Jesse Zimmerman’s hat reports breathlessly at Grist
Well HERE’S some cheerful news for your Friday afternoon: Dozens of dead baby dolphins have been washing ashore in the Gulf of Mexico, along Mississippi and Alabama coastlines. Crap.
Well, I’ll agree with that sentiment.
The timing seems pretty suspicious — the BP oil spill happened around the time these baby dolphins would have been starting to gestate. But NOAA’s cautioning people not to leap exuberantly through a hoop to conclusions. Cold water can also kill dolphins, and the water has been cold lately — in fact, NOAA was already starting to look into weather-related dolphin mortality in the Gulf last year, right before the oil spill hit.
See? Don’t jump to conclusions that it is BP’s fault (though, I have a feeling that it is partly at fault), because the water in the Gulf has been….cold? Wait, I thought the water in the Gulf was getting so warm that all the coral was going to die?
While NOAA’s trying to figure out whether we can blame BP or just the cruelty of nature for this one,
Looks like Jesse’s hat forgot the current talking point, that Man’s release of greenhouse gases is making things cold.
I heard that global warming makes dolphins taste like tuna. Just puttin’ it out there.
It is possible. The fact that NOAA is looking into it is because I know some individuals at NOAA that are more concerned with a rapid shift into Glaciation then they are the silliness of CO2 causing global warming of any consequences.
If you understand the ocean patterns you will know that a massive influx of sea water moves from the West coast of Africa and the equator to the tip of Florida where it is picked up by another massive warm water current and is then absorbed and sent northeast along the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S until it moves past Newfoundland and on towards England, Europe and literally into the Arctic latitudes.
Melting Glaciers along with warming sea water can cause the salinity levels of these currents to move deeper causing them to not only slow down but to change the temperature gradients of the top moving currents. As they move deeper the water becomes colder because the warm water pulled from the equator is now deeper due to the rising alkalinity of the currents.
In short….dolphins washing up on shore in the gulf is reason for concern and the fact that their is an associated severe cold water pattern in that area is of such consequence that NOAA is reluctant to even point to oil and chemicals rather then cold water first and foremost.
Current water analysis of the gulf is showing the water temperature off the coasts of Miss. and Alambama as low as 58 degrees compared to 75 degrees in other areas of the gulf.
Why? I personally would be doing salinity measurements in the gulf right now to determine if the warm currents are deeper causing the current cold weather to cool this region of the gulf..
but thats just me.