IMO...When will or ever will_______ ( fill in with any appropriate being(s)) understand that global warming is a great issue that needs to be dealt with now. I like preventative measures instead of the "scramble for fixture as best we can in vain" approach.

Here's something new. Will be on TV (NOVA)

Next on NOVA: "Deep Sea Invasion"

http://www.pbs.org/nova/algae/

Broadcast: August 2, 2005 -- Repeat
(NOVA airs Tuesdays on PBS at 8 p.m. Check your local listings as dates and times may vary.)

French marine biologist Alexandre Meinesz was diving in the Mediterranean when he spotted a strange blanket of bright green plants on the seabed. Meinesz was alarmed to find that the plants were toxic algae that were decimating marine life in the Mediterranean, but his findings were ignored for years by the scientific establishment. Nicknamed "killer algae," these organisms have since taken over thousands of acres of seabed, and no one knows how to stop them. Recently they appeared for the first time off the coast of California, and now U.S. officials are struggling to contain their spread along the coast of California.

Here's what you'll find on the companion Web site:

Articles

The Impact of Invasive Species
Explore varying degrees of menace posed by alien invaders, from
the gray squirrel to far more damaging organisms.

Battling Introduced Wildlife
Ecologist Daniel Simberloff outlines strategies for combating
weed-like species, both those that have gained a foothold and
those that might.

Time Line and Interactive

Chronology of an Invasion
Follow the alarming spread of Caulerpa taxifolia, the so-called
"killer algae," as it colonizes new waters around the world.

Matching Aliens with Impacts
Take a look at ten successful invaders and see if you can match
them to the damage they've caused in their new environment.

Resources

NOVA News Minute
This video clip describes how the "killer algae" that have
already infested the Mediterranean could become a serious threat
to America's warmest coastlines.

Plus a transcript of the program and a list of links and books.

http://www.pbs.org/nova/algae/

_______________________________________________

Darn, vgkg, those are worrisome trends. We have been battling the alga in several harbors in California for a few years plus a persistent kelp species. All those aliens sneaking in by boat from foreign shores.

Marshall, here's more on your west coast woes :

'Strange Things Happening' to Pacific Coast Marine Life
By Terence Chea
Associated Press
posted: 01 August 2005
04:43 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- 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.

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.

"There are strange things happening, but we don't really understand how all the pieces fit together,'' said Jane Lubchenco, a zoologist and climate change expert at Oregon State University. "It's hard to say whether any single event is just an anomaly or a real indication of something serious happening.''

Scientists say things could very well swing back to normal next year. But if the phenomenon proves to be long-lasting, the consequences could be serious for birds, fish and other wildlife.

This much is known: From California to British Columbia, unusual weather patterns have disrupted the marine ecosystem.

Normally, in the spring and summer, winds blow south along the Pacific Coast and push warmer surface waters away from shore. That allows colder, nutrient-rich water to well up from the bottom of the sea and feed microscopic plants called phytoplankton.

Phytoplankton are then eaten by zooplankton, tiny marine animals that include shrimp-like crustaceans called krill. Zooplankton, in turn, are eaten by seabirds and by fish and marine mammals ranging from sardines to whales.

But this year, the winds have been unusually weak, failing to generate much upwelling and reducing the amount of phytoplankton.

Off Oregon, for example, the waters near the shore are 5 to 7 degrees warmer than normal and have yielded about one-fourth the usual amount of phytoplankton, said Bill Peterson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Newport, Ore.

"The bottom has fallen out of the coastal food chain, and there's just not enough food out there,'' said Julia Parrish, a seabird ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Seabirds are clearly distressed. On the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco, researchers this spring noted a steep decrease in nesting cormorants and a 90 percent drop in Cassin's auklets -- the worst in more than 35 years of monitoring.

On Washington state's Tatoosh Island, common murres -- a species so sensitive to disruptions that scientists consider it a harbinger of ecological change -- started breeding nearly a month late. It was the longest delay in 15 years of monitoring.

Researchers have also reported a sharp increase in dead birds washing up in California, Oregon and Washington.

Along Monterey Bay in Central California, there are four times the usual number of dead seabirds, said Hannah Nevins, a scientist at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.

