Scientistsdiscover the biggest seaweed bloom in the world:
From Phys.Org:(https://phys.org/news/2019-07-scientists-biggest-seaweed-bloom-world.html) [N.B. I find the newest version of WordPress almost impossible to work with. There is no correlation between the commands they tell you to use and what actually happens. This might be the last post I post here. There’s no way I can set up a link. Impossible. ]
Scientists led by the USF College of Marine Science used NASA satellite observations to discover the largest bloom of macroalgae in the world called the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB), as reported in Science.
They confirmed that the belt of brown macroalgae called Sargassum forms its shape in response to ocean currents, based on numerical simulations. It can grow so large that it blankets the surface of the tropical Atlantic Ocean from the west coast of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico. This happened last year when more than 20 million tons of it—heavier than 200 fully loaded aircraft carriers—floated in surface waters and some of which wreaked havoc on shorelines lining the tropical Atlantic, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and east coast of Florida.
Well, where did this come from? Was it the heat? No.
The team identified key factors that are critical to bloom formation: a large seed population in the winter left over from a previous bloom, nutrient input from West Africa upwelling in winter, and nutrient input in the spring or summer from the Amazon River. In addition, Sargassum only grows well when salinity is normal and surface temperatures are normal or cooler.
Did you say ‘cooler’ Oh, my! Those darn satellites. Not only do they point out algal blooms that no one’s noticed before, they also show that temperatures are staying steady, or are even declining, over the last twenty years so.
Well now that we’ve spotted them, what about these newly discovered algal blooms? How do they affect ‘global warming”?
This, from Ecology.com:
It is estimated that marine plants produce between 70 and 80 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere. Nearly all marine plants are single celled, photosynthetic algae. Yup, that’s right, good ol’ scum on the pond…green gak…..slip slimein’ away. Even marine seaweed is many times colonial algae. They are a bunch of single cells trying to look like a big plant, but they are really individuals.
We need marine algae a whole lot more than they need us. Think about it, 70 percent to 80 percent of all the oxygen we breathe comes from algae! Without them we would really be sucking wind, but not for long! At this point, you may be saying, “Yo! What about the trees and other land plants?” Trees and other land plants are very important, no doubt about it. But for pure survival, we couldn’t make it without algae.
Why does so much of our oxygen come from algae? First of all, remember that the oceans cover about 71 percent of this planet and land is only about 29 percent. If we assume that every square mile of the ocean produces as much oxygen as every square mile of land, then this makes sense. The oceans would produce about 71 percent and the land 29 percent of the oxygen we breathe. Looks like we are in the ballpark, don’t you think?
So, we’re told that humans add 4% to the total carbon cycle taking place. We’re also told that algal blooms amont to 70 to 80% of oxygen produced. This means that algal blooms might perhaps ‘absorb’ 70 to 80% of atmospheric carbon dioxide. But, actually, there are various kinds of ‘sinks’ other than these blooms when it comes to carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, algal blooms must represent a very high percentage of the planet’s overal uptake of carbon dioxide. This means that this discovery, by itself, has the potential of easily offsetting the 4% humans add to the normal carbon cycle.
If so, then there’s nothing to be alarmed about. Nor, is there reason to spend perhaps a 100 trillion dollars to ‘combat’ supposed ‘warming’—except, of course, to make rich people even richer as they sell the ‘world’ their newly constructed ‘lifesavers.’ “Buy our lifesavers or you will perish.”
The claims of climate alarmists now seem to border on buffoonery. There are so many unknowns that undercut the models they’ve set up. As they say, “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous things.”