You will never guess, but salmon that survived the hot Holocene period, and the even hotter Eemian, will probably be OK in a slightly warmer world. Expert researchers found this surprising.
Given the broad spread of Salmon in the Northern Hemisphere, and their past survival through every single interglacial warm period of the Pleistocene, I would have thought that they could cope with quite a bit of climate change. As it turns out, they cope so well, that even salmon eggs that come from a 12C environment can be raised in an environment a whopping 8C warmer, and they were not noticeably any worse off.
Part of the concern with salmon was the spawning and eggs, and the problem with getting the salmon to shift their maternity wards and childcare arrangements (which they seem very attached too). But presumably those breeding grounds have varied before in temperature, and salmon didn’t die out, so — at least with this problem — nature has it figured out.
Map: Salmon and Climate Change, Fish in hot water, Red List.
Atlantic salmon also show capacity to adapt to warmer waters
Populations of Atlantic salmon have a surprisingly good capacity to adjust to warmer temperatures that are being seen with climate change, a group of scientists at the University of Oslo and University of British Columbia have discovered. The finding about Atlantic species adds to recent UBC-supported research on heat tolerance of Pacific salmon.
The new study, a collaboration between Norwegian and Canadian researchers, was recently published in Nature Communications. Funded by the Norwegian Research Council, it addressed questions around how climate change might affect salmon species distribution and abundance.
UBC authors of the study include Katja Anttila, a postdoctoral fellow who now works at the University of Turku in Finland, and Tony Farrell, Chair in Sustainable Aquaculture.
Scientists studied wild salmon from two European rivers. They compared a cold-water population from Norway’s northern Alta River, where water temperatures have not exceeded 18 C for 30 years, with warm-water populations from France’s Dordogne River, located 3,000 kilometres south, where annual water temperatures regularly exceed 20 C.
Eggs from both populations were hatched at the University of Oslo, where they were raised at 12 or 20 C. Despite substantially different natural environments, both populations had remarkably similar capabilities when warmed.
When reared at 12 C temperatures, salmon from both populations developed cardiac arrhythmias at 21 to 23 C, after a maximum heart rate of 150 beats per minute. But those raised at 20 C developed cardiac arrhythmias at a surprising 27.5 C, after the heart reached 200 beats per minute. Researchers found that increasing the fish’s acclimation temperature by 8 C raised temperature tolerance by 6 C.
“The results are surprising,” Farrell said. “A fish faced with uncomfortably warm temperatures might relocate or even die if it is too extreme. Here we have evidence for warm acclimation of a commercially and culturally important fish species.”
A 2010 study shows eggs of three salmon or trout species survive over an 8 – 16C range depending on the species. (see Table 1). The grown fish are happy over a 20 C range. Sea Surface temperatures have warmed by eight-tenths of a degree in the last 100 years.
That’s the thing about a scare over 0.8C of warming — the daily range, the seasonal spread, and the natural range of temperatures far exceeds the shift in long term trends (which have always changed themselves as well). Biology often copes.
…
This study was done with climate change in mind. It’s the opening line….”Anthropogenic climate change is affecting species distributions and abundance…” . Commendably the researchers seem to have stuck with the observations and tossed out their hypothesis when it didn’t fit. Bravo.
DISCUSSION
Genetic differentiation between Norwegian populations was reported earlier and the Alta population aligns close to those populations. Current thinking is that the diversification among salmonid species and genetic isolation due to anadromy might be connected to climatic cooling during recent ice ages. Moreover, the prevalence of local adaptations increases with geographical distance, which led us to expect local adaption for the Alta population, where the river temperature has not increased above 18 C for at least the last 30 years, and the Dordogne population, which regularly encounter temperatures over 20 C in their natural habitat. In contrast to expectations, Alta and Dordogne populations differed very little in their acute cardiac response to temperature, but instead showed considerable cardiac plasticity in response to thermal acclimation that surprisingly was largely independent of the latitudinal and climatic origin of the populations. Therefore, for the most part we rejected thehypotheses of local thermal adaptation in these Atlantic salmon populations.
A little debate over evolutionary processes gets discussed too:
Therefore, the present results emphasize that acclimation remains a feasible possibility for survival in a warmer future, with physiological plasticity replacing the immediate need for local adaptation. If such plasticity enables Atlantic salmon to adequately respond to ongoing warming trends associated with climate change, the southern Dordogne salmon will be physiologically challenged by warming to a greater degree than the northern Alta salmon, because the capacity for cardiac acclimation to warm temperature still resides in the Alta population. The limited local thermal adaptation in Alta and Dordogne salmon populations contrasts with the apparently strong local adaptations revealed for Fraser River adult sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) populations8. The most parsimonious explanation for such a species difference is the athletic requirement of the adult sockeye salmon for its once-in-a lifetime spawning migration, which has probably been a powerful selective force to optimize AS to local river migration conditions. Such selection may have been relaxed for Atlantic salmon.
