bloom
scientists have discovered that melting arctic ice leads to algae blooms. apparently this was unexpected. though it jibes with a theory i posted a while ago. heh. "theory". which in this case means wild-assed guess. anywho, the thinking goes like this. once every 100k years or so the earth's orbit gets a bit more eccentric than usual. this causes the earth to move through parts of the solar system it doesn't usually go. places where there's lots of accumulated dust. which the earth scoops up. much of which falls on ice. cause the eccentricity means the earth spends more time farther from the sun. and colder. as the ice melts. this solar windfall of dust and fresh water acts as fertilizer. plants go crazy. earth warms and ice melts faster. it's what i call the fertilizer theory. cause i could be full of shit. as far as i know, no one's actually done any research on it. maybe they will now though. cause the recently discovered algae blooms might just be enabled by nutrients released from melting arctic ice.