Actually we are going to need a severe collapse of some kind, like a severe decline in fisheries in order to wake the vast majority of people from their very special state of delusion. We may need severe famines and massive human suffering before the days of dream reality come to an end. Of course, when this happens it may already be too late. It is beyond bizarre that humans remain collectively opposed to the reality of the situation.
24
Maybe when people have to pay 20. a pound for flounder, they will take climate change seriously .
7
The following link (I have posted previously) really shows what is happening...fish populations are in trouble when essentially billions of human are harvesting them for dinner in unsustainable ways. (and farm fishing is not going to be any panacea due to its limitations.)
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/big-fish-stories-getting-littler
11
Oh... that's too bad.
I keep coming back to Jenga.
Human exploitation and degradation. Human impact on climate.
All like pulling out blocks from a huge Jenga tower. One by one. We all sit by watching, comforted that the tower is still standing. And by that evidence all is pretty much OK, because still standing.
But when too many blocks are removed....
Many folks think we still have time to remediate. But all the dynamics in play at this point are just too massive. There are too many problems and too many new mouths to feed.
Many folks think climate change is going to result in a somewhat gradual decline and that we'll just find a way to survive it. Many folks speak about it in an a manner that suggests there will be a time after it. Like it is some up-coming storm that will pass and then life will go on in some version of normal, with apparently significant human populations living in reasonably normative living conditions. As if children and grandchildren will be in positions able to reflect on what we did or did not do today. As if.
When this starts coming undone it will be startling and fast and not much fun.
90
@Matthew -
"The trouble is, you think you have time."
Gautama Buddha
17
“Fisheries are like a bank account, and we’re trying to live off the interest,” Dr. Pinsky said.
Actually, fisheries are more like a mutual fund that we inherited. We didn't invest the original funds, and there are many factors at work, including climate change, pollution, and overfishing, etc. that affect the size of the fund at any one time. That makes it hard to know how much we can remove without drawing down the capital. Adding to the problem is that after scientists do their best calculations of how much fishing can be sustained, those numbers are then influenced by politics, which often results in overfishing and drawing down the capital. Smaller fund, smaller returns in the future...
31
Let's not forget that Japanese fishing fleets are the most aggressive in the World for their geographic reach,and have resumed their hunting of endangered species like the Blue Whale for " scientific research".
8
I am grateful to Kendra Pierre-Louis for all her fine reporting.
We need to be reminded every day, in detail, about the consequences of what we are doing.
We cannot continue to draw down the resources of a finite planet, wasting more and getting fancier toys all the time.
No more excuses, we are out of time. More is not better.
61
@Wop333 - and who is causing the warming? Hint - not the non-primate apes. People. Who's overfishing and polluting and acidifying and habitat destroying, too? People.
So where's the nonsense that our CO2 is causing part of this damage, just as our overfishing and pollution, etc. are causing parts of the harm?
10
Down my way , overfishing is not really an issue. There is no modern equipment for fishing and little enthusiasm for the gruelling life
There is almost no industry or local pollution.
And yet the fish , the reefs are gone. Back to you.
19
everyone talking about climate change wants to do things like carry their own reusable bags and straws. big deal. some say eliminate plastics. ok but just take a stroll through the supermarket. not going to be easy. still others want to eliminate the use of fossil fuels and air travel (see AOC). and almost everyone grudgingly acknowledges the fact that human overpopulation is the actual CAUSE of climate change, yet everyone wants to treat the symptoms and not the disease. it's a hard decision, but we need to do something about the almost 8 billion people on the planet. no matter how much we do to address the symptoms, if we dont address the cause there will be no escaping climate change disaster.
7
@bored critic - well, yes and no. Humanity behaving as if we're on an infinite stack of resources, with an infinitely large place called "away" where we throw our waste away to is the problem. That, plus the number of us acting like that.
But the developed nations are already entering declines in population, decreased birth rates, and achingly slow progress on polluting less over time ( despite current Administration's efforts).
And developing nations are leapfrogging some of the pollutant cycles, as they work towards decent lives and lower birthrates themselves.
http://ieefa.org/bnef-developing-countries-add-more-renewables-than-fossil-fuel-generation-for-first-time/
China's facing a population decline right now. Europe, Japan, ditto. USA, growing more due to immigration since our births are below replacement rate.
SO, as we mature as a species, we need to keep cleaning up our act, develop circular economies that don't require growth, and start reducing our footprint so the rest of the remaining species get a break.
"It's a hard decision, but we need to do something about the almost 8 billion" is supposed to sound tough, I guess, but genocide isn't right, and I never hear people who say that talking about what gets done in the country they live in. Are you considering yourself as one fragment of the population decrease you're advocating? Probably better to just try living better - your membership among the living, and mine, will end eventually.
3
And yet any serious conversation and real action on a Green New Deal, or honestly addressing the catastrophe that is our climate change is window dressing at best.
People seem more concerned about the ideology that might be behind any active, deep approach to tackling this catastrophe.
