By Kenneth R. Weiss
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

May 2, 2008

Oxygen-starved waters are expanding in the Pacific and Atlantic as ocean temperatures increase with global warming, threatening fisheries and other marine life, a study published today concludes.

Most of these zones remain hundreds of feet below the surface, but they are beginning to spill onto the relatively shallow continental shelf off the coast of California and are nearing the surface off Peru, driving away fish from commercially important fishing grounds, researchers have found.

The low-oxygen, or hypoxic, zones may also be connected to the Pacific coast invasion of the Humboldt, or jumbo, squid. These voracious predators, which can grow 6 feet long, appear to be taking advantage of their tolerance for oxygen-poor waters to escape predators and devour local fish, another team of scientists theorizes.

Researchers believe these phenomena are linked to subsurface layers of hypoxic water in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans that have been thickening over the last 50 years, according to the analysis published today in the journal Science.

The study, led by Lothar Stramma at the University of Kiel in Germany, warns that the spread of hypoxic waters that suffocate marine life is consistent with climate models forecasting what would happen as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere.

The trend, the study points out, eerily echoes a scenario that unfolded about 250 million years ago, when 95% of life on Earth went extinct after heat-trapping carbon dioxide spewing from volcanoes warmed the planet and the oceans became stripped of oxygen.

“If you warm waters, they hold much less oxygen,” said coauthor Gregory C. Johnson, an oceanographer with the federal Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. “That’s the same as a bottle of soda water. If you open it warm, it’ll fizz all over the place. If you open it cold, it will slowly fizz out as it warms.”

More importantly, Johnson said, the lighter warm water creates a cap over the colder depths, making it less likely that oxygen-enriched surface water will mix with colder water. Other biogeochemical processes also rob oxygen from deeper waters, such as the decomposition and re-mineralization of dead plankton as it settles to the seafloor.

These vast low-oxygen zones that stretch far out to sea differ from the “dead zones” at the mouth of the Mississippi River and in near-shore waters around the world. These localized low-oxygen waters typically form after fertilizer-rich river discharges produce thick blooms of algae that suck the oxygen out of water after they die and decompose.

My sympathies go out to all the people who have suffered during this time of crisis. My respects go out to all of the amazing firefighters, peace officers, workers, volunteers and public officials who have worked overtime to fight the fires and provide a measure of security for our city.

But homeland security is not just about defeating the enemy at hand. It is about creating a climate of security that foresees and prevents threats. These fires have shown that the biggest threats to our security are from natural disasters and our own flawed model of urban development and dysfunction. It is imperative that we demand leadership for our future and our security that is more than just about endless development and mindless growth. It is about being strategically green, or as Thomas Friedman,

our new green guru, so eloquently argues,

Being green, focusing the nation on greater energy efficiency and conservation, is not some girlie-man issue. It is actually the most tough-minded, geostrategic, pro-growth and patriotic thing we can do. Living green is not for sissies. Sticking with oil, and basically saying that a country that can double the speed of microchips every 18 months is somehow incapable of innovating its way to energy independence - that is for sissies, defeatists and people who are ready to see American values eroded at home and abroad. Living green is not just a “personal virtue,” as Mr. Cheney says. It’s a national security imperative.

Assemblymember Lori Saldana argues that renewable power is good for the planet and good for our security here in San Diego,

One climate change-related issue is critical: we need distributed and locally-generated renewable power for San Diego County’s security, i.e.- solar panels on every public building. Here’s one reason why: My district (the 76th) has no fires, so we are evacuation ground zero - taking in thousands of people from around the county. If power lines to the stadium had burned, we would be in big trouble. Of the 6000+ people at the Q, many are seniors from assisted living, needing various levels of medical care. If there were solar panels around the stadium we could generate power 300 days/year, mostly for the grid.

