being transferred up the
food chain.
As noted above, forest releases of nitrogen and phosphorous are problematic. So to in lakes. If
predictions of thermal stratification of lakes – consequent to warming – occur, chemical
reactions in anoxic sediments will release more phosphorous. Cyanobacteria blooms could occur
more frequently. Terrestrial sediments washed into lakes will carry more nutrients and
pollutions, reinforcing the cycle of release as climate change induces more events of heavy,
erosive runoff.
OCEANS
In relating lakes and oceans, look to water pH. Acid rain has been the popular culprit causing the
demise of Adirondack brook trout, and we pin the source as mid-west coal burning generation
stations. In the ocean, acidification (rather decreasing alkalinity, for sea water pH tends to range
7.5 to 8.4) the basic concern is the change in microbial communities. Much of the structure of
the ocean, literally, is comprised of organisms that use calcium carbonate. Calcifers like algae,
diatoms, corals, mollusks, and starfish loose the ability to form calcium carbonate in less alkaline
water. Kolbert uses the analogy of a mason building a foundation when someone steals bricks
faster than they can be laid. Land uses that change the pH of tributaries, and atmospheric
changes that alter the sea water surface exchange rate of carbon dioxide amount to brick theft,
and increased cost of energy (decrease efficiency) to the organism trying to build a skeleton or
structure. The short story – coral reefs may be the first major ecosystem to disappear.
On January 18 it was reported that Earth's 2016 surface temperatures were the warmest since
modern record-keeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and NOAA.
8
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
This makes 2016 the third year in a row to set a new record for global average surface
temperatures. Because weather station locations and measurement practices change over time,
there are uncertainties in the interpretation of specific year-to-year global mean temperature
differences. However, even taking this into account, NASA estimates that 2016 was the warmest
year, with greater than 95 percent certainty. NASA’s Gavin Schmidt stated, "We don't expect
record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear." Most of the
warming occurred in the past 35 years (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp). Phenomena such as El
Niño or La Niña, which warm or cool the upper tropical Pacific Ocean and cause corresponding
variations in global wind and weather patterns, contribute to short-term variations in global
average temperature. Global weather dynamics affect regional temperatures, but not uniformly.
Some areas are hotter, some colder. These fluid dynamics create the jet stream and warming or
cooling winds. The significant changes are evidenced in diminishing Arctic ice pack and
Antarctic ice shelf ablation.
Changes in Amazon land use also affect atmospheric circulation consequent to
albedo/temperature changes. As the Himalayas grow from the colliding Indian and Asian plates
they affect winds aloft and the jet stream. The wind currents, like the ocean currents, are felt
around the world. Effects of currents are a matter of scale. Thinking small, locally the bottom of
westerly winds shearing off passage over the Adirondacks frequently make for periods of
easterly waves on Oneida Lake. Oscillation of lake water motion creates currents that move
nutrients and fish along temperature gradients.
As reported on January 17 (www.sciencedaily.com), a huge Antarctic iceberg, roughly the size
of Delaware, looks set to break away from continent. Satellite observations from December 2016
show a growing crack in the Larsen ice shelf which suggests that an iceberg is likely to calve
soon. There is some good scientific evidence that thinning ice sheets are related to global
warming. There are large valleys in the ocean floor beneath some of the massive glaciers
flowing into the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica. Carved by earlier advances of ice during
colder periods, the troughs enable warm, salty water to reach the undersides of glaciers, fueling
their increasingly rapid retreat. As deeper waters warm and sea level rises, the ice-to-rock
interface is lubricated. Ice sheets lift and fracture. Ice bergs floating away cool the upper sea
surface. As they melt, they increase sea level. Rising water not only floods low-lying coastlines
around the world, but further lift more sea ice from anchors on both polar caps.
The effects of ice – anywhere on Earth – have local and global consequences. Biofilms on the
bottom of the floating sea ice are at the bottom of a food chain that, in turn, ultimately feed
whales. Onshore (think coastal marshes, inland swamps, and your garden), soil stores a large
fraction of Earth's carbon - actually more carbon than the atmosphere and biosphere combined.
