I think lionfish are at least one of the top three threats to Caribbean reefs. And I have written several papers arguing that the threat from exotic species is often greatly exaggerated. (So I am generally skeptical about claims of pending doom from exotic invasions) In most cases, the addition of non-native species simply increases [...]
Seems like the weather watchers are fawning over the latest update of the UAH MSU satellite data:
June 2009 saw another — albeit small — drop in the global average temperature anomaly, from +0.04 deg. C in May to 0.00 deg. C in June, with the coolest anomaly (-0.03 deg. C) [...]
Quick preface: This great article on global climate modelling (Published in Miller-McCune magazine) was written by Nicholas Jachowski, a Stanford student who as part of the Stanford Overseas Program conducted studies on coral physiology at Heron Island Research Station.
While the ultimate concern over climate change centers [...]
A new Reef Site in Coral Reefs (Green and Cote 2009) describes the striking densities of non-native lionfish on coral reefs in the Bahamas. Lionfish (Pterois volitans), a predator from the central and western Pacific ocean, were first sighted in 1992 off Florida and have been spreading rapidly throughout the Caribbean (USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database 2009). On deep offshore reefs off of North Carolina, they are now the second most abundant fish (Whitfield et al. 2007).
UPDATE: Camilo Mora, the lead author of the study, posted a comment about the test of expert opinions. “I would like to clarify that one of the tests we did in this paper was to compare the expert’s opinions with actual empirical data collected by one of us (i.t. Tony Pitcher). We found that [...]
“Increasingly acidic oceans and warming water temperatures due to carbon dioxide emissions could kill off the world’s ocean reefs by the end of this century, scientists warned on Monday.
The experts told a meeting in London the predicted pace of emissions means a level of 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide [...]
To be honest, I struggled to believe the headline news: “Climate change is shrinking sheep” – surely April fools day was over 3 months ago? Reading on, the story becomes more intriguing… Apparently, researchers have conducted detailed measurements on the body weights of a population of Soay sheep on the [...]
One of the most common climate change skeptic arguments against AGW is that short-term declines in globally averaged temperature completely refute arguments about the occurrence and causes of global warming. A new paper published in Geophysical Research Letters (Easterling and Wehner 2009) argues that short term periods of no-trend or even cooling (nested within longer term [...]
Go check out these incredible photographs by National Geographic photographer Thomas Peschak of mantaray feeding frenzies in the Maldives. Apparently this swirling ‘cyclone‘ feeding behavior is rarely seen outside of the Maldives. Click here for a previous post on Climate Shifts for more details and video [...]
TED, a nonprofit devoted to ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’ hosts an annual conference bringing together ‘world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives’. I’ve watched quite a few incredible talks (Al Gore, Tierney Thys, & Jane Poynter to name but a few), but [...]
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