Our Common Endangered Brook Trout

[FishTales]

Think about it!

http://fishandboat.com/images/people/exec_dir/straight_talk/2016_05_06_brook.pdf

 

[RLeep2]

That is grim...

It also tends to put a lot of the fussing about angling methods in special reg areas in perspective.

I hope we can overcome our navel gazing and collective I-me-mine fixation long enough to stand and do the right thing, not only for the brook trout and our coldwater fisheries, but also for our kids, grandkids and their grandkids.

Given our track record as a species, I can't say I can drum up a whole lot of optimism that we will do so.

Thanks, John.

 

[BrookieChaser]

So the PFBC knows of Aldo Leopold's "Land Ethic", but ignores it.

 

[foxtrapper1972]

Brookie- I saw that too. Leopold makes for a good short quote in an article but he would be considered a radical in our time. If you read the rest of his essay from which this quote was taken he is challenging the whole way we think of our selves in relation to the natural world. (He challenges the notion that the natural world is just there for man's use, to plunder or "use" for our benefit.) At any rate it would require some sort of gov't regulations to make any meaningful change and we know how many people feel about more regulations. We are only now seeing some benefit from the Clean Water Act and only in some places. The system and ethic that is now prevalent doesn't favor the Brook Trout.

 

[ryansheehan]

Brook trout have survived many climate changes, not to go political but the heating and cooling of the planet has gone on long before us and will continue after us. I feel like more focus on things we can control, like clean water and stocking over natives (just to name a few) would yield much better results. Not looking to get into an argument about global warming just wonder about how limited resources can have the greatest effect on the population.

 

[Maurice]

RLeep2 wrote:
That is grim...

It also tends to put a lot of the fussing about angling methods in special reg areas in perspective.

I hope we can overcome our navel gazing and collective I-me-mine fixation long enough to stand and do the right thing, not only for the brook trout and our coldwater fisheries, but also for our kids, grandkids and their grandkids.

Given our track record as a species, I can't say I can drum up a whole lot of optimism that we will do so.

Thanks, John.

I will do what I can but naval gazing is one thing I will not give up. So forgive me if that means the death of a species.

 

[foxtrapper1972]

I vote for more navel gazing and less world domination. The Brook Trout thank you.

 

[CRB]

One needs to put into perspective climate change will swing the opposite way and start a global cooling/freezing event. The last part is often over looked. when one swings the pendulum, it will swing evenly the opposite way.
The brook trout in PA are for the most part just wild hatchery strain fish due to the effects of the late 19th early 20th century logging and the stocking of streams decimated by harvest and fires over the entire woodlands of our state. The best ares for finding heritage strain brookTrout would be the northern most part of the range in Canada.

 

[lineman]

Chicken Little syndrome......political bunk. According to "climatologists" predictions from 20 years ago, we are supposed to be in an man caused ice age now in 2016.

 

[troutbert]

CRB wrote:
One needs to put into perspective climate change will swing the opposite way and start a global cooling/freezing event. The last part is often over looked. when one swings the pendulum, it will swing evenly the opposite way.

Why do you think so?

 

[ryansheehan]

troutbert wrote:

CRB wrote:
One needs to put into perspective climate change will swing the opposite way and start a global cooling/freezing event. The last part is often over looked. when one swings the pendulum, it will swing evenly the opposite way.

Why do you think so?

It's an excuse "climatologists " use when their models don't come true, every time.
If you can't predict you don't have science.

 

[pcray1231]

Global warming certainly won't be "good" for trout, and we would almost certainly lose some streams.

That said, I think the doomsday scenarios it paints for trout in PA is pretty ridiculous. They paint broad areas as "cold" or "warm". That just ain't how it works. Last I checked there were warmwater streams in the areas they say are currently cold, and there are coldwater streams in the areas they say are currently warm (such as NW PA).

A better way to look at it is this. IF we take the 3 degrees C by 2100 as gospel. That's roughly 5 degrees F. And we'll assume the increase is year round (rather than just winter, which would be a better case, or just summer, which would be worse)

Now, lets compare some average yearly temperatures around PA (which corresponds pretty well to the temp of groundwater discharge, limestone and freestone alike).

Coudersport: 44 F
State College: 50 F
Allentown: 51 F
Pittsburgh: 52 F
Reading: 52 F
Harrisburg: 54 F

So, uh, Coudersport would have average temperatures more similar to State College. State College would be more similar to Harrisburg. etc.

Now a few examples from the mid-Atlantic:

Roanoke, VA: 57 F
Asheville, NC: 57 F

So Pittsburgh, Reading, etc. would be more like these more southerly locations. Which, last I checked, had plenty of wild trout fishing in their vicinities.

I'm not trying to claim "all is well" here. We certainly could have a substantial reduction of wild trout streams, and it's reason for concern. But lets not pretend that ALL of them would disappear, and there wouldn't be any wild trout left at all. There are wild trout in Georgia today. You think we'll be a warmer climate than Georgia?

 

[pcray1231]

Brook trout have survived many climate changes, not to go political but the heating and cooling of the planet has gone on long before us and will continue after us.

As a species, yes. In certain locations, no.

Certainly during those glaciation cycles their range has advanced and retreated across broader expanses than the state of PA. I don't think anyone was saying the brook trout will be gone from EARTH. Just PA. Which I disagree with (outlined above), but for different reasons than you. A swing of 15 or 20 degrees, like has happened in the geologic past, would indeed drive them totally out of PA, but not to extinction globally.

But a 15 or 20 degree rise in temps by 2100 is well beyond what even the most bullish projections say for global warming.

 

[troutbert]

ryansheehan wrote:

troutbert wrote:

CRB wrote:
One needs to put into perspective climate change will swing the opposite way and start a global cooling/freezing event. The last part is often over looked. when one swings the pendulum, it will swing evenly the opposite way.

Why do you think so?

It's an excuse "climatologists " use when their models don't come true, every time.
If you can't predict you don't have science.

I don't think that pendulum idea came from climatologists.

 

[franklin]

pcray1231 wrote:
Global warming certainly won't be "good" for trout, and we would almost certainly lose some streams.

That said, I think the doomsday scenarios it paints for trout in PA is pretty ridiculous. They paint broad areas as "cold" or "warm". That just ain't how it works. Last I checked there were warmwater streams in the areas they say are currently cold, and there are coldwater streams in the areas they say are currently warm (such as NW PA).

Yep. There are similar maps showing wide swaths of sea level rise. Some show my house, currently sitting at 260 ft above sea level, as being under water in 100 years.

 

[pcray1231]

TB, it did and it didn't. I don't think any scientists call it a "pendulum". But there is talk of a tipping points which could kick off global cooling, even an ice age. Or accelerating the warming. There are all kinds of positive and negative feedback mechanisms in climate, and how they all shake out is at best educated guesswork.

"The day after tomorrow" was a Hollywood movie over dramatizing one of them. Not the doomsday storms and overnight change of course. But of melting ice in polar regions adding fresh water to polar oceans and slowing or shutting down thermohaline circulations, which are responsible for moving much of the earths heat from equatorial to polar regions. The result would favor cooling over most of the earth, but warming at the equator.

Another example is that large volcanic eruptions tend to happen with a warming earth. Large magma chambers stew for a few extra million years when covered by miles of glaciers. As those thin, boom. And large eruptions put sulfur in the atmosphere and cause short-lived mini ice ages.

But there are plenty of positive feedbacks too. Meaning warming can cause more warming.

 

[CRB]

Yes that fresh water melting from the poles will sink and start to disrupt the warm currents. The only reason Europe is warm is because of these currents and they have been disrupted in the past.
Every thing is interconnected. Sun spots a decrease in the suns radiation, cosmic events and the planet earth are all likely to recur.
Surfing the web on historical events also tell the story of climate change in the past.

 

[troutbert]

pcray1231 wrote:

I don't think any scientists call it a "pendulum". But there is talk of a tipping points which could kick off global cooling, even an ice age.

If anyone has links to scientists writing about how global warming could cause some sort reaction or feedback that leads to global cooling, please post em up.

 

[franklin]

troutbert wrote:

pcray1231 wrote:

I don't think any scientists call it a "pendulum". But there is talk of a tipping points which could kick off global cooling, even an ice age.

If anyone has links to scientists writing about how global warming could cause some sort reaction or feedback that leads to global cooling, please post em up.

Increased temps leading to increased water vapor in atmosphere leading to increased reflection of sunlight leading to cooling.

Some models show a flattening of global temps later in this century partially due to this.

There are also studies appearing which predict increased foliage growth in what is currently tundra leading to increased absorption of CO2 causing a temperature mitigation.

 

[pcray1231]

Yes that fresh water melting from the poles will sink and start to disrupt the warm currents.

Got that backwards. Salty water is heavier than fresh water. Salty water also gets colder than freshwater before freezing. And coldwater is heavier than warm water.

Hence, normally the ice forms, causing the remaining water to get saltier, which gets colder. Salty cold water becomes more dense than the water underneath it, and it sinks. The displacement pulls warmer water in from the south (or north in the southern hemisphere), which proceeds to do the same. This turnover drives those warm currents.

A fresh water influx would prevent it from getting saltier, and prevent it from getting colder without freezing, so it wouldn't become more dense and wouldn't sink and the "engine" for the currents slows or shuts off.

If anyone has links to scientists writing about how global warming could cause some sort reaction or feedback.

I will when I have the time. There are literally thousands of them. I wrote one of them.

Some feedbacks are positive (warming leads to increased warming). Examples include loss of ice cover, which means the earth absorbs more sun. Another is the melting of permafrost, which traps a huge amount of methane, which, when released, is a very strong greenhouse gas.

Other feedbacks are negative, such as the above mentioned thermohaline circulation and volcanic effects. As well as plant life soaking up more CO2 as more CO2 becomes available.

There are lots and lots of papers examining each, trying to identify tipping points, and so forth. As to what the net effect of all of them combined is, nobody really claims to know for sure, so they're just measuring them as separate entities.