The people of Norway and Finland appear to have paid for this research. Western wealth can support research that discusses and debates changes in the maximum heart rate (fHmax), aerobic capacity, and cardiac arrhythmias of different subtypes of a fish. I’m sure there are subtypes of people on Earth we don’t know as much about.
REFERENCE
Katja Anttila, Christine S. Couturier, Øyvind Øverli, Arild Johnsen, Gunnhild Marthinsen, Göran E. Nilsson, Anthony P. Farrell. Atlantic salmon show capability for cardiac acclimation to warm temperatures. Nature Communications, 2014; 5 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5252
Elliot and Elliot (2010) Temperature requirements of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar, brown trout Salmo trutta and Arctic charr Salvelinus alpinus: predicting the effects of climate change, Journal of Fish Biology (2010) 77, 1793–1817, doi:10.1111/j.1095-8649.2010.02762.x (PDF)
Image: Salmon and Climate Change, Fish in hot water, Red List.
This is sure to spawn outcries from warmists. They’ll say there’s something fishy about this. But they won’t have any snapper comebacks. Counter claims are sure to come at a snail’s pace. This will seal their doom.
…ok that’s all I had time for.
220
Another fish story, is this being done on Porpoise?
Seriously though any information on adaptation of sea life is interesting considering the theory of humans evolving from the sea and sharing some chemical compositions, does this mean we could adapt to this dangerous climate change?
Oh that’s right we already do by altering blood viscosity, sweating, fat for insulation and metabolism, phew I was worried there for a second.
240
Sorry, can you speak up ‘cos I’m hard of herring!
And have you written this in the right plaice?
80
We could have a whale of a time, waiting for some AGWists to jump the shark and join us – we should whelkome them, with no eel-will. Be an angel, and don’t parrot their earlier pro-clam-ations.
50
It’s quite obvious the salmon are not on message.
80
Which is quite unusual, because the ones that aren’t red are pink.
90
“salmon are not on message”
Nope, but was on my plate last night ! 🙂
60
Who discovered one of the world’s most climate affecting cyclic phenomena?
It wasn’t climate scientists despite their immense amounts of money and resources compare to the real discovers who just used unadjusted, unhomogenised, non infilled data and good plain careful research and science plus that so uncommon, common sense to discover one of the world’s largest climate affecting cycles, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation [ PDO ]
It seems that Fisheries scientists are much more open minded and science based than the so called climate scientists.
And here’s an example of why;
The Case of the Disappearing Salmon
[ 3 / 9 / 2009 ]
Scenario:
In September of 1997 the ocean temperature increased to 69 degrees Fahrenheit in the northwest or 10 degrees above normal as warmer waters moved north along the Pacific west coast. A local fisherman snagged a 104 lb marlin that is typically found in warmer Baja California waters (NY Times article, 1997).
Tropical yellowfin tuna were also represented in northwest Pacific waters. In northern California, tropical fish such as mahi mahi and swordfish swam the ocean waters.
However, the warmer waters brought about by the fickle Pacific Ocean also wreaked havoc on other fish.
Salmon, a cold water species, were especially susceptible to these environmental changes in the ocean. Mackerel migrated north with the warmer waters and preyed on young salmon just entering the ocean through river mouths.
Furthermore, warmer waters resulted in the loss of millions of salmon during migration to streams where they hatched.
The salmon were disappearing.
Or were they?
Only recently have scientists discovered the reasons for the changes in ocean temperatures and their impacts on salmon. They noticed that in some years so many salmon returned to a hatchery that fisheries managers had to give them away. In other years, fishing boats remained at the docks because there were too few fish in the local ocean waters.
Although predicting salmon abundance is harder than predicting the weather, researchers also noticed another pattern: when Alaskan fishermen win, the Pacific Northwest (here defined as the region from N. California through Washington state) fishermen lose and visa versa.
Some biologists and oceanographers think they might know why.
Searching through old issues of fishing journals, Steven Hare of the International Pacific Halibut Commission in the state of Washington was struck by the correlations he saw between Alaska and Pacific Northwest fisheries.
Hare noted that in 1915, a reporter in Pacific Fisherman wrote that Bristol Bay (Alaska) salmon packers returned to port early due to a lack of fish.
At the same time, the chinook salmon migration up the Columbia River that borders Oregon and Washington was the best in 25 years.
In 1939, the Bristol Bay salmon run was touted as “the greatest in history,” while the chinook catch down south was “one of the lowest in the history of the Columbia ( Rozell 1998 ).”
