Acid Oceans? & Oyster Shells

from What’s Natural?

Published July 14, 2020 in the Pacifica Tribune

(I also wrote a white paper for the CO₂  Coalition, providing more details and references to peer reviewed science regards how marine life counteracts ocean acidification. That paper can be downloaded here )

Search the internet for “acid oceans” and you’ll find millions of articles suggesting the oceans are becoming more corrosive due the burning of fossil fuels, and “acid oceans” are threatening marine life. Although climate modelers constantly claim the oceans’ surface pH has dropped since the 1800s, that change was never measured, as the concept of pH was not created until the early 1900s by beer-makers.

In 2003 Stanford’s Dr. Ken Caldeira coined the term “ocean acidification” to generate public concern about increasing CO₂  . As New Yorker journalist Elizabeth Kolbert reported, “Caldeira told me that he had chosen the term ‘ocean acidification’ quite deliberately for its shock value. Seawater is naturally alkaline, with a pH ranging from 7.8 to 8.5—a pH of 7 is neutral—which means that, for now, at least, the oceans are still a long way from actually turning acidic.” Nonetheless Caldeira’s term “ocean acidification” evoked such undue fears and misunderstandings, we are constantly bombarded with catastrophic media hype and misdiagnosed causes of natural change.

For example, for nearly a decade the media has hyped the 2006-2008 die-off of larval oysters in hatcheries along Washington and Oregon. They called it a crisis caused by rising atmospheric CO₂  and the only solution was to stop burning fossil fuels. But it was an understanding of natural pH changes that provided the correct solutions. Subsurface waters at a few hundred meters depth naturally contain greater concentrations CO₂  and nutrients and a lower pH than surface waters. Changes in the winds and currents periodically bring those waters to the surface in a process called upwelling. Upwelling promotes a burst of life but also lowers the surface water pH.  Not fully aware of all the CO₂  dynamics, the hatcheries had made 3 mistakes.

upewlling

First, they failed to recognize not all oyster species are well adapted to the low pH of upwelled water. The larvae of native Olympia oysters naturally survive intense upwelling events along the Washington coast because that species “broods” its larvae. The larvae initiate their shells protected inside their parents’ shells where pH is more controlled. However, the Olympia oysters were over-harvested into near extinction in the 1800’s.

So, fishermen imported the Japanese oyster, which is now the mainstay of the Washington and Oregon fisheries. Japanese oysters did not evolve within an intense upwelling environment similar to Washington’s coast. Each Japanese oyster simply releases over 50 million eggs into the water expecting their larvae to survive any mild changes in pH during initial shell formation. Hatcheries didn’t realize the Japanese oyster’s larvae had a 6-hour window during which the larvae’s initial shell development and survival was vulnerable to low pH.

Second, because cooler waters inhibit premature spawning, hatcheries pumped cool water from the estuary in the early morning. As measured in coral reefs, photosynthesis raises pH during the day, but nighttime respiration drops pH significantly. By pumping early morning water into their tanks, they imported estuary water at its lowest daily pH. Finally, they failed to recognize natural upwelling events transport deeper waters with naturally low pH into the estuary, further lowering the pH of water pumped into their tanks.

Now, hatcheries simply pump water from the estuary later in the day after photosynthesis has raised pH. Scientists also developed a metering device that detects intrusions of low pH waters, so hatcheries avoid pumping water during upwelling events. As for most shellfish, once the shell is initiated, a protective layer prevents any shell corrosion from low pH conditions. Problem easily solved and crisis averted!

The simplistic idea that burning fossil fuels is causing the surface ocean to become more acidic is based on the fact that when CO₂  interacts with water a series of chemical changes results in the production of more hydrogen ions which lowers pH. Unfortunately, all catastrophic analyses stop there. But living organisms then reverse those reactions. Whether CO₂  enters the surface waters via the atmosphere or from upwelling, it is quickly utilized by photosynthesizing plankton which counteracts any “acidification”. A percentage of the organic matter created in the sunlit waters sinks or is actively transported to depths, further counteracting any surface “acidification’. Some organic matter sinks so rapidly, CO₂  is trapped at depths for hundreds and thousands of years. The dynamics that carry carbon to ocean depths largely explains why the oceans hold 50 times more CO₂  than the atmosphere.