"Basically, they're not finding enough food, and they use up the energy that's stored in their muscles, liver and body fat,'' Nevins said.

Fish appear to be feeling the effects, too. NOAA found a 20 percent to 30 percent drop in juvenile salmon off the coasts of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia in June and July, compared with the average over the previous six years.

And researchers counted the lowest number of juvenile rockfish in more than 20 years of monitoring in Central and Northern California. Fewer than 100 were caught between San Luis Obispo and Fort Bragg this year, compared with several thousand last year.

Scientists have seen some of these strange happenings before during El Nino years, when higher water surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific alter weather patterns worldwide. But the West Coast has not had El Nino conditions this year.

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, and what is happening this year is relatively sudden.

But "if we did see this next year, the notion that global warming plays a role in this carries more weight,'' said Nathan Mantua, a climate expert at the University of Washington in Seattle.

In order to have nutrient rich water from the bottom of the ocean rise, there has to be someplace else where surface watera are cooling and sinking. For surface waters to cool, there has to be evaporation into the atmosphere, which will be faster if the atmosphere is relatively dry. Is there any way to measure the velocity and volume of the deep currents that flow along the bottom of the oceans, from the polar regions towards the equator?

Eric, there must be info like that out there somewhere but this simple map of ocean currents is the best I could dig up.

Mercy,... "The End" must be near!

Man surely fouls his nest.

Vgkg, the map you posted is a schematic of surface ocean currents. It shows the Gulfstream heading north across the Atlantic, towards Scandinavia, and it shows the Japan current, which flows north in the Pacific ocean. In order to have upwelling of deeper water, in the regions nearer the equator, there would have to be a lot of water sinking in the polar regions, and flowing toward the equator.

Water sinks when it is denser than the water beneath, and salt content increases density. So, melting ice in the polar regions releases fresh water to the polar ocean surface, and reduces the rate of sinking. Since there is no evidence of water piling up at the poles, it follows that the volume/velocity of the Gulfstream and Japan current must also be reduced somewhat.

It is not clear that ocean water sinks only at the polar regions of the planet. There may be other places, where hot and dry winds accelerate evaporation of surface waters, and drive convection.

Eric - try these sites for more info on ocean current speed, etc.

Home page for US Geologic Survey coastal & marine program, also has link to sea level change page which is composed of links to area-specific reports:
http://marine.usgs.gov/

U Miami site: overview with links to very detailed reports, (excellent info but it helps to know the jargon):
http://oceancurrents.rsmas.miami.edu/

Designed for kids, and those of us not accustomed to the more formal reports - a good introduction:
http://www.miamisci.org/ecolinks/maphydrosphere.html

Seems life can thrive just about anywhere. The down side is that this life was discovered (or uncovered) by melting ocean ice so whether it'll still thrive remains to be seen...

Arctic Found Teeming with Life
By The Associated Press

posted: 02 August 2005
09:52 am ET

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) -- Beneath its ice, the Arctic Ocean is teeming with life, says a team of international scientists that just completed a 30-day expedition to the northern ocean.

In the months and years ahead, the 45 scientists from the U.S., Canada, China and Russia that took part in the Hidden Ocean expedition will pore over thousands of photographs, ice samples and ocean specimens collected in the Canada Basin.

"We were surprised. There was an awful lot more life up here than what people expected and believe there is,'' said Russ Hopcroft, a Canadian researcher and assistant professor at the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

Hopcroft said most scientists found new species or, at least, species not previously believed to exist in the Arctic.

The announcement comes just a few weeks after another group said they had found and unexpected ecosystem on the seafloor of Antarctica, a world away.

Despite the region's inhospitable climate for humans, the northern ocean is home to many life forms, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, and unicellular and multicellular plants and animals.

From the shelter of the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, teams of scientists explored the ice surface, beneath it and the ocean floor.

They ventured as far as latitude 76 degrees north in the basin, the deepest part of the Arctic Ocean, located north of Alaska and the Yukon Territory.

The study is part of an international census on marine life, and funding for a similar study of Antarctica was announced last Friday.