The salmon numbers disparity occurred again in 1972, then more recently in 1994, when Alaska fisherman broke a record for salmon harvest while Washington and Oregon managers were forced to close the chinook fishery on the Columbia because so few fish were returning.
The current woes of Pacific Northwest salmon fishermen are not due to salmon’s preference for a northern life; Alaska and Pacific Northwest salmon rarely mingle, and many are of different species.
So why the correlation between good years here, bad years there?
According to Hare and Nathan Mantua, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, ocean conditions affect salmon.
They found that the Gulf of Alaska and Bristol Bay since 1977 have been more suitable places for salmon than the northern Pacific off the coast of California, Washington and Oregon.
In the twenty years before 1977, years when Alaska’s fisheries were struggling, the northern Pacific waters were more suitable for salmon.
The researchers discovered that the alternating pattern of changing salmon abundance between Alaska and the Pacific Northwest has to do with a climate phenomenon similar to El Nino .
Instead of El Nino’s recurrence pattern once every three to seven years, the one that may affect salmon has phases that last 20 to 30 years.
This Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), as the researchers call it, has its strongest signature in the North Pacific Ocean, while El Nino’s patterns originate near the equitorial Pacific.
The PDO flips back and forth between a warm and cool phase.
During a cool phase, the Pacific Northwest has a more favorable environment for salmon than Alaska due to its cooler ocean waters.
The opposite occurs during a warm phase of the PDO (see Images A and B ).
Consequently, the remarkable characteristic of Alaskan salmon abundance over the past half-century has been the large fluctuations at interdecadal time scales which resemble those of the PDO (see Image C and Table 1 on the right).
110
Give it time, they’ll develop fish and lobsters that cook in tepid water 😉
50
Its a bit early to be off topic but !
NoTricksZone 2 july 2014
NCEP Data Show June 2014 Among The Coldest This Century!
Four Of Five Coldest In The Last 5 Years
[quoted ]
Firstly, June 2014 is nowhere near “the warmest on record”. It is among the coldest of the 21st century.
Secondly the colder mean global June temperatures have occurred during the recent years, and the warmer ones earlier in the century (exception 2000), thus indicating that Junes have been cooling off. In fact, 4 of the 5 coldest Junes this century occurred in the last 5 years.
[ / ]
______________
Via Weatherzone
and note the climate Council mention
Record hot June for the world
Michael Condon, Wednesday July 23, 2014 – 15:16 EST
Climate Council map showing 156 weather records were broken across Australia during the 2013-14 summer. – ABC
Last month was the hottest ever June worldwide, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration in the US, which tracks climate data over ocean and land.
Records date back to the 1880s.
It followed the hottest May ever.
Blair Trewin, a climatologist at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, says the record temperatures have to do in part with the coming El Nino, which raises global ocean temperatures, meaning bigger tropical storms in the Pacific.
“Yes, it was the warmest June recorded on a global level,” he said.
“Global records began in the late 19th century and, although some of the records don’t cover all of the period through, we have good records from the early 20th century
20
If you really want impact, dump “this century” and install “this millennium”.
05
Can someone please tell me how the The National Climate Data Center, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, says we have had the hottest June since records began, yet the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, say it was the coldest this century.
I’ve heard about being “on the same page”,but these people obviously aren’t even on the same planet!
No wonder there are two opposing sides of this argument, when there two opposing data sets to choose from. So which one is real? Who Is right?
60
Paul, if you read this, you will understand how the NCDC can create as much warming as they want.
A note on data record stability:
All the above temperature estimates display changes when one compares with previous monthly data sets, not only for the most recent months as a result of supplementary data being added, but actually for all months back to the very beginning of the records, more than 100 years ago.
Presumably this reflects recognition of errors, changes in the averaging procedure, and the influence of other unknown phenomena.
None of the temperature records are stable over time (since 2008). The two surface air temperature records, NCDC and GISS, show apparent systematic changes over time.
This is exemplified the diagram on the following page showing the changes since May 2008 in the NCDC global surface temperature record for January 1915 and January 2000, illustrating how the difference between the early and late part of the temperature records gradually is growing by administrative adjustments.
These changes were done between May 2008 and June 2014 and had the net effect of increasing the alleged global warming between Jan 1915 and Jan 2000 from 0.39C to 0.52C, a 33% increase in alleged global warming.
You can find more on the issue of lack of temporal stability on http://www.climate4you (go to: Global Temperature, followed by Temporal Stability).
20
Thanks for that Jaymez.
I went to the site, and read it all.
This is just getting more and more ridiculous.
Institutions are altering both new and old records to match what they think the climate should be.
Is there anywhere that still has original temperature records showing what the temperatures were when they were actually measured?
Somewhere with reliable data that hasn’t been fiddled with.
20
A modern day proverb:
A person with a watch, knows the time.