Mother nature doesn’t care if we’re Capitalists or Democrats or Socialists or Republicans – we will be wiped out regardless of labels.
57
More in America than elsewhere, everything is a partisan issue, everything. I had no idea that our survival, the beautiful planet we inherited and should serve, would bring party zealots out of the woodwork.
I hope people realize that these partisan views have been foisted on you by those with an agenda to power.
12
Perhaps we should consider not having as many children as we do. It would limit our effects on the planet. In addition, since food is not a luxury, having fewer children would help avert a famine or three. While we're doing that we ought to consider how to deal with man made climate change before it's too late if it's not already.
105
The movie Idiocracy comes to mind. Nevertheless I agree with your sentiments but we need to educate everybody's children better so they do not repeat our mistakes and elect the Trumps of this world.
23
@BK mmmmm, electrolytes! It's what fish crave!
Perhaps we should consider that at this point having any children at all will consign them to lives of misery and worse in a failing world with failing societies.
17
Decades of over fishing have destroyed entire eco systems, crag nets destroy and kill anything in their path.
But yea global warming is the reason why.
How about caps on fishing, sink poachers, bad drag nets and allow the fish population to rebound?
Oh right, that does not fit the narrative.
Yea global warming, omg that’s what
Meantime poaching, overfishing and drag nets carryon decimating the oceans legally.
6
Human greed is also wiping out endangered fish species and huge commercial fishing trawlers looking for expensive species. Russia and other fishing vessels near Antarctica do this and can get high prices for the fish from wealthy people. Nations dump the majority of the dead fish back in the ocean once they have taken out the specific fish species they want to sell. NZ has put protected marine reserves around their territorial waters but sometimes foreign vessels are found to be fishing inside them. An eco system is dependant on all species as they all have their place in the eco system.
Japan, Iceland and Norway also kill whales and dolphins for food and don't care if they wipe out these species. It's all to do with greed and money. There are other cheaper plentiful fish species humans could eat.
All that plastic in the ocean and chemicals dumped into it will be warming the ocean as well. Commercial industry can kill rivers by dumping their waste in them so the ocean is no different.
No one ever mentions all that nuclear waste that was sealed in containers and dumped in the ocean, in outer space and under the ground, because no one wants to give up nuclear power.
The human race is on a fast track to extinction and all they do is yak, yak, yak, and don't do anything about it because people don't want to pay more, or lose money.
The more humans in the world, the more pollution as it is humans that create pollution by just existing.
9
Millions or billions?
I can't access the actual article, just the abstract, and unfortunately in science, the devil is in the details.
But on the face of it, I wonder how accurate their data is from 1930. Did we actually have global measures of fish stock that were accurate? How about ocean temps in 1930? How accurate?
My guess is there is probably a lot of error in both measures. Why do I say this? Well, we know that global temp measures were a wild guess in 1930 as most of the globe didn't have temp stations and ocean temps weren't rigorously measured either. And global fisheries? Really? We probably have estimates -- with an emphasis on the word estimates. But who collected the data?
And a 4% decline over 80 years. I would estimate that that is within the range of error -- which is probably pretty wide.
It would be nice if when the Times reports on an article that the article itself was available. Maybe this is great science, but I'd like to see exactly how they came up with this figure. Trust but verify is a pretty good position to take with Time's articles on climate change -- particularly when they refer to studies that show a change in ecosystems related to CC or projected to occur as I have found errors in both the reporting in the TImes and the actual journal articles.
5
@Ralphie - So reading your comment - you wonder, guess and estimate. And you do that about data that's available when you talk about temperature records.
The planet's warming. You offer unsubstantiated comments about data and processing without reviewing the easily-available published, peer-reviewed data processing algorithms.
The oceans are warming. You guess and speculate about data and results (while the oceans ignore the data, and simply expand as if they're warming and collecting ice runoff).
Fish stocks are shifting from warming waters. You don't read the studies, but sure do opinine about the data - without looking at it.
Face it Ralphie. You don't trust and verify. You just keep throwing your non-expert opinion up against thousands of researchers working in various disciplines. You tell us you've gotten journal articles corrected, but of course, you want us to trust without verification. You might have corrected a typo, or moved a result a millionth of a degree, but you can't disprove the basic physics or the hundreds of thousands of studies that say we're going to be dealing with this for the next x centuries.
The greenhouse effect is real and doing what it does when presented with lots of extra greenhouse gas, but you doubt it. So noted.
5
Ocean warming and greed, advanced fishing technology and over fishing. My heart goes out to fishermen. I grew up on the shore. What I don't understand is why people stand in line to be the guy that catches the last Codfish in existence. Asian countries have the worst record. Fining sharks and throwing them overboard to die, miles of nets that kill everything that swims by, dynamiting reefs, killing fish and coral. There needs to be a global concept of sustainable harvesting and conservation. One does not exist, particularly in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
3
‘Soylent Green’ the 1973 movie, not the new product(!), takes place in 2022. A plot point is the ocean survey document, years 2015-2019 detailing the end of ocean life. Just thought to mention it.