To maintain marine food webs, it is essential that upwelling bring sunken nutrients back into the sunlight to enable photosynthesis. Upwelling also brings stored CO₂  and low pH water to the surface. Wherever upwelling recycles nutrients and lowers surface pH, the greatest abundance and diversity of marine life is generated.

Jim Steele is director emeritus of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, SFSU and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism.

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net

Hopefulness Despite 2.9 Billion Lost Birds

What’s Natural

Hopefulness Despite 2.9 Billion Lost Birds

In 2019 bird researchers published Rosenberg et al “Decline of the North American Avifauna”, reporting a decline in 57% of the bird species. They estimated a net loss of nearly 2.9 billion birds since 1970, and urged us to remedy the threats, claiming all were “exacerbated by climate change”, and we must stave off the “potential collapse of the continental avifauna.” Months before publication the researchers had organized an extensive media campaign. Typical doomsday media like the  New York Times piled on with “Birds Are Vanishing From North America” and Scientific American wrote, “Silent Skies: Billions of North American Birds Have Vanished.”

As I have now been sheltering in place, I finally had ample time to thoroughly peruse Rosenberg’s study. I had a very personal interest in it, having professionally studied bird populations for over 20 years and had worked to restore their habitat. I also had conducted 20 years of surveys which were part of the study’s database.  Carefully looking at their data, a far more optimistic perspective is needed. So here I join a chorus of other ecologists, as reported in Slate, that “There Is No Impending Bird Apocalypse”. As one ecologist wrote, it’s “not what’s really happening. I think it hurts the credibility of scientists.”

First consider since 1970 many species previously considered endangered such as pelicans, bald eagle, peregrine falcon, trumpeter swan, and whooping crane have been increasing due to enlightened management. Despite being hunted, ducks and geese increased by 54%. Secondly, just 12 of the 303 declining species account for the loss of 1.4 billion birds, and counterintuitively their decline is not worrisome.

Three introduced species - house sparrows, starlings and pigeons - account for nearly one half billion lost birds. These birds were pre-adapted to human habitat and are considered pests that carry disease and tarnish buildings and cars with their droppings. Across America, companies like Bird-B-Gone are hired to remove these foreign bird pests. Furthermore, starlings compete with native birds like bluebirds and flickers for nesting cavities, contributing to native bird declines. The removal of starlings is not an omen of an “avifauna collapse”, but good news for native birds.

Flicker

When European colonists cleared forests to create pastures and farmland or provide wood for heating, open-habitat species “unnaturally” increased. Previously confined to the Great Plains, brown‑headed cowbirds quickly invaded the newly opened habitat. Unfortunately, cowbirds parasitize other species by laying its eggs in their nests. A cowbird hatchling then pushes out all other nestlings, killing the parasitized species’ next generation. The loss of 40 million cowbirds only benefits our “continental avifauna”.

Several bird species had evolved to colonize forest openings naturally produced by fire, or floods or high winds. Those species “unnaturally” boomed when 50% to 80% of northeastern United States became de-forested by 1900. Still, eastern trees will reclaim a forest opening within 20 years, so open habitat species require a constant supply of forest openings. However as marginal farms and pastures were abandoned, fires were suppressed and logging reduced, forests increasingly reclaimed those openings. With a 50% decline in forest openings, their bird species also declined; now approaching pre-colonial numbers. Accordingly, birds of the expanding forest interior like woodpeckers are now increasing.

White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos quickly colonize forest openings but then disappear within a few years as the forest recovers. Those 2 species alone accounted for the loss of another quarter of a billion birds; not because of an ecosystem collapse, but because forests were reclaiming human altered habitat. Nonetheless those species are still 400 million strong, and juncos remain abundant in the open habitat maintained by suburban back yards. If environmentalists want to reclaim the abundance of their boom years, they must manage forest openings with logging or prescribed burns.