A person with two watches, is never sure.
00
Correction! finger trouble !;
the NTZ post was the 22 July 2014
The ABC announcement was 23 July 2014
20
For the Love of the Stars Above,
Dumb fish can adapt to changing climatic circumstance but an idiot human can’t!
Where will it all finish?
40
Where will it all finish?
Humans will die out from terminal stupidity.
And the fish will not even notice nor care.
20
Given that Salmon are found from the Arctic to Southern Spain and California why does the fact that they can handle a wide range of temperatures appear to be a surprise ?
130
But don’t you understand none of this matters! The facts don’t matter, the observations don’t matter!
Don’t you understand, you stupid deniers, only the forecasts made by the computer models matter.
On a more serious note, I am off salmon fishing in Iceland today – someone has to do it – I wonder what the salmon did during the last ice age, when most of the world’s salmon rivers where under a kilometre or more of ice?
Answer: they moved and/or adapted.
So why do alarmists think of climate as being something which should be static and that there is an ideal temperature for our world?
Answer: Because the lessons of history and the geological record are an inconvenient truth and therefore a climate heresy.
70
October 6, 2013:
The report released by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in late September confirms what residents of Alaska have known for years — climate change is real, it is caused largely by humans, its effects are here now and things will only get worse.
http://www.adn.com/article/20131006/governor-should-renew-alaskas-leading-role-climate-change-response
~ ~ ~
October 10, 2013: Booming Southeast pink returns fuel Alaska’s biggest salmon harvest ever
http://www.adn.com/article/20131010/booming-southeast-pink-returns-fuel-alaskas-biggest-salmon-harvest-ever
~ ~ ~
Jun 03, 2014:The lobster fishery in Nova Scotia has come to a standstill.
“We were blindsided. Never seen this coming at all,” he said.
“Simply, that the catches have been overwhelming. Day after day of good fishing weather.
Catches in some areas that have essentially doubled,” he said.
“The system is clogged,” he said.
“… there’s just nowhere to put live lobster this week.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/nova-scotia-lobster-fisheries-shut-down-some-tied-up-in-p-e-i-1.2662872
40
Either fish are stupid, or the ABC is.
. . .
August 13, 2010 – climate change has fish moving south
It shows about 30 per cent of the fish that live in south-east Australia have moved to new habitats and started to breed.
PETER LAST: We think climate change has something to this with this. There’s been a warming of the waters around Tasmania during that period.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2010/s2981717.htm
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
August 17, 2012 – warm seas will affect fish:
The CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) says climate change is having a big impact on the country’s oceans, with tropical fish turning up as far south as Tasmania.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3569893.htm
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
17 June, 2014 – cold seas kill fish:
Cold Antarctic water probable cause of dead fish washed up on Ninety Mile Beach, EPA says … [with] beachgoers identifying mainly the leather jacket species and also trevally. The fish prefer warmer waters.
Large numbers of dead fish have also washed up on Tasmania’s east coast.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-17/cold-water-likely-cause-of-dead-fish-ninety-mile-beach/5527990
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
July 8, 2014 – Warming oceans force fish south
New research shows the world’s warming oceans are forcing tropical fish to move south and putting other habitats at risk.
Dr Verges says it’s because of climate change.
Tropical species that perhaps were carried by this current, you know, they used to die once they hit certain cold temperatures but because the temperatures are now warmer overall, especially in the winter, species are starting to stay and form populations.
JAKE STURMER: Is there a fix? Is there any way to stop this?
ADRIANA VERGES: Well, we should definitely try and stop CO2 emissions. Any efforts to stop climate change are going to be key in at least slowing down this process.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2014/s4042327.htm
30
Are the two mutually exclusive?
40
Q: “Are the two mutually exclusive?
Answer:
What is the memory span of the average goldfish?
Is it truly only 3 seconds?
Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage (MythBusters) go head-to-head in search of the answer.
http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/goldfish-memory-minimyth.htm
3.27 minutes for the answer!
20
The Australian taxpayers are stupid for continuing to fund the ABC.
10
No fish is that dumb!
00
Fish only appear dumb to us humans, because they choose to spend most of their time mentally calculating complex Fourier transforms of hydrological signals in four dimensions, and spend very little time worrying about what the celebrity du jour was wearing when they last went to visit their manicurist.
10
I have a feeling we are going to get some quite fishy comments on this subject.
Old fishermen never die.
They just smell that way
40
Give them time to adjust out UHI from earlier salmon data.
40
When i saw Salmon happy to adapt etc. I thought you were referring to Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland.
Unfortunately Salmond isn’t happy to adapt: he is all for building windmills to save the world, and to wreck the Scottish economy.
Scots would be better off appointing a salmon instead.
