DocWatch Ocean Acidification It's the chemistry, stupid.
Ocean acidification may be the worst crime committed by our humble species. Much of the extra CO2 we produce is absorbed by the ocean. Ocean water plus CO2 produces carbonic acid. Calcium carbonate doesn't form well in increased acidity; consequently life forms that build themselves with calcium carbonate suffer. Ooops! Ocean acidity is decreasing the fecundity of many phytoplankton (at the base of the ocean food chain), wiping out baby clams and mussels, and stifling coral. And it's just beginning! Wait till the acidity increases even more: jellyfish gumbo tonight, guys?
Wed, Jan 13, 2016 from Australia ABC News: Baby fish may get lost in silent oceans as carbon dioxide rises Future oceans will be much quieter places, making it harder for young marine animals that navigate using sound to find their way back home, new research has found. Under acidification levels predicted for the end of the century, fish larvae will cease to respond to the auditory cues that present-day species use to orient themselves, scientists reported in the journal Biology Letters. ...
Sat, Nov 7, 2015 from PhysOrg: A small increase of ocean acidification => dramatic shift in ocean habitats Rising levels of CO2 released by anthropogenic activities are driving unprecedented changes in the chemistry of the oceans. The mean ocean surface acidity has increased by a near 30 percent [since] the advent of the Industrial Revolution....
"The present study shows that moderate acidification observed in a CO2 vent system leads to a dramatic shift in highly diverse and structurally complex benthic habitats thriving at depths rarely explored in terms of ocean acidification effects", explains Cristina Linares, Ramon y Cajal researcher at the University of Barcelona, first author of the paper and coordinator of the project LIFE+INDEMARES.
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Mon, Aug 10, 2015 from Dahr Jamail, via TruthOut: The New Climate "Normal": Abrupt Sea Level Rise and Predictions of Civilization Collapse ... As if that's not enough, Hansen's study comes on the heels of another study published in Science, which shows that global sea levels could rise by at least 20 feet, even if governments manage to keep global temperature increases to within the agreed upon "safe" limit of 2 degrees Celsius.... Disconcertingly, another new "normal" this month comes in the form of huge plumes of wildfire smoke over the Arctic. At the time of this writing, well over 12 million acres of forest and tundra in Canada and Alaska have burned in wildfires, and the smoke covering the Arctic sea ice is yet another anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) amplifying feedback loop that will accelerate melting there. The additional smoke further warms the atmosphere that quickens the melting of the Arctic ice pack....
"The results show that based on plausible climate trends, and a total failure to change course, the global food supply system would face catastrophic losses, and an unprecedented epidemic of food riots," the Institute's director, Dr. Aled Jones, told Insurge Intelligence. "In this scenario, global society essentially collapses as food production falls permanently short of consumption."... ...
Well, as long as the American Way of Life™ isn't threatened!
Thu, Sep 11, 2014 from World Meteorological Organization: WMO GHG Bulletin: The State of Greenhouse Gases in the Atmosphere Based on Global Observations through 2013 ... Yet that buffering
reaction consumes CO32-, reducing the chemical capacity
of the near-surface ocean to take up more CO2. Currently
that capacity is only 70 percent of what it was at the beginning
of the industrial era, and it may well be reduced to only
20 percent by the end of the twenty-first century. The current
rate of ocean acidification appears unprecedented at least
over the last 300 million years, based on proxy-data from
paleo archives. Acidification will continue to accelerate at
least until mid-century, based on projections from Earth
system models....
As a result of increased
anthropogenic emissions, atmospheric CH4 reached 253 percent
of its pre-industrial level (~722 ppb) in 2013. Atmospheric
CH4 increased from ~1650 ppb in the early 1980s to a new
high of 1824±2 ppb in 2013 (Figure 4 (a)). ...
What's a third of a billion years, when my energy-stock-intensive retirement is threatened?
Sun, Aug 3, 2014 from US Naval War College, via YouTube: Jeremy Jackson: Ocean Apocalypse, a lecture at the US Naval War College In an hour-plus lecture filled with trenchant analysis of current data, and astounding historical comparisons between 1900 and now, Jackson (aka "the James Hansen for the Ocean") overviews how badly, badly we've been treating the oceans -- and how unlikely it is that we can recover them, prior to the consequent collapse of civilization. ...
Fri, Jul 11, 2014 from Phys.org: Leading scientists express rising concern about 'microplastics' in the ocean Microplastics - microscopic particles of plastic debris - are of increasing concern because of their widespread presence in the oceans and the potential physical and toxicological risks they pose to organisms....
In an article published today in the journal Science, the two scientists have called for urgent action to "turn off the tap" and divert plastic waste away from the marine environment.
Microplastics have now been documented in all five of the ocean's subtropical gyres - and have even been detected in Arctic sea ice - with some of the highest accumulations occurring thousands of miles from land. These plastic bits have been found in organisms ranging in size from small invertebrates to large mammals, and are known to concentrate toxic chemicals already present in seawater. This raises concern about the potential consequences to marine organisms....
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I know -- let's make the ocean acidic, so we can dissolve the microplastics!
Fri, Jul 4, 2014 from Phys.org: Marine bacteria unfazed by rising ocean acidification The new study, published in Environment Microbiology Reports, shows for the first time that even if ocean acidification reaches the levels predicted for the year 2100, the bacterial community will remain unaffected....
He suspects that the resistance of marine bacteria to ocean acidification means they will be able to evolve an even higher level of resilience before 2100, as they get used to higher acid levels.
'Hitting them with a big stick we see a huge capacity for resistance, but over the long term they have an enormous evolutionary capacity, he says. 'Over the next 100 years there will be millions of generations of bacteria, so if we still have a steadily increasing amount of carbon dioxide, as is predicted, being absorbed into oceans the bacterial communities will adapt.'
...
Thank goodness that Ocean Life: The Sequel will have something to evolve from.
Tue, Jun 24, 2014 from GOC, via CommonDreams: Global Ocean Commission says rescue needed within five years The world's oceans face irreparable damage from climate change and overfishing, with a five-year window for intervention, an environmental panel said Tuesday.
Neglecting the health of the oceans could have devastating effects on the world's food supply, clean air, and climate stability, among other factors.
The Global Oceans Commission, an environmental group formed by the Pew Charitable Trust, released a report (PDF) addressing the declining marine ecosystems around the world and outlining an eight-step "rescue package" to restore growth and prevent future damage to the seas. The 18-month study proposes increased governance of the oceans, including limiting oil and gas exploration, capping subsidies for commercial fishing, and creating marine protected areas (MPAs) to guard against pollution, particularly from plastics....
Government subsidies for high seas fishing total at least $30 billion a year and are carried out by just ten countries, the report said. About 60 percent of such subsidies encourage unsustainable practices like the fuel-hungry "bottom trawling" of ocean floors -- funds that could be rerouted to conservation efforts or employment in coastal areas. ...
Five whole years? We have time for far more study, I think.
Thu, Jun 12, 2014 from GuyMcPherson.com: Guy McPherson Sings Sad Songs without Solace ... American actress Lily Tomlin is credited with the expression, "No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up." With respect to climate science, my own efforts to stay abreast are blown away every week by new data, models, and assessments. It seems no matter how dire the situation becomes, it only gets worse when I check the latest reports....
I'm not implying conspiracy among scientists. Science selects for conservatism. Academia selects for extreme conservatism. These folks are loathe to risk drawing undue attention to themselves by pointing out there might be a threat to civilization. Never mind the near-term threat to our entire species (they couldn't care less about other species). If the truth is dire, they can find another, not-so-dire version....
Gradual change is not guaranteed, as pointed out by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in December 2013: "The history of climate on the planet -- as read in archives such as tree rings, ocean sediments, and ice cores -- is punctuated with large changes that occurred rapidly, over the course of decades to as little as a few years." ...
This article changes my perspective entirely on my credit score.
Wed, Jun 11, 2014 from University of Edinburgh, via ScienceDaily: Warming climates intensify greenhouse gas given out by oceans Fresh insight into how the oceans can affect CO2 levels in the atmosphere shows that rising temperatures can indirectly increase the amount of the greenhouse gas emitted by the oceans.
Scientists studied a 26,000-year-old sediment core taken from the Gulf of California to find out how the ocean's ability to take up atmospheric CO2 has changed over time.
They tracked the abundance of the key elements silicon and iron in the fossils of tiny marine organisms, known as plankton, in the sediment core. Plankton absorb CO2 from the atmosphere at the ocean surface, and can lock away vast quantities of carbon....
Researchers found that those periods when silicon was least abundant in ocean waters corresponded with relatively warm climates, low levels of atmospheric iron, and reduced CO2 uptake by the oceans' plankton. Scientists had suspected that iron might have a role in enabling plankton to absorb CO2. However, this latest study shows that a lack of iron at the ocean surface can limit the effect of other key elements in helping plankton take up carbon. ...
I wonder if ocean acidity's effect on plankton might also be a factor?
Tue, Jun 3, 2014 from Earth Institute, via Science Daily: Modern ocean acidification is outpacing ancient upheaval: Rate may be ten times faster Some 56 million years ago, a massive pulse of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere sent global temperatures soaring. In the oceans, carbonate sediments dissolved, some organisms went extinct and others evolved.
Scientists have long suspected that ocean acidification caused the crisis -- similar to today, as humanmade CO2 combines with seawater to change its chemistry. Now, for the first time, scientists have quantified the extent of surface acidification from those ancient days, and the news is not good: the oceans are on track to acidify at least as much as they did then, only at a much faster rate....
"We are dumping carbon in the atmosphere and ocean at a much higher rate today -- within centuries," said study coauthor Richard Zeebe, a paleoceanographer at the University of Hawaii. "If we continue on the emissions path we are on right now, acidification of the surface ocean will be way more dramatic than during the PETM." ...
Evolution needs to up its game if it wants our respect. Faster! Ten times faster!
Tue, May 27, 2014 from kirotv 7: New bill hopes prize money will help find a solution to ocean acidification Rep. Derek Kilmer introduced the Ocean Acidification Innovation Act, a bill that would offer prize money to researchers who find a solution to carbon dioxide dissolving into the ocean.
"The way we're addressing this is trying to get more research attention on monitoring and addressing the situation of ocean acidification," said Rep. Derek Kilmer D-6th District.
Kilmer says ocean acidification is a huge threat to the state's $250 million shellfish industry.
He wants federal money to be leveraged into more minds working on a solution to saving the dying shellfish.
"What we found is you can provide a $5 million research grant for a researcher to go solve a problem or you can provide a prize. ...
Is this the beginning of trying to buy our way out of our consumer-culture crisis?
Wed, May 7, 2014 from Science, via CBS News (2006): Salt-Water Fish Extinction Seen By 2048 The apocalypse has a new date: 2048.
That's when the world's oceans will be empty of fish, predicts an international team of ecologists and economists. The cause: the disappearance of species due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change.
The study by Boris Worm, PhD, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, -- with colleagues in the U.K., U.S., Sweden, and Panama -- was an effort to understand what this loss of ocean species might mean to the world.
The researchers analyzed several different kinds of data. Even to these ecology-minded scientists, the results were an unpleasant surprise.
"I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected," Worm says in a news release.
"This isn't predicted to happen. This is happening now," study researcher Nicola Beaumont, PhD, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, U.K., says in a news release.
"If biodiversity continues to decline, the marine environment will not be able to sustain our way of life. Indeed, it may not be able to sustain our lives at all," Beaumont adds. ...
Wed, Apr 30, 2014 from NOAA, via EurekAlert: NOAA-led researchers discover ocean acidity is dissolving shells of tiny snails off West Coast A NOAA-led research team has found the first evidence that acidity of continental shelf waters off the West Coast is dissolving the shells of tiny free-swimming marine snails, called pteropods, which provide food for pink salmon, mackerel and herring, according to a new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Researchers estimate that the percentage of pteropods in this region with dissolving shells due to ocean acidification has doubled in the nearshore habitat since the pre-industrial era and is on track to triple by 2050 when coastal waters become 70 percent more corrosive than in the pre-industrial era due to human-caused ocean acidification. ...
As if. Pteropods died out at the end of the Cretaceous, like 65 million years ago!
Sun, Apr 13, 2014 from Guardian: Entire marine food chain at risk from rising CO2 levels in water Researchers studied the behavior of coral reef fish at naturally occurring CO2 vents in Milne Bay, in eastern Papua New Guinea.
They found that fish living near the vents, where bubbles of CO2 seeped into the water, "were attracted to predator odour, did not distinguish between odours of different habitats, and exhibited bolder behaviour than fish from control reefs".
The gung-ho nature of CO2-affected fish means that more of them are picked off by predators than is normally the case, raising potentially worrying possibilities in a scenario of rising carbon emissions.
More than 90 percent of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere is soaked up by the oceans. When CO2 is dissolved in water, it causes ocean acidification, which slightly lowers the pH of the water and changes its chemistry. Crustaceans can find it hard to form shells in highly acidic water, while corals risk episodes of bleaching. ...
When you say "entire marine food chain," can you be more specific?
Thu, Apr 3, 2014 from NOAA, via TriplePundit: Tropical Pacific Ocean Acidification Occuring Much Faster Than Expected, NOAA Finds Change is taking place in the tropical Pacific Ocean, where NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) researchers have found that carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have increased as much as 65 percent faster than atmospheric CO2 since 1998. Rising CO2 concentrations of this magnitude indicate that tropical Pacific waters are acidifying as fast as ocean waters in the polar regions, which may have grave repercussions for marine food webs, biodiversity, fisheries and tourism. ...
Wed, Feb 26, 2014 from Huffington Post: 10 Million Scallops Dead In B.C. Waters Rising acidity in the sea water around Qualicum Beach has led to the death of 10 million scallops -- equivalent to three years' product, and every scallop the company put in the ocean from 2009-2011, Island Scallops CEO Rob Saunders told The Parksville Qualicum Bay News.
"I'm not sure we are going to stay alive and I'm not sure the oyster industry is going to stay alive," Saunders told the newspaper. "It's that dramatic."
The disaster constitutes a $10-million loss to the business once so successful, they were featured on The Food Network. ...
