Pacific Coast Life Concerns Scientists

[moser]

Pacific Coast Life Concerns Scientists

By TERENCE CHEA, Associated Press Writer Mon Aug 1, 8:29 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO - Marine biologists are seeing mysterious and disturbing things along the Pacific Coast this year: higher water temperatures, plummeting catches of fish, lots of dead birds on the beaches, and perhaps most worrisome, very little plankton — the tiny organisms that are a vital link in the ocean food chain.
ADVERTISEMENT

Is this just one freak year? Or is this global warming?

Few scientists are willing to blame global warming, the theory that carbon dioxide and other manmade emissions are trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere and causing a worldwide rise in temperatures. Yet few are willing to rule it out.

Rest of story (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050802/ap_on_sc/ocean_crisis)


---------------
That's pretty disturbing.

[Martino]

Few scientists are willing to blame global warming ...

Pity the article doesn't say who these scientists are, or what their affiliations are.

As for the possibility that this is being caused by global warming, scientists are not so sure, since climate change is believed to be a gradual process,

Again, believed by who? There is a wide consensus amongst the science advisors of European governments that global warming is measurably happening now.

Almost exactly the same story was reported by the BBC over a year ago, after a catastrophic decline in British bird populations:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3822719.stm

More importantly, this follow-up story doesn't politically tip toe around the probably cause:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3879841.stm


Extract:

Martin Edwards and bird expert Sarah Wanless, from Nerc Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (a British government agency), have got together to try to pinpoint how this is happening.

"We have already shown that kittiwakes are declining and declining quite rapidly - but at the moment we don't know the mechanisms," said Dr Wanless.

"And that is why we are joining up the bird work with the plankton work, so we can see how these links actually operate.

"What Martin Edwards and his colleagues are showing is that there is a profound difference in the plankton in the North Sea, and we are seeing a decline in the sand eels that many birds feed on."

She continued: "We speculate these are climate driven changes, which are working their way right through the food chain. And we are seeing signals emerging from the birds.

"In some cases we are finding a whole lot of adult birds dead and in other cases that the birds are abandoning their chicks."

And there might be worse to come. Because sea birds are generally long lived, changes happen rather slowly. So what we are seeing now could be, some fear, the tip of the iceberg.

"Some species might decline to the extent where they are no longer present," said Dr Wanless. "And kittiwakes might well be one of the first to disappear."