Arctic Climate Change Is Food For Thought

(CBS)  Studying the Arctic is like taking the pulse of our planet. But to check for irregularities, where you do place your fingers? Scientists are looking within the ocean to see how changes in temperature are affecting something we all depend on: the food chain.

"Even the tiniest of microorganisms is part of a larger food web," geneticist John Nelson tells CBS News science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg.

To better examine how the ocean's organisms are connected, scientists deploy a device called the rosette.

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Introducing The Rosette

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Considered the heart of the operation and worth nearly $750,000, it's the most important piece of equipment onboard — collecting water from depths close to 10,000 feet to provide a snapshot of the Arctic Ocean from surface to seabed.

"The biology of the system is intricately intertwined, and to look at just one piece of that is really walking around with blinders on," says Nelson. "You're just looking at one thing at a time. But really, to understand the whole thing, you have to look at it all."

A melting iceberg may be an obvious barometer of our warming planet, but scientists are also interested in how the fresh water is mixing with the ocean and altering the delicate marine ecosystems beneath.

Salt water ecosystems are more fragile than their fresh water counterparts, so when fresh water from an iceberg mixes with the ocean's salt water, it means the organisms living there may not survive. This starts with phytoplankton, a basic food source for marine wildlife. What happens to these micro-organisms is also important, because they absorb some of the carbon dioxide humans release and convert it to something crucial.

"Half of the oxygen you're breathing now is coming from these guys," explains marine biologist Diana Varela.

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Follow Daniel Sieberg's Journey: Blog, Photos, and Video

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Sea animals like starfish depend on phytoplankton for food. Some ocean life is scooped up from the bottom to see how warmer temperatures here could affect where they're able to live.

"So even at the level these creatures live in the seabed, they could be affected by climate change from the surface?" asks Sieberg.

"Absolutely — because they're dependent on food from the surface," says Ed Hendricks of the Canadian Nature Museum.

At the top of the Arctic food chain are polar bears, like a mother and cub that have just eaten a seal. Polar bears hunt on the ice, and as the ice is reduced, their chance to find food diminishes. Less ice also means the bears spend more time in the water — sometimes for so long, they drown.

Thanks to expeditions like this one, our climate change picture is slowly coming into focus. The question is: Can we adapt to what they discover?

[the_quietman]

The electric car was tried by "Baker" and abandoned in the early 1900s because we lacked good battery technology. The biggest automakers tried it again because the battery technology had improved, but it has not yet improved enough. The Fuel Cell may be the answer to this issue eventually but for now it has not been demonstrated to be a SAFE, CLEAN and reliable source of power. As for scrapping the cars, that is an old legal issue with prototypes, take it up with the Feds.

[rainmangdg57]

If "global warming'' were half the problem that people like Al Gore say it is, than why was a marketable electric car destroyed. That''s right the Big Three, Toyota and Nissan had electric cars that worked very well. Would go over 70 mph, and were very inexpensive. After the leases ran out, (and you could only lease them) they were forcibly reclaimed and destroyed. Not recycled, not sold to the owners, but CRUSHED and buried. Big oil bought most of the right to these vehicles and batteries and destroyed them with the blessings of the auto industry, government and big oil. Also, why do we hear nothing of the magnetic fields on earth. Did you know that the poles will soon change? Not science fiction. What effect will that have on life? on the economies of the world? Figure it out people, it''s all about the money and power!!

[talkingham]

I live next to an ancient coral reef that contains iron ore deposits resulting from the deposits of living organisms over a 20-40-million year period so sure I realize it's not a static planet. I also realize that we are making our own dent and own changes to this planet that have never been made in quite the same way or perhaps as quickly unless the result of a major disaster like an asteroid or comet hit, super volcanoes, whatever. The northern ice cap is shrinking faster than ever measured before-- why do you think Russia wants to suddently stake a claim up there-- because it's suddently becoming accessible by something other than super ice breakers, and it is happening quickly. There will be another ice age, it's just a matter of when- and it will probably take place fairly quickly after the Greenland ice melts dumping vast amounts of fresh water intot he Gulf stream and shutting it down. I'm not worried about it, I'll probably be dead. For people to insist that human influence on the ecosystems is minimal is just as stupid as saying that we are the only effect. I do think the removal of the planet's tree cover is going to have a longterm devastating effect on the ecology, just common sense not science.