Thu, Dec 5, 2013 from Science Daily: Rising Ocean Acidification Leads to Anxiety in Fish A new research study combining marine physiology, neuroscience, pharmacology, and behavioral psychology has revealed a surprising outcome from increases of carbon dioxide uptake in the oceans: anxious fish.
A growing base of scientific evidence has shown that the absorption of human-produced carbon dioxide into the world's oceans is causing surface waters to decline in pH, causing a rise in acidity. This ocean acidification is known to disrupt the growth of shells and skeletons of certain marine animals but other consequences such as behavioral impacts have been largely unknown....
The researchers say the anxiety is traced to the fish's sensory systems, and specifically "GABAA" (neural gamma-aminobutyric acid type A) receptors, which are also involved in human anxiety levels. Exposure to acidified water leads to changes in the concentrations of ions in the blood (especially chloride and bicarbonate), which reverses the flux of ions through the GABAA receptors. The end result is a change in neuronal activity that is reflected in the altered behavioral responses described in this study. ...
Update: Rising Ocean Acidification Leads to Anxiety in Humans
Sun, Nov 17, 2013 from Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel : Ocean's Carbon Dioxide Uptake Can Impair Digestion in Marine Animal Ocean acidification impairs digestion in marine organisms, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Researchers from Sweden and Germany have studied the larval stage of green sea urchins Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis. The results show that the animals have problems digesting food in acidified water. ...
Fri, Nov 15, 2013 from BBC: Emissions of CO2 driving rapid oceans 'acid trip' -- 300 million-year-old flashback The world's oceans are becoming acidic at an "unprecedented rate" and may be souring more rapidly than at any time in the past 300 million years.
In their strongest statement yet on this issue, scientists say acidification could increase by 170 percent by 2100.
They say that some 30 percent of ocean species are unlikely to survive in these conditions.
The researchers conclude that human emissions of CO2 are clearly to blame.
The study will be presented at global climate talks in Poland next week.
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You mean to tell me all that ocean plastic isn't absorbing excess carbon? That was the whole point!
Sun, Nov 10, 2013 from Foreign Affairs, via WitsEndNJ: The Devolution of the Seas: The Consequences of Oceanic Destruction Of all the threats looming over the planet today, one of the most alarming is the seemingly inexorable descent of the world's oceans into ecological perdition. Over the last several decades, human activities have so altered the basic chemistry of the seas that they are now experiencing evolution in reverse: a return to the barren primeval waters of hundreds of millions of years ago....
Over the last 50 years -- a mere blink in geologic time -- humanity has come perilously close to reversing the almost miraculous biological abundance of the deep. Pollution, overfishing, the destruction of habitats, and climate change are emptying the oceans and enabling the lowest forms of life to regain their dominance. The oceanographer Jeremy Jackson calls it 'the rise of slime': the transformation of once complex oceanic ecosystems featuring intricate food webs with large animals into simplistic systems dominated by microbes, jellyfish, and disease. In effect, humans are eliminating the lions and tigers of the seas to make room for the cockroaches and rats. ...
So, you environmentalists have become 'cockroaches and rats'-ists?
Mon, Oct 14, 2013 from Climate News Network: Ocean Deteriorating More Rapidly Than Thought Marine scientists say the state of the world's oceans is deteriorating more rapidly than anyone had realized, and is worse than that described in last month's U.N. climate report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
They say the rate, speed and impacts of ocean change are greater, faster and more imminent than previously thought -- and they expect summertime Arctic sea ice cover will have disappeared in around 25 years. ...
Mon, Oct 7, 2013 from Canadian Press, via HuffingtonPost: Starfish Deaths Alarm Vancouver Scientists Last month, a diver alerted Vancouver Aquarium staff that he had found a number of dead and decaying sunflower sea stars in the cold Pacific waters of a popular dive spot just off the shore of West Vancouver.
Within weeks, the tentacled orange sea stars had all but disappeared in Howe Sound and Vancouver Harbour, disintegrating where they sat on the ocean floor....
"Where the population density had been highest in summer of 2012, on the western shore of Hutt Island, all the sunflower sea stars are gone from that area, with rivers of ossicles (a hard body part) filling ledges and crevices," Marliave wrote in his blog....
The Howe Sound research team have heard from veterinarians and other marine experts that similar die-offs have taken place in Florida and California....
In July, researchers at the University of Rhode Island reported that sea stars were dying in a similar way from New Jersey to Maine, and the university was working with colleagues at Brown and Roger Williams universities to figure out the cause. ...
Tue, Sep 24, 2013 from The Independent: Coral alert: destruction of reefs 'accelerating' with half destroyed over past 30 years The rapid decline of the world's coral reefs appears to be accelerating, threatening to destroy huge swathes of marine life unless dramatic action is swiftly taken, a leading ocean scientist has warned.
About half of the world's coral reefs have already been destroyed over the past 30 years, as climate change warms the sea and rising carbon emissions make it more acidic....
"Our oceans are in an unprecedented state of decline due to pollution, over-fishing and climate change. The state of the reefs is very poor and it is continuing to deteriorate," said Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, of the University of Queensland.
"This is an eco-system that has been around for tens of millions of years and we are wiping it out within a hundred. It's quite incredible." ...
Do you get it yet, Nature? We can kick your ass until we're dead.
Sun, Sep 15, 2013 from Seattle Sun-Times: Actual journalism on ocean acidification Imagine every person on Earth tossing a hunk of CO2 as heavy as a bowling ball into the sea. That's what we do to the oceans every day....
Scientists once considered that entirely good news, since it removed CO2 from the sky. Some even proposed piping more emissions to the sea.
But all that CO2 is changing the chemistry of the ocean faster than at any time in human history. Now the phenomenon known as ocean acidification -- the lesser-known twin of climate change -- is helping push the seas toward a great unraveling that threatens to scramble marine life on a scale almost too big to fathom, and far faster than first expected....
"There's a train wreck coming and we are in a position to slow that down and make it not so bad," said Stephen Palumbi, a professor of evolutionary and marine biology at Stanford University. "But if we don't start now the wreck will be enormous."...
Roughly a quarter of organisms studied by researchers actually do better in high CO2. Another quarter seem unaffected. But entire marine systems are built around the remaining half of susceptible plants and animals.... [T]he winners will mostly be the weeds."...
The pace of change has caught everyone off guard. ...
... the weeds, the vermin, the generalists that reproduce quickly. Plague of rats, weeds, and insects, anyone?
Sun, Sep 15, 2013 from PLoS One, via ScienceDaily: Unprecedented Rate and Scale of Ocean Acidification Found in the Arctic Acidification of the Arctic Ocean is occurring faster than projected, according to new findings published in the journal PLoS ONE. The increase in rate is being blamed on rapidly melting sea ice, a process that may have important consequences for health of the Arctic ecosystem....
The new research shows that acidification in surface waters of the Arctic Ocean is rapidly expanding into areas that were previously isolated from contact with the atmosphere due to the former widespread ice cover.
"A remarkable 20 percent of the Canadian Basin has become more corrosive to carbonate minerals in an unprecedented short period of time. Nowhere on Earth have we documented such large scale, rapid ocean acidification" according to lead researcher and ocean acidification project chief, U.S. Geological Survey oceanographer Lisa Robbins....
"Not only is the ice cover removed leaving the surface water exposed to human-made carbon dioxide, the surface layer of frigid waters is now fresher, and this means less calcium and carbonate ions are available for organisms."
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Kinda stands to reason: there ain't no ocean icidification going on!
You're still reading! Good for you!
You really should read our short, funny, frightening book FREE online (or buy a print copy): Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies!
We've been quipping this stuff for more than 30 months! Every day!
Which might explain why we don't get invited to parties anymore.
Sun, Sep 1, 2013 from Washington Post: The oceans are acidifying at the fastest rate in 300 million years. How worried should we be? The world's oceans are turning acidic at what's likely the fastest pace in 300 million years. Scientists tend to think this is a troubling development. But just how worried should we be, exactly?...
As humans keep burning fossil fuels, the oceans are absorbing more and more carbon-dioxide. That staves off (some) global warming, but it also makes the seas more acidic -- acidity levels have risen 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution....
One study published last year in Climatic Change suggested that the loss of mollusks -- one of the easier-to-forecast effects of acidification -- could cost the world around $100 billion per year by the end of the century. The main variable here is how much China and other fast-growing countries are likely to depend on these species for food in the future.
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Tue, Aug 27, 2013 from Nature: Rising ocean acidity will exacerbate global warming The slow and inexorable increase in the oceans' acidity as they soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could itself have an effect on climate and amplify global warming, according to a new study. Acidification would lead certain marine organisms to emit less of the sulphur compounds that help to seed the formation of clouds and so keep the planet cool....
Adding in the effects of acidification on DMS, which the team calculated using three different estimates of the strength of the link between pH and DMS production, led to additional increases ranging between 0.23 and 0.48 degrees C. Their paper is published in Nature Climate Change today.
(Thanks, DesdemonaDespair) ...
Thu, Aug 15, 2013 from ScienceAlert: Ocean acidity continues to increase A unique comparison of coastal water monitoring near Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica has shown significant changes in ocean chemistry over the past 16 years.
The study, published in The Journal of Marine Chemistry, shows a marked and somewhat unexpected increase in the acidity of the seawater in the region....
'The surprise was that the change in acidity was so large, indicating that natural and human induced changes have combined to amplify ocean acidity in this region,' said Mr Roden.
...
If he's surprised, we should be a little suspicious of his conclusions, since "faster than expected" is the new normal.
Tue, Aug 13, 2013 from Los Angeles Times: Effects of climate change in California are 'significant and growing' California is feeling the effects of climate change far and wide, as heat-trapping greenhouse gases reduce spring runoff from the Sierra Nevada, make the waters of Monterey Bay more acidic and shorten winter chill periods required to grow fruit and nuts in the Central Valley, a new report says.
Though past studies have offered grim projections of a warming planet, the report released Thursday by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment took an inventory of three dozen shifts that are already happening. ...
This report is in direct contradiction with the findings of the Office of Environmental Cluelessness.
Sat, Jul 27, 2013 from Forbes: Baby Oysters In 'Death Race' With Acidifying Oceans Scientists at Oregon State University have pinpointed a reason for the mysterious die-offs of young oysters in the Pacific Northwest, a phenomenon that threatens the survival of one of America's prime seafood delicacies.
Pacific oyster larvae, two days old or younger, are among the shellfish most at risk as the oceans become more acidic, according to a study released in a June issue of Geophysical Research Letters. The release of carbon into the atmosphere, caused by humans' burning of fossil fuels, is in turn adding carbon to the ocean, changing its chemistry and endangering entire marine food webs.
During the first two days of life, an oyster's prime directive is to build a shell of calcium carbonate to protect itself against predators. To do this, it relies entirely on energy from its own egg, as it has not yet developed the ability to feed....
Many of America's favorite seafoods, including mussels, crabs, scallops, abalone and lobster, are at risk for perishing in coming decades as their shells fail to develop properly in more acidic ocean water. The scourge also affects tiny plankton that are the base of the food web that produces prized Alaskan salmon. ...
Sun, Jun 30, 2013 from PhysOrg: Major changes needed for coral reef survival To prevent coral reefs around the world from dying off, deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions are required, says a new study from Carnegie's Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira. They find that all existing coral reefs will be engulfed in inhospitable ocean chemistry conditions by the end of the century if civilization continues along its current emissions trajectory. Their work will be published July 3 by Environmental Research Letters....
Coral reefs use a mineral called aragonite to make their skeletons. It is a naturally occurring form of calcium carbonate, CaCO3. When carbon dioxide, CO2, from the atmosphere is absorbed by the ocean, it forms carbonic acid (the same thing that makes soda fizz), making the ocean more acidic and decreasing the ocean's pH. This increase in acidity makes it more difficult for many marine organisms to grow their shells and skeletons, and threatens coral reefs the world over.
Using results from simulations conducted using an ensemble of sophisticated models, Ricke, Caldeira, and their co-authors calculated ocean chemical conditions that would occur under different future scenarios and determined whether these chemical conditions could sustain coral reef growth.
Ricke said: "Our results show that if we continue on our current emissions path, by the end of the century there will be no water left in the ocean with the chemical properties that have supported coral reef growth in the past. We can't say with 100 percent certainty that all shallow-water coral reefs will die, but it is a pretty good bet."
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"Acidity" is just another word for "opportunity," right?
Wed, May 29, 2013 from PNAS, via RedOrbit: New CO2 Removal Technique Produces Green Fuel, Offsets Ocean Acidification A new technique to remove and store atmospheric carbon dioxide has been demonstrated by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The new technique also generates carbon-negative hydrogen and produces alkalinity, which can be used to offset ocean acidification.
At laboratory scale, the team demonstrated a system that uses the acidity normally produced in saline water electrolysis to accelerate silicate mineral dissolution. The system simultaneously produces hydrogen fuel and other gases. The electrolyte solution that results shows a significant elevation in hydroxide concentration that in turn proved strongly absorptive and retentive of atmospheric CO2. The findings of this study were published in a recent issue of PNAS.
The carbonate and bicarbonate produced in the process could be used to mitigate ongoing ocean acidification, the researchers suggest, much like how an Alka Seltzer neutralizes excess acid in the stomach. ...
Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it might be if it scales up!
Wed, May 22, 2013 from PLOS, via PlanetEarth: Coccoliths thrive despite ocean acidification An international team studied the effect of ocean acidification on plankton in the North Sea over the past forty years, to see what impact future changes may have....
Foraminifera and coccoliths, which are small shelled plankton and algae, appear to be surviving remarkably well in the more acidic conditions. But numbers of pteropods and bivalves - such as mussels, clams and oysters - are falling.
'Ecologically, some species are soaring, whilst others are crashing out of the system,' says Professor Jason Hall-Spencer, of Plymouth University, who co-authored the paper....
'The aragonite skeleton of pteropods dissolves more easily in corrosive waters than the low-magnesium calcite that typifies many clams and other molluscs,' explains Hall-Spencer. 'But now we think that it's not as simple as that. It depends partly on how stressed organisms are by other factors, such as lack of food. It also depends on their shape and their ability to protect their skeletons.' ...