Microorganisms break down and consume this carbon as they live and grow, converting it into
the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Consequently, the activity of microorganisms in soil has the
potential to alleviate or worsen climate change, so we need to form predictions regarding their
activities. (Ember Morrissey, West Virginia University, 1/17/17).
In the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere large mammal populations appear to be
following the mammoth and mastodon. Reindeer and caribou herds are drastically smaller, as
individual animals or herds and as a population, than they were 35 years ago. Moose are in
9
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
decline. Snowshoe hare are now locally rare in many areas, including northern NY. Some opine
that these declines are attributed to release of carbon from thawing permafrost, high in organic
material, adding fuel to “the greenhouse effect” speculation. Others point to nutritional stresses
from diminished or changed vegetation forage. Some American and Canadians think reductions
are attributed to diseases, microbes, and insects induced into northern ranges by the huge
expansion of white tail deer over the last century.
Humans have only been around for a half million years. Non-avian dinosaurs lasted 500 million
years. Then they went extinct. As have the creatures that preceded them(g). Climate has always
changed as the Earth warms and cools, and continents float across the mantle. Mankind can do
little other than think about past and geologically imminent changes. We can, nevertheless,
effect present day changes.
In 2010, an iceberg about the size of Rhode Island collided with Antarctica's Mertz Glacier
Tongue, carving out a piece of more than 1,000 square miles. Studying the re-sculpted shoreline,
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reported in a paper published January 25 in Science
Advances { January 2017 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1601426 }that Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW)
has freshened at a surprising rate between 2007 and 2016 -- a shift that could alter ocean
circulation and ultimately contribute to rising sea levels. A change the circulation, due to
salinity/density alteration, changes everything in the ocean. Ocean circulation drives the
movement of warm and cold waters around the world, so it is essential to storing and regulating
heat and plays a key role in Earth's temperature and climate.
Along one string of sampling stations, that stretches from Antarctica to the southern Indian
Ocean, researchers have tracked the conditions of AABW (see diagram below) -- a layer of
profoundly cold water less than 0°C (it stays liquid because of its salt content, or salinity) that
moves through the abyssal ocean, mixing with warmer waters as it circulates around the globe in
the Southern Ocean and northward into all three of the major ocean basins.
10
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
Authors Viviane Menezes and Alison Macdonald stated that Antarctic Bottom Water gets its
characteristics from the atmosphere -- for example, dissolved carbon and oxygen -- and sends
them deep into the ocean. Then, as the water moves around the globe, it mixes with the water
around it and they start to share each other's properties. It's like taking a deep breath and letting it
go really slowly, over decades or even centuries. AABW in this region has grown fresher four
times faster in the past decade than it did between 1994 and 2007. The fresher and warmer the
water is, the less dense it will be, and the more it will expand and take up more space -- and that
leads to rising sea levels
Watson(f) found that there are large regional differences in fish catch because of how surface
ocean and bottom ecosystems channel energy sources. Phytoplankton are the foundation of
ocean life, providing the energy that supports nearly all marine species.
"Coastal systems where large amounts of nutrients critical for phytoplankton growth are
'upwelled' from deep waters via currents make a contribution to global fish catch that far exceeds
what one would expect from phytoplankton production alone," says Charles Stock, Research
Oceanographer at NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and Nereus Program
Principal Investigator.
11
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
These findings allow for better predictions of catch potential in different ecosystems and how
climate change will affect fisheries. Phytoplankton require light, found at the surface of the
ocean, and nutrients, which tend to accumulate in deeper waters, to grow and create the energy
needed to support fisheries. Warming of the surface ocean due to climate change is increasing
ocean stratification -- the segregation of deep and surface waters. The effects of this will be
amplified in low and mid-latitude areas, where modest to moderate declines in phytoplankton
production, of up to 15%, could result in fish catch decreases that may exceed 50% in some
places.
"Changes at the base of the food web among plankton are amplified when examining top and
intermediate predators, such as fish," says author Rebecca Asch, Assistant Professor at East
Carolina University and Nereus Program Alumnus. "This indicates that climate change will have
a substantially larger impact on species further up the food chain. This is important since these
are also the species that we as humans depend upon as sources of protein to feed the world."