100
The headline initially struck me as a comment on Scottish Independence, where the First Minister Alex Salmond and his sidekick Nicolla Sturgeon are hatching something fishy between them.
Salmond is an ardent promoter of both oil (‘It’s Scotlands’s Oil’ ) and renewables. Anything that creates a market for Scottish resources & ingenuity.
I don’t know if he’s really a warmist at heart, or just a canny politician seeking to exploit the tide of warmism while it lasts.
Sturgeon is only known for presiding over the demise of Out of Hours medical services to rural communities, leaving them relying on the promise of a flying ambulance service.
Oolder people are now abandoning their lifetime homes in the Highlands in droves, for the assurance of 24/7 access to medical facilities through oversubscribed metropolitan A&Es.
40
Things are bound to be a little fishy with Salmon(d) and Sturgeon in charge…
10
The salmon are possibly considering their options as well.
How many wild salmon will there be in Scotland after September ?
10
“Commendably the researchers seem to have stuck with the observations and tossed out their hypothesis when it didn’t fit. Bravo.”
The basis of this research was yet another attempt to prove that global warming/climate change was the culprit in another funded, scientific ‘fishing expedition’; expected to arrive at a predetermined conclusion. That conclusion would have been happily exploited by a global PR machine waiting in the wings.
I can’t give these guys a bravo.
20
These type of postings (ie in a warming world) just feed warmist trolls. There ain’t NO warming!!
[That is a bit unfair Eliza. Surely you don’t dispute warming since the LIA? – Mod]
20
Eliza, There seems no doubt that the LIA was a “cooler period”, and that we are warmer than then.
It is the warming indicated in data sets such as Giss and HadCrut, BOM over the period of raised CO2 level, ie the second half of last century..
.. that is HIGHLY debatable.
Historical reports and a lot of raw data seems to indicate a very warm period in the late 1800’s and another warm peak around 1940, but a slight dip around 1970.
These are the warm periods that have been totally erased from Giss, Hadcrut , Bom etc by the charlatans trying to create the global warming meme.
Mann’s attempt to also get rid of the MWP was just another case of an attempted to do the same, just a very poor one because the guy is basically incompetent.
So the question, “has there been any warming?” …
from 1970 – 2000, maybe a small amount, but I don’t think this first decade or so of century got any warmer than the late 1800’s and the early 1940s,
even though the highly manipulated GIss, HadCrut and Bom would have us think so.
51
Mod,
I would certainly dispute the significance and the assumed cause of what warming we can be sure of.
The temperature change since the LIA has been too small and too slow to be of interest except to scientists who study such things. The rest of us don’t have a reason to care or be afraid of anything, Al Gore notwithstanding. And our only option is to cope with whatever happens in the future. Again, Al Gore notwithstanding.
30
Im with you Roy. I see nothing that gives me confidence in our ability to separate human effects (if any exist) from natural variability. While there has certainly been “warming” it basically depends on where you start your measurements from as to how much and what its meaning and significance is.
How much warming has there been since the planet formed and life began? What form did that warming take? Why did it pause occasionally resulting in ice ages? We are not even close to answering those basic questions yet we think we can tease 0.3c out of 0.9c over 100 years and assign meaning to some of those numbers.
Id call it delusionary.
20
Please don’t go overboard on us with this excessive politeness. 😉
But you’re right on the money about the warming, cooling, climate changing, weather or whatever the right term is.
10
It seems to me the only “skeptical” site REALLY tackling the AGW scam directly with no crap is Steven Goddards by far.
30
Eliza, I wasn’t aware Goddard had done a global raw data set?
But Frank Lansner did.
And 120 proxies by: Ljundqvist that tell a similar story.
There is more to the world than USHCN. Keep that skeptical hat on.
70
Global warming alarmists would have us believe that there will be catastrophic implications if the global average temperature increased by 2.0C or so. Or if CO2 concentration reached 560 ppm. I know many market gardeners pump their glasshouses with CO2 up to 1,500ppm to improve growth. And of course everyday the Earth’s life forms of all types are subjected to daily temperature ranges many multiples of 2.0C. I notice that here in Australia, in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, the daily temperature range has been as much as 20.0C recently. Yet all sorts of creatures cope with that. Seasonal temperature ranges around the globe can be equally as dramatic.
If the planet can cope with these dramatic changes over the short term, it should be no surprise that the planet can cope with climate change over the long term. Yet we still have millions of dollars in research being spent trying to prove that minor changes in climate will be catastrophic, and surprise is expressed by scientists when they discover examples of nature coping quite well.
When will the climate alarmists accept the evidence that our climate has change dramatically over the past and species have adapted just fine. A couple of degrees or so change is not unprecedented, it certainly should not be alarming!