With the aid of a remote-operated underwater vehicle, a photo platform lowered from the vessel, diving suits and 24-hour sunlight, the team collected samples from places never before seen by the human eye.

Fred Gorell, spokesman for the expedition funded by the U.S. government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the main goal is to raise awareness.

"The oceans are 95 percent unknown, unseen by human eyes, yet so important to us,'' he said.

The specter of global warming makes it urgent to document life in the far north and the Antarctic.

"There's already fairly good indications that we're undergoing some kind of global climate change and the areas that are warming up the fastest are the poles,'' Hopcroft said from the Healy as the scientists prepared last week to disembark.

Arctic sea ice cover has decreased by about 3 percent per decade over the last 25 years, and there are indications ice thickness has decreased all over the Arctic.

Yet scientists know relatively little about the regions, Hopcroft said. As the changes continue, it will be important to have a benchmark to measure them against.

The race is on to document the polar caps, said Ian MacDonald, a professor at Texas A&M University.

"The scientific consensus is that the end of continuous ice in the summer months is within the human horizon -- 50 years, 70 years, 30 years,'' MacDonald said. "In recorded history, we've never had that, so this is a new era. It will have enormous consequences.''

Among the rare finds for scientists were observations of comb jellies, or ctenophores, a jellyfish-like creature so fragile some pour like liquid out of collection jars.

The expedition also had the first close look at mysterious pock marks that mar the ocean floor in the northern reaches of the basin.

Approximately 2 1/2 miles below the ocean surface there are as many as two dozen depressions, some up to 130 feet deep and a half-mile across.

"That was very exciting,'' MacDonald said in an interview via satellite telephone from the ship.

Most surprising was the amount of sea life that call the depressions home. MacDonald counted 72 sea cucumbers in an area of 3 square meters.

"The abundance and diversity on the sea floor was the highest we've ever seen, anywhere,'' he said. "We're very excited about that but we don't, at this point, have any clue as to why.''

There is more information on ocean convection, and deep water currents, by searching under: thermohaline ocean conveyor.

Fresh Analysis Points to Potential for Rising Seas
By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 03 August 2005
01:02 pm ET

After a fresh analysis, scientists today warned again that global warming is threatening the stability of fragile glacier systems in the Antarctic and could lead to sea level increases worldwide.

The Antarctic region where an ice shelf known as Larsen B is found is warming faster than any other place on the planet, said Eugene Domack, a geology professor at Hamilton College.

This regional warming is disrupting natural cycles in the ebb and flow of the glacier systems that have been occurring for thousands of years.

"Which then says, okay, if this is unprecedented, maybe this is [human-caused] warming rather than some natural cycle," Domack told LiveScience. "Overall, this seems to fit the pattern that we would predict from global warming."

Domack is the lead author of a study published in the Aug. 4 issue of the journal Nature detailing the finding, which is based on ice core samples taken from the Antarctic region.

The Larsen B ice shelf has been thinning at a rate of tens of meters over thousands of years due to melting from its underside, a natural process known as undermelt. But the researchers' findings suggest that it is the surface melt caused by regional warming that finally caused it to collapse in the spring of 2002.

Larsen B has continued to fall apart in a series of breakups.

Melting ice from an ice shelf set adrift is not that big a deal, Domack said. The real concern is what happens to melting ice water from land glaciers feeding into those ice shelves.

While intact, the ice shelves act as a reservoir for the land glacier water and a barrier that prevents that water from flowing into the sea.

Remove the ice shelf, and the barrier is gone, and water from the land glacier freely flow into the ocean, raising sea levels.

Domack compared the ice shelves to buoy lines in a pool, and the melting waters from terrestrial glaciers to a raft.

"If you remove the buoy line, that raft can float out into the deep end. That's what the breakup of ice shelves do," he said. "You remove the buoy line, then the land ice can accelerate and transfer mass into the ocean, raising sea levels."

"These glaciers are small, so the total sea level changes are small," Domack said about the Larsen ice shelves. But the same dynamic will apply to larger ice shelf systems as well.

"If they go, larger land-ice systems that feed into them will surge and accelerate," Domack said. "And there, the changes in sea level not insignificant."