06-28-2006, 05:34 PM
Hi,
I have no links nor direct references for this conjecture, simply things I've pieced together from years of reading scientific publications. So, I might have it wrong or the information I based the opinion on may have since been shown to be invalid. However, I'd like to see some more definitive studies before I hop onto a "only the land mass is important, thus the Norther Hemisphere is more stable as to CO2" bandwagon.
Indeed, when one thinks about it, fishing may be a bigger contributor to CO2 emission than many of the other human activities that get a bulk of the blame. Reducing the number of the top of the food chain fish (those that are tastiest to human and thus greatly over fished) could allow a large population increase, down the food chain, of fish too small to be worth harvesting (at least prior to the Soylent Green phase of our population explosion). Many of these small fish are primarily herbivorous and their increase could severely reduce the amount of photosynthetic material available. The zig-zags in the plots could be cycles of reproduction (such as the lemming or locust cycles which are dynamically stable systems based on feedback and hysteresis) rather than (only) meteorological effects.
Quite often, the problem is that too many researchers are piss poor scientists and worse mathematicians. Their science is flawed because they go into a project with the intention of proving their prejudices rather than searching for the truth (As Winston Churchill said, "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.") Like the drunk who searches for his keys where there is light and not where he dropped them, they find nothing of value. And even those that do keep an open mind are so blinkered by the blinders of their narrow specialized education (actually 'training', they know everything about nothing, much like the NASA trained chimps) that they cannot relate to anything outside their field. The few who actually do look outside their field for fertile ideas are either ridiculed for being scatterbrained, or worshiped for 'major advancements' that were just old established technologies where they happened to look. Those that stick to their pigeon holes usually just find the same old bird-#$%&.
-Pete
Quote:One of the things addressed in the film is that there is a yearly CO2 level cycle, easily visible on the graph as a zig-zag. What causes this cycle? Turns out that the Northern Hemisphere is better (so far) at mitigating CO2 buildup, because it has much more arable land mass than the Southern Hemisphere. It has a lot more vegetation (trees), and it reduces the CO2 levels each year as the sun provides more heat to the Northern Hemisphere (during northern summer). During northern winter, the sun gives more heat to the Southern hemisphere, which has less landmass, so less vegetation, so less CO2 mitigation.Unfortunately, that is a land centric view. There is a large amount of life, much of it vegetable, in the top 100 feet (35 meters) of the ocean. Just because plankton and krill are not as impressive as redwoods does not say that they are any less efficient at CO2 conversion. Probably, per acre, the small stuff is more efficient given that a much smaller percent of its mass is used only to support the working bits and that this reduction in infrastructure (branches, trunk, twigs) blocks less of the sunlight from getting to the lower levels (a forest on a bright summer day can be pretty dark below the canopy -- I know, I've spent a fair bit of time in them). Given the three to one ratio of water to land, the superiority of the Northern Hemisphere to regulate CO2 becomes even more questionable.
I have no links nor direct references for this conjecture, simply things I've pieced together from years of reading scientific publications. So, I might have it wrong or the information I based the opinion on may have since been shown to be invalid. However, I'd like to see some more definitive studies before I hop onto a "only the land mass is important, thus the Norther Hemisphere is more stable as to CO2" bandwagon.
Indeed, when one thinks about it, fishing may be a bigger contributor to CO2 emission than many of the other human activities that get a bulk of the blame. Reducing the number of the top of the food chain fish (those that are tastiest to human and thus greatly over fished) could allow a large population increase, down the food chain, of fish too small to be worth harvesting (at least prior to the Soylent Green phase of our population explosion). Many of these small fish are primarily herbivorous and their increase could severely reduce the amount of photosynthetic material available. The zig-zags in the plots could be cycles of reproduction (such as the lemming or locust cycles which are dynamically stable systems based on feedback and hysteresis) rather than (only) meteorological effects.
Quite often, the problem is that too many researchers are piss poor scientists and worse mathematicians. Their science is flawed because they go into a project with the intention of proving their prejudices rather than searching for the truth (As Winston Churchill said, "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.") Like the drunk who searches for his keys where there is light and not where he dropped them, they find nothing of value. And even those that do keep an open mind are so blinkered by the blinders of their narrow specialized education (actually 'training', they know everything about nothing, much like the NASA trained chimps) that they cannot relate to anything outside their field. The few who actually do look outside their field for fertile ideas are either ridiculed for being scatterbrained, or worshiped for 'major advancements' that were just old established technologies where they happened to look. Those that stick to their pigeon holes usually just find the same old bird-#$%&.
-Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?