Another reader, Carrie Schneider, comments that,

Power lines are the putative cause in the largest fire (Witch). A downed power line is a scary source of ignition in a high wind, because the fire is immediately huge. The fire to the south (Harris) affected transmission from a major corridor, causing SDG&E to issue power conservation pleas.

The real issue is how can San Diego learn from this disaster and create an opportunity to establish our city as “America’s finest green city”? One reader, JR argues that,

San Diego may want to revisit the concepts of large parklands running from the mountains to the sea, and looking at Jim Bell’s idea of increased urban density. This may not alleviate the chances of fires, but it may make them less disastrous to so many.

I understand that fires have been around for a long time. But the correlation between climate change, prolonged drought and increased fire seasons is a scientific fact (see Tom Swetnam’s co-authored article). There is no debate on this point.

Our climate has changed, and now we have to respond and radically change the way we do things to prevent more human-caused natural disasters. Friedman, as always, makes this very clear:

We need a president and a Congress with the guts not just to invade Iraq, but to also impose a gasoline tax and inspire conservation at home. That takes a real energy policy with long-term incentives for renewable energy - wind, solar, biofuels - rather than the welfare-for-oil-companies-and-special-interests that masqueraded last year as an energy bill. Enough of this Bush-Cheney nonsense that conservation, energy efficiency and environmentalism are some hobby we can’t afford. I can’t think of anything more cowardly or un-American. Real patriots, real advocates of spreading democracy around the world, live green. Green is the new red, white and blue.

Is San Diego up to the challenge?

– SERGE DEDINA

Originally published in the VOICEOFSANDIEGO.ORG

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

FAIRBANKS, Alaska, Sept. 20 — The cap of floating sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, which retreats under summer’s warmth, this year shrank more than one million square miles — or six Californias — below the average minimum area reached in recent decades, scientists reported Thursday.

The minimum ice area for this year, 1.59 million square miles, appeared to be reached Sunday. The ice is now spreading again under the influence of the deep Arctic chill that settles in as the sun drops below the horizon at the North Pole for six months, starting Friday.

The findings were reported by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., and posted online at www.nsidc.org.

While satellite tracking of polar sea ice has been done only since 1979, several ice experts who have studied Russian and Alaskan records going back many decades said the ice retreat this year was probably unmatched in the 20th century, including during a warm period in the 1930s. “I do not think that there was anything like we observe today” in the 1930s or 1940s, said Igor Polyakov, an ice expert at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

The ice retreat has been particularly striking this year. The Alaskan side of the Arctic Ocean has stretches of thousands of square miles of open water; the fabled Northwest Passage through the islands of northern Canada was free of ice for weeks; and the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans north of Russia was nearly clear a week ago, with one small clot of ice around a group of Siberian islands.

Mark Serreze, a senior researcher at the snow and ice center, said it was increasingly clear that climate change from the buildup of greenhouse gases was playing a role in the Arctic warming, which is seen not only in the floating ice but also in melting terrestrial ice sheets, thawing tundra and warming seawater.

“We understand the physics behind what’s going on,” Dr. Serreze said. “You can always find some aspect of natural variability that can explain some things. But now it seems patterns that used to help you don’t help as much anymore, and the ones that hurt you hurt you more.”

“You can’t dismiss this as natural variability,” he said. “We’re starting to see the system respond to global warming.”

Still, he and other scientists acknowledged that both poles were extraordinarily complicated systems of ice, water and land, and that the mix of human and natural influences was not easy to clarify.

Sea ice around Antarctica has seen unusual winter expansions recently, and this week is near a record high.

California Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger and five other regional leaders along with two Canadian provincial leaders pledged to enforce a tough regional cap on carbon emissions. They aim to cut emissions by 15% of the 2005 level in 13 years.

While it’s great to hear that some states are stepping up to the challenge the fact remains that nothing like this is being done on a national level. The current administration has been dragging its feet for too long and only now as we stand on the precipice of global climate change are officials beginning to realize the scope of the problem. California officials were more than justified in calling out the administration’s unwillingness to enact a national level program to cut greenhouse gases. Some states see the clear and present danger and are taking the steps to address the problem while some still drag their feet.