All those new fish names you see at the store... some are just marketing names, some are species previously not sold here for food. And we hardly twitch. No fish, eat plankton. No plankton, eat...
3
There has been rapacious fishing for about 100 years, with fish declining in size dramatically all over the world. Certain areas are known to be over-fished or poorly managed, yet the NY Times somehow is blind to this history of exploitation, and simply points a finger to "warming oceans." How irresponsible. Yet data actually show the oceans have warmed by almost nothing. Get real. Humans are destroying the oceans by over-fishing. Period!
3
@Carol: You should read the article again. The study cited investigated sustainable fishing methods. Of course it excluded decline in fish stock for other reasons, such as over fishing you mention.
Where did you get your information from that the oceans are not warming?
3
@Carol Gebert - Read carefully. The article states, in the fourth paragraph: "But the new findings — which separate the effects of warming waters from other factors, like overfishing — suggest that climate change is already having a serious impact on seafood."
To think that any of the damages happening to the biosphere are due to exactly one cause is unreal. Period.
Fish stocks are declining because of overfishing, and pollution, and invasive species, and temperature shifts, and destruction of reefs and mangrove habitat, and silt runoff, and nutrient runoff creating dead zones - and also from the CO2-induced pH changes and warming and resulting decline in oxygen levels.
The world is complex. Our military gets it when they note clearly that climate change is a threat multiplier.
To say that only one thing we're doing wrong can cause harm is like someone telling their doctor that the heavy drinking and smoking can't be harming them, because they already have diabetes.
Fact is, we have to fix all the stuff we're doing wrong. I know some people don't like facing that, but it's the conclusion when people get real.
6
Good news for the battle against Asian carp. Now if you could just get Americans to enjoy them! Re branding to "Southern Lake Cod"!
3
"We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that." ---Thomas Edison, 1931
4
I believe global warming is and will continue to be a impacting factor in habitat for food fish. I also believe aggressive fishing by an ever increasing population has also had a large impact on aquatic population. I think it unrealistic to put all the blame on climate change when overfishing, pollution, and destruction of habitat are equal if not greater perpetrators. I am disappointed the NYT has not given a more comprehensive view of the problem.
2
@Robert Mosier - should every article about one new study about aspect of our impacts be an encyclopedia about all the other impacts?
2
Pretty soon there will be too many people and not enough
food.
2
These numbers are suspicious , how did they get to 4%, all very vague....
3
From my personal experience ,it seems way higher.
2
Thank you Kendra Pierre-Louis.
Climate change and environmental degradation are such hard topics. The more we know the worst it seems.
Please take care and avoid burn out -- your work is so important.
3
oh well, a lot of the seafood was tainted with mercury anyway.
I have lived on a Caribbean island on and off since 1970.
The reefs have gone from magical abundance of species to underwater deserts. The annual game fish competition often comes up with nothing. We import Talapia.
Anacdotal observation . Also in our property we no longer have to protect the from mosquitoes, which had been a necessity since the original settlers. Tarantulas and centipedes, land crabs likewise
14
The oceans will be the first cause of global civil disruption, but not because of rising sea levels, but because of the loss of ocean resources due to over fishing, acidification, and warming. About a billion people, one-seventh of the world’s population, rely on seafood as their primary source of animal protein. Imagine the consequences as their food supplies and sources of income disappear.
9
If the world's fish population was really declining shouldn't the price of fish be surging in the supermarkets? I don't see this happening. Perhaps the author can put together price charts to show us what price of fish is doing as compared to inflation of the rest of foodstuff to show us that these theories are really true.
2
@Rahul
Fish was at one time (the 1950s for example) a staple food for poor people, particularly those living in coastal areas like NYC. Salmon, flounder, scrod, snapper, cod... all were relatively inexpensive. This started to change in the 1970s when stocks became severely depleted. Ask any American in their 70s or 80s who likes to eat fish what they paid for it years ago.
10
@Middleman MD
In 1950 a Doctor used to make $ 20,000 a year, now a Doctor makes $ 200,000+ a year. You cannot expect the price of food to remain constant when salaries have gone up ten-fold. Half the worlds population had not eaten fish in 1950 in the third world because A) They could not afford fish B) They lived inland and fish was not sold in the areas where they lived because refrigerated transport was not available. In 2019 Fish is sold and consumed everywhere in the world. I see no evidence that there is a shortage of fish anywhere.
3
@Rahul
Per inflation calculators fish prices are going up faster than inflation, see link below.
Seems last 20 years inflation, per this site 2.02% yr, fish going up 3% plus.
One conundrum is pricing is by product, farmed talapia basically barely existed 20 years ago. Same for farmed Salmon.
https://www.officialdata.org/Fresh-fish-and-seafood/price-inflation/2005
2
The unsustainable pressure exerted on the fish population everywhere across the Globe is already well undergoing, its effects are well-documented whereas the collected data paint a rather grim picture looming on the low horizon.
