Gary's views

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

PLANKTON

Plankton can tell us an awful lot about our planet. On Friday I had a briefing at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth. In collaboration with an internationally respected charity, they have been studying these microscopic creatures for seventy years, and are world leaders.

Nobody doubts that sea and air temperatures are rising. The key issue is: is this just one of those cyclical changes that happens from time to time, or is it the way we are treating the planet that is causing it?

The scientists who study these things have little doubt. It is us. It is the combined impact of the additional carbon we are releasing into the earth’s atmosphere ever since the Industrial Revolution kicked off. Yes, there are some scientists who still dispute that, but they are a shrinking minority. Some people still challenge the link between smoking and lung cancer, even though the evidence is compelling.

The North Atlantic is rising in temperature at a steady rate, which is where our tiny friends the plankton come in. For the first forty years of the locally based study, the picture was fairly stable: plankton just hung around doing whatever plankton do. Now they are on the move. They are drifting north at a rate of twenty-five kilometres per annum to escape the warming seas. In 40 years they have shifted about 800 miles north, roughly the length of the United Kingdom.

This tells us two things – one, it is concrete evidence of the sea temperature rising, and second that these climate changes have consequences. Plankton are the bottom of the food chain, the fish that live on them have either got to move with them, or they will die out. That is apparently one reason why cod stocks are dwindling – their dinner is heading north.

So what else will happen as a result of global warming? If the ice caps around Greenland melt, sea levels will rise by several metres. Goodbye London. Hot countries will get hotter and people, like the plankton, will migrate to find food.

Nobody knows when any of this may happen and the far off dates we sometimes read bring false comfort. Any child born this year, our children and grandchildren, should expect to live until 2080, and the next generation will certainly suffer the consequences if we do not act.

Even though the cure has a lifestyle price tag, is not time we politicians took this more seriously?

posted by Nigel on Thursday, February 17, 2005