Wed, May 8, 2013 from Huffington Post: Ocean Acidification Threatens Arctic Ecosystem, Study Shows The Arctic ecosystem, already under pressure from record ice melts, faces another potential threat in the form of rapid acidification of the ocean, according to an international study published on Monday....
Cold water absorbs carbon dioxide more readily than warm water, making the Arctic especially vulnerable. The report said the average acidity of surface ocean waters worldwide was now about 30 percent higher than at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
"Arctic marine waters are experiencing widespread and rapid ocean acidification," said the report by 60 experts for the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, commissioned by the eight nations with Arctic territories.
"Ocean acidification is likely to affect the abundance, productivity and distribution of marine species, but the magnitude and direction of change are uncertain." ...
There's an ecosystem up there? I thought it was just ice!
Mon, May 6, 2013 from BBC: Arctic Ocean 'acidifying rapidly' Scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) monitored widespread changes in ocean chemistry in the region....
It is well known that CO2 warms the planet, but less well-known that it also makes the alkaline seas more acidic when it is absorbed from the air.
Absorption is particularly fast in cold water so the Arctic is especially susceptible, and the recent decreases in summer sea ice have exposed more sea surface to atmospheric CO2. ...
Tue, Apr 16, 2013 from UCSB, via PhysOrg: Effect of ocean acidification may not be so dire "The story years ago was that ocean acidification was going to be bad, really bad for calcifiers," said Iglesias-Rodriguez, whose team discovered that one species of the tiny single celled marine coccolithophore, Emiliania huxleyi, actually had bigger shells in high carbon dioxide seawater conditions. While the team acknowledges that calcification tends to decline with acidification, "we now know that there are variable responses in sea corals, in sea urchins, in all shelled organisms that we find in the sea."...
"The E. huxleyi increased the amount of calcite they had because they kept calcifying but slowed down division rates,"slower growth could become problematic. If other species grow faster, E. huxleyi could be outnumbered in some areas.
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Ocean acidity may not be a problem for many [ocean] calcifiers.*
* Some restrictions may apply.
Tue, Apr 9, 2013 from New Scientist: Sea urchins evolving to cope with ocean acidification As the oceans become more acidic, many marine animals will have a harder time extracting the calcium from seawater that they need to build their skeletons. Marine biologists fear an ecological catastrophe could be imminent unless animals evolve to take up calcium more efficiently....
In their lab, they reared larvae of the purple sea urchin in water of normal or elevated acidity, corresponding to atmospheric CO2 levels of 400 and 900 parts per million. To their surprise, they found that the more acidic water had no apparent negative effect on the development of the larval skeletons.
Behind that apparent stability, though, was a lot of genetic change. When Pespeni used gene sequencing to study the developing larvae, she found that gene frequencies had shifted dramatically during that time. In particular, genes related to growth, lipid metabolism and the movement of ions into and out of cells showed significantly more changes in urchins reared under high-acidity conditions. All these types of genes help cells cope with increased acidity - a strong hint that the changes are the result of natural selection. ...
Howzabout we evolve them to digest microplastic, too!
Mon, Mar 25, 2013 from Reuters: Reef-building corals lose out to softer cousins due warming Climate change is likely to make reef-building stony corals lose out to softer cousins in a damaging shift for many types of fish that use reefs as hideaways and nurseries for their young, a study showed.
Soft corals such as mushroom-shaped yellow leather coral, which lack a hard outer skeleton, were far more abundant than hard corals off Iwotorishima, an island off south Japan where volcanic vents make the waters slightly acidic, it said.
A build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is turning the oceans more acidic in a process likely to hamper the ability of creatures such as lobsters, crabs, mussels or stony corals to build protective outer layers. ...
Climate change will turn us all into a bunch of softies.
Thu, Feb 14, 2013 from Crosscut: Businesses balk at dealing with ocean threat Business interests say a proposal to deal with the rising acidity of Washington's coastal waters is "not ready for prime time."
The Association of Washington Business and the Washington Farm Bureau lined up Wednesday against a bill to create a council to advise the state government on how to tackle ocean acidification. The bill also calls for considering the acidity of water runoff in urban planning efforts.
"Most of those recommendations (by a 2012 scientific, business and legislative panel on how to deal with ocean acidification) the business community doesn't believe are ready for prime time," AWB representative Brandon Houskeeper told the Senate Environment and Energy Committee. ...
Mon, Nov 26, 2012 from Reuters: Sea snails show impact of more acidic ocean The shells of some marine snails in the seas around Antarctica are dissolving as the water becomes more acidic, threatening the food chain, a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience said on Sunday... The shell of the pteropod sea snail in the Southern Ocean was severely dissolved by more acidic surface water, the researchers ... found. ...
Sun, Nov 4, 2012 from LiveScience, via HuffingtonPost: Ocean Acidification Research Suggests Return To Dinosaur-Era Underwater Acoustics ... Rising acidity in the oceans could set underwater acoustic conditions back to the Cretaceous period, scientists say, allowing some low-frequency sounds like whale songs to travel perhaps twice as far as they do now.
"We call it the Cretaceous acoustic effect, because ocean acidification forced by global warming appears to be leading us back to the similar ocean acoustic conditions as those that existed 110 million years ago, during the Age of Dinosaurs," David G. Browning, an acoustician at the University of Rhode Island, said in a statement. ...
WHAT'S THAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU. THE METAPHOR IS TOO LOUD.
Mon, Oct 1, 2012 from Wall Street Journal: Ocean acidification emerges as new climate threat ...In the past five years, the fact that human-generated carbon emissions are making the ocean more acidic has become an urgent cause of concern to the fishing industry and scientists.
The ocean absorbs about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide we put in the air through fossil fuel burning, and this triggers a chemical reaction that produces hydrogen, thereby lowering the water's pH.
The sea today is 30 percent more acidic than pre-industrial levels, which is creating corrosive water that is washing over America's coasts. At the current rate of global worldwide carbon emissions, the ocean's acidity could double by 2100. ...
Thu, Sep 27, 2012 from PhysOrg: Sea of the living dead The world's coral reefs have become a zombie ecosystem, neither dead nor truly alive, and are on a trajectory to collapse within a human generation according to an academic from The Australian National University.
Professor Roger Bradbury, an ecologist from the Crawford School of Public Policy in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, said overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution are pushing coral reefs into oblivion. "The scientific evidence for this is compelling and unequivocal, but there seems to be a collective reluctance to accept the logical conclusion--that there is no hope of saving the global coral reef ecosystem," he said. "There is no real prospect of changing the trajectory of coral reef destruction in less than 20 to 50 years. In short, these forces are unstoppable and irreversible. "By persisting in the false belief that coral reefs have a future, we grossly misallocate the funds needed to cope with the fallout from their collapse. Money isn't spent to study what to do after the reefs are gone."
...
Mon, Aug 20, 2012 from ScienceAlert: Drastic tactics to save oceans? ... "A much broader approach to marine management and mitigation options, including manipulating the environment around corals and considering the translocation of reef-building corals, must be evaluated," he said....
Marine conservation options may include:
* Using shade to protect corals from the heat stress which leads to coral bleaching and death, albeit at small scales.
* Actively assisting biological resilience and adaptation through spatial planning, protective culturing and possibly selective breeding
* Maintain or manage ocean chemistry by adding globally abundant base minerals such as carbonates and silicates to the ocean to neutralize acidity, and improve conditions for shell formation in marine creatures
* Convert CO2 from land-based waste into dissolved bicarbonates that could be added to the ocean to provide carbon sequestration and enhance alkalinity.
...
Fri, Aug 17, 2012 from The Independent: Seas score a meagre six out of 10 in new marine health index Marine scientists have for the first time worked out a systematic way of scoring the health of the world's oceans, in an attempt to assess how well they are coping with the pressures of overfishing, pollution and anything else that affects the well-being of the sea.
The overall global score for the Earth's coastal seas is 60 points out of a possible maximum of 100, showing there is still plenty of "room for improvement", they concluded.
Some areas with the lowest scores, such as the coastal waters off the troubled West African state of Sierra Leone, which scored 36, failed in almost every one of the 10 measures the scientists used to assess the health of the sea. ...
Tue, Jul 17, 2012 from CBC Canada: Pacific Ocean acid levels jeopardizing marine life The Pacific Ocean is growing more acidic at a much faster rate than anticipated, scientists say, putting everything from corals to mussels in jeopardy.
Researchers say carbon dioxide from the atmosphere forms carbonic acid in the ocean, changing the seawater enough that it can dissolve the shells of coral and shellfish.
The water off the west coast of Vancouver Island is changing at an unprecedented rate, meaning vulnerable life forms in the ocean's food chain must adapt or die. ...
Tue, Jul 3, 2012 from MediaMatters, via LivingGreen Magazine: Study Finds Kardashians Get 40 Times More News Coverage Than Ocean Acidification Carbon dioxide emissions are not just warming up our atmosphere, they're also changing the chemistry of our oceans. This phenomenon is known as ocean acidification, or sometimes as global warming's "evil twin" or the "osteoporosis of the sea."
Scientists have warned that it poses a serious threat to ocean life. Yet major American news outlets covered the Kardashians over 40 times more often than ocean acidification over the past year and a half....
According to the National Research Council, the chemical changes are taking place "at an unprecedented rate and magnitude" and are "practically irreversible on a time scale of centuries." ...
Well... yeah. The Kardashians require much more explanatory text.
Mon, May 28, 2012 from University of Bristol: It Took Earth Ten Million Years to Recover from Greatest Mass Extinction It took some 10 million years for Earth to recover from the greatest mass extinction of all time, latest research has revealed. Life was nearly wiped out 250 million years ago, with only 10 per cent of plants and animals surviving. It is currently much debated how life recovered from this cataclysm, whether quickly or slowly.... The end-Permian crisis, by far the most dramatic biological crisis to affect life on Earth, was triggered by a number of physical environmental shocks -- global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification and ocean anoxia. These were enough to kill off 90 per cent of living things on land and in the sea...Professor Benton added: "We often see mass extinctions as entirely negative but in this most devastating case, life did recover, after many millions of years, and new groups emerged. ...
Tue, May 15, 2012 from PhysOrg: Scientists sound acid alarm for plankton The microscopic organisms on which almost all life in the oceans depends could be even more vulnerable to increasingly acidic waters than scientists realised, according to a new study.
Previous experiments have given an unduly optimistic view of the impact of acidifying oceans on plankton; it turns out that the methods used may have biased their results.
"Plankton often grow in clumps or aggregates," says Professor Kevin Flynn of Swansea University, lead author of the study. "But the way they are handled tends to break these clumps up. When a scientists starts working on a plankton sample in the lab, the first thing they do is give it a good shake."...
They found that if predictions of general ocean acidification come true, many kinds of plankton will face much more acidic conditions, and more widely varying conditions over each day, than previously realized - conditions far beyond anything seen in recent history. The results are likely to be stunted growth, or even death....
In another twist, as seawater gets more acidic, its capacity to protect against even more acidity diminishes, so general ocean acidification will increase the impact of the local acidification that plankton trigger. ...
Wed, Apr 4, 2012 from ClimateWire: Dying corals -- milestones along a meandering path to famine ...Already, there is evidence that as the ocean warms, many commercial fish stocks are moving poleward in search of cooler waters. Rising ocean temperatures have triggered coral bleaching events that have caused widespread damage to the world's reefs, which serve as a habitat for many species....
Researchers are also concerned about the effects that shifting ocean chemistry will have on marine ecosystems. As the world's carbon dioxide output has risen, oceans have absorbed more and more of the heat-trapping gas, leaving seawater 30 percent more acidic than it was before the Industrial Revolution began.
Eventually, ocean acidification could scramble ocean ecosystems by making it harder for sea creatures like oysters, coral and plankton to grow the hard, chalky shells that protect them from predators. ...
No matter where those fish go we'll track em down!
Wed, Mar 21, 2012 from Reuters, via Chicago Tribune: Damage to world's oceans 'to reach $2 trillion a year' The cost of damage to the world's oceans from climate change could reach $2 trillion a year by 2100 if measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions are not stepped up, a study by marine experts said on Wednesday.
The study found that without action to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions, the global average temperature could rise by 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century causing ocean acidification, sea level rise, marine pollution, species migration and more intense tropical cyclones. It would also threaten coral reefs, disrupt fisheries and deplete fish stocks....
If cuts in emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases were carried out more urgently and temperature increases were limited to 2.2 degrees C, nearly $1.4 trillion of the total cost could be avoided, the study found.
However, such progress would require the widespread use of radical carbon removal technologies like sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, Frank Ackerman, one of the report's authors told Reuters.
"The faster we stop emissions rising, the lower the damage will be. But on current technology, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up on a 4 degree C pathway," said Ackerman, senior economist and director of the Climate Economics Group at SEI's U.S. Center. ...
But think of all the business innovation that will spur!
Thu, Mar 1, 2012 from AFP, via Google: Ocean acidification may be worst in 300 million years: study High levels of pollution may be turning the planet's oceans acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the past 300 million years, with unknown consequences for future sea life, researchers said Thursday.
The acidification may be worse than during four major mass extinctions in history when natural pulses of carbon from asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions caused global temperatures to soar, said the study in the journal Science.
An international team of researchers from the United States, Britain, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands examined hundreds of paleoceanographic studies, including fossils wedged in seafloor sediment from millions of years ago.
They found only one time in history that came close to what scientists are seeing today in terms of ocean life die-off -- a mysterious period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 56 million years ago....
"But if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about -- coral reefs, oysters, salmon." ...
Mon, Feb 20, 2012 from Science News: Carbon dioxide breaking down marine ecosystems If carbon dioxide emissions don't begin to decline soon, the complex fabric of marine ecosystems will begin fraying -- and eventually unravel completely, two new studies conclude.
The diversity of ocean species thins and any survivors' health declines as the pH of ocean water falls in response to rising carbon dioxide levels, scientists from England and Florida reported February 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. What's more, affected species aren't restricted to those with shells and calcified support structures... ...
