rising seas
Social Research
10/6/13
All over the world, from the Bering Sea to the Sea of Japan, from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Mexico, from China to the Chesapeake, any place oceans are in trouble, jellyfish are taking over. Jellyfish do well in warmer waters. Our carbon dioxide emissions are both warming the water and causing it to become corrosive. Warmer water -- even a fraction of a degree -- holds less oxygen than cooler water and shifts the balance of who survives and who perishes. In April 2012, Diablo was plunged into emergency shutdown because of jellyfish clogging up the seawater intake pipes for the cooling system. Jellyfish have caused many dozens of such shutdowns at nuclear power plants, coal-fired power plants, and desalination plants -- pretty much any type of industry that draws seawater. In a healthy ecosystem, fish are superior competitors and predators over jellyfish. But the things we humans do -- we fish, we pollute, we dam, we build, we translocate making life harder for fish and better for jellyfish. And so, as we look around the world, we see that many of the most heavily disturbed ecosystems have "flipped" to being dominated by jellyfish instead of fish. Refrigerator-sized jellies growing in the seas of China and drifting into Japanese and Korean waters. And once in control, they don't seem to be letting go. We don't have a solution for the damages we are causing. We need to buy time, so solutions can be innovated.
This article relies on common sense in order to make its findings and state its claims. The scientists in this article clearly see that the rise in the jelly fish populations is clearly due to global warming. Everyone knows the carbon emissions are heating up the earth while at the same time warming up the earth’s waters. “ Just makes sense” (p.4) that the cause of the rising temperatures in the water are due to global warming which increases the rise in jelly fish, leading to collapse of a food
10/6/13
All over the world, from the Bering Sea to the Sea of Japan, from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Mexico, from China to the Chesapeake, any place oceans are in trouble, jellyfish are taking over. Jellyfish do well in warmer waters. Our carbon dioxide emissions are both warming the water and causing it to become corrosive. Warmer water -- even a fraction of a degree -- holds less oxygen than cooler water and shifts the balance of who survives and who perishes. In April 2012, Diablo was plunged into emergency shutdown because of jellyfish clogging up the seawater intake pipes for the cooling system. Jellyfish have caused many dozens of such shutdowns at nuclear power plants, coal-fired power plants, and desalination plants -- pretty much any type of industry that draws seawater. In a healthy ecosystem, fish are superior competitors and predators over jellyfish. But the things we humans do -- we fish, we pollute, we dam, we build, we translocate making life harder for fish and better for jellyfish. And so, as we look around the world, we see that many of the most heavily disturbed ecosystems have "flipped" to being dominated by jellyfish instead of fish. Refrigerator-sized jellies growing in the seas of China and drifting into Japanese and Korean waters. And once in control, they don't seem to be letting go. We don't have a solution for the damages we are causing. We need to buy time, so solutions can be innovated.
This article relies on common sense in order to make its findings and state its claims. The scientists in this article clearly see that the rise in the jelly fish populations is clearly due to global warming. Everyone knows the carbon emissions are heating up the earth while at the same time warming up the earth’s waters. “ Just makes sense” (p.4) that the cause of the rising temperatures in the water are due to global warming which increases the rise in jelly fish, leading to collapse of a food