50
It varies far more than that. I worked in the NT close to the desert back in the 70’s. Daytime temperatures were in the mid 30’s and at night it could drop below freezing.
40
I think that there may be a “CO2 Hole” (similar to the Ozone Hole) in the NT.
30
Methinks alarmism is not a new phenomenon.
20
The vast majority of the living world can cope with temperature changes larger than even the most hysterical predictions of alarmists. This should be no surprise to anyone properly conversant with the Theory of Evolution Through Natural Selection.
The fact that adaptations to temperature exist in such abundance is testimony to the undeniable fact that the temperature ranges that are tolerated have been encountered before. They have been encountered so often that there has been time to evolve many different adaptions numerous times.
It is ironic that the warmist camp attempts to equate CAGW skeptics (realists) with creationists. It is they who misunderstand and deny the theory of evolution through natural selection. The CAGW hypothesis is inconsistent with biological science.
Adaptations to temperature ranges mean that those temperature ranges have existed as a selective pressure for prolonged periods. These adaptations predate our industrial production and they manage much larger temperature differences than any projected due to global warming.
21
Well whod a thunk.
20
This is news??? I was at UBC in Marine Biology in the 70’s and even then I knew salmon adapted to temperature changes.
20
The biggest threats to salmon are over fishing, dams and inadequate flow because of diversion of water for human use or even drought. But not temperature.
Those are the problem to solve, not climate change.
If the world will be getting colder as we suspect, I wonder what a lot of fish will do when their habitat begins freezing solid.
40
“when their habitat begins freezing solid.” this would be a very convenient way to shop for snap frozen food, except the freezer section could be 1000’s of square miles in size. 🙂
Roy I don’t know if you’ve seen the “River Monsters” series on Animal Planet, the thing that struck me was how much variation in tolerance to water conditions there was from fish species to species, given they travelled all over the planet there was also amazing similarities between species from opposite ends of the scale (sorry), I actually dislike fishing as a pastime but I found this show fascinating.
The show was aired on SBS/ABC here and I almost didn’t watch it anticipating the pseudo science crap but only found one episode where climate change was mentioned, it was in a lake in eastern Europe where fish washed up dead due to “unusually” warm water, this was false as my quick research found this was a common occurrence during the summer with that species of fish in that lake, pays to check eh?
20
Yonni,
My cable TV package doesn’t include Animal Planet, which is no particular loss because I’m much more interested in other things and probably wouldn’t watch it.
I’m not sure what happened to it because quite a while back I could find it if I went channel surfing. They’ve dropped a number of things recently and the only excuse I’ve ever seen is recently from a service tech who said, “We need the bandwidth in our system for other things.” I suspect that’s a line about a mile long since at frequencies used for HD TV there’s plenty of bandwidth for literally 1,000 + channels.
I have a long litany of complaints about the whole thing but I won’t bore you with them. But maybe I should ask to have Animal Planet put back. At least I wouldn’t expect better treatment from a chimp or a hippo.
10
As the ice increases the polar bears, seals and fish will stay along the edge as it moves to and fro over the course of the seasons like they always have.
00
There are many serious challenges facing the world’s populations of wild salmon -overharvest, pH effects of afforestation and fire suppression, the loss of marine derived nutrients in spawining streams, loss of large woody debris needed for overwinter survial in rearing streams, etc. Unfortunately, salmon are repeatedly hijacked to serve as the poster animal for the latest environmental crusade.
Anadromous salmon can be thought as riding the glacial front over time. Southerly population are always at risk to the highly variable interglacial T signal that can cause rapid extinction from these rivers and equally fast repopulation when optimum conditions return. Extreme cold exerts its own set of survival challenges. During the height of the last Ice Age Atlantic salmon retreated into two small know glacial refugias in the Barents Sea and the Iberian Peninsula. Anadroumus (ocean going) salmonid populations as such retract in a both a warmer and a cold world with the center of their population continuously adapting.
The physical and biochemical changes (smoltification) that occur in young salmon preparing to enter salt water are seriously constrained by temperature. Steelhead (O. my kiss) as an example see this process (smolting) confined to a rather narrow temperature range of 10 to 15C while the non-smolting populations of salmon can survive at higher temperatures. Smolt (young salmon) will either stop downward migration at higher temperatures and those entering salt water at temperature above 15C experience high mortalities. (Temperature induced osmoregulation problems can cause as an example blindness and increased bird predation levels as the small salmon try to ride the less salty surface water.) There may also be lower temperature limit to smolting but it is less studied.
10
Yes Pat but you wont hear the MSM and major environment groups talking about the other problems because they have measurable outcomes in terms of improvement and decline. Its not good business to address problems you can fix, far better to scare people with a problem that cant be measured in terms of success and failure, then you can milk the fearful for donations indefinitely.
