Ocean Oxygen Suffering In The Hands Of Political Science
There’s a raft of stories out there about the very real crisis of our oceans losing their oxygen
The stories are cueing off of a report in a scientific journal that is working to float the idea that the ocean oxygen crisis is entirely due to ‘climate change’, the usual suspect for all environmental ills.
The authors of this new report reveal their work is more political-science, than real science, as they dismiss, almost utterly, the collapse of ocean oxygen production due to diminished photosynthesis.
Don’t despair and turn away, we can and are working to restore the oceans to health.
Dateline June 2007 in the New Scientist, “As clear as the clearest lakes on the planet, salty as ocean waters, roughly the size of the Mediterranean – this is the clearest and most lifeless patch of ocean in the world.” Click to read more
This tilted and widely promoted view of the “suffocating” loss of ocean oxygen originated from a new paper, published Jan. 4 in the journal Science. The paper and journal purports it to be the ‘first’ to make these observations. It is far from the first to report on observations ocean oxygen depletion.
The authors of this peer-reviewed scientific report, fill it with their ideas of how the usual suspects, that of ‘climate change’ in the form of ocean warming, is the principal cause of declining oxygen in the ocean. They go on to present their debating proposition that this doesn’t just spell trouble for marine plants and animals but that it carries dangerous repercussions for life on land as well.
The lead of their paper is…
As plastic waste pollutes the oceans and fish stocks decline, unseen below the surface another problem grows: deoxygenation.
Talk about dragging in and conflating all the usual suspects, this is the epitomy of politicizing science and it is preposterous behaviour that discredits this work and science as a whole!
A vital fact these academicians omit is that the ocean pastures, which historically have been filled with photosynthetic plankton, have experienced a 40-50% decline in that photosynthesis in the past century. To omit this powerful, indeed most powerful, variable, and diminishing source of oxygen in the oceans reveals at once that the purpose of this paper is to sell their hypothesis, that being the greatest threat to life in the oceans is the climate change bugaboo – global warming.
If these authors were reporting on such a hypothesis in a field, of say medical science, and referring to conditions of human patients, the authors would have been required to declare in their paper their relationship with medical/pharmaceutical financial supporters for their research. But in this age where ‘climate change’ is the biggest and most popular devil of all and hence the biggest source of research dollars, no such warning to the readers is offered by the proponents or their journal sponsors of their affiliation with climate change finance.
Ocean collapse long reported
In just the past half a century the equivalent loss of ocean pasture plankton equivalent to the clear-cutting of the entire Amazon Rainforest every five years has taken place. Everyone has heard the Amazon referred to as ‘the lungs of the earth’ – Click to read more
The report notes that 2 percent of the ocean’s total oxygen has been lost over the last half-century. It further goes on to state that there has been an increase in low oxygen regions of the world oceans. All perfectly true but this is not new News. For nearly 30 years reports on the collapse of ocean plankton have been replete in the scientific literature. (As has the cure for this problem. You will find a more on this cure that is also supported by NASA as your read on.)
The level of that collapse have been explained in terms of the loss of what ocean scientists refer to as ‘primary productivity’, read that to mean the phyto-plankton that has been persistently and consistently reported to be in cataclysmic decline for decades, albeit out of the limelight.
But hey if you are publishing in the Journal Science with the expectation that such a prominent publication, that depends upon and will likely land you plenty of new ‘climate change’ research funding, you are sure to pitch your story to pander to those funders favourite memes.
Oceans Are A Living Ecosystem At Work
Ocean from the air mixes freely in the ocean keeping surface waters well oxygenated. Massive additional Oxygen produced by photosynthesis supersaturates the water and is mixed down into deeper waters by the vertical mixing of trillions upon trillions of swimming strokes. Oxygen is sufficient in the cold depths as proven by the presence of large deep swimming fish who find plenty of oxygen to breathe to depths of 1000 meters and more.
The authors of this recent report on oxygen decline don’t seem to be able to do the math regarding what influences ocean oxygen. Their assumption is that oxygen in the ocean is solely controlled by the solubility of oxygen as determined by ocean temperature. They then make the enormous stretch that the tiny shifts in ocean temperature that are observed are the cause of oxygen declines that are measured.
Sadly the science behind their hypothesis seems to be purely curve fitting that fits best to the explanation that the curves fitting has been done to conform to the hypothesis. This leads to their hypothesis that eschews entirely, indeed neglects, the collapse of 40-50% of the oceans oxygen production!
We don’t have to go it alone to save our planet from our deadly CO2 and keep our oceans and air filled with life-sustaining oxygen, we have trillions of tiny allies. click to read more
Ocean temperature has an important role in ocean oxygen but there are ample ecological and biological factors that actively and potently work to sustain ocean productivity and oxygen mixing.
Every evening the stage is set for greatest migration on earth.
That diel zooplankton migration is also the greatest mechanical force on this planet. It is the work of trillions upon trillions of tiny fins, flippers, and feet that muscle their way from the depths to the surface, the zooplankton. Before dawn those pasture grazers swim back down to the dark abyss. Their stirring of the seas mixes the surface ocean keeping it alive and well. Or at least they did until the great dying began with our fossil fuel/fool age of CO2.
The Blue Carbon War
Tragically there is plenty of money in anything that speaks to global warming and next to no money for anything to do with ocean primary productivity or heaven forbid restoration of that lost ocean pasture productivity. Even worse there is a ‘blue carbon war’ that has been engaged for decades by the climate industrial complex against any and all who might propose ocean pasture restoration.
That war is all about the money. Ocean pasture restoration was first proposed in 1990 by the late great oceanographer whom NASA maintains a web page referring to him and his work with the title ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS. His ‘Geritol Solution’ has long been fought with every dirty trick in the book including fake news as it offers an immediate effective and inexpensive solution to restoring the oceans to historic health and abundance and an incredibly low-cost.
Ocean Pasture Eco-Restoration To The Rescue
Fortunately, oceanographers have been studying and mapping the oceans and its living pastures for decades. The new discipline of ocean pasture management is now emerging and is offering, just as terrestrial pasture management has done on land, practical tools to restore, replenish, and safely and sustainably manage our global ocean pastures that are today in such a terrible state of decline.
By restoring the ocean pastures via replenishment of their missing yet vital mineral dust ocean pastures in all of the world’s seven seas can be immediately and inexpensively returned to historic productivity producing prodigious amounts of oxygen to keep the world’s lungs working and in the bargain sending billions of additional fish into our nets and onto the plates of hungry people around the world.