[mitywhity]

Yo! Talkingham - remember the sixties? We were advised to prepare for an Ice Age then. What happened? Remember the eighties? We were told to expect global famine because of the acid rain. What happened? It takes just a little common sense to see what is going now. All of a sudden we are to prepare to fry then to swim in rising seas. As if that has never happened before. Do you vainly believe that the planet has always existed in the exact same condition that it was when you were born? They just discovered a settlement off the coast of Britain in the English Channel that was several feet underwater. What happened back then? Were they cooking too much with fire or what?

[mitywhity]

What kind of doofus ever thought we could exist on Mars anyway. Hey, Star Trek was just a TV show! It's funny that to create an atmosphere on Mars we must introduce technology that produces massive amounts greenhouse gases! Ha Ha! The irony is just too funny! So even if we did manage to create livable conditions on Mars, we would not be able to get the EPA and Al Gore to certify it! So, if we don't bow down to Al Gore we are officially Earth-Haters? You folks really are in a cult!

[talkingham]

It's amazing that at the mere mention of global warming the earth haters get their panties so tight in a wad that it pierces all the way to their walnut sized brains.

Only the next ice age will help shut their foaming at the mouth traps. They can't understand simple terms like "rate of change" without some wild spewing rant against Al Gore. Probably won't happen in my lifetime (about 20 years left I guess) but when the Greenland ice sheet melts the new coastline for much of the US is going to be about 20 miles inland from where it is now, and yes, it could happen faster than most people are predicting and evidence indicates it has certainly happened before with or without man's influence. The difference is now that the rate of change may indeed be influenced by the fact we have cut down most of the world's tree's to make cheap, badly designed furniture.

If you have kids under 10 years of age consider buying that beach front property at least 5-10 miles from the current coastline in the Southeast US. Forget about Mars, Bush's plans to go there were cancelled due to a bankrupt space program brought on by his Iraq war.

[serbrown]

91 years of history says that this is BS. Please check out the listed link.

http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/Breakup%
20Log.html

[republic1776]

Lawrence Solomon...
shhhhhhhhhhh!
Al Gore and CO. has exclusive rights.
How will we market carbon credits on Mars?
Maybe create special Mars tax.
It's needs more rocks.
You know, I recall in the late sixties every time NASA had af flight We had rain for the entire duration.
Pehaps, this is the missing link to warming on Mars.
I hear a sweet sound $$$$$$

[cdc1952]

Look to Mars for the truth on global warming

Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
Friday, February 02, 2007

January 26, 2007
Climate change is a much, much bigger issue than the public, politicians, and even the most alarmed environmentalists realize. Global warming extends to Mars, where the polar ice cap is shrinking, where deep gullies in the landscape are now laid bare, and where the climate is the warmest it has been in decades or centuries.
"Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians," he told me. "These parallel global warmings -- observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth -- can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance."
The sun's increased irradiance over the last century, not C02 emissions, is responsible for the global warming we're seeing, says the celebrated scientist, and this solar irradiance also explains the great volume of C02 emissions.
"It is no secret that increased solar irradiance warms Earth's oceans, which then triggers the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."

[cdc1952]

Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
Friday, February 02, 2007

... Tennekes argued, modern theory "unequivocally predicts that no amount of improvement in the quality of the observation network or in the power of computers will improve the average useful forecast range by more than a few days."
... In a paper presented in 2003, a team of European scientists detailed advances in modelling science. "Since the day, almost 20 years ago, in which Henk Tennekes stated ... that 'no forecast is complete without a forecast of the forecast skill,' the demand for numerical forecasting tools ... has been ever increasing," they said, explaining efforts to make modelling reliable beyond a three- to four-day period. Thanks to the intense efforts of a new generation of climate modellers, modelling capability has advanced in some instances by 12 to 36 hours, in others by several days. To extend the bounds further, the paper announced a major new research initiative, designed to bring the forecasting discipline to the 120-hour range.
... Tennekes believes ... "there is no chance at all that the physical sciences can produce a universally accepted scientific basis for policy measures concerning climate change." Moreover, he states: "There exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies."