'Sumo-sized' jellyfish invade Japanese waters

[PrayersForMaura]

Japan grapples with invasion of giant jellyfish

TOKYO (Reuters) - A slimy jellyfish weighing as much as a sumo wrestler has Japan's fishing industry in the grip of its poisonous tentacles.
Vast numbers of Echizen kurage, or Nomura's jellyfish, have appeared around Japan's coast since July, clogging and ripping fishing nets and forcing fishermen to spend hours hacking them apart before bringing home their reduced catches.

Representatives of fishing communities around the country gathered in Tokyo on Thursday, hoping to thrash out solutions to a pest that has spread from the Japan Sea to the Pacific coast.

"It's a terrible problem. They're like aliens," Noriyuki Kani of the fisheries federation in Toyama, northwest of Tokyo, told Reuters ahead of the conference.

More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060119/sc_nm/environment_japan_jellyfish_dc

 

[PrayersForMaura]

Further in that story "Scientists have suggested global warming might be a factor."




Uh oh. The old "global warming" saga looms again.
I think we can safely blame global warming for everything going on in the world today.

What I am wondering is, what is going to happen when global freezing comes back? The return of the ice age?

 

[vanillasky]

How bizarre, I've never heard of such a huge jellyfish.

 

[Buzz Mills]

Further in that story "Scientists have suggested global warming might be a factor."




Uh oh. The old "global warming" saga looms again.
I think we can safely blame global warming for everything going on in the world today.

What I am wondering is, what is going to happen when global freezing comes back? The return of the ice age?

I watched a PBS program on Global Warming, and bioligists, and scientists, know of a dozen species that have disapppeared, and are presumed to now be extinct, with only a 1/2 degree change in Global Temperature, so it isn't really that far-fetched to think that Global Warming could be part of the situation. They even say that 3/4 of a ton of termites exist for every person on the planet, and they are saying that with the amount of timber being harvested in the Amazon Basin, and a lot of Third World countries, that the termite population will increase accordingly, as there is so much dead worrd around. Termites generate a large amount of methane gas

I just read a 2003 article where they have discovered a new species of Giant Jellyfish, here, and nicknamed it "Big Red." There are a lot of top notch marine biolgists located here on the West Coast. Here's the article:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/West/05/07/giant.jellyfish.ap/

They named the new genus "Tiburonia" after the aquarium's research vessel Tiburon, and the species "granrojo," Spanish for big red.

 

[PrayersForMaura]

I do understand that a change in temperature can cause smoe effects, but there are other species that have become extinct without cause of global warming.

I was being sarcastic, mostly, because it seems that this is all I hear lately EVERYWHERE. It's a warmer winter, must be global warming. Active hurricane season. Must be global warming.
If it's true - and it could be - then should we be more worried than we are?
And if it's not true, then what is really going on?

I'm still fascinated by the Ice Age.
And I don't think movies about objects colliding with earth are too far off either. I would just like more of an explanation sometimes than "global warming". That just seems like a blanket "Excuse" but perhaps it's just my ignorance of not knowing enough about it when the information really is there for me to see.

My boyfriend and I have little "discussions" about this all the time. Sometimes we even agree to disagree. He watches a lot of the science channels so he knows more than I do. So don't listen to me anyway!

 

[Hammerized]

They really are beautiful creatures. Ah, at least in the *spectacular* news photos I've seen, LOL.

I read an article about this phenomenon last month, and I was intrigued at how the local villages and towns in China dealt with it.

Like a delicacy! Jellyfish ice cream. Jellyfish french fries (yes, they have McDonalds!) And on... Maybe Japan needs to loosen up a bit.

 

[Buzz Mills]

SNIP

If it's true - and it could be - then should we be more worried than we are?
And if it's not true, then what is really going on?

SNIP

We can do whatever we want, because there aren't many of us that are going to be around that long, but our future generations will be greatly burdened by what we (the U.S) have chosen to mostly ignore.

