At its heart, the global warming problem is about food.
There’s a local angle to the climate news that the Atlantic “conveyor belt” is slowing down. Also known as North Atlantic Drift, these are the ocean currents that go from the tropics and bring relatively mild weather to Europe. The melting of Greenland’s glaciers has significantly slowed down the conveyor belt. So, Europe may well be getting colder. But there’s a local problem as well — where do the fish go?
From Living on Earth’s interview with famed climate scientist Michael Mann:
CURWOOD: Now, when you say it keeps Europe warm, we’re saying places like England, which is far north of eastern United States – New York, Boston – tends to be much warmer and has an earlier spring.
MANN: That’s right. And of course, Western Europe relies upon that moderate climate. If they were to lose that moderate climate that would obviously be problematic for them, for their economy. The pattern of climate, of rainfall, of drought, of temperature, that we rely upon today, and we rely upon the stability of those climate patterns for human civilization, well, if they were to change abruptly, that could really spell trouble, for us, for other living things, so any abrupt change in climate could potentially be catastrophic. We have long suspected that the North Atlantic Ocean circulation, the conveyor belt is one of those components of the climate system that could potentially undergo a very rapid change if we continue to warm the planet with fossil fuel burning and increased greenhouse gas concentrations. The climate models predict that we could see that current begin to shut down perhaps by the end of the century. As it turns out, the models appear to be too conservative because in our latest study we find evidence that that current is already weakening substantially and could be much closer to a total collapse than current generation climate models would suggest.
My emphasis. And the Massachusetts angle of the story? No good news for our beleaguered fishing industry:
One of the greatest concerns here is that if we did shut down the ocean circulation system, the conveyor belt, while we wouldn’t get a new ice age in the northern hemisphere, we would fundamentally change the flow of nutrients that feed ecosystems in the north Atlantic Ocean, which is one of the most productive regions for sea life in the entire world, and we would potentially lose access to fish populations that we rely upon right now, at a time when we’re already seeing threats to fisheries from ocean acidification, from overfishing. And so, while the impacts wouldn’t play out like a Hollywood disaster film, they could still be disastrous for us.
Here in Massachusetts, if we want to preserve a local industry — hell, if we want to eat — we’d better figure this out. Mitigate and adapt: What can we do to slow this process down, and what can we fish and eat in the future?
ramuel-m-raagas says
Wegman’s and restaurants worry not about fish spawning in our oceans, since they get tilapia and branzini (shrimp, too) not from chaMayim (waters) created by [adonay] but from man-run farms.
Salmon has been the most popular fish this century; it comes not from the expanse of our oceans, but smaller bodies of fresh water (if not farmed in commercial property).
Charley on the MTA says
Raise tilapia and strawberries in your backyard! I saw it at Epcot. Must be legit.
Peter Porcupine says
This is one a a couple of facilities here – http://www.eandtfarmsinc.com/about.htm
ramuel-m-raagas says
I clicked on your link (axisoflogic), but my browser has issues so it did not open. My clipboard paste function also fails.
Let me test paste:
https://youtu.be/Q7LY0R55Mlc
Do you see a srwbry?
Charley on the MTA says
Tilapia and strawberries. Freakin iPhone blogging
thegreenmiles says
Tilapia replacing salmon, and threats to clams, oysters, shrimp, beef, chocolate, coffee & beer … food in a climate-disrupted future will be boring. Maybe instead, build offshore wind now instead of fracked gas pipelines?
historian says
There is an unfolding fisheries and sea food disaster occurring that will not be solved by fish-farming Tilapia (one of the least nutritious of all fish).
Not only has the Cod stock plummeted, but the winter shrimp season in the Gulf of Maine has been cancelled for the second year in a row.
The fact that it is basically no longer possible to find lobster in Long Island sound also raises he alarming possibility that ocean warming will eventually push lobsters out of the Gulf of Maine.