Add to that, the surge of industrial fishing techniques who, since the past decades deplete the existing livestock at a pace far exceeding that necessary for its strained population to replenish itself moreover has implemented techniques almost systematically damageable for the maritime environment. Last but not least, the steady increase of the human population as a steady stream of consumers unlikely to turn its back from seafood anytime soon.
In light of this jumble of elements (almost omitting that the ocean-element is also seen as a subsidiary wasteland for tons of plastic trash...), the rise of temperatures almost like a minor issue.
10
@jeanfrancois,
I, too, wondered about exactly how the effect of over-fishing was accounted for.
Even just in my own lifetime the increase in the harvest, in the number of boats, in the technology, in the human population...must be staggering.
Blaming global warming is particularly unhelpful in the case of commercial fishing since the Paris Accord is
less likely to help the fish than to help us. (The numbers just aren't enough; not enough reduction in GHGs, not enough time, not enough participation.)
Many fish species depend on density and the population of older, larger females to spawn most successfully. The endless schools of fish, the massive cod, the giant tunas, the biggest bill-fish are already gone.
One way or another people are going to have to find something else to eat.
7
@laurence
...and the picture at the head of the article speaks volume. One single catch realized by such type of fishing net would, in the pre-industrial era and a bit caricaturally perhaps, translate into a thousand individuals each holding a fishing rod.
Interestingly enough, the 3 fishermen here who do not stand in the way of progress while overseeing the transfer of goods with their hands folded behind their back pose as passive observers marveling at something that's in proportion way beyond human-scale.
4
@laurence
Your answer about overfishing was in the 4th paragraph:
.."But the new findings — which separate the effects of warming waters from other factors, like overfishing...".
1
We're all pretty complacent about this. I still eat my sushi. But there may be a day when Blue Water Cafe down the street goes belly up because there are no more fish left.
2
@Hazlit why wouldn't they shut down before then, or change the menu?
Global warming and its effects on the ocean will likely interact badly with continued human population increases (now ~80 million a year) and their need for food. Add in forest clearing to get more arable and pasture land, and things just accelerate.
A shortage of marketable wild fish makes those still around more valuable. In turn, that makes cheating more lucrative, potentially adding more stress until fisheries collapse.
I do have it on the authority of anonymous, self-styled expert commentators on previous Times pieces that global warming is a liberal hoax. Or that god will provide.
But if nothing is done, it's more likely human populations will have to crash before the oceans and other ecosystems can recover. Let's just hope it's not from mass starvation, a global pandemic, or nuclear winter. We don't deserve suffering on that scale, or, worse, to go extinct, do we?
9
When I see a picture of industrialized fishing, like this one, I'm horrified. Looks like these guys just ripped apart the fish school equivalent of New York City. How were they able to do this?? Fossil fuels, particularly diesel. Humans have been living the high life on fossil fuels while all other life pays the price. And while we're talking of price, Mitsubishi has a large, aggressive bluefin tuna fishing operation that is pushing this declining species to the brink of extinction. The catch is frozen in special Mistubishi freezers so they will reap millions when bluefins are scarce. https://www.projectcensored.org/mitsubishi-profits-worlds-tuna-become-critically-endangered/
Are the Mitsubishi board members unconscionable psychopaths? Are we?
34
@Deborah
Humans and the commons. In that context you and I, and they, we are all psychopaths. You typed out your comment on a fossil-fuel dependent thing. You too probably want a job and shelter and food. We all rationalize our exploitation because we have to. Trying to put any one factor on a scale of egregiousness becomes fairly irrelevant given the scale of what is occurring. The end of things is sad.
2
4% decline since 1930? I've been hearing of far more precipitous declines for years.
"OSLO, Sept 16 2017 (Reuters) - The amount of fish in the oceans has halved since 1970, in a plunge to the "brink of collapse" caused by over-fishing and other threats, the WWF conservation group said on Wednesday. Populations of some commercial fish stocks, such as a group including tuna, mackerel and bonito, had fallen by almost 75 percent, according to a study by the WWF and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL)."
World Economic Forum Aug 2018..."Nearly 90% of the world’s marine fish stocks are now fully exploited, overexploited or depleted."
4% decline in 80 years should be cause for wild celebration.
17
@bobg This report is citing the impact of climate change alone, separating that impact from the even greater impacts that you cite from overfishing and other unidentified causes. It's also noting that fish stocks under stress from overfishing and other causes reproduce more poorly in the warmer regions of their range, than in the colder regions.
9
@bobg. 4% is just the part of the decline attributable to climate change. Yes he overall declines from overfishing have been much larger.
8
"...the solution lies in slowing or halting climate change."
Yes, a canary in a coal mine; but even more than dwindling fish stock caused by human over consumption is the acidification of the oceans, and the loss of phytoplankton, responsible for taking in co2 and expelling oxygen, and feeding the little creatures a larger fish depends on for survival.
