Fukushima theory gaining traction?

[CaptnJack]

lol, Mods...think I should win some sort of award for this thread imo

Here you go...

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[spatman]

lol, Mods...think I should win some sort of award for this thread imo

[AdrianSmith]

[SSpiffyDiver]

A bigger version that won't fit in the forum: http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/radiation.png

[Jeremy]

lol, Mods...think I should win some sort of award for this thread imo

Here you go...

star.png

That's perfect

Gratefully accepted. Someone needed to shine the light of truth on this important topic imo.

[spatman]

Someone needed to shine the light of truth on this important topic imo.

And thanks to you, other members got to do exactly that.

[AdrianSmith]

Someone needed to shine the light of truth on this important topic imo.

And thanks to you, other members got to do exactly that.

^^this.

-Adrian

[Jeremy]

Second wave is hitting and the evidence keeps piling up.

Now pacific coast sea birds are all dying out.

I'm sure the sheeple will keep drinking their fluoride and watching the teevee though...nothing to see here

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6411188

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Scientists are trying to figure out what's behind the deaths of seabirds that have been found by the hundreds along the Pacific Coast since October.

Mass die-offs of the small, white-bellied gray birds known as Cassin's aucklets have been reported from British Columbia to San Luis Obispo, California.

It's normal for some seabirds to die during harsh winter conditions, especially during big storms, but the scale of the current die-off is unusual.

"To be this lengthy and geographically widespread, I think is kind of unprecedented," Phillip Johnson, executive director of the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, told the Salem Statesman Journal (http://stjr.nl/1CZBwvU). "It's an interesting and somewhat mysterious event."

[CaptnJack]

Yes and its killing the dang starfish like crazy too! According to my grandpappy, back when they were testing warheads in the Pacific was even worse and there were no birds or starfish at all! Thank god they recolonized through the Panama canal.

[cofford]

[spatman]

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[Linedog]

[pogiguy05]

SQUIRREL

[lamont]

Science? The science says it isn't bacteria, isn't viral, isn't fungal. I'm ruling out bananas and smoke detectors imo. I'll go with huge nuclear accident that was due to hit our shores at this time for $1000 Alex.

The science says its viral, you couldn't possibly be more incorrect:

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/48/17278.abstract

[Linedog]

[CaptnJack]

Science? The science says it isn't bacteria, isn't viral, isn't fungal. I'm ruling out bananas and smoke detectors imo. I'll go with huge nuclear accident that was due to hit our shores at this time for $1000 Alex.

The science says its viral, you couldn't possibly be more incorrect:

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/48/17278.abstract

I will go with "aliens" as least correct.

[johndo88]

If you're worried about Fukushima, you'd better take down the smoke detectors in your house, move to a concrete-free building, and stop eating bananas. They all have orders of magnitude more radioactivity than you'll ever get from Fukushima.

Oh GREAT!!!!

*throws bananas at smoke detectors

cofford is right about bananas. Check out this video about where the most radioactive place on earth is (and you will be surprised by the ending).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRL7o2kPqw0

*throws bananas as YouTube

[Linedog]

I watched the video, I'm not eating bananas or becoming an astronaut.

[Jeremy]

Science? The science says it isn't bacteria, isn't viral, isn't fungal. I'm ruling out bananas and smoke detectors imo. I'll go with huge nuclear accident that was due to hit our shores at this time for $1000 Alex.

The science says its viral, you couldn't possibly be more incorrect:

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/48/17278.abstract

People confuse causality all the time, especially scientists. Yes, a viral pathogen has been associated with the wasting disease. But what caused the virus to mutate into such a killing machine? I googled that question because I like to think for myself. Someone named Yahoo Commenter Paul said:

"Yes. Radiation damages nucleic acids so can lead to mutations in anything that has a nucleic acid genome including viruses. Killing the virus is the most likely outcome but there is a chance of a mutation that benefits the virus which would be worse for the host organism. I teach biology."

Radiation? Well, Fukushima radiation is hitting us now. Chance that this could be bad bad news for any host organisms? Millions of starfish are raising their arms (if they had any) saying "Yeah, this is bad news imo!"

Now we have dead birds on top of that. Who knows what will be hit next?

[spatman]

The wasting syndrome had occurred in smaller amounts prior to Fukushima, with cases reported as far back as the '70s. I'm certainly not an expert like Yahoo Commentator Paul, but I would think that the two are not directly related.

[lamont]

Science? The science says it isn't bacteria, isn't viral, isn't fungal. I'm ruling out bananas and smoke detectors imo. I'll go with huge nuclear accident that was due to hit our shores at this time for $1000 Alex.

The science says its viral, you couldn't possibly be more incorrect:

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/48/17278.abstract

People confuse causality all the time, especially scientists. Yes, a viral pathogen has been associated with the wasting disease. But what caused the virus to mutate into such a killing machine? I googled that question because I like to think for myself. Someone named Yahoo Commenter Paul said:

"Yes. Radiation damages nucleic acids so can lead to mutations in anything that has a nucleic acid genome including viruses. Killing the virus is the most likely outcome but there is a chance of a mutation that benefits the virus which would be worse for the host organism. I teach biology."

Radiation? Well, Fukushima radiation is hitting us now. Chance that this could be bad bad news for any host organisms? Millions of starfish are raising their arms (if they had any) saying "Yeah, this is bad news imo!"

Now we have dead birds on top of that. Who knows what will be hit next?

You're correct about not understanding the causes. We don't know if this is a random mutation and just happened to occur now or if we did something to stress the environment and loaded the dice up so that this was much more likely to occur. And the authors of the scientific paper addressed this as an open question, the scientists do actually know what they're talking about, and they didn't ignore that question.

However, your attribution to Fukushima as a possibility is just flatly wrong and physically not possible. The radiation from Fukushima is not magical radiation it is just like the rest of the background radiation and there's not enough of it to matter. The list of possible human causes that might have influenced this virus developing include all the changes that we've done to the nearshore in puget sound and all the runoff and dumping we've done into puget sound, plus the possibility of global warning and ocean acidification and other changes. Its also not a new thing to be seeing changes in puget sound. The sharks disappeared from Elliott Bay years ago, did the radiation from Fukushima travel backwards in time and do something to them as well? Since your thesis seems to be that all the changes we're seeing in biodiversity in Puget Sound are due to Fukushima you're going to need to come up with a hypothetical time traveling radioactive isotope (tardisonium) which caused that to happen as well.

Your theory is physically ridiculous and will only distract from efforts to understand the real stress that we're putting onto Puget Sound and if you really care about the biodiversity loss and not just tinfoil hat conspiracies then you need to stop. Please.

[CaptnJack]

Seriously, Lamont was quite gracious in his rebuttal, try to accept its not relevant.

[ljjames]

OK, I know a lot of this has been tongue in cheek, but I'll bite anyway. Richard and the other scientists could probably explain all this a lot better and i've been working on putting this all in a blog, but since people need something to blame (human nature) I'll take a stab at it anyway.

Puget Sound has been in a downward spiral for years.

Last I heard (a couple weeks ago at a science conference), approximately 64% of its shorelines are armored (seen as big walls blocking erosion) - meaning the nearshore environment is changed due to water/wave action. In the armored area (big rock walls, pilings, concrete etc..) there is less sediment due to the agitation kicking it up into the water column and the longshore current blowing it away , meaning less eelgrass (puget sound's nursery) and the forage fish beaches are altered to be far less hospitable to the spawning fish who need a nice mix of sand and gravel. (small fish eat plankton, salmon, marine mammals and sea birds eat small fish, orca's eat salmon...)

Additionally the riparian zone (that area where trees and things used to slide onto the beach, along rivers/lakes/streams/puget sound) is gone so there is minimal shade for eggs and baby fish, and fewer bugs and things to eat.

Forage fish populations in some areas are at all time lows.

Chinook Salmon are at <10% historic levels, Coho wavering around 10% (likely due in part to pre-spawn mortality caused by stormwater runoff and loss of habitat for spawning)

Southern Resident fish-eating Orcas (who's population is food limited, and who's decline is likely unrelated to the captures of the 70's) are hanging on by a thread and the built up toxics in their bodies are liberated in times of limited food (because they survive on their blubber and the blubber was storing the chemicals)

Increasing human population is dumping massive amounts of polluted stormwater runoff and don't forget the nitrates and phosphates from our secondary treated poop water (we can do better!)

The rivers running into Puget Sound are coming from dramatically impaired watersheds, with minimal trees along the shoreline, this lack of shade allows increased water temperature. As we know, temperature increase can change things just enough for microbes to prosper, and fish to wane. Dams slow the water causing additional warming, and our buggered up, wild wild west, use it or loose it water rights + agriculture suck it dry. All this means not enough water for salmon and the water that is there is too warm (i'm not even going to get into the hatchery and harvest discussion)

The water that does make down the rivers and into the sound, is full of pollutants, both agricultural and urban.

The plankton cycle is messed up, and the nitrogen balance has been impacted (read: more transient dead zones, less good plankton making it to the bottom for critters to eat)

Water comes into Puget Sound from the ocean at a fairly stable and known ratio of nitrogen and silicate concentrations, and then start declining. Declines in the Si:DIN ratio can be an indication that human induced nitrogen inputs are increasing, which, strangely might be explained by population growth around Puget Sound and few of the permits for the sewage treatment facilities requiring nitrogen limits or even reporting of nitrogen concentrations in their effluent, which makes it hard to even gauge the trends and impact over time.

This is just the tip of the proverbial melting iceberg.

This is an eco-system, a food web, and there are tons of small changes that I imagine we don't even realize yet. I haven't mentioned sea stars specifically but I'll say this: On our piling transects it hasn't been just the starfish going away, I've documented a huge shift in biodiversity. Rockfish and perch have moved on, anemones and crabs have diminished, everything has changed. Chicken or egg... Why were there fish when there were starfish and there are none now?

So quite simply, there are at least a dozen other reasons I see off the top of my head that could have finally hit a tipping point impacting the water and pushing the immune system of the sea stars to a point where they couldn't handle whatever else was thrown at them, be it a mutated bug, something that came in via ballast water, or goodness knows what.

I have references for all these statements in triplicate for those who are really curious and want to learn more.

Richard et al, please correct any miscommunications etc.

<stepping off soap-box>

[lamont]

Its also just a huge cop-out to blame it all on the nuclear reactor meltdown half a world away and not accept any possible responsibility for yourself. Its a great way to blame it all on something you clearly don't understand so that you don't have to think or do anything hard yourself (all the while, of course, acting like you're the hard thinker who asks the tough questions that the "scientists" are too simplistic to understand to keep your own ego optimally inflated).

[CaptnJack]

All that Laura and Lamont said...

Also, perhaps 3 or 4 years ago (JanK has tons of pics of this) there were seastars piled on top of seastars. They were frigging everywhere. Its not at all unusual for an existing, or slightly altered pathogen to sweep through a population like that. Viruses are incredibly dynamic organisms (although they are not technically alive) being just a slice of RNA in a protein coat. They don't need a miniscule increase in background radiation in order to "mutate" like some sort of oceanic Godzilla. They are constantly altering their genome swapping little bits of genetic code with other viruses that co-infect any eukaryotic hosts as well as swapping genetic code with their bacterial hosts - the vast majority of viruses actually infect bacteria. The starfish wasting virus has been around for decades and we don't know what caused the current outbreak. The scientific method will never be able to rule out radiation (can't prove a negative), but its so far down the plausible scale that its not worth spending money investigating.