Sat, Feb 18, 2012 from UBC: Ocean acidification turns climate change winners into losers Previous projections have suggested the effects of warmer water temperature would result in fish moving pole-ward and deeper towards cooler waters - and an increase of fish catch potential of as much as 30 per cent in the North Atlantic by 2050.
Accounting for effects of de-oxygenation and ocean acidification, however, some regions may see a 20-35 per cent reduction in maximum catch potential by 2050 (relative to 2005) - depending on the individual species' sensitivity to ocean acidification.
For example, in the Norwegian Sea, ocean warming by itself may result in a 15 per cent increase in fisheries catch potential. However, accounting for acidification and de-oxygenation, the increase turns to a decrease of 15 per cent, and the region from a "winner" to a "loser." ...
Careful now -- that makes it seem like climate change could make us all losers!
Thu, Feb 2, 2012 from BioScience, via EurekAlert: Are nuisance jellyfish really taking over the world's oceans? In recent years, media reports of jellyfish blooms and some scientific publications have fueled the idea that jellyfish and other gelatinous floating creatures are becoming more common and may dominate the seas in coming decades. The growing impacts of humans on the oceans, including overfishing and climate change, have been suggested as possible causes of this apparently alarming trend.
A careful evaluation of the evidence by Robert H. Condon of Dauphin Island Sea Lab and his 16 coauthors, however, finds the idea that jellyfish, comb jellies, salps, and similar organisms are surging globally to be lacking support. Rather, Condon and his colleagues suggest, the perception of an increase is the result of more scientific attention being paid to phenomena such as jellyfish blooms and media fascination with the topic. Also important is the lack of good information on their occurrence in the past, which encourages misleading comparisons. Condon and his coauthors describe their findings in the February issue of BioScience.
Such fossil and documentary evidence as is available indicates that occasional spectacular blooms of jellyfish are a normal part of such organisms' natural history, and may be linked to natural climate cycles. But blooms drew less attention in decades and centuries gone by. ...
Tue, Jan 31, 2012 from ArsTechnica: Ocean acidification already well beyond natural variability Ocean acidification entails a decrease in the pH of ocean water as the carbonate that buffers it is consumed. That carbonate does more than just maintain pH, though. Lots of marine organisms, from plankton to mollusks to coral, use it to build shells and skeletons. As the buffer is depleted, the saturation state of carbonate minerals like calcite (and its polymorph aragonite) decreases, making it more difficult for organisms to incorporate them. In most areas of the surface ocean, calcite and aragonite are supersaturated, making it easy for organisms to build shells and skeletons. In undersaturated water, the equilibrium tilts the other way, and dissolution of these structures becomes possible....
In all areas where coral reefs are found (these are often described as the "rainforests of the sea" for their astonishing diversity and abundance of life), the researchers find that the current saturation state of aragonite is well below the pre-industrial average. To put it into concrete terms, they estimate that calcification rates of reef organisms have already dropped by about 15 percent. Under the A1B emissions scenario, calcification rates would decrease by a total of 40 percent (relative to pre-industrial) by 2100. ...
I'd have to accept this, were I to kowtow to the tyranny of facts.
Mon, Jan 30, 2012 from Sydney Morning Herald: Sea cucumbers may save Great Barrier Reef Tropical sea cucumbers and their faeces could save coral reefs from the harmful impacts of climate change, scientists have found.
Scientists at One Tree Island, the University of Sydney's research station on the Great Barrier Reef, say sea cucumbers reduce the impact of ocean acidification on coral growth.
"When they ingest sand, the natural digestive processes in the sea cucumber's gut increases the pH levels of the water on the reef where they defecate," Tree Island director professor Maria Byrne said....
"The research at One Tree Island showed that, in a healthy reef, dissolution of calcium carbonate sediment by sea cucumbers and other bioeroders appears to be an important component of the natural calcium carbonate turnover."
The ammonia waste produced when sea cucumbers digest sand also serves to fertilise the surrounding area, providing nutrients for coral growth.
Sea cucumbers are among the largest invertebrates found on tropical reefs.
About 30 species are commercially harvested by the fishery industry along the Great Barrier Reef and throughout the tropics.
...
"Commercially harvested" somehow conflicts with "sustainability."
Mon, Jan 16, 2012 from Nature Climate Change, via EPOCA: Carbon dioxide is 'driving fish crazy' "For several years our team have been testing the performance of baby coral fishes in sea water containing higher levels of dissolved CO2 - and it is now pretty clear that they sustain significant disruption to their central nervous system, which is likely to impair their chances of survival," Prof. Munday says....
["]They were confused and no longer avoided reef sounds during the day. Being attracted to reefs during daylight would make them easy meat for predators."
Other work showed the fish also tended to lose their natural instinct to turn left or right - an important factor in schooling behaviour which also makes them more vulnerable, as lone fish are easily eaten by predators.
"All this led us to suspect it wasn't simply damage to their individual senses that was going on - but rather, that higher levels of carbon dioxide were affecting their whole central nervous system." ...
Mon, Jan 9, 2012 from Wall Street Journal: Taking Fears of Acid Oceans With a Grain of Salt The Natural Resources Defense Council has called ocean acidification "the scariest environmental problem you've never heard of." Sigourney Weaver, who narrated a film about the issue, said that "the scientists are freaked out." The head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls it global warming's "equally evil twin."
But do the scientific data support such alarm? Last month scientists at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other authors published a study showing how much the pH level (measuring alkalinity versus acidity) varies naturally between parts of the ocean and at different times of the day, month and year.
"On both a monthly and annual scale, even the most stable open ocean sites see pH changes many times larger than the annual rate of acidification," say the authors of the study, adding that because good instruments to measure ocean pH have only recently been deployed, "this variation has been under-appreciated."...
Off Papua New Guinea and the Italian island of Ischia, where natural carbon-dioxide bubbles from volcanic vents make the sea less alkaline, and off the Yucatan, where underwater springs make seawater actually acidic, studies have shown that at least some kinds of calcifiers still thrive--at least as far down as pH 7.8. ...
See? If the Wall Street Journal says so, then Adam Smith says so, too. Move along.
Thu, Jan 5, 2012 from TED, via The Oil Drum: Jeremy Jackson talks about How We Wrecked the Ocean
Jeremy Jackson is the Ritter Professor of Oceanography and Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. ...
Sun, Dec 11, 2011 from Nature.com: Acidic oceans threaten development in young fish Ocean acidification -- caused by climate change -- looks likely to damage crucial fish stocks. Two studies published today in Nature Climate Change reveal that high carbon dioxide concentrations can cause death and organ damage in very young fish.The work challenges the belief that fish, unlike organisms with shells or exoskeletons made of calcium carbonate, will be safe as marine CO2 levels rise....
"These two studies are part of a growing trend that realizes that the broader effects of ocean acidification are much more than just calcification," says Donald Potts, a coral-reef biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. ...
Fish, it's time to team up with your mollusk buddies and brainstorm a solution!
Tue, Nov 22, 2011 from Yale Environment 300: Northwest Oyster Die-offs Show Ocean Acidification Has Arrived ... Ocean acidification -- which makes it difficult for shellfish, corals, sea urchins, and other creatures to form the shells or calcium-based structures the need to live -- was supposed to be a problem of the future. But because of patterns of ocean circulation, Pacific Northwest shellfish are already on the front lines of these potentially devastating changes in ocean chemistry. Colder, more acidic waters are welling up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean and streaming ashore in the fjords, bays, and estuaries of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, exacting an environmental and economic toll on the region's famed oysters. ...
Wed, Oct 12, 2011 from Bangor Daily News: Shellfish harvesters plagued by acidic 'dead muds' They're called dead muds.
Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere combined with unregulated nitrogen pollution are having a deadly effect on Maine's shellfish, some researchers say.
Scientists are starting to measure the impact of increasingly acidic waters on coastal organisms, and what they've found is alarming. Formerly fertile shellfish flats are becoming uninhabitable wastelands of dreck....
"They call them dead muds," said Mark Green, an oyster grower and marine science professor at St. Joseph's College in Standish. "The darker muds and sulfur-rich muds don't have any clams, and those are the flats that have lower pH levels. Places where historically there have been great harvests that supported clammers for decades, you now see water quality changes that are reflected in the mud." The more acidic the water, the lower the pH.
In these places, researchers aren't finding dead or unhealthy shellfish. They're finding nothing at all. It is a complete eradication. ...
"uninhabitable wastelands of dreck." Now that's writing!
Mon, Oct 3, 2011 from USGS, via PhysOrg: Earth is having a bad acid trip, study finds Earth may be overdosing on acid - not the "turn on, tune in, drop out" kind, but the "kill fish, kill coral, kill crops" kind. And it's shaping up to be a very bad trip.
The problem isn't just acid rain or ocean acidification, either: pH levels are plummeting all over the planet, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Virginia. The origin of all this acidity, the researchers report, is humanity's growing use of natural resources such as coal, metal ores and nitrogen.
Scientists have long known that certain chemicals can acidify soil and water when released en masse into the environment; sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides contribute to acid rain, for example, while carbon dioxide is widely blamed for causing ocean acidification.
In their new study, though, the USGS and UVA researchers report that a worldwide acid wash is now being fueled by a variety of human activities, namely "the mining and burning of coal, the mining and smelting of metal ores, and the use of nitrogen fertilizer." This is dramatically reducing pH levels not just in soil and seawater, they report, but also in streams, rivers, lakes and even the air. ...
Wed, Aug 31, 2011 from Environmental Health News: Mass extinctions linked to climate change are already underway. New evidence confirms what scientists have long suspected: that climate change is already having major effects on many of the world's species.
Researchers report for the first time that the documented species responses -- migration to a higher or cooler climate or changes in population -- suggest actual extinction risks linked to climate change are almost double those that were predicted. Just as grim are future outlooks -- almost one-third of species will be threatened by 2100.
Temperature, ocean acidity and other climate-related changes can set the stage for widespread extinctions by adding even more pressure to ecosystems already stressed by habitat loss, pollution, disease and other human-related impacts....The results of the study do not bode well for the species slated for extinction. These organisms are the ones most sensitive to temperature, precipitation and other environmental changes. ...
I wonder if it's possible to get unslated for extinction.
Tue, Aug 30, 2011 from University of Hawai'i: Scientist creates new hypothesis on ocean acidification Aragonite is the mineral form of calcium carbonate that is laid down by corals to build their hard skeleton. Researchers wanted to know how the declining saturation state of this important mineral would impact living coral populations....
In the past, scientists have focused on processes at the coral tissues. The alternative provided by Jokiel's "proton flux hypothesis" is that calcification of coral skeletons are dependent on the passage of hydrogen ions between the water column and the coral tissue. This process ultimately disrupts corals' ability to create an aragonite skeleton. Lowered calcification rates are problematic for coral reefs because it creates weakened coral skeletons leaving them susceptible to breakage, and decreasing protection....
The model is a radical departure from previous thought, but is consistent with existing observations and warrants testing in future studies." In general, this hypothesis does not change the general conclusions that increased ocean acidification is lowering coral growth throughout the world, but rather describes the mechanism involved. ...
Sun, Aug 28, 2011 from EPOCA: Warming of the Mediterranean Sea hampers the resistance of corals and mollusks to ocean acidification Some calcifiers (mussels, gastropods and corals) protect their shell or skeleton from the corrosive effects of increasing ocean acidification. They can therefore resist some of the damaging effects of increasing ocean acidity generated by the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere through human activities. This resistance is diminished when organisms are exposed to extended period of elevated temperature (28.5 deg C). This is a result of an international study (1), co-led by Jean-Pierre Gattuso, research scientist at Laboratoire d'océanographie de Villefranche (CNRS/UPMC), published in the journal Nature Climate Change. These results suggest that the ongoing and future warming of the Mediterranean combined with the rise of its acidity will increase the frequency of mass-mortality events....
The tissues and organic layers covering the shells and skeletons play a major role to protect them from the corrosive action of high-acidity seawater. However, the areas of shells and skeletons that are not protected by tissues or organic layers are vulnerable and more prone to dissolution. The higher the acidity, the faster dissolution is. The scientists have shown that this capacity to resist is much lower when the organisms are subject to an extended period of elevated temperature (28.5°C). At this temperature, mortality is increasing with increasing acidity.
Some Mediterranean invertebrates already live at their upper limit of temperature tolerance and have already experienced mass-mortality events. The combined effect of warming and increased acidity will likely increase the frequency of these events in the future. ...
Wed, Aug 24, 2011 from Mongabay: Humanity knows less than 15 percent of the world's species Scientists have named, cataloged, and described less than 2 million species in the past two and a half centuries, yet, according to an new innovative analysis, we are no-where near even a basic understanding of the diversity of life on this small blue planet. The study in PLoS Biology, which is likely to be controversial, predicts that there are 8.7 million species in the world, though the number could be as low as 7.4 or as high as 10 million. The research implies that about 86 percent of the world's species have still yet to be described....
"We have only begun to uncover the tremendous variety of life around us," says co-author Alastair Simpson, also with Dalhousie. "The richest environments for prospecting new species are thought to be coral reefs, seafloor mud and moist tropical soils. But smaller life forms are not well known anywhere. Some unknown species are living in our own backyards—literally."Less is even known about the threats to species in what scientists say is an age of mass extinction. ...
Wed, Aug 17, 2011 from OnEarth: NRDC: Acidic Oceans Q&A with NRDC senior scientist Lisa Suatoni: How closely is ocean acidification related to global climate change?
Ocean acidification and global climate change are two -- independent -- impacts of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations. When fossil fuels are burned, carbon dioxide is produced. Approximately two thirds of that CO2 goes into the atmosphere, where it causes global warming; the remaining third is absorbed by the world's oceans, where it causes ocean acidification. Two problems, one culprit....
The Arctic is predicted to be corrosive to some types of shelled organisms in the next 10 to 30 years....
As we speak, roughly one million tons of CO2 are being absorbed by the oceans every hour. And the source of this pollution -- global emissions of greenhouse gases -- is expected to rise, rapidly. By mid-century, the average atmospheric CO2 concentration could easily reach double the pre-industrial concentration, and so could the drop in ocean pH. That means the problems we are seeing in the Pacific Northwest oyster industry are most likely going to get worse and spread elsewhere. Although they've held off disaster for now, the oyster hatcheries will need to continue developing techniques to protect their "crop" from the shifting chemistry of the sea.
What can we do about acidification on a larger scale? Is there a way to get the ocean's chemistry back into balance?There is no way to artificially restore the chemistry of the world's oceans to pre-industrial levels. It will happen naturally as the ocean water mixes with the deep sea sediments, which act to neutralize the enhanced acidity, but that takes thousands of years. The only broad-scale solution to ocean acidification is to reduce and stabilize carbon dioxide emissions right now to keep things from getting worse.
...
I bet we'll just innovate ourselves out of needing the ocean!
Mon, Aug 15, 2011 from MSNBC: Arctic voyage to study ocean's changing acidity The world's oceans are getting more acidic, and a new mission to the Arctic will help scientists figure out what this means for delicate marine life.
For the second straight year, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will embark on a research cruise aboard the U.S. Coast Guard vessel Healy to the Arctic Ocean on Aug. 15 to collect water samples and other data to determine trends in ocean acidification from the least explored ocean in the world.
What the scientists learn from the data collected during the seven-week cruise will provide an understanding of the extent to which the Arctic Ocean 's chemistry is changing and detail potential implications for carbonate species -- such as phytoplankton and shellfish -- that are vulnerable to greater ocean acidity created by climate change.
"Ocean acidification can have broad global impacts on industry, ecosystems, tourism and policy, so it is of vital importance to determine trends and whether impacts are already occurring in oceans around the world," said USGS oceanographer Lisa Robbins. ...
Tue, Jul 19, 2011 from CNN: Study: Changes to ocean expected to damage shellfish around world Massive global greenhouse gas pollution is changing the chemistry of the world's oceans so much that scientists now predict it could severely damage shellfish populations and the nations that depend on the harvests if significant action isn't taken.
A new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts shows that ocean acidification is becoming a very serious problem. The study was published in July online in the journal Fish and Fisheries....Ocean acidification, or the changing chemical make-up of seawater, has occurred since the industrial revolution as ocean waters absorbed too much carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a by-product of human industrial activities, mainly the burning of fossil fuels.The Woods Hole study found that many marine animals like mollusks and corals that build hard shells and skeletons are most at risk from this. ...
Seems the shelflife of shellfish is deteriorating.
Mon, Jul 11, 2011 from George Monbiot, in the Guardian: Have jellyfish come to rule the waves? Last year I began to wonder, this year doubt is seeping away, to be replaced with a rising fear. Could it really have happened? Could the fishing industry have achieved the remarkable feat of destroying the last great stock?
Until 2010, mackerel were the one reliable catch in Cardigan Bay in west Wales. Though I took to the water dozens of times, there wasn't a day in 2008 or 2009 when I failed to take 10 or more. Once every three or four trips I would hit a major shoal, and bring in 100 or 200 fish: enough, across the season, to fill the freezer and supply much of our protein for the year....
I pushed my kayak off the beach and felt that delightful sensation of gliding away from land almost effortlessly - I'm so used to fighting the westerlies and the waves they whip up in these shallow seas that on this occasion I seemed almost to be drifting towards the horizon. Far below me I could see the luminous feathers I used as bait tripping over the seabed.
But I could also see something else. Jellyfish. Unimaginable numbers of them. Not the transparent cocktail umbrellas I was used to, but solid, white rubbery creatures the size of footballs. They roiled in the surface or loomed, vast and pale, in the depths. There was scarcely a cubic metre of water without one.Apart from that - nothing. It wasn't until I reached a buoy three miles from the shore that I felt the urgent tap of a fish, and brought up a single, juvenile mackerel. ...
In every gaping void there is an opportunity, right? Right?
Sat, Jun 25, 2011 from SightlineDaily: Trouble on the Half Shell Four summers ago, Sue Cudd couldn't keep a baby oyster alive.
She'd start with hundreds of millions of oyster larvae in the tanks at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Netarts, Oregon. Only a handful would make it....
A hatchery that has supplied seafood businesses for three decades had virtually nothing to sell for months, said Cudd, who owns the hatchery.
"They would just sort of fade away... It was really devastating. We're kind of the independent growers' hatchery, and we had always been reliable up until that point. People were just shocked. I heard a lot of times how it was ruining people's businesses."
It's tough to say with scientific certainty that ocean acidification is the sole cause of the die-offs that have plagued two of the Northwest's three major oyster hatcheries in the last few years.
But this much seems clear: young oysters have a hard time surviving in conditions that will only become more widespread as carbon dioxide from cars, coal plants and other industries cause the fundamental chemistry of the ocean to become more acidic. ...
Thankfully, there's news about the Royal Couple I can focus on!
Wed, Jun 22, 2011 from ClimateProgress: Another U.S. Coal Plant to Shutter. Will Renewables and Efficiency Fill the Gap? A municipal utility in Texas said this week that it plans to shut down an 871-MW coal plant within the next 7 years to avoid spending $3 billion for pollution controls. The Deely plant, operated by CPS Energy, has been running for more than 30 years - making it a candidate for environmental upgrades to comply with pending federal standards for mercury and air toxics.
Rather than invest in a new coal plant, however, the company plans on making up for the production loss by investing in 780 MW of energy efficiency capacity and 1,500 MW of renewable energy, including 44 MW of contracts from solar PV plants. Sierra Club issued a statement this week celebrating the planned closure, saying that solar "will replace that dirty electricity and bring clean energy jobs to Texas."...
What will fill in the gap? The contracts from CPS Energy are likely a good indicator of how that gap will be filled: Some efficiency, a mix of renewables, a good amount of natural gas, and, potentially, some cleaner coal electricity from new plants (if they get built.) According to data from the solar industry, the dropping costs of solar PV make the resource competitive with new coal plants that will be built over the next 8 years. These are solar PV plants in areas with high solar resources, not everywhere in the country. If that's the case, solar and other renewables will likely make up a larger portion of new contracts. ...
Mon, Jun 20, 2011 from BBC: World's oceans in 'shocking' decline The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists.
In a new report, they warn that ocean life is "at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history".
They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised.
The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity....
"The findings are shocking," said Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director and professor of conservation biology at Oxford University.
"As we considered the cumulative effect of what humankind does to the oceans, the implications became far worse than we had individually realised.
"We've sat in one forum and spoken to each other about what we're seeing, and we've ended up with a picture showing that almost right across the board we're seeing changes that are happening faster than we'd thought, or in ways that we didn't expect to see for hundreds of years." ...
I hear Britney is showing off plenty of skin on her new "Femme Fatale" tour!
Sun, Jun 19, 2011 from Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Are jellyfish a harbinger of dying seas?
Jellyfish, common in the seas for eons, suck so up so much food -- and give back so little -- that a dramatic population increase would gravely threaten the future of oceans worldwide, according to a new study.
Jellyfish could send once-productive seas, including the Gulf of Mexico, back to a more primitive state, if theories pointing to striking increases in the gelatinous creatures prove true.
They assault the base of the food chain, creating conditions where little can survive but jellyfish and bacteria, new scientific findings published this month reveal....
The findings are a cause for concern because reports of jellyfish blooms are increasing, leading many scientists to speculate that water pollution, global warming and overfishing may be tipping the scales toward conditions more favorable for jellyfish. ...
Sun, Jun 12, 2011 from Guardian: Explosion in jellyfish numbers may lead to ecological disaster, warn scientists Global warming has long been blamed for the huge rise in the world's jellyfish population. But new research suggests that they, in turn, may be worsening the problem by producing more carbon than the oceans can cope with....
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that while bacteria are capable of absorbing the constituent carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other chemicals given off by most fish when they die, they cannot do the same with jellyfish. The invertebrates, populating the seas in ever-increasing numbers, break down into biomass with especially high levels of carbon, which the bacteria cannot absorb well. Instead of using it to grow, the bacteria breathe it out as carbon dioxide. This means more of the gas is released into the atmosphere....
Condon's research also found that the spike in jellyfish numbers is also turning the marine food cycle on its head. The creatures devour huge quantities of plankton, thus depriving small fish of the food they need. "This restricts the transfer of energy up the food chain because jellyfish are not readily consumed by other predators," said Condon. ...
There's a Nobel for whoever figures out how to turn jellyfish into oil.
Sat, Jun 4, 2011 from University of Bristol via ScienceDaily: Ocean Acidification Leaves Clownfish Deaf to Predators Baby clownfish use hearing to detect and avoid predator-rich coral reefs during the daytime, but new research from the University of Bristol demonstrates that ocean acidification could threaten this crucial behavior within the next few decades. Since the Industrial Revolution, over half of all the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels has been absorbed by the ocean, making pH drop faster than any time in the last 650,000 years and resulting in ocean acidification. Recent studies have shown that this causes fish to lose their sense of smell, but a new study published in Biology Letters shows that fish hearing is also compromised. ...
Sun, May 29, 2011 from NatureClimate, via EurekAlert: Tiny bubbles signal severe impacts to coral reefs worldwide The research team studied three natural volcanic CO2 seeps in Papua New Guinea to better understand how ocean acidification will impact coral reefs ecosystem diversity. The study details the effects of long-term exposure to high levels of carbon dioxide and low pH on Indo-Pacific coral reefs, a condition that is projected to occur by the end of the century as increased man-made CO2 emissions alter the current pH level of seawater, turning the oceans acidic.
"These 'champagne reefs' are natural analogs of how coral reefs may look in 100 years if ocean acidification conditions continue to get worse," said Langdon, UM Rosenstiel School professor and co-principal investigator of the study....
The study shows shifts in the composition of coral species and reductions in biodiversity and recruitment on the reef as pH declined from 8.1 to 7.8. The team also reports that reef development would cease at a pH below 7.7. The IPCC 4th Assessment Report estimates that by the end of the century, ocean pH will decline from the current level of 8.1 to 7.8, due to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
"The seeps are probably the closest we can come to simulating the effect of man-made CO2 emissions on a coral reef," said Langdon. "They allow us to see the end result of the complex interactions between species under acidic ocean conditions." ...
Tiny bubbles, in the brine / Tiny bubbles, don't feel fine.
Thu, May 26, 2011 from ScienceDaily: First Legal Roadmap to Tackle Local Ocean Acidification Hotspots Coastal communities hard hit by ocean acidification hotspots have more options than they may realize, says an interdisciplinary team of science and legal experts. In a paper published in the journal Science, experts from Stanford University's Center for Ocean Solutions and colleagues make the case that communities don't need to wait for a global solution to ocean acidification to fix a local problem that is compromising their marine environment. Many localized acidification hotspots can be traced to local contributors of acidity that can be addressed using existing laws, they wrote....
"We identified practical steps communities can take today to counter local sources of acidity." The paper, entitled "Mitigating Local Causes of Ocean Acidification with Existing Laws," is the first to lay out how acidification hotspots can be reduced by applying federal and state laws and policies at a local level....
...
That roadmap doesn't show too many rest areas ahead.
Wed, May 11, 2011 from ScienceDaily: Ocean Acidification: Carbon Dioxide Makes Life Difficult for Algae The acidification of the world's oceans could have major consequences for the marine environment. New research shows that coccoliths, which are an important part of the marine environment, dissolve when seawater acidifies.
Coccoliths are very small shells of calcium carbonate that encapsulate a number of species of alga. Algae plays an important role in the global carbon-oxygen cycle and thus in our ecosystem. Our seawater has changed because of our emissions of greenhouse gases and therefore it was interesting for Hassenkam and his colleagues to investigate how the coccoliths react to different types of water.
"We know that the world's oceans are acidifying due to our emissions of CO2 and that is why it is interesting for us to find out how the coccoliths are reacting to it....
In fact, it turns out that the shell falls completely apart when we do experiments in water with a pH value that many researchers believe will be the found in the world oceans in the year 2100 due to the CO2 levels...." ...
Sun, May 8, 2011 from PNAS: Tracking single coccolith dissolution with picogram resolution and implications for CO2 sequestration and ocean acidification Currently, coccoliths serve as an important sink in the global carbon cycle, but decreasing ocean pH challenges their stability....
Even after 60 million years, the fossil coccolith crystals are still tiny..., compared with inorganically produced calcite, where one day old crystals can be 10 times larger, which raises the question if the biogenic nature of coccolith calcite gives it different properties than inorganic calcite? And if so, can these properties protect coccoliths in CO2 challenged oceans? Here we describe a new method for tracking dissolution of individual specimens, at picogram (10-12 g) resolution. The results show that the behavior of modern and fossil coccoliths is similar and both are more stable than inorganic calcite. Organic material associated with the biogenic calcite provides the explanation. However, ancient and modern coccoliths, that resist dissolution in Ca-free artificial seawater at pH > 8, all dissolve when pH is 7.8 or lower. Ocean pH is predicted to fall below 7.8 by the year 2100, in response to rising CO2 levels. Our results imply that at these conditions the advantages offered by the biogenic nature of calcite will disappear putting coccoliths on algae and in the calcareous bottom sediments at risk. ...
Denier translation: the human-produced CO2 that's not causing global warming is also not causing the ocean to go acidic, and therefore poses no threat to the base of the ocean food chain, nor to the ocean's ability to absorb CO2.
Sat, Apr 16, 2011 from New Scientist: Acidic ocean robs coral of vital building material CARBON dioxide has pillaged the Great Barrier Reef of a compound that corals and many sea creatures need to grow. The finding, from the first survey of ocean acidification around one of the world's greatest natural landmarks, supports fears that the ecosystem is on its last legs.
Bizarrely, the reef doesn't appear to be suffering from the effects of ocean acidification just yet. But that may be because it is balanced on a knife-edge between health and decay.
Oceans become acidic when they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Once dissolved, the gas reacts with carbonate to form bicarbonate, stripping seawater of the compound that many marine organisms including coral, shrimp and crabs need to build their shells or skeletons....