Insect outbreaks also create forest openings. For hundreds of years forests across Canada and northeastern US have been decimated every few decades by spruce bud worm eruptions. So, forest managers now spray to limit further outbreaks. Today there are an estimated 111 million living Tennessee Warblers that have specialized to feed on spruce bud worms. But the warbler’s numbers have declined by 80 million because insect outbreaks are more controlled. Still they have never been threatened with extinction. Conservationists must determine what is a reasonable warbler abundance while still protecting forests from devastating insect infestations.

The grassland biome accounted for the greatest declines, about 700 million birds. Indeed, natural grasslands had been greatly reduced by centuries of expanding agriculture and grazing. But in recent times more efficient agriculture has allowed more land to revert to “natural” states.  However fossil fuel fears reversed that trend. In 2005 federal fuel policies began instituting subsidies to encourage biofuel production. As a result, 17 million more acres of grassland have been converted to corn fields for ethanol since 2006.

Although still very abundant, just 3 species account for the loss of 400 million grassland birds: Horned Larks, Savannah Sparrows and Grasshopper Sparrows. Horned Larks alone accounted for 182 million fewer birds due to a loss of very short grass habitats with some bare ground. To increase their numbers, studies show more grazing, mowing or burning will increase their preferred habitat.

Horned Lark

It must be emphasized that the reported cumulative loss of 2.9 billion birds since 1970, does not signify ecosystem collapses. But there are some legitimate concerns such as maintaining wetlands. And there are some serious human-caused problems we need to remedy to increase struggling bird populations. It is estimated that cats kill between 1 to 3 billion birds each year. Up to 1 billion birds each year die by crashing into the illusions created by window reflections. Collisions with cars and trucks likely kill 89 to 350 million birds a year. Instead of fearmongering ecosystem collapse, our avifauna would best be served by addressing those problems.

Questioning Bird Models

Population estimates for most land birds are based on data from the US Geological Surveys Breeding Bird Surveys (BBS). I conducted 2 BBS surveys on the Tahoe National Forest for 20 years. Each survey route consists of 50 stops, each a half‑mile apart. At each stop for a period of just 3 minutes, I would record all observed birds, the overwhelming majority of which are heard but not seen. Many birds can be missed in such a short time, but the BBS designers decided a 3-minute observation time allowed the day’s survey to cover more habitat. Each year on about the same date, the BBS survey was repeated.

Each BBS route surveys perhaps 1% the region’s landscape. To estimate each species’ population for the whole region, the survey’s observations are extrapolated and modeled. However, models rely on several assumptions and adjustments, and those assumptions that can inflate final estimates. For example, in 2004 researchers estimated there were 6,500,000 Rufous Hummingbirds. By 2017, researchers estimated there were now 21,690,000. But that larger population cannot be deemed a conservation success. That tripling of abundance was mostly due to new adjustments.

Because singing males account for most observations, the number of observed birds is doubled to account for an unobserved female that is most likely nearby. Furthermore, it is assumed different species are more readily detected than others. The models assume that each stop will account for all the birds within a 400‑meter radius. Because a crow is readily detected over that distance, no adjustments are made to the number of observed crows. But hummingbirds are not so easily detected. The earlier surveys assumed a hummingbird could only be detected if it was within an 80‑meter radius. So, to standardize the observations to an area with a 400‑meter radius, observations were multiplied by 25. Recent survey models now assume hummingbirds can only be detected within 50 meters, so their observations are now adjusted by multiplying by 64.

Thus, depending on their detection adjustments, one real observation could generate 50 or 128 virtual hummingbirds. That number is further scaled up to account for the time‑of‑day effects and the likely number of birds in the region’s un-surveyed landscapes.  

Setting aside assumptions about the regional homogeneity of birds’ habitat, one very real problem with these adjustments that has yet to be addressed. If one bird is no longer observed at a roadside stop, the model assumes that the other 127 virtual birds also died.

Survey routes are done along roadsides and up to 340 million birds are killed by vehicles each year.  Many sparrows and warblers are ground nesters and will fly low to the ground. Many seed eating birds like finches will congregate along a roadside to ingest the small gravel needed to internally grind their seeds. Every year I watched a small flock of Evening Grosbeaks ingesting gravel from the shoulder of a country road, get picked off one by one by passing cars. Roadside vegetation often differs from off-road vegetation. Roads initially create openings that are suitable for one species but are gradually grown over during the lifetime of a survey to become unsuitable habitat. So, it should never be assumed that the loss of roadside observations represents a decline for the whole region.