Meanwhile, there is evidence the UV layer that protects earth is under performing due to chemical effluence, not just carbon dioxide and methane.
Aside from a carbon tax to get us off of carbon, we need to go totally ecological in all areas to reduce the toxic stew we belch out daily and which further undermines planetary ecology.
14
I’m sure that as soon as Melania has salmon served at the White House, Trump will point to it and declare “no fish emergency here!"
13
Well, highly unlikely they ever eat together and highly unlikely he knows what salmon is because KFC doesn’t fry it ip and put it in a bucket.
10
@Bill B - As the late, unlamented (R)egressive pol, Helen Chenoweth said, "There's no salmon shortage, there's
plenty of salmon in cans on grocery store shelves."
4.1% over 80 years...that's 0.05% per year, or 5% in a century. It cannot even be measured that accurately.
Most fish people eat is farmed, either in fresh water ponds or in ocean bays. Fish farmers can and will move to colder climates or raise different species if warming becomes a problem. Sea fishermen can move to higher latitudes, following the fish.
Change isn't necessarily bad.
2
lol you're ignoring the ripple effects of global warming.
@Jonathan Katz
2
@Jonathan Katz The fisheries don't actually work that way. This report is citing solely the impact of climate change on fisheries, completely apart from the already established and far greater impacts of overfishing and other factors cited in previous reports, and by one of the commenters above. Just a few of the factors: Fisheries abundance and reproduction are not linear, so, among other things, when a stock declines its ability to reproduce, below a certain point, is jeopardized, even more so with warmer waters, as cited. Colder waters in other regions carry different characteistics -- acidity, salinity, flora and fauna -- that may or may not sustain migrating stocks of new species. Stock characteristics and abundance do not run in parallel across multiple species, so while one stock may be able to move to colder waters, its food supply of other species may not. International boundaries prevent fishermen from moving to places where new stocks may propagate. Fishing boats designed and built for one fishery may not be suitable for new fisheries. Finally, one point of correction: This article studied the period up until 2010, and cited the North Atlantic herring stock as being in good shape. New data shows that the stock in the U.S. is not in good shape, and fishing limits have just been cut to 21,000 metric tons from a 160,000 m.t. few years ago. As late as last year it was 50,000 metric tons. Am out of space, but impact on the lobster industry will be dramatic.
10
@Jonathan Katz
So another few billion more humans to feed will be no problem, right.. Good luck, you’re going to need it if you’re still around in 30 years, I hope for your sake you aren’t.
1
Fish=short-term profits.
We deny science and have incompetent leadership.
Quit serving fish to anyone at the White House or in the DC locations where our Senators and reps eat. Then, just maybe, someone might get a grip on reality.
1
So, whatever your care most about, you also need to care most about climate change.
Everything that matters on earth requires a healthy planet to unfold on. If you were not at the People’s Climate March, if you were not in Paris during the Climate negotiations, that’s ok.
But where are you today? If you haven’t gotten out there to make your voice heard publicly, this is your last best chance to do so while it can still make a difference. Not as big a difference as if we’d have had five million at the People’s Climate March years ago, but a real and critical difference nonetheless.
Meanwhile, weakened octopuses are climbing anchor chains here off the Oregon coast to try to reach oxygen in hypoxic waters.
Please.
Find your voice.
Find some friends.
Find the door.
25
The solution to this problem is simple enough, and I'm sure it's true. After all, it's in the Bible, and what could be more true than that?
"Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some." John 21:6
Fish for everyone! No problem. Pass the tartar sauce!
5
I am flattened by the amount of human-made climate change denial I see in these comments.
2
The link in the NYT article is to the perspective piece on the article. Link to the actual article is here.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6430/979
6
Well played, JB00123
3
The link is to the abstract, not the article.
3
AOC says we can’t eat beef. Now this article says stop eating fish. That leaves chicken?
And pork and fried insects, William.
Enjoy !
5
@William Beans are much cheaper. Possibly healthier than beef.
3
@Jonathan Katz....Cows or beans, what about the methane?
Asian and third world country’s will not follow any laws regarding seasons and areas that can’t be fished .
3
We are just pillaging the oceans. "Sustainable fishing." What a joke. We are almost 8 billion people. Going on be 11 billion. Gotta eat. Soon all fish will be farmed. Eat wild catch now - it won't be around forever.
Disappearing fish populations is tragic for the fish. Humans have no right to torture-murder them to begin with.
6
"The study found that the amount of seafood that humans could sustainably harvest from a wide range of species shrank by 4.1 percent from 1930 to 2010, a casualty of human-caused climate change".
What hogwash. Utter hogwash. A decline of 4.1 percent over 80 years--from climate change? How can they even say that? It's ridiculous on its face.
More likely, fish stocks are in decline because, with technological advances, we have become much better at catching them. And as the population has more than quadrupled since 1930--we fish more because we need more fish.