Studies in the Red Sea have found that some species of coral start to dissolve at a [aragonite] saturation of 2.8.
"Almost every bit of water we sampled was below 3.5," says Tilbrook, who presented his findings at Greenhouse 2011 in Cairns this week. Close to the shore, to the south of the reef, the saturation was 3.... ...
All those corals need to do is find a better contractor.
Fri, Apr 15, 2011 from BBC: Exploring the 'oceans crisis' What marked this week's event - convened by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean - as something a bit different was the melange of expertise in the same room.
Fisheries experts traded studies with people studying ocean acidification; climate modellers swapped data with ecologists; legal wonks formulated phrases alongside toxicologists.
They debated, discussed, queried, swapped questions and answers. Pretty much everyone said they'd learned something new - and something a bit scary....
It's fairly well-known now, for example, that the impacts of climate change on coral reefs can be delayed by keeping the reef healthy - by preventing local pollution, keeping fish stocks high and blocking invasive species.
So a policy to reduce climate impacts can mean curbing fishing or pollution, which might in turn mean changing farming practices to prevent fertiliser run-off.
In places, filter-feeding fish are apparently living in sediments containing so many particles of plastic that it makes up half of each mouthful. Other pollutants such as endocrine-disrupting ("gender-bending") chemicals gather on the plastic surfaces - which obviously can be harmful to the fish.
So a "healthy fisheries" policy might again involve regulating pollutants....
Josh Reichert, head of the Pew Environment Group, likening the current situation to...
"... driving towards the edge of a cliff while taking copious notes along the way.
"For years the science has gotten better, and the problem has become worse. Better science will enhance our understanding of the dilemma we face but will not resolve it - we depend on government to do that, and the challenge we face is getting government to act."
...
Thu, Mar 17, 2011 from Scientific American: House Repubs Vote That Earth Is Not Warming Congress has finally acted on global warming--by denying it exists. It's in the grand lawmaking tradition of the Indiana state legislature's 1897 attempt to redefine the value of pi.
The Republican-led House of Representatives is currently working on the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, which would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide emissions to mitigate climate change.
In the House Energy and Commerce Committee, California Democrat Henry Waxman had proposed an amendment calling on Congress to at least acknowledge that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," just as abundant scientific evidence confirms.
But on Tuesday, March 15, all the committee's Republicans voted down that amendment, as well as two others acknowledging the threat of climate change to public well-being. ...
Rep. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Heat.
Sun, Mar 6, 2011 from Time: Testing the Waters ...Corals build colonies that secrete calcium carbonate to form ocean reefs. When they're healthy, coral reefs provide shelter and food for animals all along the food chain, including the top: us. Across the planet, half a billion people rely, directly and indirectly, on corals for their living. That's why what happens to the 9,000-year-old Great Barrier Reef, as well as to other reefs worldwide, is critical. The recent Queensland floods were most notably tragic for the lives lost and property destroyed. But they have also hurt the Great Barrier Reef by funneling into the ocean vast plumes of freshwater and agricultural runoff that could severely damage the coral. Besides the extreme rain that sparked the floods, rising ocean temperatures, changes to the ocean's chemistry and the global trade in natural resources -- all symptoms of our fossil-fuel economy -- are waging a multifront war on the marine environment. "You can't walk into a forest and start hacking at branches and killing off animals and denuding the forest cover without killing the trees," says Justin Marshall, a marine biologist at the University of Queensland. "The outlook for the whole reef is poor."
...
This story brought to you by a mag once called TIME now called NO TIME LEFT.
Fri, Feb 11, 2011 from BioScience Magazine: Oyster Reefs at Risk and Recommendations for Conservation, Restoration, and Management Native oyster reefs once dominated many estuaries, ecologically and economically. Centuries of resource extraction exacerbated by coastal degradation
have pushed oyster reefs to the brink of functional extinction worldwide. We examined the condition of oyster reefs across 144 bays and 44
ecoregions; our comparisons of past with present abundances indicate that more than 90 percent of them have been lost in bays (70 percent) and ecoregions
(63 percent). In many bays, more than 99 percent of oyster reefs have been lost and are functionally extinct. Overall, we estimate that 85 percent of oyster reefs have
been lost globally. Most of the world's remaining wild capture of native oysters (greater than 75 percent) comes from just five ecoregions in North America, yet
the condition of reefs in these ecoregions is poor at best, except in the Gulf of Mexico. We identify many cost-effective solutions for conservation,
restoration, and the management of fisheries and nonnative species that could reverse these oyster losses and restore reef ecosystem services. ...
Thu, Jan 13, 2011 from Washington Examiner: Ocean acidification: one less thing to worry about According to a 2009 statement by Britain's Royal Society, co-signed by Dr. James Hansen, of NASA's Goddard Center, and Dr. Mark Spalding of The Nature Conservancy: "Temperature‐induced mass coral bleaching causing widespread mortality on the Great Barrier Reef and many other reefs of the world started when atmospheric CO2 exceeded 320ppm.... "At today's level of ~ 387ppm CO2, reefs are seriously declining and time‐lagged effects will result in their continued demise with parallel impacts on other marine and coastal ecosystems...
Except that there's practically no evidence that the depth in which coral shells dissolve faster than they accumulate has gotten any shallower over the past 250 years, geoscientist David Middleton points out in "Chicken Little of the Sea Strikes Again".
"There is solid evidence that elevated atmospheric CO2 levels have actually caused carbonate deposition to increase over the last 220 years," Middleton writes.
In fact, CO2 may actually be good for coral reefs. "It appears that in addition to being plant food... CO2 is also reef food," he points out... Once again, we have an environmental catastrophe that is entirely supported by predictive computer models and totally unsupported by correlative and empirical scientific data," he concludes.
"We can safely pitch ocean acidification into the dustbin of junk science."
...
Another eco-fad eradicated by one intrepid scientist's search for notoriety.
Sun, Jan 9, 2011 from WGBH Climatide: Discovery of the year: ocean acidification is happening NOW ocean acidification is the phenomenon in which carbon dioxide from the atmosphere dissolves in the surface waters of the ocean, producing carbonic acid that (in sufficient quantities) shifts the pH balance of the ocean toward acidity and impairs the ability of animals like oysters and corals to extract the calcium carbonate they need to build their skeletons or shells. In the past 200 years, the ocean has absorbed nearly a third of carbon dioxide emissions, resulting in a 30 percent increase in ocean acidity. Talmage and Gobler reared quahogs (Mercenaria mercenaria) and bay scallops (Argopecten irradia) under conditions simulating past, present, and likely future carbon dioxide levels. Not surprisingly (because numerous previous studies have documented similar findings), the shellfish of the future had severe shell defects, higher death rates, and slower growth than their modern-CO2 counterparts. What was less expected was the observation that modern conditions produced shellfish with thinner shells, slower growth, and death rates almost double those of shellfish grown in pre-industrial water conditions. ...
As if the health of bivalves has anything to do with me!
Tue, Jan 4, 2011 from Aquatic Toxicology: The effect of carbon dioxide on growth of juvenile Atlantic cod Gadus morhua L. All water quality parameters were within the range of what might normally be considered acceptable for good growth, including the CO2 levels tested. Weight gain, growth rate and condition factor were substantially reduced with increasing CO2 dosage. The size-specific growth trajectories of fish reared under the medium and high CO2 treatments were approximately 2.5 and 7.5 times lower (respectively) than that of fish in the low treatment. Size variance and mortality rate was not significantly different amongst treatments, indicating that there was no differential size mortality due the effects of hypercapnia, and the CO2 levels tested were within the adaptive capacity of the fish. In addition, an analysis was carried out of the test CO2 concentrations reported in three other long-term hypercapnia experiments using marine fish species. The test concentrations were recalculated from the reported carbonate chemistry conditions, and indicated that the CO2 concentration effect threshold may have been overestimated in two of these studies. Our study suggests that juvenile Atlantic cod are more susceptible to the chronic effects of environmental hypercapnia than other marine fish examined to date. ...
So we didn't overfish the Atlantic cod. They just got smaller and smaller and smaller...
Fri, Dec 31, 2010 from PNAS, via EnvironmentalResearchWeb: Ocean acidification changes nitrogen cycling in world seas Increasing acidity in the sea's waters may fundamentally change how nitrogen is cycled in them, say marine scientists who published their findings in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Nitrogen is one of the most important nutrients in the oceans. All organisms, from tiny microbes to blue whales, use nitrogen to make proteins and other important compounds.
Some microbes can also use different chemical forms of nitrogen as a source of energy.
One of these groups, the ammonia oxidizers, plays a pivotal role in determining which forms of nitrogen are present in the ocean. In turn, they affect the lives of many other marine organisms.... In six experiments spread across two oceans, Beman and colleagues looked at the response of ammonia oxidation rates to ocean acidification.
In every case where the researchers experimentally increased the amount of acidity in ocean waters, ammonia oxidation rates decreased.
These declines were remarkably similar in different regions of the ocean indicating that nitrification rates may decrease globally as the oceans acidify in coming decades, says David Hutchins of the University of Southern California, a co-author of the paper.... As human-derived carbon dioxide permeates the sea, ammonia-oxidizing organisms will be at a significant disadvantage in competing for ammonia.... "What makes ocean acidification such a challenging scientific and societal issue is that we're engaged in a global, unreplicated experiment," says Beman, "one that's difficult to study--and has many unknown consequences." ...
It's not like Neptune would allow this to continue. Nor would Aquaman. Atlantis would rise up!
Fri, Dec 17, 2010 from DesdemonaDespair: The Twelve Doomiest Stories of 2010 Ice-capped roof of world turns to desert:
Scientists warn of ecological catastrophe across Asia as glaciers melt and the continent's great rivers dry up.... Death of coral reefs could devastate nations, have 'tremendous cascade effect for all life in the oceans':
Coral reefs are part of the foundation of the ocean food chain. Nearly half the fish the world eats make their homes around them. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide -- by some estimates, 1 billion across Asia alone -- depend on them for their food and their livelihoods.... Ocean fish extinct within 40 years:
The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 unless fishing fleets are slashed and stocks allowed to recover, UN experts warned.... Oceans acidifying much faster than ever before in Earth's history:
"It is not the first time in the history of the Earth that the oceans have acidified, but a disturbing aspect now is that it is occurring much faster than ever before. As a consequence, not only the pH value drops, but the saturation state of the oceans with respect to carbonate falls as well. Times are tough, especially for calcifying organisms," says Prof. Jelle Bijma, marine biogeoscientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute. ...
Thank goodness this is all a game, and we can just hit "reset" whenever we want to start over!
Fri, Dec 10, 2010 from New York Times: An Alert on Ocean Acidity Carbon dioxide emissions from man-made sources are causing the acidity level of the world's oceans to rise at what is probably the fastest rate in 65 million years, threatening global fisheries that serve as an essential food source for billions of people, according to a new United Nations report.... The acidity of the oceans has grown 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. At current emission rates, ocean acidity could be 150 percent higher by the end of the century, the report states.... "No doubt different species of coral, coralline algae, plankton and mollusks will show different tolerances, and their capacity to calcify will decline at different rates," Dr. Veron wrote. "But as acidification progresses, they will all suffer from some form of coralline osteoporosis."
"The result will be that corals will no longer be able to build reefs or maintain them against the forces of erosion," the article continues. "What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime, and they will stay that way." ...
Quite apart from the massive die-off of nearly all marine ecosystems -- that bacterial slime will stink!
Thu, Dec 9, 2010 from The ApocaDocs: 2010 Year in Review from the ApocaDocs The shocking truth ripped from the headlines! An appalling sense of humor in full display! The TOP 100 STORIES selected from the 1600+ news items archived and bequipped by the ApocaDocs in 2010, our The Year in Review displays not just the most holy shit, death-spiral-ish stories of the year, but also many of our favorite quips ("holy shit" stories tend to bring out the quipsters in both of us). All displayed in staggering CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER to help recap the year. You'll find yourself asking "What, all this, and it's only June!?!" Groans, grimaces, and guffaws abound in this rollercoaster reprise of a most eventful year. ...
Mon, Dec 6, 2010 from Yale360: Is the End in Sight for The World's Coral Reefs? You may well feel that dire predictions about anything almost always turn out to be exaggerations. You may think there may be something in it to worry about, but it won't be as bad as doomsayers like me are predicting. This view is understandable given that only a few decades ago I, myself, would have thought it ridiculous to imagine that reefs might have a limited lifespan on Earth as a consequence of human actions. It would have seemed preposterous that, for example, the Great Barrier Reef -- the biggest structure ever made by life on Earth -- could be mortally threatened by any present or foreseeable environmental change.
Yet here I am today, humbled to have spent the most productive scientific years of my life around the rich wonders of the underwater world, and utterly convinced that they will not be there for our children's children to enjoy unless we drastically change our priorities and the way we live.... In a long period of deep personal anguish, I turned to specialists in many different fields of science to find anything that might suggest a fault in my own conclusions. But in this quest I was depressingly unsuccessful.... The early stages of acidification have now been detected in the Southern Ocean and, surprisingly perhaps, in tropical corals. On our current trajectory of increasing atmospheric CO2, we can expect that by 2030 to 2050 the acidification process will be affecting all the oceans of the world to some degree.... The atmospheric levels of CO2 we are already committed to reach, no matter what mitigation is now implemented, have no equal over the entire longevity of the Great Barrier Reef, perhaps 25 million years. And most significantly, the rate of CO2 increase we are now experiencing has no precedent in all known geological history. ...
Sounds like you're expecting us to believe you, just because you've spent a lifetime studying marine science.
Sun, Dec 5, 2010 from Daily Mail: Jellyfish are taking over the oceans: Population surge as rising acidity of world's seas kills predators Britain's beaches could soon be inundated with records numbers of jellyfish, marine experts warned today.
Scientists say the number of jellyfish are on the rise thanks to the increasing acidity of the world's oceans.
The warning comes in a new report into ocean acidification - an often overlooked side effect of burning fossil fuel....
The report, written by Dr Carol Turley of Plymouth University, said: 'Ocean acidification has also been tentatively linked to increased jellyfish numbers and changes in fish abundance.'
Jellyfish are immune to the effects of acidification. As other species decline, jellyfish will move in to fill the ecological niche.
Populations have boomed in the Mediterranean in recent years. Some marine scientists say the changing chemistry of the sea is to blame....
The report says acidification may push overstressed oceans into disaster with far reaching consequences the billions of people who rely on fish as their main protein source....
'The basic chemistry of sea water is being altered on a scale unseen within fossil records over at least 20 million years,' the report said.
...
I hear Ashton Kutcher's mistress has a sex tape, and boy is he pissed!
Wed, Dec 1, 2010 from Sydney Morning Herald: Australian Great Barrier Reef not looking so great They began the world-first experiment on a two-square-metre patch of the reef off Heron Island in May and found damage to the reef more serious than expected.
They will soon remove the four experimental chambers - two simulating future carbon dioxide levels and two with control conditions. They are using more than 20 precision instruments to monitor the changing water chemistry. The experiment simulates the predicted levels of carbon emissions in 2050.
Team member David Kline said the group had noted that in only eight months the part of the reef with the higher CO2 levels already looked quite different. ''What is growing there has changed, the types of algae are different and, based on our research, we would expect that the growth rate of the coral would have slowed,'' he said.
''If people's CO2 emissions continue as they have, the future of the reef is very grim. I would suggest that coral reefs will be highly altered and perturbed ecosystems by 2050 if we do not make a massive effort to curb our emissions. The findings back up much of the previous research that finds ocean acidification will have serious impacts on reefs.''... Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said scientists could use the data to predict at what point the reef would fade away. ''The corals are disappearing at a rate of 1 or 2 per cent a year ... If you multiply that by 20 years, that's 40 per cent.'' ...
A percent here, a percent there, pretty soon it adds up to real damage. Oh, hey, that might have implications elsewhere!
Fri, Nov 19, 2010 from New York Times: A Call to Action on Ocean Acidity States bordering water bodies that are becoming more acidic from the absorption of carbon dioxide should list them as impaired under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency declared in a memo this week.
Carbon dioxide emissions are considered a threat not only because of their heat-trapping properties in the atmosphere but also because of their ability to change ocean chemistry. The world's oceans act as a sponge for carbon dioxide, and as the gas dissolves in seawater, it changes into carbonic acid.... In the case of ocean acidification, such declarations could conceivably compel states or the federal government to act to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
"It gives the green light to states to go ahead and assess whether their waters are being impacted by ocean acidification and designate them if they are," said Miyoko Sakashita, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Step two would be some kind of approach to controlling the pollution that's causing the problem, which in this case would be carbon dioxide." ...
Once again those filthy liberuls are trying to save civilization's future through regulation.
Fri, Nov 5, 2010 from Nature.com: Ocean pH dropping faster than expected Thanks to rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, some Arctic waters are already experiencing pH dips that could be harmful to sea life. What's more, this acidification seems to be happening more rapidly than models have predicted.... "Models are probably underestimating at least by a few years the impact of ocean acidification in the Arctic," says Jeremy Mathis, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. "We don't know what the organisms' responses are yet, but the conditions are already there to potentially be disruptive to the ecosystems."...
One important source of carbonate ions is aragonite, a particularly soluble form of calcium carbonate. Seawater is usually saturated with aragonite. However a recent study in Biogeosciences estimated that by 2016, according to the IPCC's mid-range emissions projections, aragonite will fall below this level in some Arctic waters for at least one month a year. By the end of the century, it predicts that the entire Arctic Ocean could be under-saturated with respect to aragonite.
"But we don't have to wait until 2016," says Mathis. "We're already seeing places in the Arctic where these under-saturations are happening now." High latitude waters in the Arctic and Antarctic are particularly sensitive to pH changes, as cold waters absorb more gas than warm waters....
The news gets worse. Several speakers on the panel, including Richard Feely, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who has been leading large-scale ocean surveys of acidification, warned that the acidity of seawater could double by the end of the century. ...
Whoops! My bad! Erroneous moi! Ich bin ausgeguilty! Can we move on now?
Sat, Oct 30, 2010 from Reuters: Concern Over Ocean Acidification Ramps Up Research Dollars Mounting concerns over ocean acidification--a consequence of CO2 emissions--has accelerated research funding aimed at understanding the process potentially endangering marine life in ocean waters all across the earth.
In early October, the National Science Foundation awarded over $24 million dollars to 22 projects through a new grant program targeted to study how ocean acidification affects marine environments. While the NSF has funded ocean acidification in the past, it is the first time the agency has created a special program aimed at the field of study.
As CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere increase, much of the gas is absorbed by the oceans, where it dissolves in the water. As a result, the oceans are getting more acidic over time. However, the long-term effects of the process are poorly understood.
"There are serious concerns about ocean acidification, and that's why this research is being conducted," Phillip Taylor, Head of the Ocean Section in NSF's Ocean Sciences Division, told SolveClimate News. "There are many who think this is going to have an impact on important animals in the sea that are instrumental in driving the productivity of ocean waters."...
Those changes may not sound like a lot, but pH is measured on a logarithmic scale, so a 0.1 difference is equivalent to a 30 percent change in acidity or alkalinity. "When you change the pH of water, it has very clear and potentially immediate affects on the physiology of organisms," Taylor said.
One effect of ocean acidification is to decrease the availability of carbonate ions in the water, an important compound for organisms like corals, shellfish and foraminifera that use carbonate to build their calcium carbonate shells. These shells are part of the organisms' body structure; they provide shape, size and protection against predators. ...
Maybe research funding should be on a logarithmic scale, based on its potential for catastrophe?
Wed, Sep 22, 2010 from EPOCA: Shellfish feel the burn: damage linked to atmospheric CO2 Last week, the National Academy of Sciences released a report on research of what has been called "the other carbon problem"--ocean acidification.... The NAS report says that we're way behind in studying this problem, which wasn't even fully recognized until recently. Just how far behind we are is made clear by a paper that will be released this week by PNAS, which reveals that two species of commercially harvested shellfish are likely to already be suffering increased mortality due to ocean acidification.... The interesting twist in the new work is that the authors also run the experiment under preindustrial CO2 levels of about 250ppm (actual levels were closer to 280ppm). For both species of shellfish, the mortality was much lower and development proceded more quickly. For the quahog, viability doubled (from 20 percent to 40 percent), while for the bay scallop, viability went from 43 percent to 74 percent. The animals made major developmental milestones more quickly--metamorphosis at day 14 occurred in half the animals at preindustrial CO2 levels, but that dropped to less than seven percent at modern levels.
The authors helpfully point out that they've eliminated predation in their lab conditions. If the animals were subject to being eaten, the weaker shells that form at higher CO2 levels would almost certainly increase the mortality.... According to the paper, it's actually been over 24 million years since levels are likely to have been this high, and many shellfish have diversified more recently than that; any changes in CO2 in the intervening time have also been far more gradual than the current pace. ...
This wasn't supposed to happen until long after I was dead!
Sat, Sep 11, 2010 from EnvironmentalResearchWeb: A sea of troubles This year has been a tough one for the world's oceans. Sea-surface temperatures have continued to rise, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill caused serious pollution, as did numerous smaller leaks, and over-fishing and acidification continue apace.
So it's no surprise that ocean life, from the smallest plankton to the largest whale, is showing signs of damage. Only this week the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration designated the eastern North Pacific basking shark a "species of concern" because of the dramatic drop in its numbers despite years of protection from fishing.... And earlier this summer researchers in Canada found that the amount of phytoplankton in the ocean has decreased by 40 percent since 1950 in 8 out of 10 large ocean regions. They ascribed this decline to rising sea-surface temperatures, but added that there may be other factors that they haven't yet discovered. ...
Wed, Sep 1, 2010 from ScienceDaily: Acidifying Oceans Spell Bleak Marine Biological Future 'by End of Century', Mediterranean Research Finds A unique 'natural laboratory' in the Mediterranean Sea is revealing the effects of rising carbon dioxide levels on life in the oceans. The results show a bleak future for marine life as ocean acidity rises, and suggest that similar lowering of ocean pH levels may have been responsible for massive extinctions in the past.... 'A tipping point occurs at mean pH 7.8. This is the pH level predicted for the end of this century'.
Rising carbon dioxide levels acidify the ocean, which has a particularly devastating effect on organisms that have calcium carbonate shells, like Foraminifera.
'Forams are well preserved in the fossil record, which is why we chose to study them', says Dr Hall-Spencer. 'We knew the results were likely to show a decline in foram diversity but we weren't expecting such a seismic shift'. ...
Ninety years ago we were in Model T's! I'm sure we'll think of something.
Mon, Aug 23, 2010 from Guardian: Coral doctor sounds the alarm about more acidic seas The changes he sees in ocean chemistry spell trouble for the coral that he studies closely. If the acidification process continues on its current trajectory, it poses a dire threat to the whole marine ecosystem.
"What I'm really concerned about with ocean acidification is that we are facing the prospect of a crash in marine food webs." says Guinotte. "There is no question that many of my colleagues in marine science are scared about what is happening. We know we need a more precise understanding of the changes and biological responses now under way -- and we need it as quickly as possible, before it is too late to turn things around."... As carbon dioxide is absorbed by seawater, hydrogen ions are released. This lower the pH, making the water more acidic. Measurements indicate that Earth's oceans are already about 30 percent more acidic than they were before the industrial revolution. As the number of hydrogen ions has risen, the number of carbonate ions available in seawater has gone down. This carbonate deficit makes life more difficult for the "marine calcifiers," species such as coral and shellfish that use carbonate to build their skeletons and protective shells.... "From the standpoint of the oceans," Guinotte says, "there is no escaping the fact that we are going to need major reductions in our CO2 emissions -- something like 80 to 90 percent. When we see governments arguing about reductions of 10 to 15 percent, I think all of us in the marine science community need to say that CO2 reductions of this scale are simply not going to be sufficient. We have to get off fossil fuels." ...
CO2 reductions of 85-90 percent? Are you tripping?
Fri, Aug 20, 2010 from Bangor Daily News: Gulf of Maine: changing? ... But what would happen if the entire Gulf of Maine ecosystem changed at once?
We may soon find out. Excess carbon dioxide, or CO2, in our atmosphere is causing ocean acidification. The ocean absorbs atmospheric CO2, and when CO2 mixes with seawater, carbonic acid develops. Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere has subsequently increased the acidity of seawater, lowering its pH. And the oceans are expected to become even more acidic over the next 200 years, as CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to rise. In fact, atmospheric CO2 levels are predicted to nearly double over that time.... [S]helled organisms exhibit different responses to increasingly acidic marine environments. Mollusks such as bay scallops, whelks, periwin-kles, oysters, conchs, quahogs and softshell clams build their shells more slowly as the amount of atmospheric CO2 increases. And in some cases, the shells of these organisms actually begin to dissolve away.... Under high CO2 conditions, quahog shells had fewer ridges, conch shells had smaller knobs and the spines of pencil urchins became truncated. These organisms are thought to have evolved their ridges, knobs and spines for burrowing, stability and motility, respectively. Without them, these animals would be even more vulnerable to predators.... The bottom line is that the net effect of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems will likely be more severe than the sum of the responses of individual species. At the ecosystem level, it is unlikely that the weakening of some species (the mollusks) will be offset by the strengthening of others (the crustacea). ...
That's the "symphony effect": if it sucks for one instrument, it makes every other instrument off key. Wait -- is that right?
Fri, Aug 6, 2010 from Biogeosciences: Ocean acidification shows no effect on Baltic Cod sperm Ocean acidification, as a consequence of increasing marine pCO2, may have severe effects on the physiology of marine organisms. However, experimental studies remain scarce, in particular concerning fish. While adults will most likely remain relatively unaffected by changes in seawater pH, early life-history stages are potentially more sensitive - particularly the critical stage of fertilization, in which sperm motility plays a central role. In this study, the effects of ocean acidification (decrease of pH to 7.55) on sperm motility of Baltic cod, Gadus morhua, were assessed. We found no significant effect of decreased pH on sperm speed, rate of change of direction or percent motility for the population of cod analyzed. We predict that future ocean acidification will probably not pose a problem for sperm behavior, and hence fertilization success, of Baltic cod.
...
Thu, Aug 5, 2010 from Q13Fox TV: Puget Sound is becoming threat to shellfish industry It's a multi-million dollar business that depends on Puget Sound to help it thrive. But, those very waters could be killing the shellfish industry. Scientists say the Sound is becoming more acidic and oysters are dying because of it.... "When you have the water incoming into the hatchery and it's very low PH waters it can kill off the larvae of many of our oyster species," said Feely.... There is no easy fix. Scientists believe the high acid levels we're seeing right now has been building up in Puget Sound for decades. Bill Dewey believes the best way to protect future generations of oysters is stop polluting the environment right now.
"Even if we change carbon emissions, policies today, we still have got 50 more years of problems coming our way," said Dewey.
...
It's as if our own environment were becoming toxic to life... Oh, wait... we already know that!
Sun, Aug 1, 2010 from Seattle Times: Oysters a sign of trouble from Puget Sound acidity Pacific oysters in the wild on Washington's coast haven't reproduced in six seasons. Scientists suspect ocean-chemistry changes linked to the fossil-fuel emissions that cause global warming are helping kill these juvenile shellfish.
The oceans are becoming more acidic, and that corrosive water is finding its way into Puget Sound.
No one knows how it will impact the Sound's sea life. But scientists in laboratories around the globe increasingly find corrosive water can alter marine systems in strange, subtle and sometimes worrisome ways. ...
Fri, Jul 30, 2010 from LiveScience, via DesdemonaDespair: Oceans May Be Primed for Mass Extinction The Gulf and the rest of the world's waters also face the uncertain and potentially devastating effects of climate change. Warming ocean temperatures reduce the water's oxygen content, and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide is altering the basic chemistry of the ocean, making it more acidic. There is no shortage of evidence that both of these effects have begun to wreak havoc on certain important creatures.... "Today the synergistic effects of human impacts are laying the groundwork for a comparably great Anthropocene mass extinction in the oceans, with unknown ecological and evolutionary consequences...". When it comes to the oceans, research shows a parallel to the Permian-Triassic extinction -- also known as the Great Dying -- which eradicated 95 percent of marine species when the oceans lost their oxygen about 250 million years ago.
