By Jim Steele
In summer 2020, the media hyped various versions of “Tropical Oceans Headed For Collapse Within The Next 10 Years”. One outlet warned, “Global warming is about to tear big holes into Earth’s delicate web of life.” A single peer-reviewed paper instigated those apocalyptic headlines predicting CO2-caused warming would ramp-up species extinctions starting in tropical oceans. In contrast, I’ll confidently bet any climate scientist $1000 that no such thing will happen.
Sadly, some researchers hope to enhance their fame and fortune by offering dooms day scenarios. Profit hungry media and scientific journals with “if it bleeds, it leads” business models, abet that fear mongering. Scientists also get consumed by their own fearful visions. Gaia scientist James Lovelock predicted by 2100 global warming would make the tropics uninhabitable and “billions of us will die” with a few breeding pairs surviving in the Arctic. (To his credit, Lovelock recanted his alarmism.) Stanford’s Dr. Paul Ehrlich falsely predicted “hundreds of millions of people will starve to death” in the 1970s. So, we must ask, are collapsing oceans a real concern, or just another scientist from the “chicken little school of science” crying wolf? We’ll know by 2030.
Fortunately, good scientists are urging “ocean optimism”, promoting lessons learned from our mistakes and successes. Overfishing and overhunting is definitely a significant threat to ocean ecosystems. Once hunted to near extinction for their oils, whales and sea lions are now rapidly recovering. Thanks to wise hunting regulations, Hawaii’s endangered humpback whales grew from just 800 individuals in 1979 to 10,000 by 2005. Turtle nests in Florida increased from “62 in 1979 to 37,341 in 2015” as North and South Atlantic green turtle populations increased by 2,000% and 3,000% respectively.
Likewise, fish populations are recovering with better fisheries management. Off the USA’s west coast, uncontrolled bottom trawling extirpated several species. So, fishery managers implemented a complete fishing ban, as scientists expected recovery to take 100+ years. However within just 10 years a dramatic improvement prompted both environmentalists and regulators to agree to reopen much of the coast to trawling. Critical photosynthesizing algae, diatoms, rapidly flourish when upwelling brings nutrient rich, high CO2 deep waters back to sunlit surfaces. Diatom blooms stimulate zooplankton abundance which feeds fast-growing bait fish, like anchovies and sardines, thus sustaining a food web from tuna to whales. And more good news, since the 1850s warming has spurred dramatic increases in upwelling and marine life.
Michael Mann and Kevin Trenberth rule the roost within the chicken little school of science. They recently co-authored a “scary” paper titled Record-Setting Ocean Warmth Continued in 2019. Using the energy metric Zetta (1021) Joules, an incomprehensible foreign language for the public, they estimated 2019 warmed by 25 Zetta Joules. That converts to a not so scary 0.016 °F (0.009 °C) increase. Five thousand years ago, marine organisms thrived in waters that were about 2.7°F to 3.6°F warmer than today. At their alleged “record setting” warming pace, it would take four to six hundred years to reach those earlier temperatures.
To be fair, it’s extremely difficult to measure the oceans’ heat content. To improve our knowledge, a world-wide array of floating buoys, ARGO, was established by 2003 to measure temperature down to 2000 meters and periodically transmits data via satellite. We now realize ocean currents are far more complex than once thought, and due to constant changes in ocean heat transport, such as caused by El Niño, the ocean heat content require distinguishing warmer temperatures due to heat redistribution versus warming from the sun or CO2. Unpredicted by climate models, ocean heat transport caused 90% of recently increased ocean heat to accumulate in a narrow band of the Southern Ocean outside the tropics, while the rate of northern hemisphere warming is decreasing. However, ARGO data also reported cooler temperatures than previous less reliable ship measurements. Oddly, 0.216°F is added to the ARGO data. Such a large adjustment makes the estimated increase of 0.016°F/year highly uncertain.
There’s a further complication. Outside the tropics, the earth loses more heat than the sun or a greenhouse effect can provide. It’s the transport of heat towards the poles that keeps temperatures outside the tropics much warmer than they would be otherwise. In ancient climates of the Cretaceous and early Eocene, polar regions were far warmer than today with crocodiles in Greenland and lush coastal vegetation in Antarctica. Such “equable climates” are explained by changing continental configurations and stronger ocean currents carrying more heat from the tropics towards the poles. Yet, the tropics did not cool. Exported tropical heat was compensated by reduced cloud cover, which increased solar heating. Ocean oscillations that increase ocean heat transport today most likely explain the Arctic warming of the 1930s.