Absurd stories like this--that's how you create "climate deniers".
7
When you don't understand a science story, the automatic response should not be "hogwash". The response should be "That sounds methodologically difficult... how did they do it?" Once you understand that, then maybe you can have a reasonable critique. But, you just don't understand the story, and would rather dismiss it than try and understand. The first issue is that they aren't claiming that there has been a 4% reduction, and therefore that this is due to climate change. The actual reductions have been MUCH larger, and that's due to overfishing. What they have done is very sophisticated analysis that includes regional ocean temperature changes to separate declines from over fishing from background declines in the population dynamics of the fish. And it shows that beyond the issue of overfishing, there are background declines as well, and ones that bear the fingerprints of climate change.
54
@Brian Wright,
Your last line is pure supposition. There is no evidence quoted to show that those "background declines" are caused by global warming. That is an assumption on the part of the study's authors; a common mistake these days.
You should have read the article more carefully before you impugned @Jesses's intelligence. That, too, is "how you create 'climate deniers'".
Also, this NYT article is seriously in need of a good editor.
An article about climate change accompanied by a photo of humans overfishing the oceans. So which is it?
4
The two are connected. It's not either / or. It's both.
7
I heard the story of how back in the 1800's you could walk into the surf off the coast of Newfoundland, drop a bucket in the water, and pull up a load of codfish.
Today? There are no more cod. Read Charles Clover's classic work, "The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat," to see how greed, politics and blithering stupidity has essentially wiped the northern cod, once one of the most plentiful life forms on the planet, off the face of the earth..
29
@paulo s. s. If you walk into the surf off the coast of Newfoundland, you are going to get awfully cold, awfully fast.
Yes, fishing needs to be regulated to avoid overfishing. That has nothing to do with climate change.
1
Not only are our fisheries being depleted, the size of each fish has gotten vastly smaller. We have eliminated the larger "trophy" fish from the gene pool.
The pic's in the link show catches from '58 to '07.
Back when fish used to be 6' they now proudly display 1'ers.
Trophy fish used to avg. 44lbs., now 5lbs.
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/big-fish-stories-getting-littler
Human kind has soiled it's own nest. Rather than being good stewards, we have polluted, decimated, raped 'n pillaged. Sorry kids. We were/are selfish. We don't/didn't care. Thus will be the epitaph for our short lived human species. We didn't even last as long as those giant lizards.
27
It is beyond belief that as intelligent and crafty are humans are the flip side is we are collectively as ignorant.
I was in Taiwan years ago and a noted wood sculptor was chain saw carving a small animal. Turned out that nobody in the area of the Northeast Coast knew what a rabbit was because the island population had eaten them all years ago. While over here what is it 40% of the population don’t know the difference between climate change and weather. Even with science to build a particle accelerator or Hubble telescope the bulk of our ignorant population is more concerned with far more pressing issues like award ceremonies and gossiping about Lady Gaga and Brad Cooper. Who cares? I mean really who cares?
I agree with Mr Wizard. We are utterly doomed and even if we could capture carbon in the atmosphere, the oceans are never coming back. There will be a massive starve off coming.
28
@Ted Sieberto Rabbits are a curse where they are not native. Ask any Australian.
5
@Jonathan Katz
Maybe it’s the Australians who are the problem.
Anthropogenic migration is as natural as any other kind and has been going on for as long as humans have had the means to travel.
Fish becoming scarce or too expensive to purchase.
Jellyfish are taking over the oceans
They thrive in the acidity
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Though ocean temperatures play a role, we with our burgeoning human population and desire for abundance, whether wealth, food, water, have overfished for decades. We used to dip smelt 40 years ago in tributaries of the Columbia River and you could simply walk down to the river with a dip net and have an overflowing net each dip. For many years that has not been true. We focus on the top of the food chain. However, the bottom is alarmingly struggling. Insects, plankton. We water the desert as if water is an infinite resource. Though the world is warming, we are doing little to change our climate behaviour as we seek profit, luxury, limitation of our own energy expenditure and disturbance. This administration continues to focus on 'Trump brand' themes: profligate luxury. In administration appointments and policy. It will come back to bite us. Badly.
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As we breed and increase the human population on Earth with no controls insight, we will consume more resources than the planet can replenish or technology can mitigate.
As we breed and increase the human population on Earth with no controls insight, we will create more pollution than the planet can recycle or technology can mitigate.
We don't have a planet problem. We have a human breeding problem.
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@mrpisces
Well said, it’s the elephant in the room but the vast majority can’t see it.
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It starts at the bottom. Phytoplankton size and numbers in decline.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3764198/
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Another reason "why more butter, meat and cheese for Americans" should have no place in U.S. dietary guidelines.
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The birds and the bony fish were the vertebrate winners of the last mass extinction 65 million years ago. While the cartilage sharks, rays and skates have been winning every mass extinction since their first appearance 430 million years ago.
