BBC etc: Whalers killed so many whales it raised the Earth’s CO2, oh my.
There it is, along with stories on a Turkish sheep that gave birth to a human-faced lamb, and a NASA probe that found trees on Mars, something at the entertaining but gonzo Russian news agency Ria Novosti that I can actually sort of endorse : Industrial whaling has no effect on carbon dioxide levels.
Is that not silly? Who would ever think that global warming’s cause is consequentially due to dead whales anyway? To say it has no effect may be strong, but who would think it might be worth worrying about? Some seem to think so. Take a look at these stories that prompted the Russian riposte:
- BBC – Victoria Gill: Whaling worsens carbon release, scientists warn ;
- Discovery News – Jessica Marshall: Whales, like trees, slow warming ;
The news has a legitimate-enough provenance. At the Ocean Sciences meeting sponsored by the American Geophysical Union, this year in Portland, Maine, a local researcher reported yesterday his calculation of how much CO2 might have reached the atmosphere due to whaling’s bounty over the last century – via the rotting of dead whales on beaches or at whaling stations, the combustion of blubber-derived whale oil, and the like. That is an interesting academic exercise and, given the sizes of whales, it should be no surprise that the theoretical high end of the calculation might translate to a lot of trees. And it is true enough that naturally dead whales or other megabeasts in the sea tend to sink to the bottom and leave their carbon there. And that fishing and whaling boats move the biomass to places with access to the air. But in proportion, how big is this?
The Ocean Sciences meeting’s organizers put on a press conference yesterday for this. That’s probably the only reason it is in the news. But this story has such a giggle factor that reporters should recognize that up front and wire it up purely as a curiosity. Other reasons not to remove the biggest creatures from the sea are so adequate, and the other primary reasons for global warming so far dwarf whaling, that to make a straight story linking the two as seriously entwined is overdoing it.
Grist for the Mill: Ocean Science Meeting Press Conference List ;
- Charlie Petit