Similarly, recent poleward, ice-melting heat transport, with reduced cloud cover that increases solar heating may explain much of our recent climate change. By 2030, we should know.
For publication in Battle Born Media newspapers
Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus, authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism, and a member of the CO2 Coalition
Predictions should be removed from a scientist’s vocabulary. We don’t predict things, we try to explain, understand and analyze part of a picture. Predicting things is for the ones that look for fame and money from the hordes of desperate that believe the lies and devote their lives to fix what doesn’t need to be fixed.
I will add $1000 to your bet.
Predictions are how theories are tested. They are an integral part of science.
And climate scientists have made a lot of predications that failed. What does that tell us about climate scientists?
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions
Yes, FAILED predictions ARE an integral part of “climate scienceᴸᴼᴸ”
They are a feature, not a bug!
Predictions are used all the time in the applied sciences.
Yes, with scientific data and theories you can hypothesize things that should occur. Like Newton hypothesis for the existence of Neptune, or Higgs-Bosom, but these are predictions that you can prove, by either creating the framework and mechanisms to prove.
Now, to predict that the Earth will be 6C warmer in 2145 is not a prediction (or hypothesis) that you can prove, as there’s no way to create the mechanisms and equipment to do so. First, the predictor will not be alive then, and the amount of variables that are not being measured or even considered is astronomically high.
The same way that predictions of habitat collapses and species extinctions are not factual and not even easy to prove. It’s true that we have to make efforts to conserve and preserve areas, habitats, species, but at the same time the ecological doomsayers that predict the apocalypse, and just doing their FUD. Again, the amount of variables not being considered, is enormous, and there’s no way, shape or form to predict such things without major investment and work of thousands of field researchers during decades to determine the state of every single habitat on Earth. And even after this, not everything will be studied at 100% and things will fall between the cracks.
Are you single Pauleta? I think I’m in love with your kind of thinking.
Logical thinking.
short-time, falsifiable predictions based on tested well-worn theory.
So nothing at all like “climate scienceᴸᴼᴸ”
Prediction is the main use of my science degrees. If I can use scientific knowledge and quantitative forecast techniques to out-perform a random guess or the status quo, then I have added value to the efficiency of the human endeavor. If I cannot, then I am unemployed.
How can hypotheses be testable if they don’t make predictions?
Predictions are central to science.
Making policies on the basis of predictions (before they are tested) has nothing to do with science.
Or good Government.
There are predictions and then there are predictions. Soothsayers make predictions, however they are not made based upon solid, provable facts and consistent mathematics. Science on the other hand, requires those solid, provable facts and consistent mathematics to make provable and measureable predictions.
Too much of “climate science” is based upon statistical manipulation of unfit data to project so-called trends. They do not make predictions based upon scientifically derived facts and mathematics. ECS is a perfect example of how little science there is in making predictions of what will happen. Over the last 40 years the facts used in determining ECS have only gotten worse as evidenced by the ECS range expanding and not narrowing. This should tell folks that the so called science being used is more akin to soothsaying than making predictions based upon solid scientific facts and calculations.
I liken the Global Average Temperature (GAT) to a large stock portfolio. We would all be rich if statistics could accurately and consistently predict the best combination of stocks. Well, at least half would be richer and half poorer. Accurately trending time series of data has many pieces and they are not always accurate. GAT doesn’t even begin to address the statistical issues of trending time series that every adequate stock broker deals with.
ECS range is shrinking if you consider only the ECS estimates that are supported by the past 40 years of data. If you calculate ECS from observed data or by comparing climate model forecast errors vs ECS assumptions, then you arrive at an ECS in the 1-point-something range.