The larger the models’ detectability adjustments are for a given species, the greater the probability that any declining trend in roadside observations will exaggerate a species population loss for the region. The greatest population losses were modeled for warblers and sparrows and most warbler and sparrow data are adjusted for detectability by multiplying actual observations 4 to 10-fold. It is worth reporting good news from recent studies in National Parks that used a much greater density of observation points and were not confined to roadsides. Their observation points were also much closer together and thus required fewer assumptions and adjustments. Of the 50 species they observed, all but 3 populations were stable.

Pushing a fake crisis, Rosenberg et al argued that declining numbers within a species that is still still very abundant doesn’t mean they are not threatened with a quick collapse. He highlighted the Passenger Pigeon was once one of the most abundant birds in North America and they quickly went extinct by 1914. That doomsday scenario was often repeated by the media. But comparison to the Passenger Pigeon’s demise is a false equivalency. Passenger Pigeons were hunted for food when people were suffering from much greater food insecurity.

Rosenberg et al summarized their study with one sentence: “Cumulative loss of nearly three billion birds since 1970, across most North American biomes, signals a pervasive and ongoing avifaunal crisis.” But it signals no such thing. Wise management will continue. With better accounting of the natural causes of each species declines, plus more accurate modeling, it will be seen that Rosenberg’s “crisis” was just another misleading apocalyptic story that further erodes public trust in us honest environmental scientists.

Jim Steele is director emeritus of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, SFSU and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism.

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net

Unintended Consequences? Polio and COVID 19

Polio children in iron lungs

We must consider the unintended medical consequences of societal lockdowns hoping to prevent the spread of COVID 19. Unintended consequences are exemplified by past polio epidemics that left some of my classmates crippled. For the most severely afflicted, a polio infection required, not a ventilator, but an iron lung for children to breathe. The polio virus had likely been around for thousands of years, but in the 20th century severe epidemics began. Why?

In 1992 Dr Krause from the National Institute of Health published, “There are numerous examples of old viruses that have caused new epidemics as a consequence of changes in human practices and social behavior. Epidemic poliomyelitis emerged in the first half of this century when modern sanitation delayed exposure of the virus until adolescence or adulthood, at which time it produced infection in the central nervous system and severe paralysis. Before the introduction of modern sanitation, polio infection was acquired during infancy, at which time it seldom caused paralysis but provided lifelong immunity against subsequent polio infection and paralysis in later life. [emphasis mine] Thus, the sanitation and hygiene that helped prevent typhoid epidemics in an earlier era fostered the paralytic polio epidemic.”

Indeed, it was the more affluent people with higher standards of living that were most affected by polio epidemics, because their children were more likely isolated from milder strains.

As is the case for most rapidly mutating viruses, there will be various strains. Some will cause mild effects while others could be deadly. A strain’s virulence may depend on a person’s age and health. There are several strains of influenza virus, so vaccines are adjusted each year. There were 3 strains of poliovirus that were identified. Vaccinations eradicated two types and now groups like the Rotary are funding work to eradicate the remaining type. The observation that early exposure to polio viruses provided life-long immunity raises the question regards dealing with COVID 19. To what degree is sheltering in place preventing people from becoming naturally immune when infected with a mild strain?

The larger the population of naturally immune people, the greater the “fire-break” that prevents the spread of a more deadly strain. Just as social distancing minimizes the exponential growth of a deadly strain, it also prevents the exponential growth of naturally immune people. If so, perhaps a more targeted approach would be better. Our elderly population are the most vulnerable and are often confined to crowded facilities. People with compromised health conditions should self-isolate. We definitely need to minimize the spread to those vulnerable people. Perhaps designating one hospital to specialize on COVID and another for non-COVID medical care is a good strategy. Stopping medical care for a far greater number of people with other severe problems out of fear of spreading COVID 19 is not wise. And is it wise to quarantine everyone?

