Comments (11)

By Les Scammell, April 23, 2011 10:34 pm

I know it sounds a little radical, whaling contributing to climate change. After all, whales live in the ocean and climate change is due to the amount of carbon in the upper atmosphere. However, if you follow my line of thought, you may wonder if there isn’t at least a loose connection between the two.

Whale in full flight

Climate change is said to be caused by a number of factors. The first is the amount of CO2 that we are pumping into our atmosphere. The second is the speed at which we are cutting down forests, in particular, old forests that have been around for thousands of years. Trees can help to reduce CO2 as they use this gas as part of their photosynthesis process.

Oceans have forests too in the form of phytoplankton. When the conditions are right, phytoplankton blooms can be clearly seen from the sky and like our land based forests, phytoplankton photosynthesize converting CO2 into food. Over the last 200 years phytoplankton blooms in the southern oceans have dropped dramatically and while the amount of CO2 not now being absorbed is hard to measure, there is bound to be some impact.

Researchers are now looking at these waters in an attempt to determine why these blooms have are no longer as large as they once were. The waters are relatively rich in nutrients – bar one – iron. For some reason there is a very low concentration of iron in those waters.

Is Whaling Really Necessary

Now here comes the association with whales. Like many land creatures, whales fertilize the oceans through their waste. The waste from whales is relatively high in iron, and iron that is accessible to life such as the phytoplankton. The twist goes further since whales feed on both phytoplankton and krill, a crustacean that also feeds on phytoplankton.

The association is there – fewer whales has resulted in less iron in the water. This has led to smaller blooms of phytoplankton and fewer krill.

Is this affecting climate change? That’s for the scientists to tell us. The big problem at present is that science is taking radical sides and it’s hard to really get at the truth. From my perspective, this may only have a marginal effect on climate change, but whaling is certainly having an affect on the overall biology of our southern oceans, and that cannot be good in the long run – all the more reason to ban whaling for the next fifty years – let’s allow the stocks of whales in our southern oceans to bloom once more – the phytoplankton may well bloom with them.

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By Les Scammell, December 21, 2009 9:24 am

It seems the world cannot make up it’s mind about climate change and whether or not we should take any action. Part of the real problem of course sits fairly and squarely with the scientists involved. They really have not explained their case very well at all.

I will add that our media is somewhat to blame as well. They are after the sensational rather than the real news so if one expert says something completely different, the media will run with that for a week and not give any real exposure the 1000 other experts with a consensus opinion – they are boring you see.

We need facts and we need lots of them but we need them in a language that everyone can understand. Not in scientific talk that only another scientist can understand.

Where are we going with climate change and doing something about it – it seems no where fast. Perhaps we as citizens of the world need to act to force our politicians to act. Having said that, until we have all the facts relating to climate change, we are in the same boat as the politicians – why take action if it hasn’t been proven to us that action needs to take place.

Come on experts – give the details in plain English so we can all start pushing in the right direction.

If you are a scientist – start feeding me the info and I will blog it to the world.

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By Les Scammell, November 18, 2009 11:05 pm

There is a lot of talk about climate change these days. I am not a scientist so it is hard to decide who is right.What I do know is that our climate is changing. Now whether or not it is cyclical or man made, I don’t know but it’s sure getting hot in the kitchen today!

I think we are still in Spring – let me check the calendar. Yup, it’s November so that’s Spring for us in the southern hemisphere. Trouble is, someone forgot to tell the weather man that. We have had a week of above 30 degree Celsius temperatures. A couple of days of 35 or 36 but yesterday sure was the wammy of the year – 41 degrees in the shade. For those that still live in Fahrenheit measurements, that’s a balmy 105 degrees.

There is one thing I do love about these sort of temperatures and that’s the storms we get in the evening and last night it was a ripper. They say there were over 9000 lightening strikes in the area. I can believe it. The lightening was incredible, probably the best I have ever seen. One day I may even learn how to video it.

The lightening last night was not your standard flash of light followed by the boom. No, this time the lightening danced around the night sky lighting it up like a Christmas tree. Each flash lasted seconds, some as much as three or four seconds. Rain – not enough to settle the dust.

If this is Spring, I hate to think what Summer will bring. Climate change, what climate change – they call it unseasonal weather. Yeah right!

photo credit: El Garza

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By Les Scammell, October 26, 2009 10:42 am

I have to wonder how green the Greens are when it comes to politics. And I don’t mean green as in novice – I mean green as in environmental. We have a situation now in Australia where the Government wants to go down a particular path in an effort to reduce green house gases with the big focus world wide on carbon reduction.

Rightly or wrongly, the Federal government wants to introduce a system of carbon credits and carbon trading. The long term aim is reduce the amount of carbon produced.

The opposition groups in the Australian upper house have rejected the legislation and are now proposing changes – basically rewriting the legislation before it comes back into parliament.

The Greens are the political group that have me befuddled the most. We have had ten years of climate denial in Australia. The former Howard government basically denies there was a climate problem. Even I have doubts so I can understand their position somewhat.

We have gone from a position of denial to a position of nothing is better than making a start. At least, that seems to be the view of the Greens. Now my thinking would oppose that. Making a start would get people thinking, talking and acting to make some changes in their lives.

I can understand the Greens want more controls put in place. However, as I stated, a start is a start. Instead, the people of Australia along with businesses both small and large are all being left in limbo not knowing when change will happen, what that change will be, and how much that change will cost us in terms of jobs and our weekly expenses.

What is the biggest fear faced by humans – the fear of change. I don’t agree fully with the legislation either but I do know one thing – once we make a start we can then think about any fine tuning that needs to be done. The Greens? They seem to be more about political grandstanding than actually doing anything constructive about the environment.