As to the fisheries even better than expected as they say. “Worldwide, on average assessed stocks are near their most productive levels. Fishing pressure was previously higher than optimal levels in the 1990s and early 2000s, but average fishing pressure on assessed stocks has gradually declined since then and is currently about 30 percent less than levels that would in the long term provide maximum sustainable yield (MSY).” http://www.fao.org/3/cb1800en/CB1800EN.pdf While this comes from the UN (FAO), authors [School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle] are reliable and have viewed Louisiana situation fairly well. Haven’t thoroughly examined it, but so far looks good.
Nations need to watch out for China’s dark fleet of fishing boats that are raiding like locusts.
Ecuador, which the Galapagos Islands are a part of, is in deep hock to the Chinese because of debts, among other things mostly incurred from a failed hydro-electric dam the Chinese built for Ecuador. China will come raiding Ecuadorian territorial fishing waters again. The Ecuadorian government will once again protest… with a “nod and a wink” but otherwise do nothing else.
That is the face of Chinese economic Imperialism on the world. Get used to it.
There is a lot to digest in the report and they admit that there are unregulated stocks of concern, especially because of the lack of usable data. Overall they are optimistic but realize problems in certain areas that need help.As to the cod mentioned below I went to an American Fisheries Society meeting in Halifax in 1994 where I heard a paper about the temperature change, mostly ignored.
Those chaps will not only eat anything they will also eat everything. They are scraping the African coastal waters clean and eating every living thing on land.
They behave like a global pandemic.
Thank you Mr. Steele. As always, a very interesting article. A couple of questions:
Why are ARGO temperatures adjusted up to align with past ship-based temperature measurements? What would be the result if the ship-based measurements were adjusted down to align with ARGO temperatures, which I assume are more reliable?
And are past cloud cover measurements reliable enough to produce a calculation of the warming effect of changes in cloud cover on the oceans? Could this be used to determine the warming effects of solar heating of the oceans and consequent heat transport to the poles over the past 50-100 years?
Thank you.
The claim is that since the ship based readings are longer, they must be better.
If they are adjusting ARGO to match ship based measurements,…
… why did they even bother with the ARGO network !!
Anthony, Pat Michaels, Judith Curry, etc all found Karl’s paper and their adustment to Argo troubling. I. forget who, but the justification was that since the trends were the same, it didnt matter if Argo series was adjusted upwards or ship data downwards. But from an ocean heat content perspective, that is total BS. Heat content is a function of the seawater density, heat capacity and temperature. By adjusting Argo upwards they increased heat content with the stroke of a pen
It seems to be a poor decision. ARGO data is more reliable and should be presented as is. If an adjustment needs to be made, then the ship data should be adjusted (I would imagine there have been adjustments in the ship data in the past to correct for bucket vs. ship intake methodologies). It seems that the oceans are far more important than land regarding climate impact and should be recorded as accurately as possible.
Regarding my other question, are there reliable cloud cover measurements to allow for a meaningful analysis and calculation of the warming effect of changes in cloud cover on the oceans?
Plus, I would think, that by now there are many more ARGO measurements than old ship measurements so more upward adjusted figures to add into the calculation of “average”.
Headline from tithe Conversation.
“Worried about Earth’s future? Well, the outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp”
Who came up with the outlook and how if even scientists can’t grasp it?
politicians?
We won’t have to wait until 2030 to find out whether the prediction of the tropical ocean collapse comes true. We already know that the prediction is pure garbage. The oceans might warm 0.1 degrees in that time. Might. We know that 0.1 degrees C is at the limit of human capability to measure, especially with natural variability running into several degrees. Ocean creatures are not sensitive to such small changes – we know because if they were they’d already be dead.
“0.016 °F (0.009 °C) increase”
That’s a temperature change that is only measurable in carefully controlled laboratory settings with expensive, calibrated thermistors. In the field (oceans in situ) that’s an impossible accuracy to 3 digits of precision. Hence, the climate chicken littles revert to scary sounding zeta joules to scam the public.
Let’s put that OHC rise in perspective, shall we
See that little red squiggle at the end
That is the advertised human contribution to OHC
this cuddly <a href=”https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2021/01/14/TELEMMGLPICT000248614027_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqmDcmHq7RwIwNcy5dd_yl9djaa42ADyAijk5gxqtuYrI.jpeg?imwidth=1260 “> poly bear had enough of snow and ice </a> and is trying to hitch a lift somewhere warmer
Link embedding not working ?! ):
The polar bear is probably saying “I hate this new fangled tinned food”
“Off the USA’s west coast, uncontrolled bottom trawling extirpated several species. So, fishery managers implemented a complete fishing ban,”
They never stopped fishing in Canadian waters all the way up to Alaska, however.
Does anyone have any info on Newfoundland banks cod fishery . I was under the impression that it was fished out at the turn of the century? Any sign of recovery? Likewise I am told that lack of cod and haddock in UK due to recent overfishing has lead to a proliferation of jellyfish which as a slight compensation are predated upon by langoustines which at least are sellable. I dont know but would appreciate a response from someone knowledgeable
alastair
Regards. jellyfish blooms, they are mostly the result of natural ocean oscillations.
Read: Recurrent jellyfish blooms are a consequence of global oscillations, by Condon 2012
Regards the cod fishery read Northern cod comeback by Rose and Rowe 2015
https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full/10.1139/cjfas-2015-0346
If you cant download the papers email me at naturalclimatechange@earthlink.net , and I’ll send you the PDF. I would also suggest using Google scholar and searching for the title of those papers. They will provide a. link to all the research that later cited their papers. You can sort by most recent to find the latest informationb
Here is Rose’s abastract, “The great “northern” cod (Gadus morhua) stock, formerly among the world’s largest and the icon for depletion and supposed nonrecovery of marine fishes, is making a major comeback after nearly two decades of attrition and fishery moratorium. Using acoustic-trawl surveys of the main prespawning and spawning components of the stock, we show that biomass has increased from tens of thousands of tonnes to >200 thousand tonnes within the last decade. The increase was signalled by massive schooling behaviour in late winter first observed in 2008 in the southern range of the stock (Bonavista Corridor) after an absence for 15 years, perhaps spurred by immigration. Increases in size composition and fish condition and apparent declines inmortality followed, leading to growth rates approaching 30% per annum. In the spring of 2015, large increases in cod abundance and size composition were observed for the first time since the moratorium in the more northerly spawning groups of this stock complex. The cod rebound has paralleled increases in the abundance of capelin (Mallotus villosus), whose abundance declined rapidly in the cold early 1990s but has recently increased during a period of warm ocean temperatures. With continued growth in the capelin stock and frugal management (low fishing mortality), this stock could rebuild, perhaps within less than a decade, to historical levels of sustainable yield. More generally, if this stock can recover, the potential exists for recovery of many other depleted stocks worldwide.
Condon, R. H., and 21 other authors. 2013. Recurrent jellyfish blooms are a consequence of global oscillations. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 110:1000-1005.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1210920110
Anyone who claims that we can measure the oceans temperature to 0.1C, much less 0.0009C is lying.
Heck, anyone who claims we can measure the temperature of the oceans to within 1C is stretching the truth to the breaking point.
And that’s not a single measurement.
They are claiming a difference of 0.009°C, an increase.
That’s at least two measurements with the combined error being not worthy of mention compared with 0.009°C.
Climatology should be classified as an arts degree. It’s very imaginative.
Kip wrote, “Oddly, 0.216°F is added to the ARGO data. “
Kip’s hyperlink references the fraud-on-science that was the Karl, et al, 2015 Science mag paper written at the behest of the Obama WH OSTP in the lead-up to the Paris COP21 betrayal of the West to China. The Pause was a seen as a serious PR issue in selling the Paris agreement sell-out that had to be “corrected” in a prestigious journal to give it cred. (as an aside: Marcia McNutt, the Editor in Chief at Science mag then was a key player in getting the Karl Pause-buster paper a quick pal-review and publishing).
For all the manifest deceptions of the Karl 2015 SciMag paper, they did not use the Argo data and they clearly said so. The Argo data destroys their arguments. They wrote in the supplement to their paper the following on the ERSST v4 adjustment they used, where they corrected more accurate fixed buoy SST data with less accurate ship SST data while retaining the statistical properties of the buoy data. That was a clear statistical fraud on Herr Karl’s part.
They wrote in the Supplement to their fraud paper (my bold for empahsis):
“Sea Surface Temperature:
ERSST v4 provides monthly sea surface temperature anomalies with respect to the 1971-2000 base period for a global 2ox2o grid. The gridded field is produced from ship and buoy sea surface temperatures in the ICOADS release 2.5 data set (29) using bias correction and Empirical Orthogonal Teleconnection methodologies as described in (13). The addition of buoy data in recent decades has been particularly important as the spatial coverage from ship observations has decreased since the 1990’s (cf. Fig. 1(a) in (13)).
As stated in this article, three of the 11 major improvements incorporated into ERSST version 4 had by far the largest impact on the trend during the recent “hiatus” period (2000-2014). To make the buoy data equivalent to ship data on average requires a straightforward addition of 0.12°C to each buoy observation. This impacts the trend only because the number of buoys and percentage of38 coverage by buoys has increased over this period.
In addition, because buoy data were determined to have less noise than ship data (greater precision), another improvement was to give buoy data more weight when using Empirical Orthogonal Teleconnections to reconstruct SST (see equation 3 in (13)). With this correction, the buoy data have now been homogeneously integrated with the ship data. This resulted in additional warming. The factor that contributed the largest change in SST trends over this period was continuing to make corrections to ship data after 1941. These corrections are based on information derived from night marine air temperature. This correction cools the ship data a bit more in 1998-2000 than it does in the later years, which thereby adds to the warming trend. To evaluate the robustness of this correction, trends of the corrected and uncorrected ship data were compared to co-located buoy data without the offset added. As the buoy data did not include the offset the buoy data are independent of the ship data. The trend of uncorrected ship minus buoy data was -0.066°C dec-1 over the period 2000-2014, while the trend in corrected ship minus buoy data was -0.002°C dec-1 that these time dependent ship adjustments did indeed correct an artifact in ship data impacting the trend over this hiatus period.
In our current analyses we do not include Argo buoys because of the relatively small
additional spatial coverage (the floats are submerged for much of their lifetimes). As an example for December 2014, the number of Argo floats that measured SSTs are only about 1% of those from buoys and about 14% of those from ship observations. Note that most Argo floats shut down at 5 m or deeper depths to protect against bio-fouling. Although little impact is expected on the global trends by including the Argo float observed SSTs, their contribution may become larger in some localized regions in the Southern Ocean and other places where measurements from surface drifters, moored buoys and ships are limited. In the next version of ERSST, we will analyze Argo floats’ regional impacts, and if merited, we will include these data in future version. In order to include the Argo float SSTs, we will need to carefully calibrate the Argo float SSTs against ship and surface drifter/moored buoy SSTs, just as we did for the buoy-ship SST inter-calibrations in the current version of ERSST that is used in this paper.”
(end excerpt of Karl et al, 2015 Supplement)
=======
In a followup paper, the “ship-buoy SST adj.” of 0.12ºC created such a glaring statistical error in the 1951-2012 period (to get rid of the Pause) that NOAA-NCEI (NCDC) had to do something.
See figure 7b, 9th parameter, in this paper published by NOAA in May 2016.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/29/9/jcli-d-15-0430.1.xml
About 2 yeas later in 2017, after Herr Karl had retired from NOAA-govt service, a new version, ERSST v5 was published to correct (walk back) some of the SST data adjustments embarrassments that had been committed in NOAA’s name. It was in ERSST v5 that Argo data was incorporated and “adjusted” by 0.03ºC, ostensibly claimed the adj was to match the fixed buoy data which records temps at 0.2 meters below the surface where the Argo is at 5 meters just before it surfaces to start sending data.
NOAA writes about ERSST v5 Argo-buoy with:
“The buoy–Argo SST difference may be associated with the two types of different instruments and/or two different observing depths. Specifically, the depth of Argo SST (above 5-m depth) may not match with the depth of buoy floats (nominally 0.2 m). The mean difference of 0.03°C, albeit small, might not be trivial to the short-term SST trend since the number of Argo observations is increasing. Therefore, Argo SSTs are adjusted accordingly in ERSSTv5.”
Ref: (here for more on ERSST v5 “adjustments” to buoy and Argo data.)
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/30/20/jcli-d-16-0836.1.xml#s3
The obvious conclusion for me is that all of the Mann-Trenberth claimed SST warming is easily contained within the NOAA ERSST v5 Argo adjustment that is largely a Wild-assed guess (WAG) by NOAA.
Thanks Joel for adding the details about how bad Karl’s adjustments to the Argo data were. Writing this article for the general public in a newspaper limits me. Bt here on WUWT we have many well informed readers that appreciate your further comments.
Jim, Sorry I called you Kip. My bad. Kip’s a nice guy too I hear.
If your adjustments are an order of magnitude greater than the signal you claim to have found, then you are fooling yourself. You haven’t found anything.
The CCP is fishing the world including territorial waters of other countries….slave labor aboard their ships has been identified….frozen salmon from Norway to China has been rejected as carrying the virus…..fish farms in China have a reputation as the most toxic in the world.
World has nothing to fear of global warming, it has been there before. What humanity needs to be concerned about is the AI designed viruses. I dont think much of Elon Musk’s pronouncements and particularly not keen on him naming battery powered car after one of the greatest inventors the world has ever known, but his warning of the AI controlled by evil humans should not be ignored.
Of course, we have very good observational evidence (not just modeled) that the surface temperature of the open ocean hits a hard stop at about 30C (86F). At this temperature, any addition power inputs are matched by loss mechanisms at least as great.
So the tropical oceans are the LAST place we would expect to see any dramatic ramifications from “warming”.
Wow, such an insight. In the Sea of Cortez (look it up, I am tired of telling people where this is.) the Mexican fisherman is taking smaller and smaller fish to satisfy the market. Taking shark fins is normal, although in 10 years of snorkeling the “Sea” I never saw a single shark. Is that because they are taking them all? But there are several island in the Sea and one in particular is protected from fishing. It is right in the middle of the Sea (Isla San Pedro Martir) so not many fisherman go there. The fish of all species are prolific. But if Mexico continues to allow their fisherman to take the fish even this island will be devastated. The Mexican fisheries people tell us that the fish can recover but it will take the will of the people and elected officials to make it happen. P.S. Mexicans don’t give a hoot about the environment.
Jim,
As with all your posts, I find myself wishing for more! It is so refreshing to have a highly qualified voice giving us positive news and hope for a better future! I hope all is well in Pacifica and that someday I can get back to view the Mavericks surfing contest in person!
Encore! Encore! Bravo!
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future” – Yogi Berra
“To be fair, it’s extremely difficult to measure the oceans’ heat content. To improve our knowledge, a world-wide array of floating buoys, ARGO, was established by 2003 to measure temperature down to 2000 meters and periodically transmits data via satellite.
However, ARGO data also reported cooler temperatures than previous less reliable ship measurements.
Oddly, 0.216°F is added to the ARGO data. Such a large adjustment makes the estimated increase of 0.016°F/year highly uncertain.”
Odd maybe, but the cause is not unknown:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OceanCooling/page1.php
Interesting article. Three points arise from it.
1) Global Warming is mainly (four fifths) warming of the oceans.
2) We cannot measure the warming of the oceans. All we can do is model it and adjust the measurements to match.
3) Volcanoes may be important but as the warming is too small to measure we cannot know that.
In summary: AGW is academically stimulating but not of general interest.
Seriously, NASA, you think it’s ok to use such divisive language on your official website?
“Earth’s delicate web of life.”
These alarmists are always inserting adjectives like “fragile” or delicate with zero basis for that claim.
I’d say any system which can withstand swings from tropical to glacial there and back many times is better described as being robust, than fragile.
But it is hard to protect against a large mob such as so many fishing fleets.
Plus many, Jim. As an ardent hunter/fisher conservationist since many decades, I would only observe that prudent simple conservation measures almost always suffice, per examples Ducks and Trout Unlimited.
Three simple examples from my SW Wisconsin beloved Uplands dairy farm.
The predator wolf, coyote, fox populations were decimated 2 centuries ago. The results inevitable on the prey population. The sick were not eliminated quickly. CWD exploded.
The family Lupus are CWD-immune due to millennia of selection against.
Junk science. Nothing but junk science.
The Oceans already collapsed by in the 1970s. Paul Ehrlich said so, so it must be true.
I was 16 when Ted Danson (you remember him right?) was saying the oceans would be dead within 10 years. I was skeptical then and when that, and many other prognostications, didn’t pan out then that’s when I started questioning everything.