The fact that many people have tested positive for COVID 19 virus but had no symptoms suggest there are various mild strains that could naturally impart immunity. These mild reactions are primarily seen in people younger than 50 years old. However, once those younger cohorts gain immunity, they will be less vulnerable as they age.  

Recently in the New England Journal of Medicine Dr Fauci wrote, " If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively."

Dr John Ioannidis is a Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy and of Biomedical Data Science, at Stanford University School of Medicine, director of the Stanford Prevention Research Center, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford

He wrote an opinion piece A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data suggesting we may be overreacting.

In contrast to Imperial College model suggesting over a million Americans could die, Ioannidis argued, “If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths. This sounds like a huge number, but it is buried within the noise of the estimate of deaths from “influenza-like illness.” If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average.”  The Imperial College and Ioannidis’s model will be tested soon, as American COVID deaths stands at 2,871 as of March 30^th.

Nonetheless, it will be difficult to determine how effective a societal lockdown was if COVID 19 behaves like influenza.  Flu infections dramatically drop beginning around April. Relative to seasonal warming, a lockdown may have a minimal effect. Perhaps by inhibiting the spread of a natural immunity, we may be setting the stage for another big wave of COVID 19 next year. These are questions must be debated.

Influenza deaths versus seasons

Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net

Accelerating infection rates? Or accelerated testing?

Accelerating infection rates? Or accelerated testing?

It appears the spread of COVID 19 is not accelerating as the media suggests. The increase in confirmed cases is a result of accelerated testing.

According to data shared by the Atlantic on March 17, only 25,000 Americans had been tested for COVID 19 resulting in 4,400 confirmed infections by March 12. That suggests a 17.6% infection rate per tested specimens. This infection rate very likely over-estimates the infection rate of the American population, as most tests are performed on people concerned about respiratory symptoms that could also be caused by the common cold or the flu. Likewise younger people who are less likely to get infected are unlikely to seek testing.

If the pandemic spread is accelerating, then infection rates per test should be increasing. But they are not according to my calculations.

The Atlantic provided access to a data base listing the number of COVID 19 tests for each state.

Not all states had reported, but as of March 23, the number of tests had accelerated to 317,240 total. Based on the current number of confirmed cases, 49,940, the number of cases per test was just 15.7%. At the very least, the smaller percentage of confirmed cases per test suggest there has been no acceleration in the spread of the disease. Journalists reporting on the spread of COVID 19 should not just report the number of confirmed cases but the number of cases per the number of tests.

Because many confirmed cases have only mild symptoms, the mortality rate is also informative. Of the currently confirmed 49,940 American cases, there have been 634 deaths. That is a mortality rate of less than 1.3% of confirmed cases. For comparison, the death rate for the closely related SARS virus was over 9%, but there were far fewer infections. The COVID19 death reate is ten times greater than influenza. However since October 2019, many more people are infected by the flu, over 38 million,  and the number of deaths is estimated between  23,000 and 59,000, far greater than COVID 19.

If COVID 19 behaves like the flu, then warming weather should cause infections to drastically decline as we progress toward summer

Warming Improves Our Health - part 1

What’s Natural

Warming Improves Our Health - part 1

It’s deeply disturbing to hear people uncritically regurgitate media misinformation suggesting global warming threatens our health far worse than the COVID pandemic. Scientific evidence unequivocally shows colder weather is the major killer. As Figure 1 illustrates, the percentage of all deaths attributed to weather and temperature increases during the cold months. In contrast mortalities rates fall during warmer months. Researchers examining 74 million deaths across the globe from 1985-2012 found 7.3% were caused by temperatures cooler than the optimum compared to just 0.4% attributed to temperatures above the optimum.  Extreme temperature events, both hot and cold only accounted for 0.9% of all deaths.  

Likewise, a 2014 National Health Statistics reports found, “During 2006–2010, about 2,000 U.S. residents died each year from weather-related deaths. About 31% of these deaths were attributed to exposure to excessive natural heat, heat stroke, sun stroke; 63% were attributed to exposure to excessive natural cold, hypothermia, or both.”  Similarly, according to the CDC , from 1979-1999, a total of 8015 deaths in the United States were heat related while 13,970 deaths were attributed to hypothermia. So why aren’t people listening to the science?