There is no Chllean Sea Bass. There is the Patagonian Toothfish. Orange Roughy are long lived and slow breeding fish. Humans seek fish that are not too oily and fishy smelling and tasting and full of Omega-3's.
Mass fishing technology has gone beyond our ability to adequately weigh costs and benefits as human numbers rise to 7.4 billion and counting.
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As long as Trump can order a Filet-O-Fish, he could care less.
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During human evolution, we didn't have access to many ocean fish. Every one we take means something else didn't eat, and it's due to our 'invasion species' nature.
That's not our first mistake.
Nothing Humans Do Is Sustainable.
We are not long for this world, the laws of unintended consequences has already wiped us out, and we don't even know it yet.
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(Intended Audience: The wives and daughters of the carbon barons & the carbon-sponsored politicians)
I truly fear for the future safety of the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the owners, board members and executives of the oil, natural gas, coal and pipeline companies and their sponsored political “leaders.”
As living conditions on our planet become unbearable due to the severe, relentless impacts of Climate Change, generations of devastated citizens around the world will ask: “Who is most directly responsible for this existential catastrophe?”
When these citizens look around, they will find many of the culpable carbon barons and carbon-sponsored politicians have already passed on to whatever afterlife awaits them. But the direct descendants of the carbon barons and the carbon-sponsored politicians will still be here. And there will be no escape – not even behind their gated communities – from the wrath of billions of incensed citizens on every continent.
For the carbon barons, it all comes down to one essential choice to be made RIGHT NOW: harvest their carbon assets and sacrifice their descendants – or – strand their carbon assets and save their descendants?
For the carbon-sponsored politicians, it also comes down to one essential choice to be made RIGHT NOW: continue to dither on Climate Change legislation and sacrifice their descendants – or – pass sweeping and meaningful Climate Change mitigation legislation and save their descendants?
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@Phillip Stephen Pino Somehow, despite the doomsayers, things generally have been getting better. Meat is (surprisingly) cheaper, compared to incomes, than it was 50 or 100 years ago. So is energy. So are almost all commodities. So are almost all manufactured goods---so cheap that in the Western world you never see anyone, even the homeless, in tattered or patched clothing.
@Phillip Stephen Pino - Nah! Your "carbon barons" are only the Pushers. We - you and I - are the Carbon Addicts. And we flat-out refuse to go without our daily fix!
Want to see the problem? Look in the mirror to take a peek @, “Who is most directly responsible for this existential catastrophe?”
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Right @jonathan katz. Because the true costs of your beloved cheap goods are externalized. The destruction of Earths habitability is never part of accounting.
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Reading the comments, appreciate the Jenga, and upwelling etc. Change will come very quickly when the hydrogeologic changes are great enough. The atmospheric changes of carbon and other man-made processes (not just adding to in terms of driving but logging all the forests of the world) cause atmospheric changes. It changes the jet stream, which is slowing. The jet stream drives the ocean currents. So they are incrementally small changes to that Jenga tower that when cumulative enough, we will all know it catastrophically. And it won't just be everyone needs to move north from CA and FL because the tropical beaches have moved north.
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“But the new findings — which separate the effects of warming waters from other factors, like overfishing — suggest that climate change is already having a serious impact on seafood.“
I don’t doubt that overfishing is a problem, but this appears to be a separate factor.
Does it take into account over fishing? I mean we can’t just assume that if fish populations go down and temperature goes up, that one causes the other.
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@Kev Yes we can. Fish depend on upwelling to provide the necessary nutrients, and upwelling depends on temperature differential of the oceans. The North Atlantic fishing grounds would essentially collapse if this process is weakened. You can't sustain a population by regulating fishing if it can't sustain itself.
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Why is it always 'man-made climate change'?
Why can't it be over-fishing or possibly other natural event in weather or oceanography?
The earth is a living breathing organism that creates its own natural environment.
In the 1600's there was the little ice age in Europe. Was this a result of alleged 'man-made' global climate change or a natural event?
Was it only Europe with this issue or was it world-wide?
More damage to the environment is caused by a volcano than a man-made burn.
So why does man think it has the ability to disrupt what nature has been doing for all of time?
Nature on a daily basis changes. It's egotistical to think man-kind has this power to override mother nature.
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@bobj
Why is it always "round Earth" and not "flat Earth"? Why can't the scientists just for once tell us what makes us feel good instead of what the data actually means?
When climate scientists report on the effects of anthropogenic global warming (a.k.a. climate change), it's because they have ALREADY ruled out through scientific observation that the likelihood of natural causes being the cause for the observed phenomena are either non-existent or low. Thus, they report on what is, according to the data and logical deduction, the likely cause. It is not the role of the scientific community to inject egoism in detached measurements and observations. Sure, mistakes happen, but when the entire global scientific consensus reports with certainty that the likelihood of some effect is due to a particular cause any potential for egoism to skew the results has been rigorously removed from the findings due to extensive and redundant peer reviews.