The problem is very real, and with population growth, and with the stress placed on the natural resources, of this planet, including the oceans, the problem is growing. The amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere, is on a steeper slope upwards, year by year. So the warming isn't a linear function; the rate of CO2 going into the atmosphere, is increasing every year.

It isn't a good situation at all.

With a change of much less than one degree, there could be massive climate shifts. So it doesn't take much to really throw things out of whack.

They are doing a lot of computer modeling on the effects of temperature and climate change on weather patterns; they are coming up with a lot of information, and we should be reading about some of the things they are discovering, more, and more, in years to come.

 

[Hammerized]

The problem is very real, and with population growth, and with the stress placed on the natural resources, of this planet, including the oceans, the problem is growing. The amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere, is on a steeper slope upwards, year by year. So the warming isn't a linear function; the rate of CO2 going into the atmosphere, is increasing every year.

It isn't a good situation at all.

Do you think more plants and trees would counterract the CO2 level?

But then what of methane? I notice you don't specifically mention methane as a greenhouse gas. What is your opinion on methane production and the atmosphere? Shall we bulldoze the rainforests now?

If not, how to compensate for the CO2? It is a conundrum.

 

[Buzz Mills]

Do you think more plants and trees would counterract the CO2 level?

But then what of methane? I notice you don't specifically mention methane as a greenhouse gas. What is your opinion on methane production and the atmosphere? Shall we bulldoze the rainforests now?

If not, how to compensate for the CO2? It is a conundrum.

They need to stop clear-cutting the Amazon Basin, and the Third World countries also need to stop deforestation, but with the demand for wood, because of the increasing populations, and the money to be earned from the sale of it, who are we to tell those countries what to do.

Methane is a greenhouse gas.

The problem is a very delicate one, and it needs to be approached from all angles, without upsetting the balance of any country. China, with their industrialization, is one large smoke stack; they say the pollution, and air quality there, in many areas, is worse there than anyplace in the United States ever was.

 

[Hammerized]

They need to stop clear-cutting the Amazon Basin, and the Third World countries also need to stop deforestation, but with the demand for wood, because of the increasing populations, and the money to be earned from the sale of it, who are we to tell those countries what to do.

Methane is a greenhouse gas.

The problem is a very delicate one, and it needs to be approached from all angles, without upsetting the balance of any country. China, with their industrialization, is one large smoke stack; they say the pollution, and air quality there, in many areas, is worse there than anyplace in the United States ever was.

So, Buzzm1, you are as much in the dark as I am, then. Yes?

Because late, unbiased, scientific reports show that METHANE accounts for up to 30% of the "greenhouse" gases which contribute to the so-called "global warming." And the methane is originating from the rainforests.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0119/p13s01-sten.html

It's not that there's more methane in the atmosphere, but that some of it is coming from a wholly unexpected source. The results imply that, at best, this new source of methane may need to be taken into account as nations try to curb carbon-dioxide emissions by planting trees. Would increased methane emissions erase the gains against CO2? At worst, the results imply that thawing tundra in the Arctic is not the only worrisome source of methane in a warming world.
[...]
Given all the scrutiny plants have undergone, one of the open questions is how researchers could have missed these [methane] emissions. Keppler speculates that because the methane emissions are so small, they wouldn't have been detected in field studies. Any signal would have been swamped by much larger natural background levels. And microbial sources have been so well established that no one has looked for another mechanism.

For some researchers, the evidence Keppler and his team presents is sufficiently convincing to begin working them into computer models of the globe's greenhouse-gas budget - especially the potential implications for land-use changes. To do that, scientists will need to see how emissions might vary with plant species, says Alex Guenther, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

 

[PrayersForMaura]

you two have me intrigued. I am still confused though but I like your dialogue. I wish I was more informed.

 

[Buzz Mills]

The telling statement in that article is:

Dr. Keppler has discovered that plants may give off significant amounts of methane just by growing. And the amount they give off appears to rise with temperature.