Some of you Rhode Islanders may get off on the story since it focuses on a fisherman off the coast by Point Judith. His luck hasn't been so good lately since many species of fish have moved due to warmer water. (New York Times: Fish Seek Cooler Waters, Leaving Some Fishermen’s Nets Empty)
The government has some idea of where this or that species of fish predominates and they regulate fishing quotas on that basis. However, the fish have now moved, sometimes hundreds of miles north, so those quotas are now in a state of chaos.
Lobster, once a staple in southern New England, have decamped to Maine. Black sea bass, scup, yellowtail flounder, mackerel, herring and monkfish, to name just a few species, have all moved to accommodate changing temperatures.
Yet fishing regulations, which among other things set legal catch limits for fishermen and are often based on where fish have been most abundant in the past, have failed to keep up with these geographical changes.
"We show that the possibility of a collapsed AMOC under global warming is hugely underestimated," said Wei Liu, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University and lead author of the study. Liu began the research when he was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and continued it at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, prior to coming to Yale.
AMOC is responsible for carrying oceanic heat northward in the Atlantic Ocean. It consists of a lower limb of denser, colder water that flows south, and an upper limb of warm, salty water that flows north. The system is a major factor for regional climate change, affecting the Atlantic rim countries, especially those in Europe.
The government has some idea of where this or that species of fish predominates and they regulate fishing quotas on that basis. However, the fish have now moved, sometimes hundreds of miles north, so those quotas are now in a state of chaos.
Lobster, once a staple in southern New England, have decamped to Maine. Black sea bass, scup, yellowtail flounder, mackerel, herring and monkfish, to name just a few species, have all moved to accommodate changing temperatures.
Yet fishing regulations, which among other things set legal catch limits for fishermen and are often based on where fish have been most abundant in the past, have failed to keep up with these geographical changes.
- NYT
The manifold versions of climate change denial are all over the political stage but ...
Ed: the fish don't listen to politics!
I wasn't going to say that. Ha!
Sometimes it's said in corporate meetings where imagination is light and repetitions are frequent, I don't want to boil the ocean; the expression indicates an impossible task, a pointless quest.
However, as any fish can tell you, we have done a peach of a job of warming the ocean so that expression may fall into disuse.
Some say this change was going to happen anyway regardless of man but that's just more vaporous rhetoric since it makes no difference if it's man-made when the fisherman can't get a good catch of fish anymore.
Even better, we have the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and anything with a name like that you know has got to be at the bottom of a disaster movie which, in fact, it was. The AMOC was part of the basis for the Earth freezing in "The Day After Tomorrow" since it's the current which sends warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to Europe and returns cold water at a deeper level. (Science Daily: Potential instability in Atlantic Ocean water circulation system)
The researchers aren't promising an Ice Age from any destabilization of the current but there are consequences and a much colder Europe is one of them.
In fact, changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) -- the same deep-water ocean current featured in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" -- could occur quite abruptly, in geologic terms, the study says. The research appears in the Jan. 4 online edition of the journal Science Advances.
"We show that the possibility of a collapsed AMOC under global warming is hugely underestimated," said Wei Liu, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University and lead author of the study. Liu began the research when he was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and continued it at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, prior to coming to Yale.
AMOC is responsible for carrying oceanic heat northward in the Atlantic Ocean. It consists of a lower limb of denser, colder water that flows south, and an upper limb of warm, salty water that flows north. The system is a major factor for regional climate change, affecting the Atlantic rim countries, especially those in Europe.
- Science Daily
Whether you listen to the scientists or listen to the fish, we hope you will pick up on it soon and, whatever you do, ignore the politicians.
You could listen to Bernie Sanders but one man is not sufficient to justify the existence of that entire cadre. Nevertheless, we do listen to him and are proud of how he never shirks the responsibility for dealing with difficult problems. (CNN: Bernie Sanders' 23 questions for America)
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