20
It’s the statement “in a warming world” that feeds the AGW trolls not “natural warming” By the way it could cool any moment. I personally do not beleive that there has been any tangible “climate” warming or cooling in our lifetimes (Im 62) ANYWHERE. The argument is nonsense LOL
The same applies to this model and that model posts in this and other sites that feeds the warmist meme. They want you to do this. Only Goddard seems to be able to read this (in my view).
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Eliza it depends what you call tangible.
I still contend we do not have even a fraction of the data required to separate any effects of man (if they exist at all) from natural variability. The simple fact is we kid ourselves in believing we know what “normal” is, if indeed “normal” even exists in a chaotic, non linear system like the climate. There are of course limitations to what the climate can do, however the boundaries of available climate behaviour do not imply or guarantee an average behaviour in the middle.
Those that believe in AGW have simply had their ability to reason hikacked by the human brain’s natural tendancy to attempt to identify patterns in life. Pattern recognition is an extremely important survival skill when it applies to recognising that crocodiles hang out near waterholes. However when we start to see patterns where none exist, pattern recognition works against us. In the case of AGW, some humans have become deluded by rampant, non existent, pattern recognition. While not being able to recognise patterns is certainly a problem for survival, modern man makes far more errors of identifying patterns that don’t exist, than we do failing to recognise patterns.
“In a September paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, “The Evolution of Superstitious and Superstition-like Behaviour,” Harvard University biologist Kevin R. Foster and University of Helsinki biologist Hanna Kokko test my theory through evolutionary modeling and demonstrate that whenever the cost of believing a false pattern is real is less than the cost of not believing a real pattern, natural selection will favor patternicity. They begin with the formula pb > c, where a belief may be held when the cost (c) of doing so is less than the probability (p) of the benefit (b). For example, believing that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is only the wind does not cost much, but believing that a dangerous predator is the wind may cost an animal its life.”</em>
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/patternicity-finding-meaningful-patterns/
This is fundamentally my belief on why people and scientists are easily sucked in to AGW alarmism. Its just a natural human tendency misfiring with the resultant fear of survival overwhelming the ability to reason and rationalise the evidence.
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WHAAAAAT???!!! You mean that DOOOOMSDAAY is cancelled?!
Bloody salmon, just can’t read a script. No wonder they never evolved!!
Deniers!
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The fish can adapt but we have to get rid of capitalism to ensure the world survives
http://www.cityam.com/1406127764/climate-change-conference-calls-end-capitalism
h/t Steve Goddard
They have just proven the water melon label is correct !!!
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If life was as unadaptable as AGW believers, then the world might have a drama if it got warmer. But fortunately life appears to be infinitely adaptable with forms of life appearing in every extreme environment on our planet. It boggles me that these people cant seem to work out that if a species exists in the modern world, the highest likelihood is, its been able to adapt to all sorts of changes to get here.
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We know the salmon can adapt, but how do you know they are happy about it?
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O/T but when you see the quotes you’ll love the relevance. I get a subscription at work to Energy news (amongst many other things) and there is a story about plate tectonics (an area reasonable well understood, you’d think) and there are some priceless quotes by Geoscience Australia’s Dr Karol Czarnota.
They talk about some of the surprises in his findings (regarding tectonic motion):
But this is the gem – see if you spot similarities to another field of study…
He goes further:
I trust you guys will enjoy those comments as much as I did … it is refreshing to hear such comments from a scientist.
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you need to listen to more scientists bulldust. You can find loads of examples published each week in peer review that pull critique models with data. It is nothing new except to those who don’t bother looking.
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G A What does “pull critique model” mean?
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hmm… it means a typo, or more precisely a neglecto. “pull” should have been deleted.
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That’s why I usually make the distinction between scientists and advocates. In my mind the twain can rarely co-exist. Advocates find it almost impossible to be objective, scientists have to be or they cease being scientists. When I see people making scary AGW statements, the sources are invariably the likes of Flannery, Gore, SkS, IPCC etc … I don’t consider those scientific sources and yet invariably I get shouted down (generally rudely) by the blogistas at the ABC and SMH. Most of the commentators wouldn’t know a scientific paper if it fell on them…
I have read a fair share of academic papers in my time, though mostly in the mineral economics field. The majority were extremely lightweight. You are lucky if one in twenty have enough original material to be interesting, let alone significant. That the publish-or-perish system for you… it results in a high chaff-to-wheat ratio.
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Is PIOMAS an example, GA?
The change in ice volume has been steady ever since the Cryosat 2 started measuring ice thickness (very sparse data prior to that so thickness was modelled). They decided that the model was flawed and adjusted it to show more ice loss since 2010. They also treat the new data with scepticism because it doesn’t confirm their belief.