Other states need to step up as well and stop catering to business interests. In particular an article in the LA Times notes that “Nevada has advertised itself as a haven for businesses fleeing California” because environmental regulations are stricter in California. While economic values and interests should have a place in state government, the effects of global warming could eclipse whatever monetary gains some states might gain.

The states need to be united in their stance in the fight against global climate change and it’s a fight that’s spreading to other countries as well too. Canada’s participation and the Mexican state of Sonora’s consideration to join the effort speaks volumes on how global warming is truly a global problem and it requires, as the Governator aptly put it, global solutions.

Besides, we are part of the United States of America. It’s about time we doing some uniting to address global warming.

Calvin Lee

In Monterey and the central California coast, jumbo squid are invading. Known as the Humboldt squid, it can grow up to 7 feet long and weight up to 100 pounds. They are voracious predators that eat krill, sardines, birds, rockfish, and other Humboldt squid. They have been known to attack fishermen and divers as well too.

Yet, the giant squid isn’t the scariest part of this invasion.

These squid are normally found off the warm waters of Baja California and Chile. They first invaded during the 1997 El Nino event and disappeared soon afterwards. They returned during the 2002 El Nino and it seems as if the squid are here to stay, since young jumbo squid have been turning up, possibly because the squid have started reproducing in the area.

Humboldt squid found in Santa Cruz (Photo: New York Times)

Some scientists theorize that overfishing has eliminated the predators and competitors of the giant squid, thus allowing them to expand their range up the California coast.

By simply removing one species, ecological communities can be radically changed. Coral reefs have been devastated by outbreaks of crown of thorns sea stars. These outbreaks are thought to be due to overfishing. Since the predators of the larva were eliminated, the population of the starfish has been steadily increasing since the 1970’s.

Others believe that a combination of the squid’s unusual physiology along with global warming has given the squid some unique opportunities. Studies in Baja California have shown that the squid can tolerate high shifts in temperature, as well as hunt in low oxygen zones where small fish hide. This zone extends up and down the coast of the Pacific coastline; however, global warming might be increasing its spread.

Not only will global warming expand the ranges of some species but it will reduce the ranges of others. Animals, such as the polar bear are having more and more difficulty finding suitable habitat. There is an effort to declare the polar bear an endangered species.

Invasions such as these could become more common as time passes, simply because humans are doing a lot to changing both the environment and also the different players within an ecological community. Our impact on the environment has untold consequences whether we intended to cause them or not.

-Calvin Lee

The ice floes where harp seal pups are born have broken up and many animals have drowned.

Each year, the Canadian government allows the massive slaughter of hundreds of thousands of harp seals. Last year, approximately 325,000 harp seals were killed, about 6% of the total population. This massive killing only brings a revenue of $14.5 million dollars. That is, Canada only gets $40 per seal. Furthermore, after costs and indirect subsidies are taken into account (patrolling the hunt, upgrading plants, promoting the hunt, developing new markets for seal products and supporting research to find new products), Canadians would likely find that the hunt actually costs the Canadian taxpayer money. The hunt has become a cull, designed more to achieve short-term political objectives than those of a biologically sustainable hunt.

Last year, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) released a study by conservation biologist Professor Stephen Harris of Bristol University, which shows that the quota levels in the seal hunts of Canada and Greenland “pose a threat to the very survival of the harp seal population.” When the seals that are struck and lost, that is wounded animals who escape and are not recovered, more than half of all the seal pups born each year are slaughtered, Harris said. “When such hunting pressure last occurred, the harp seal population declined rapidly by over 50 percent,” said Harris. “Given seals only reach breeding age at about five to six years old, it could be too late to intervene by the time the impacts of current hunting levels are understood.” The Harris report criticizes the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) for failing to include environmental variables such as climate change in their Atlantic Seal Management Plan.

