Yesterday, under the heading “Warming link to sea lion exodus” the NZ Herald carried a story about sea lions leaving their native Galapagos Islands. Apparently about 30 of them moved 1400 kilometres south-east to the island of Foca, off the coast of Peru.
The reason for the move, described as unexpected, was put down to “what may be another symptom of global warming”.
That’s a most alarming piece of news, because the sea surface temperatures around Foca Island are described as rising “over the past 10 years from an average of 17°C to 23°C”.
That’s a rise of 6°C in only 10 years! Which is the equivalent of 60 degrees over 100 years! And they think it’s caused by so-called “global warming”? I’ve never heard such nonsense, and I’ve heard some nonsense.
Even the sea lions, whose enthusiasm for warm water apparently motivates 1400-km marathon swim events, would be seriously discombobulated by sea surface temperatures quite this high.
For the Herald to uncritically re-publish this piece from The Independent is reprehensible, particularly since they must be aware that there are currently serious discussions taking place here and overseas about the inadequacies of global and local temperature records.
Forget disused shipping containers to live in — we’ll need working refrigerators
A little research would have uncovered this egregious error, for it is impossible for such a large temperature increase to have been caused by “global warming”, since, according to Professor Phil Jones, it has been non-existent since 1995, and the IPCC calculates warming during the 20th Century was only about 0.7°C.
Let us assume that the sea surface temperatures in that region of the Eastern Pacific have indeed risen by 6°C over the last ten years. I have no knowledge of it, so perhaps some kind reader might comment on the likelihood of that being true. But, if global warming were responsible for it, then it means everybody has been wrong about the scale of the problem and, beginning in Ecuador and Peru, we must at once take all possible measures to provide decently chilled (not merely air-conditioned) living accommodation for almost everyone on Earth.
For if the warming that prompted the sea lions to move is truly global, it indicates that global warming has recently undergone an unimaginable acceleration and we can expect, given the sea surface is now 23°C, that in 90 years’ time it will be about 73°C. Bear in mind that a comfortably hot spa pool is around 38° – 40°C. If the hot water from your kitchen tap gets up over about 65°C, it is too hot to keep your hand in the stream of water.
Have we stopped thinking for ourselves?
The big question in my mind is: did Eloise Gibson see this before publication?
PS: The notion that sea surface temperatures could rise so high from any cause is as insensible as the notion that the reported 10-degree rise was caused by global warming.
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