Automobile tires, not climate change, are killing West Coast salmon – IOTW Report

Automobile tires, not climate change, are killing West Coast salmon

AmericanThinker

By Anthony Watts

From the “where the rubber meets the road” department comes this bombshell finding that flies in the face of claims about the universal boogeyman of “climate change” killing salmon due to it supposedly raising water temperatures in streams where they spawn.

Just last year, PBS and Popular Science were screaming about “climate change” being the cause of salmon deaths with headlines like “Climate Change is Killing Salmon in the Pacific Northwest” and “Climate change is cooking salmon in the Pacific Northwest.”

It seems they were wrong — dead wrong.

New research from the University of Washington published December 3 in the journal Science, exonerates “climate change” in the salmon-killing caper and finds a surprise villain: an additive to automobile tires, not “climate change.”  In fact, the researchers specifically ruled out climate change-driven water temperature increases as a cause.

Basically, the process works like this: stormwater runoff carries tire wear rubber particles into streams from the nearby roads, where a chemical called 6PPD-quinone, a biproduct from the 6PPD preservative added on tires to prevent breakdown by ozone, leaches into the water.  It has been determined that this chemical is highly toxic to salmon.  Researchers say they identified 6PPD-quinone as the “smoking gun” behind salmon deaths in freshwater streams. more

22 Comments on Automobile tires, not climate change, are killing West Coast salmon

  1. Could be something to this. We have several old tires in our yard and not a damn salmon to be found. (Then again, it might have something to do with living in the high desert.)

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  2. A twofer for the climate crazies; If it weren’t for those climate changing cars there would be no tires so cars and their tires must be eliminated, for the safety of humanity and the planet.

    This is how this is going to be “spun”.

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  3. @TimBuktu:

    Those salmon just have to stop walking across the freeways. It’s simple.

    Clearly, we need an emergency federal program to paint SALMON CROSSING lines on all the interstates and have federal crossing guards stop all traffic when a salmon gets within, say, 10 miles of the highway. Funding will surely come from a $500 per tire excise tax retroactive to 1990 (you KNOW they have all your credit card transaction data).

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  4. @TimBuktu & Uncle Al

    In northern Arizona we have at least one “experimental elk crossing.”

    Leaving aside all the questions (Are they for experimental elk or are they experimental crossings? Either way, how do the elk know?), I propose an experimental salmon crossing.

    They’re both delicious enough that they deserve crossing.

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  5. Gill nets and no monitoring by the tribal police.
    Or hey take your fifty salmon that have been In the water for 3 days and sell them. That’s the way it is. most is only good for pet food.
    Then Indians get 50 % of the catch here of all fish and shell fish. Most do not take care of their catch.
    Lazy and want a hand out. Not all.

  6. Up here in North Maine, the enviroterrorists had a law passed that requires all brooks, streams and rivers to have a natural bottom when crossed by a road, which means no culverts. Even small trickles of water have to have a bridge with a gravel bottom, all for Atlantic salmon that haven’t been here for 200 years.

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