In 2007, the threat of climate change to harp seals is not a possibility anymore. The first stage of Canada’s controversial annual harp seal hunt is likely to be scrapped because the ice floes where pups are born have broken up and many animals have drowned. Canada’s federal fisheries ministry, which oversees the hunt, said the pups had been born as usual this year but the ice floes had then been blown far out to sea and started to break up before the seals learned how to swim properly.

The first part of the hunt, which had been due to start on March 28, occurs in the Gulf of St Lawrence to the south of the Magdalen Islands on Canada’s East Coast. Hunters move across the ice floes, shooting and clubbing to death young seals.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen this in 25 years … for sure there is increased mortality,” fisheries spokesman Roger Simon said from the Magdalen Islands. There is ice (south of the islands) but there are no seals on that ice,” he added, saying the animals were now well out of the range of most of the hunters’ vessels.

In Cabot Strait, there is wide open water and almost no seals,” Internationl Fund for Animal Welfare researcher Sheryl Fink said. “I only saw a handful of adult harp seals and even fewer pups, where normally we should be seeing thousands and thousands of seals.”

The ignominious policy of the Canadian government and climate change may be a lethal combination, the road to the extinction of harp seals. The irony of harp seal hunting is that the Canadian government and isolated fishing communities insist they need the supplemental income from the hunt, since cod stocks have dwindled due to overfishing. I wonder what will be the supplemental income when harp seals dissapear due to overhunting and climate change.

What can you do? Boycott Canadian seafood

Seal hunting is an off-season activity conducted by fishers from Canada’s East Coast. They earn a small fraction of their incomes from sealing—primarily from the sale of seal pelts to European fashion markets. But the vast majority of the sealers’ incomes are from commercial fisheries. Canadian seafood exports to the United States contribute $3 billion annually to the Canadian economy—dwarfing the few million dollars provided by the seal hunt. The connection between the commercial fishing industry and the seal hunt in Canada gives consumers all over the world the power to end this cruel and brutal slaughter. Don’t consume Canadian seafood or eat in restaurants that buy Canadian seafood. You have the power to stop the harp seal slaughter.

Saul

Although globalization has been a buzz word for a decade, free flow of goods, people, and money, have never really happened. But finally, true globalization is here! There is overwhelming scientific evidence that our excesive use of fossil fuels is causing global warming, and that its effects on all species, including humans, will be catastrophic in every part of our planet. Global warming is not an issue of beliefs as some politicians such as George W. Bush wants to frame it. Just like you are affected by gravity even if you don’t “believe” in it, you will be affected by climate change.

The burning of fossil fuels and the consequential global warming is a classic example of the “Tragedy of the Commons.” In his 1968 essay published in Science magazine, Garrett Hardin popularized the concept of the “Tragedy of the Commons” in reference to natural resources. TheTragedy of the Commons is a class of phenomena that involve a conflict for resources between individual interests and the common good: free access and unrestricted deman for a finite resource ultimately dooms the resource through overexploitation. The “tragedy” should not be seen as tragic in the conventional sense, but in the sense that the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead used it: “the remorseless working of things.” Furthermore, Hardin’s use of “commons” has frequently been misunderstood, leading Hardin to later remark that he should have titled his work, “The Tragedy of the Unregulated Commons.”

Peter Barnes, author of Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, sees climate change as a pair of tragedies: first of the market, which has no way of curbing its own excesses, and second of government, which fails to protect the atmosphere because polluting corporations are powerful and future generations don’t vote.

One of the tragic flaws of our current capitalist system is the destruction of nature. The voracious use of our limited natural resources will continue unless future generations, pollutees, and non-human species are represented in our economic models instead of being dismissed as externalities. We need an economics with less emphasis on mathematics, more plurality, and a return to the human side of the subject. An economics that makes room for ethics and ecology, which have being excluded by the dominant neoclassical economic approach. Saul