Sir Spot of Borg wrote on Jul 19^th, 2012 at 5:56am:


True !!

The Unseen Forest

An unseen "forest" of microscopic beings fills the upper 200 meters of ocean, exerting an influence on this planet every bit as profound as the forests on land. The diverse phytoplankton species inhabiting the ocean's surface waters--which mainly consist of single-celled cyanobacteria, diatoms and other kinds of algae--form the base of the marine food web.

They account for roughly half the photosynthesis on the earth, remove nearly as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as all land plants, and supply about half the oxygen we breathe. Without the activities of these free-floating plantlike organisms, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would triple.

That phytoplankton could accomplish so much with so little recognition from the general public is surprising [see "The Ocean's Invisible Forest," by Paul Falkowski; Scientific American, August 2002]. Even more remarkable, scientists had no idea which microbial species performed the bulk of these vital functions until 15 years ago, when Sallie W. Chisholm of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Robert J. Olson of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and other collaborators discovered marine cyanobacteria from the genus they later named Prochlorococcus.

They are the smallest and most numerous photosynthetic organisms known and arguably the most plentiful species on the earth, responsible at times for more than half the photosynthesis in the seas. Cyanobacteria such as Prochlorococcus were the planet's first oxygen-producing creatures and are, in a broad sense, the ancestors of all higher plants.

Scientific American

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We understand from recent research that phytoplankton has declined some 40 per cent. All the plastic ever made is still with us; most of it in the ocean where it is killing our world. Phytoplankton’s role is carbon dioxide absorption. Rising levels of carbon dioxide acidify the oceans.

“Even more important are the phytoplankton known as diatoms, the base of the marine food chain. “If they go, it would be like having no grass on land, nothing else could survive,” says Ben Halpern, lead author of a map published in 2008 by the University of California, Santa Barbara. The researchers found that over 40 per cent of the world’s oceans are heavily degraded while less than four per cent are relatively pristine.

“We could trigger a mass extinction on a scale not seen for 100 million years,” warns Richard Norris, Professor of Paleobiology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “Ocean acidification is a bigger problem than global warming.”

From: Ocean-borne plastics may be choking off our air supply
By Michelle Stirling-Anosh

Sir Spot of Borg wrote on Jul 19^th, 2012 at 5:56am:


Except that isn't what Labor is doing. It (man-made climate change) is being taught as fact.

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Sir Spot of Borg wrote on Jul 19^th, 2012 at 5:56am:


Armchair_Politician wrote on Jul 19^th, 2012 at 6:54am:


What part of this fact shouldn't be taught ?

We understand from recent research that phytoplankton has declined some 40 per cent. All the plastic ever made is still with us; most of it in the ocean where it is killing our world. Phytoplankton’s role is carbon dioxide absorption. Rising levels of carbon dioxide acidify the oceans.

Zac da Black

Mutawintji wrote on Jul 19^th, 2012 at 7:00am:

Why dont you take your plastic action to the right place instead of dribbling little posts about something that has nothing to do with the theory of mann-made climate pseudo science.

If there is not a thread about plastic. Go make one. Everyone around here manages to do that correctly, except you.

Mutawintji wrote on Jul 19^th, 2012 at 7:23am:

What you speak of is environmentalism, not of the pseudo science theory of co2.

Mutawintji wrote on Jul 19^th, 2012 at 7:30am:

That question has been long posed about the ideology and the answer would seem to be, yes the climate pseudo science is more closely related to environmental activism than science.