Increasing seasonal death rate due to colder temperatures 

Global warming fear is based on speculation regards what could happen in the future if global average temperatures rose 2°F to 4°F. But scary predictions are not scientific fact until their hypotheses are tested and verified. Without time machines we cannot directly test predicted outcomes for the years 2050 or 2100.  But we can observe the effects of a similar temperature change.

In the United States people have steadily migrated away from the cold Northeast to the warmer Southwest. In the Southwest they are exposed to higher average temperatures, temperatures equal to or greater than what global warming predicts they would endure if they remained in the Northeast. The good news, scientists determined that “migration from the Northeast to the Southwest accounts for 4% to 7% of the total gains in life expectancy experienced by the U.S. population over the past thirty years.” We can infer a similar benefit from global warming. A complementary study determined people that migrated to colder climates suffered ‘greater cardiovascular mortality” than people who remained in their native country.

Because the two major U.S. government agencies that track heat and cold deaths - NOAA and the CDC - differ sharply on which is the bigger killer, the public is rightfully confused. In contrast to the CDC results, NOAA argues heat is killing twice as many people as cold, but NOAA’s researchers have also been heavily invested in catastrophic global warming claims. By statistically adjusting the data via “seasonal detrending”, they remove the greater number of winter deaths in their analyses and just focus on extreme temperature deaths. They justify their adjustments arguing factors such as increased winter deaths due to flu season are not directly due to colder temperatures. But that obscures the health effects of temperature.

Colder temperatures reduce the effectiveness of our immune systems, which promotes influenza epidemics that may kill 34,000 to 60,000 people in a year. Because influenza season ends when temperatures warm, scientists are hoping warmer weather will similarly curtail the novel COVID-19 pandemic.

NOAA’s adjusted data focuses on deaths from heat waves and cold snaps. Indeed, there is a greater spike in deaths during heat waves, but research suggests heat waves have a small long‑term effect due to a “harvesting effect”. Us elderly and health compromised people are most vulnerable to extreme weather and epidemics. The “harvesting effect” describes an event during which vulnerable people who would have likely died over the following months instead died “prematurely” during an extreme event. But mortality rates drop in the following months because the most vulnerable have already passed. Researchers have found because mortality rates fall during the months following a heat wave there is no long­‑term population effect. In contrast, cold snaps do have long-term effects as researchers found no such “harvesting effect”.

Although alarming models and media narratives suggest global warming causes more extreme heat waves, scientific data disagrees. As the EPA’s heat wave index illustrates (below), there has been no increase in heat waves as the worse heat waves happened during the 1930s.

Fortunately, heat waves are short‑lived and foreseeable. Weather forecasters detect approaching high-pressure systems that bring cloudless skies that increase solar heating. High pressure systems inhibit rising air currents that normally carry heat away. And high‑pressure systems draw warm tropical air poleward on one flank while blocking cooler air from moving south. By forecasting extreme heat waves, scientists believe we can prevent most heat wave deaths. Urban heat effects are 2°F to 10°F warmer than the countryside, thus urban dwellers should be most careful. And because elderly people who lack air conditioning are most vulnerable and less mobile, we can make sure they are moved out of harm’s way.

Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net

Dissolving Dungeness?

Published in Pacifica Tribune March 8, 2020

What’s Natural

Dissolving Dungeness?

Like New England’s lobsters, savory Dungeness crabs are San Francisco and the northwest’s iconic seafood. While fisheries around the world have declined from overexploitation, Dungeness crabs have been sustainable despite intensive harvesting over the past 40 years.  Their resilience partly relies on mature females producing 1 to 2 million eggs each year. Thus, harvesting females commercially is illegal.

Unfortunately, few eggs survive to adulthood. Besides being preyed upon, early life stages (larvae) must survive being swept out to the open ocean and then return a few months later to shallow near-shore waters. The more larvae that survive that trip, the greater their abundance. But if the winds and currents prevent the larvae’s return, populations could crash as they did in the 1950s.

The successful return of Dungeness larvae largely depends on the strength and timing of upwelling currents. When eggs hatch, larvae rise to the surface and are then blown offshore. If larvae float into the California Current, they’re carried southward and further offshore. But below the California Current is the Undercurrent, transporting warmer waters northward. Northward currents also strengthen during winter.  By migrating daily between contrasting surface and deeper waters, larvae minimize being swept too far away. Then beginning around April, a strengthening California Current creates upwelling currents that carry larvae back towards the coast while larvae remaining in the open ocean die.

Upwelling currents also promote plankton blooms by bringing essential nutrients back into sunlit surface waters. Upwelling enables the entire marine food web to flourish. Larvae that settle in regions bathed by upwelling water, benefit from 10 times more food than elsewhere. Upwelling also increases the abundance of sardines and anchovies, but that causes a problem for crab fishermen.

Humpback whales feeding on anchovies are attracted to Dungeness fishing grounds. Recovering from past exploitation, larger whale populations are more likely to encounter crab trap buoy lines and deadly whale entanglements increased. So commercial crab fishermen agreed to further restrict fishing season to minimize overlap with feeding whales. Promising technological solutions to eliminate buoy lines are a work in progress.

In 2015, beneficial upwelling also enabled a bloom in plankton species producing domoic acid. Passing up the food chain, high doses of domoic acid cause neurological damage to birds and mammals. Detecting high domoic acid levels in crabs, public health agencies shut down the 2015 Dungeness season until the danger passed.  That was economically devastating for fishermen. Hoping to recoup their losses the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations blamed climate change and sued 30 oil companies. But they are unlikely to win their lawsuit.

Outbreaks of domoic acid poisoning correlate with upwelling and natural ocean oscillations. The northward currents can bring additional domoic-acid-producing species into Dungeness habitat. Then with seasonal upwelling, their numbers explode. In 1961, a similar plankton bloom disoriented seabirds. Monterrey newspapers reported birds flying into buildings and people, inspiring Alfred Hitchcock to produce his iconic horror film “The Birds”.

Unfortunately, bad science also promotes media horror stories such as CNN’s headlines, “The Pacific Ocean is so Acidic that it's Dissolving Dungeness.” But in truth, ocean pH is far above 7.0; oceans are alkaline, not acidic.

Still NOAA’s West Coast Ocean Acidification program seeks worrisome examples of “acidification” and it was their researchers who prompted those horrific headlines. They found Dungeness larvae in off-shore waters (with a slightly higher pH) had smoother inner shells, versus larvae in near-shore waters (with a slightly lower pH) that had shells with patchy dissolution. The dissolution was invisible to the eye. Researchers had to remove the shells’ outer protective layer and examine the inner shell with scanning electron microscopes and various x-ray technologies to find microscopic “changes”. And despite a correlation with lower pH, the measured pH should not have caused any dissolution.

Dungeness larvae reaching near-shore waters are transported by the naturally low-pH upwelling currents. That upwelled water is derived from the Undercurrent, which is fed by waters originating in the deep Pacific Ocean. Those deep waters had not been exposed to our atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. Suggesting low-pH upwelled waters are worsened by “atmospheric carbon dioxide” was a false narrative. The lower pH and high nutrients are produced by hundreds of years of decaying organic matter.

When Dungeness larvae return to near-shore waters, they settle to the ocean floor and soon molt into their first juvenile shells. Larvae absorb minerals from their old shell to recycle into their new shell. That causes patches of dissolution. The researchers’ data from one near-shore location was discarded because pre-molt dissolution had clearly started as expected. Still and oddly, researchers blamed that observed pre-molt, but slightly less dissolution, on “ocean acidification” prompting endless media horror stories. What is never told is Dungeness larvae remaining offshore do not molt into juveniles, so would not be undergoing pre-molt dissolution. And despite their smoother shells, larvae remaining in offshore waters die.

Misleading science from researchers who are blinkered by their advocacy for an “ocean acidification crisis” is problematic. We need objective science, not “dissolving Dungeness” fear mongering.

Jim Steele is director emeritus of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, SFSU and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism.

