Global Warming Threatens Sea Life: Drop in species' food source found

[Jcrowley]

Warming threatens sea life
Drop in species' food source found
By Seth Borenstein, Associated Press  |  December 7, 2006

The discovery has scientists worried about how much food marine life will have as global warming progresses.

The data show a significant link between warmer water -- either from the El Niño weather phenomenon, or global warming -- and a reduced production of phytoplankton of the world's oceans, according to a study in today's journal Nature.

Phytoplankton are the microscopic plant life that zooplankton and other marine animals eat, essentially the grain crop of the world's oceans.

Study lead author Michael Behrenfeld, a biological oceanographer at Oregon State University, said yesterday that the recent dramatic drop in phytoplankton production in much of the world's oceans is a "sneak peak of how ocean biology" will respond later in the century with global warming.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/12/07/warming_threatens_sea_life/

[Stargazer99]

1. When is man going to learn that he had better start respecting

nature or he is going to kill off the human race as he kills off other forms of life? Man is so conceited and involved with materialism that he would kill off his own life form in the process of killing other forms of life involved in the cycle of existance? So damned conceited he can't understand why water doesn't come out of the hose when he has his foot on it.

[The Stranger]

2. Congratulations, your planet is dying.

[nam78_two]

3. K& R ...sigh....so depressed by this kinda news...:-/ /nt

[Karenina]

4. Another snip...

"Everything else up the food web is going to be impacted," said oceanographer Scott Doney of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts . He was not involved in the study.

"What's worrisome is that small changes that happen in the bottom of the food web can have dramatic changes to certain species at higher spots on the food chain," Doney said.

This is yet another recent scientific study with real-time data showing that the much-predicted harmful effects of global warming are, in some cases, already here, researchers said.