It is a proven fact that human beings have made numerous plants and animals to go extinct. It seems to me those are cases of "mankind...overriding nature". We have also done visible and quantifiable long lasting to permanent damage to entire ecosystems such as tropic rain forests. Again, instances of humans altering the course of 'nature'. Do cities and small Pacific islands spontaneously combust into nuclear mushroom clouds and to plots of land on their own become nuclear waste dumps? No. Humans, not 'Nature' by herself.
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@bobj "A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters may put the solar-trigger hypothesis at rest. Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado in Boulder and his colleagues suggest that the Little Ice Age began abruptly between 1275 and 1300 AD following four large sulfur-rich explosive eruptions, most likely in the tropics, over a mere 50-year period."
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@bobj So, you are speaking/working for the Koch brothers?
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I’m shocked that the harvest has declined only 4.1%
“The study found that the amount of seafood that humans could sustainably harvest from a wide range of species shrank by 4.1 percent from 1930 to 2010, a casualty of human-caused climate change.”
If & when we all make a concerted effort to cease burning fossil fuels, then I’ll consider not eating fish, especially sushi.
So long as 3-ton SUVs & Pickups are driven by people who could easily derive similar utility from smaller, less resource-guzzling vehicles, I’ll not think twice about enjoying some Toro.
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@Kevin Greene I was surprised by this number also, but it might be useful to place it next to the percentage increase in those populations that are highly dependent upon marine life as a protein source.
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Your logic is undeniable & will factor into my consumption habits at the margin.
That others need fish does supersede my want of it.
Besides, with micro plastics in nearly every marine organism (as well as heavy metals) fish really is less and less healthy.
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@michael The world has too many humans as is. There should not be any increase in populations. Anywhere.
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Certainly a serious indicator of the effect of warming, but I’d like to see some comments by people able to look at the methodology, as estimating “sustainable” catches going back 90 years must involve some significant error bars in the early years. The article, in Science of course is subscription only so most of us have to wait a bit. One would think that the most recent data, coupled with the acceleration of warming, would be the most definitive, and the most concerning. Then too, there have been large shifts in the species caught for consumption, and for fertilizer; shifts that might have to continue as we learn to eat previously ignored ocean product. The really significant metric is going to be the total mass of processable biologicals in the world’s oceans, and how this may be changing. This is where we get to see if the oceans are failing, and how fast. After all, we can eat the fish into extinction without any help from climate change. There are enough of us to do the job.
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@Marat1784 We already are eating a significant portion of the protein produced world wide. We are eating fish to extinction, and, habitat loss on land thanks to agriculture and grazing means we're already impacting over 50% of the Earth's surface.
Nothing we do is 'sustainable' long term, period, end of story.
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@Marat1784 - "…as we learn to eat previously ignored ocean product."
Presumably that would be the plastic trash with which we've filled it? Hmmm - recycling? Might work w/ enough ketchup.
Overfishing anyone? Anyone? Especially Chinese and Russian trawlers.
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@Ryan I address that in the piece. The method the researchers use account for those kinds of outside impacts.
They note that in areas where overfishing is a problem that the populations declined even more than similarly heated areas that didn't have an overfishing problem, but there were declines in both areas.
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Nice to see you defending your article. There needs to be more emphasis on this .
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I worked on the Bering sea for two years in the mid 90's , Americans factory trawlers catch everything, even baby orca's. Let's not be nieve. capitalism has no bounds.
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Canary in a coal mine.
Canary in a coal mine.
Canary in a coal mine.
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The Holocene Extinction continues.
We are doomed.
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We need to find reasons to hope. Things look grim but we HAVE solutions that can avert complete catastrophy, we just need to band together as a species to implement them.
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@Mr. Wizard I do think it's important to put forth a message of climate courage. Not blind hope that someone will do something - but that we can change the outcome if enough people find the courage to figure out how they can help.
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@Clayton Your message to have hope is partially based on the fact that languages are more optimistic than pessimistic, we all think tomorrow is going to be better than today, that's how we're programmed.
If we were SERIOUSLY considering fixing the climate problem, here are a couple things that need to happen.
End Private Property, resources need management not marketing.
MANAGE our population DOWN instead of up, since Nature is about to manage it for us.
Shouldn't be too hard. (Ain't gonna happen.)
(P.S. Don't have children, tell a friend.)
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Well, maybe now people will finally stop eating sushi like crazy and get back to real food.
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So we can just eat fast food, do I hear filet-o-fish? Isn't that DJT's preferred pleasure?
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How about, the world is losing fish to eat and we over harvest them so completely. Then we can add warming oceans.
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The problem seems to be a combination of warming oceans and exhaustion of supply by way of excessive commercial extraction if the northeast Atlantic and the Sea of Japan have seen the steepest decline. Extraction for the sushi industry and the region containing the western hemisphere's main commercial fisheries.
"“As the oceans have warmed, some regions have been particularly hard-hit. In the northeast Atlantic Ocean and the Sea of Japan, fish populations declined by as much as 35 percent over the period of the study."
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