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net

Hijacking the Winds of Change

published in the Pacifica Tribune February 25, 2020

What’s Natural . column

Low-tech weathervanes have provided farmers with sage weather advice. If winds were coming from the north, temperatures would be colder than normal; if from the south, temperatures would be warmer. Most fascinating, if winds descended down a mountain slope, they could expect fluctuating extreme weather, with temperatures bouncing between extreme warmth and cold. Across the globe, local downslope winds cause dramatic weather changes and so are given special names such as Chinooks or Foehn winds.

In the western USA, warm dry winter winds descending from the Rocky Mountains are called Chinooks. Because chinooks can melt a foot of snow in one day, Native American Blackfeet people called chinooks “snow-eaters”. Long before it became fashionable to blame warm events on CO₂ global warming, standard physics explained extreme warming events. When moist winds are forced over a mountain range, the water vapor condenses at higher elevations releasing precipitation as well as latent heat that warms the air. Then as the winds descend, the air further warms by 5.5°F for every 1000-foot drop in elevation.

For a historical perspective, read the peer-reviewed account of the “Battle of the Chinook Wind at Havre, Montana”. In December 1933 the onset of Chinook winds raised temperatures 27°F in just 5 minutes, and over the next 36 hours temperatures rose by 53°F. When the Chinooks relaxed, typical cold winter air returned, and temperatures fell 40°F in just 2 hours. Montana is a local hot spot for extreme Chinooks. The world record for the greatest warming in 24 hours happened January 1972, just 60 miles away from Havre, as temperatures jumped 103°F (−54 °F to 49 °F).

Such dramatic warming in winter seems unbelievable, but the laws of physics steadfastly state increasing pressure increases temperature without adding heat. As air moves down slope and compresses, it warms. Amazingly, tribes from Borneo to the Philippines beneficially applied the physics of warming long ago. They started fires by rapidly compressing air in a tube. Many modern backpackers carry a similar device called a “fire piston”.

When downslope winds warm and dry the air, they also drive major wildfires. In southern California these periodic wind events are called the Santa Anas, or the Diablo winds in northern California. These rapidly warming wind events dry out grasses and twigs in just a few hours making them easily ignited even in winter. Simultaneously those winds fan the flames, rapidly spreading the fire. A 1960s government report warned those winds made California vulnerable to fire all year long.

In the Swiss Alps, these downslope winds are called foehn winds. And similarly, due to foehn winds fire season in some Swiss valleys peak in the cooler months of March and April. In southeastern Australia where bushfires recently devastated the land, large fires are more likely downslope of the local “Australian Alps” due to foehn-like winds. When human ignitions and poorly managed forests coincide with foehn events, deadly conflagrations ensue.

Antarctica doesn’t experience wildfires, but foehn winds bring extreme temperatures and melt ice. Unlike most of Antarctica, the Esperanza weather station is uniquely situated between cold winds blowing from the continent that battle warm subtropical winds from the north. It is also located in a regional hot spot for foehn winds. On February 6, 2020, a foehn wind raised Esperanza’s normal 32°F summer temperatures to 64.9°F in just 6 hours. A record for the continent but much below nearby Signy Island’s 1982 record of 67.6°F, also driven by foehn winds. Twelve hours after the foehn wind relaxed, the cold winds returned dropping Esperanza’s temperatures back to its normal 32°F.  Similar foehn wind events are implicated in the collapse of that region’s Larsen B ice shelf.

Climate change requires 30+ years to detect, but the sharp spike in Antarctic warming came and went over a period of hours. But talking heads mistakenly blamed the warm event on climate change, despite the region’s 2 decade long cooling trend. MSNBC interviewed New York Times reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis, who claimed Esperanza’s extreme temperature verified that climate “models are right” so we must “rein in our greenhouse gas emissions”. But nobody ever mentioned the warming was a natural foehn event. Nor did they mention that the only way to prevent such dramatic warming from foehn events, would require leveling all the mountains of the world. Looking more ill-informed, when Kendra stated this event was “not great for the animals that live in Antarctica”, MSNBC flashed a photo of polar bears.

Instead of informing the public about the science behind these amazing wind effects, they’ve hijacked natural warm weather events to create sensational and misleading climate crisis stories. The public should demand more rigorous scientific reporting!

Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism

Contact: naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net