The ‘data’ from the modelling with guesstimates of thickness is treated as Gospel.
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One just has to look at Ayers Rock (Uluru to the newbies). It is a huge chunk of sedimentary rock, turned on its side, and projecting out of a flat barren landscape.
Geniuses the lot of em’.
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I didn’t even quote the parts at the end where they talked of implications for sea level rise estimates, and the associated climate science modelling. Not sure how serious they were, or whether they were finding a way to include the magic words “climate science” in order to attract funding. Given that the comments were right at the end of the story I think it had more to do with the latter than anything else…
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The increase of cosmic radiation at the South Pole by more than 5%. Apparent increase in the ionization of ozone in the region of the magnetic south pole.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/temp50anim.gif
http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/realtime/southpole.html
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in all of our MSM:
24 July: SMH: AAP: Bill Shorten makes case for ETS to tackle climate change in US speech
Mr Shorten said that as an economic, environmental and security issue, climate change well and truly belonged on the G20 agenda…
Mr Shorten’s remarks in the US will further fuel the domestic battle over how to tackle climate change, with the Abbott government warning it will prosecute any policy for an ETS by Labor as a return to the ”carbon tax”.
The combined value of the world’s ETS markets was more than $30 billion, covering almost a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and economies ranging from Mexico to California and parts of China***.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bill-shorten-makes-case-for-ets-to-tackle-climate-change-in-us-speech-20140724-3cgr8.html
***quite frankly, MSM, u r nothing but out-and-out propagandists, & not only as regards CAGW. face reality:
23 July: NYT: Edward Wong: China’s Energy Plans Will Worsen Climate Change, Greenpeace Says
China’s plans for 50 coal gasification plants will produce an estimated 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year and contribute significantly to climate change, according to a report released Wednesday by Greenpeace East Asia…
If China builds all 50 plants, the carbon dioxide they produce will equal about an eighth of China’s current total carbon dioxide emissions, which come mostly from coal-burning power plants and factories, the organization said. Two of the plants have already been built as pilot projects, three more are under construction, 16 have been given the green light to be built and the rest are in various planning stages, according to the report…
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/world/asia/greenpeace-says-chinas-energy-plans-exacerbate-climate-change.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0
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sooooo SBS.
24 July: SBS: Amy Westervelt: Comment: Scientists have discovered how to make people care about climate change
A woman peers through goggles embedded in a large black helmet…
In a minute, she’s handed a joystick that looks and vibrates like a chainsaw, and she’s asked to cut down a tree. As she completes the task, she feels the same sort of resistance she might feel if she were cutting down a real tree. When she leaves this forest, and re-enters the “real” world, her paper consumption will drop by 20% and she will show a measurable preference for recycled paper products. Those effects will continue into the next few weeks and researchers hypothesize it will be a fairly permanent shift…
The tree-cutting study is one of many that Stanford University has conducted in its Virtual Human Interaction Lab over the last several years in an attempt to figure out the extent to which a simulated experience can affect behavior. And it’s part of a growing body of research that suggests virtual experiences may offer a powerful catalyst for otherwise apathetic groups to begin caring about issues and taking action, including on climate change…
Bailenson, a cognitive psychologist and founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, sees particular value in virtual reality related to climate change because it allows for a combination of real experience with boundless possibilities: The brain treats the virtual experience as real but, at the same time, knows that anything is possible in the simulation…
(Amy Westervelt is an environmental journalist who lives in Truckee, California. She is a co-founder of reporting project Climate Confidential.)
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/07/24/comment-scientists-have-discovered-how-make-people-care-about-climate-change
naturally, Amy has no problem getting her rubbish published by the MSM:
LinkedIn: Amy Westervelt
http://www.linkedin.com/in/amywestervelt
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a good laugh:
23 July: The Onion: Report: Climate Change Skeptics Could Reach Catastrophic Levels By 2020
WASHINGTON—In a worrying development that could have dire implications for the health of the planet, a report published Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency suggests that the number of climate change skeptics could reach catastrophic levels by the year 2020.
According to the agency’s findings, the rising quantity and concentration of individuals who willfully deny or downplay the ruinous impact of the ongoing climate crisis will no longer be manageable by the end of the decade, leading to disastrous consequences for global ecosystems that may well prove irreversible…
“In recent decades, we have observed an alarming increase in people who refuse to acknowledge the reality of global warming, which has exceeded even our worst-case projections,” said EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, confirming a worldwide spike in the number of deniers who are actively seeking to discredit the scientific consensus that human activity is responsible for climate change. “If this trend continues at its current rate, we will pass a critical threshold of unfounded skepticism within the next six years that will have devastating repercussions on every continent and in every ocean, threatening the entire global population.”….READ ON….
http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-climate-change-skeptics-could-reach-catastr,36521/
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