A Euronews.green news item (loosely speaking) headlined “In Portugal’s marine forests, scientists discover kelp is a powerful carbon store”. Which you might briefly think was a rare good news story on climate from an alarmist outlet. But you would be mistaken because the subhed was “Scientists warn that climate change is threatening the seaweed’s ability to store carbon and support biodiversity.” Which is not a good news story in any sense of that term because in addition to being the usual alleged disaster for the planet it is a disaster for journalism. And not only because “climate change” is not a causal force but a statistical description. Because it assumes that in nature, if conditions improve for an organism it dies. If journalists are learning such things in school, we urgently suggest you take the education of your children into your own hands.
No, really. Back in the day, in biology class we learned things such as that when there is a lot of rabbit food you get more rabbits. But more rabbits eat more rabbit food so eventually you get less rabbit food and then fewer rabbits. Plus rabbits are wolf food, and when there is a lot of wolf food you get more wolves. But more wolves eat more wolf food so eventually you get fewer rabbits and then fewer wolves. But then the dearth of rabbits means more rabbit food so you get more rabbits and the cycle continues, wonderfully harmonious if also arguably a bit red in tooth and claw.
The phenomenon, you might think, would be widespread. And indeed those who believe in Darwin are or were wedded to the notion that it is a powerful explanatory force in natural affairs. When resources appear, organisms exploit them, changing their behaviour and even their anatomy to do so. Including when kelp gets more CO2 and you get more kelp.
Also, on a far more dramatic scale, the “oxygen catastrophe“ somewhere over two billion years ago when the appearance of photosynthesis, initially a great triumph for plants, led to so much green stuff devouring CO2 and belching forth oxygen that, believe it or not, is highly and disastrously reactive and began wreaking havoc on simple organisms and their environment.
Oh no, you cry. Oxygen is the stuff of life. We higher organisms breathe it in and spew carbon pollution that then kills plants um wait no, it sustains them. And yes, it’s true that once creatures appeared that were adapted to absorbing oxygen and turning it into energy and body parts, a virtuous cycle between plants and animals developed.
So where’s the kelp, you cry? Well, the thing is that kelp is a plant, right? Arguably a slimy smelly one, though some people like it in salad. But it’s a plant. So it loves CO2. More CO2 means more kelp unless and until the kelp consumes and “stores” so much CO2 that the latter becomes scarce. (See “rabbit food” and “wolf food” above.)
What’s more, kelp has been around since the Lutetian. Say what? Yeah, we had to look it up too. It’s part of the Eocene, around 48 million to 41 million years ago. Aka when it was considerably warmer than today with considerably more CO2. So here’s the problem.
The journalist, armed with an “MA Cantab, History of Art”, would have you believe, as so often, that when an organism gets more of what helps it flourish, in this case CO2 for kelp, the organism in question will very likely perish.
Kelp is of course our friend and it is slurping up carbon that would otherwise set our hair on fire. But brace for it:
“For the first time, researchers have measured the amount of carbon sequestered by seaweed in these underwater ecosystems. But they warn that climate change is threatening their ability to store carbon and support biodiversity.”
Why? Why would plants getting more CO2 be less able to “store” it instead of growing longer and thicker and absorbing more? Because with climate change all news is bad news. And as part of that odd approach, nature has gone from being wonderfully adaptive to pitifully fragile.
The reporter isn’t making it up. The scientists are. She quotes “Francisco Arenas from CIIMAR, who co-led the study”, and CIIMAR is the “Centre of Marine and Environmental Research”, that:
“A process of tropicalisation has already been detected in Portuguese waters, which puts the associated biodiversity at risk, as well as the ecological services that these forests provide, including the ability to capture and store carbon, known as blue carbon, contributing to climate change mitigation.”
Waaait a minute. A process of tropicalisation threatens biodiversity? Have you ever been to the tropics? Isn’t a dominant characteristic of such places lush rainforests, lush coral reefs and general lushness, with that business of plants and animals trading CO2 for oxygen and vice versa in dazzling profusion complete with parrots above and parrot-fish below the water?
No. That dumb old kelp will just die off if it gets more food and warmth. So government must lurch to the rescue:
“Given today’s climate emergency, researchers advocate for incorporating kelp forests into marine protection and blue carbon frameworks as both national and international priorities.”
Because left to their own devices, instead of evolving, stuff just sits there waiting to die. As we all didn’t learn in biology class.
“Given today’s climate emergency, researchers advocate for incorporating kelp forests into marine protection and blue carbon frameworks as both national and international priorities.”
And of course incorporating said researchers as highly paid permanent supervisors into the framework.