For some insight as to what NYS has in mind for ocean protections, see this Ocean Action Plan
for New York press release http://www.dec.ny.gov/press/109033.html If sea level rises 6 feet in
Long Island, who will go where and do what?
WHAT CAN I DO?
So is this discussion taken you afar from Oneida Lake ice? Come back realizing that the
expansion of deer has been induced by humans. Similarly, our international commerce brought
us the aquatic (and other) invaders. Movement between continents had – before the
Anthropocene - had been retarded by space (physical obstructions) and time (before boats and
airplanes). Understanding the complexity of today’s and future human and global
interrelationships is an immense challenge. For many of us, catching the ‘old’ fish, or even
12
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
getting on the ice to do so, is enough of a challenge. Just think, next time you stare into the 6”
hole in 6” of ice and catch gobies, that the gear around you was created elsewhere in the world,
from multiple natural resource extractions, and floated, flown, or driven across great distances, in
a relatively short time.
Think about what you are buying, and how your services are provided. Carpool. Shop and run
errands efficiently; plan a route and a time to maximize stops on one trip. Use mass transit to get
to work, or lobby for it where non-existent. Buy real wood. American trees are cut and shipped
to Asia. There they are ground up, glued, and returned to us as particle board or plywood. Huge
amounts of cheap furniture are imported on ships powered with dirty bunker oil. Manufactured
wood fiberboard furniture winds up in the trash, taking up space in landfills.
You probably have Tupperware, so buy your yogurt in bulk to avoid discarding dozens of 3
ounce cups. K-cups, grocery bags and similar plastics are from the natural gas that come in fuel
pipelines people are protesting. Minimize your household waste stream. If you drive the
Thruway east, it is pretty clear that NYC does not think this way. I guess that one in ten semis
are coming from or going to Seneca Meadows from points south of Westchester. So it is not
only the waste, it is the fuel, lubricants, rubber, exhaust, and hardware of trucking that
contributes to the problem of upstate land conversion and water protection.
Think small. Your utility bill is a prime candidate for conservation. Insulate your house, change
out old windows, repair drafty doors, add attic insulation, and turn off lights when not in the
room and appliances if you are not using them. Try to raise your kids to voluntarily become
minimalists. Before they have no choice.
REFERENCES
(a) https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-populationexplosion.html?_r=0
(b) Sharma, S. et al. Long Term Ecological Research Network
http://dx.doi.org/10.6073/pasta/379a6cebee50119df2575c469aba19c5 (2015)
c) Jordan R. Mayor, Nathan J. Sanders, Aimée T. Classen, Richard D. Bardgett, Jean-Christophe Clément,
Alex Fajardo, Sandra Lavorel, Maja K. Sundqvist, Michael Bahn, Chelsea Chisholm, Ellen Cieraad, Ze’ev
Gedalof, Karl Grigulis, Gaku Kudo, Daniel L. Oberski, David A. Wardle. Elevation alters ecosystem
properties across temperate treelines globally. Nature, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/nature21027
(d) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170130224740.htm
(e) Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 2017; 466: 100 DOI:
10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.10.022
(f) Reg A. Watson et al. Reconciling fisheries catch and ocean productivity. PNAS, January 2017 DOI:
10.1073/pnas.1610238114
(g) Mnemonic for remembering geologic periods: Camels Often Sit Down Carefully, Perhaps Their Joints
Creak (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous).
13
Scott Shupe
Climate Change – do humans sit on a limb with a saw?
The most recent period is the Paleogene, spanning an interval of 66 to 56 million years ago. Periods are
further broken into Epochs; Epochs into Ages (Pleistocene was the last ice age). The mass extinction
event at the end of the Cretaceous, known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary.
(j) Umeå universitet. "Lakes respond differently to nitrogen disposition." ScienceDaily, 6 February 2017
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170206084258.htm
(k) Fusa Miyake, A. J. Timothy Jull, Irina P. Panyushkina, Lukas Wacker, Matthew Salzer, Christopher H.
Baisan, Todd Lange, Richard Cruz, Kimiaki Masuda, Toshio Nakamura. Large14C excursion in 5480 BC
indicates an abnormal sun in the mid-Holocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
2017; 114 (5): 881
14