The same phenomenon is taking place in many areas of today's oceans.... "If current trends continue, the extinctions of the coming decades will be clearly visible to future geologists comparable in scale to the great extinction events in Earth's history," he wrote. "I think it will be an enigmatic extinction. Future geologists will try to figure out why we apparently tried to kill off so many species, but they will find it hard to believe that simple reason is stupidity." ...
It's not that we're stupid. It's that we know we're the king of the world.
Thu, Jul 29, 2010 from New Scientist: Phytoplankton [and more] in decline: bye bye food chain Ocean life is being wiped out from the bottom up. The global population of microscopic plants that float in ocean water and support most marine life has declined by 1 per cent every year since 1899.... Whatever the cause, it's a remarkably bad piece of news, because although phytoplankton are neither glamorous nor cute, the entire ocean food chain depends on them.... [Corals] are threatened by changing ocean temperatures and ocean acidification, both triggered by humanity's greenhouse gas emissions.
[Key saproxylic beetles in] Europe, at least, 24 per cent are under threat, and we would miss them if they went.
Similarly, insects such as butterflies and bees that pollinate plants are probably in decline (though the data are far from complete).
And fungi have barely been assessed at all, but along with bacteria they are the organisms that do the lion's share of decomposition, which is whiffy but essential.
In other words, never mind the pandas: it's plankton, bugs and fungi you should be worrying about. ...
Wed, Jul 28, 2010 from Dalhousie University via ScienceDaily: Marine Phytoplankton Declining: Striking Global Changes at the Base of the Marine Food Web Linked to Rising Ocean Temperatures A new article published in the 29 July issue of the journal Nature reveals for the first time that microscopic marine algae known as "phytoplankton" have been declining globally over the 20th century. Phytoplankton forms the basis of the marine food chain and sustains diverse assemblages of species ranging from tiny zooplankton to large marine mammals, seabirds, and fish. Says lead author Daniel Boyce, "Phytoplankton is the fuel on which marine ecosystems run. A decline of phytoplankton affects everything up the food chain, including humans."... documented phytoplankton declines of about 1 percent of the global average per year. This trend is particularly well documented in the Northern Hemisphere and after 1950, and would translate into a decline of approximately 40 percent since 1950.The scientists found that long-term phytoplankton declines were negatively correlated with rising sea surface temperatures and changing oceanographic conditions. ...
Does this mean I won't be able to get my Phytoplankton Krispies?
Mon, Jul 26, 2010 from Scientific American: Ancient Ocean Acidification Intimates Long Recovery from Climate Change Of course the present era is hardly the first time the planet has seen higher levels of CO2. In fact, roughly 121 million years ago--during an age known as the early Aptian--global CO2 levels were likely higher than 800 ppm (and possibly as high as 2,000 ppm) thanks to cataclysmic volcanic eruptions. Now new research published in Science July 23 shows how ancestors of today's nannoplankton fared in those acidic oceans of long ago.
It was a time of "severe global warming," paleobiologist Elisabetta Erba of the University of Milan and her colleagues wrote, after studying the carbon isotopes embedded in deep seabed cores drilled in the Pacific Ocean and locations in the ancient Tethys Ocean, which existed during the Mesozoic era. The records reveal that acidification proved a big problem for nannoplankton. "During the Aptian episode, marine calcifiers experienced a major crisis due to increasing CO2-induced acidification," Erba says.
But that crisis was not a major extinction event. The nannoplankton responded by doing less shell-forming--the heaviest shell-formers, known as nannoconids, largely disappeared from the fossil record (although they did not go extinct, the same species reappear after acidification dwindles)--and by diversifying into new, smaller species. In some cases species even increased in abundance but shrank in size--by as much as 60 percent. "Malformation is also ascertained for some [widespread] species," Erba notes. It took at least 25,000 years for the new acidity levels reached in the surface waters to transfer to deeper waters, according to the research -- and the ocean took 75,000 years to reach its peak acidity for that episode, as well as at least 160,000 years to recover.... Regardless, the shells of at least one modern foraminifera in the Southern Ocean are already smaller than those of their ancestors from a mere century ago. And the modern buildup of atmospheric CO2 is happening far faster than these ancient episodes. "The current rate of ocean acidification is about a hundred times faster than the most rapid events" in the geologic past..." ...
Tue, Jul 13, 2010 from Seattle Times: Puget Sound waters now more corrosive The waters in Puget Sound's main basin are acidifying as fast as those along the Washington Coast, where wild oysters have not reproduced since 2005.
And in parts of Hood Canal, home to much of the region's shellfish industry, water-chemistry problems are significantly worse than the rest of Puget Sound.
Scientists from the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned Monday that the changing pH of the seas is hitting Puget Sound harder and faster than many other marine waters.
That increasingly corrosive water -- a byproduct of carbon-dioxide releases from industries, power plants and vehicles -- is probably already harming shellfish, and over time it could reverberate through the marine food chain. ...
Plus, it will burn your swim suit right off your body!
Wed, Jul 7, 2010 from Science News: Ocean acidification may make fish foolhardy Baby fish become confused and reckless in water with high levels of dissolved carbon dioxide, a new study shows. This leads to higher death rates and may mean that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, which causes ocean acidification, will reduce the number of fish in the ocean.
"It shows we should be concerned with even minor changes in aquatic ecology, because it's going to have dramatic effects on the survival of fish," says Grant Brown, a freshwater behavioral ecologist at Concordia University in Montreal who was not involved in the study. "There are very fine-scale, yet extreme critical effects going on." ...
Tue, Jul 6, 2010 from Science News: Methane releases in arctic seas could wreak devastation Massive releases of methane from arctic seafloors could create oxygen-poor dead zones, acidify the seas and disrupt ecosystems in broad parts of the northern oceans, new preliminary analyses suggest.
Such a cascade of geochemical and ecological ills could result if global warming triggers a widespread release of methane from deep below the Arctic seas, scientists propose in the June 28 Geophysical Research Letters.
Worldwide, particularly in deeply buried permafrost and in high-latitude ocean sediments where pressures are high and temperatures are below freezing, icy deposits called hydrates hold immense amounts of methane... ...
Mon, Jul 5, 2010 from Science, via McClatchy: World ocean: 'overwhelming evidence' that it's 'a lot worse than the public thinks.' A sobering new report warns that the oceans face a "fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation" not seen in millions of years as greenhouse gases and climate change already have affected temperature, acidity, sea and oxygen levels, the food chain and possibly major currents that could alter global weather.... "We are becoming increasingly certain that the world's marine ecosystems are reaching tipping points," Bruno said, adding, "We really have no power or model to foresee" the impact.
"It's a lot worse than the public thinks," said Nate Mantua, an associate research professor at the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group.
Mantua, who's read the report, said it was clear what was causing the oceans' problems: greenhouse gases. "It is not a mystery," he said.
...
Alright! If it's not a mystery, then we can do something about it!
Right?
Right?
Fri, Jul 2, 2010 from The Economist: The other carbon-dioxide problem The declining pH does not actually make the waters acidic (they started off mildly alkaline). But it makes them more acidic, just as turning up the light makes a dark room brighter.
Ocean acidification has further chemical implications: more hydrogen ions mean more bicarbonate ions, and fewer carbonate ions. Carbonate is what corals, the shells of shellfish and the outer layers of many photosynthesising plankton and other microbes are made of. If the level of carbonate ions falls too low the shells can dissolve or might never be made at all. There is evidence that the amount of carbonate in the shells of foraminifera, micro-plankton that are crucial to ocean ecology, has recently dropped by as much as a third.... In many places, natural variations in pH will be larger than long-term changes in its mean.
This is not to say that such changes have no effect. If peak acidities rather than long-term averages are what matters most, natural variability could make things worse. But it does suggest that the effects will be far from uniform.... Studies of Australia's Great Barrier Reef show that levels of calcification are down, though it is not yet possible to say changes in chemistry are a reason for this. Current research comparing chemical data taken in the 1960s and 1970s with the situation today may clarify things.... Ocean ecosystems are beset by changes in nutrient levels due to run off near the coasts and by overfishing, which plays havoc with food webs nearly everywhere. And the effects of global warming need to be included, too. Surface waters are expected to form more stable layers as the oceans warm, which will affect the availability of nutrients and, it is increasingly feared, of oxygen.... Wherever you look, there is always another other problem. ...
Mon, Jun 28, 2010 from Grist: 'Carbon storage' faces leak dilemma, study finds Dreams of braking global warming by storing carbon emissions from power plants could be undermined by the risk of leakage, according to a study published on Sunday.
Rich countries have earmarked tens of billions of dollars of investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that is still only at an experimental stage.
With CCS, carbon dioxide would be snared at source from plants that are big burners of oil, gas, and coal. Instead of being released into the atmosphere, where it would contribute to global warming, the gas would be buried in the deep ocean or piped into underground chambers such as disused gas fields.... Storing CO2 in the ocean will contribute to acidification of the sea, with dangers that reverberate up the food chain, says its author, Gary Shaffer, a professor at the Danish Centre for Earth System Science in Humlebaek, Denmark. It also carries a higher risk of being returned to the atmosphere by ocean currents and storms.
Underground storage is a better option, but only if the geological chamber does not have a significant leak or is not breached by an earthquake or some other movement, says the paper.... To offset any bigger leak, re-sequestration would be needed -- in other words, grabbing an equivalent amount of CO2 from the air and storing it. But this would be a cost burden that could last for millennia. ...
Wed, Jun 23, 2010 from National Research Council, Ocean Studies Board: Ocean Acidification: A National Strategy to Meet the Challenges of a Changing Ocean Some of the strongest evidence of the potential impacts of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems comes from experiments on calcifying organisms; acidifying seawater to various extents has been shown to affect the formation and dissolution of calcium carbonate shells and skeletons in a range of marine organisms including reef-building corals, commercially-important mollusks such as oysters and mussels, and many phytoplankton and zooplankton species that form the base of marine food webs. It is important to note that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is rising too rapidly for natural, CaCO3-cycle processes to maintain the pH of the ocean.... Ocean acidification may affect wild marine fisheries directly by altering the growth or survival of target species, and indirectly through changes in species' ecosystems, such as predator and prey abundance or critical habitat.... Beyond the value of commercial or recreational shellfish harvests, shellfish resources such as oyster reefs and mussel beds provide valuable ecosystem services. ...
I wonder how you "meet the challenges" of a dead ocean?
Sun, Jun 20, 2010 from Scientific American: Oceans choking on CO2, face deadly changes: study The world's oceans are virtually choking on rising greenhouse gases, destroying marine ecosystems and breaking down the food chain -- irreversible changes that have not occurred for several million years, a new study says.
The changes could have dire consequences for hundreds of millions of people around the globe who rely on oceans for their livelihoods."It's as if the Earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day", said the report's lead-author Australian marine scientist Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. The Australia-U.S. report published in Science magazine on Friday, studied 10 years of marine research and found that climate change was causing major declines in marine ecosystems. Oceans were rapidly warming and acidifying, water circulation was being altered and dead zones within the ocean depths were expanding, said the report.
There has also been a decline in major ocean ecosystems like kelp forests and coral reefs and the marine food chain was breaking down, with fewer and smaller fish and more frequent diseases and pests among marine organisms. ...
I've been told that the four out of five doctors smoke Chesterfields.
Fri, Jun 18, 2010 from CanWest News Service: Carbon emissions having harmful, lasting impact on oceans: Reports The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster, but it may pale compared to what scientists say is brewing in the world's oceans due to everyday consumption of fossil fuels.
The billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide sent wafting into the atmosphere each year through the burning of oil, gas and coal are profoundly affecting the oceans, says a series of reports published Friday in the journal Science... Marine scientists Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, at the University of Queensland in Australia, and John Bruno, at University of North Carolina, describe how the oceans act as a "heat sink" and are slowly heating up along with the atmosphere as greenhouse gas emissions climb.
The warming, they say, is "likely to have profound influences on the strength, direction and behaviour" of major ocean currents and far-reaching impacts on sea life.
...
Fri, Jun 11, 2010 from Bristol Bay Times: Pollock show boost of bicarbonate in blood No matter what you believe about climate change, ocean chemistry doesn't lie. Even toy store chemistry tests will show that the seas are becoming more acidic, and the off-kilter levels can have a scary impact on sea creatures: it dissolves them.... In tests on one-year old pollock at varying levels of pH, researchers at NOAA Fisheries Newport lab discovered that the fish seemed to compensate for increased [acidity] by boosting levels of bicarbonate in their blood.... "Even if they were absorbing it from sea water, that is energy they are spending on regulating pH that they are not spending on growth and reproduction and foraging," he added. "So either way there was likely an energetic cost to the fish."... The Whiskey Creek Hatchery in Oregon is a major producer of oyster spat for most of the West Coast. For the past two years, the hatchery has had almost complete loss of 10 billion oyster larvae due to acidic water flowing through the holding tanks, depending on the direction of the wind. ...
Thu, Jun 10, 2010 from EPOCA: The societal challenge of ocean acidification [S]ince the beginning of the industrial revolution, the oceans have taken up approximately 30 percent of the CO2 produced from fossil fuel burning, cement manufacture and land use changes.... While the invasion of CO2 into the ocean removes this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere and thereby dampens global warming, it forms carbonic acid in seawater and lowers ambient surface ocean pH... [It] will become more pronounced as humankind emits more CO2 into the atmosphere, with surface ocean pH expected to decline by a further 0.3 pH units by the end of the century, corresponding to an approximately 100 percent increase in ocean acidity.... Such a rapid change in ocean pH has very likely not happened since the time the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. ...
Sat, May 22, 2010 from Eurepean Science Foundation, via Reuters: 'Double trouble' in acidic, warming oceans - study Acidification of the oceans means "double trouble" for marine life from corals to shellfish since it is adding to stresses caused by global warming, a study showed on Wednesday.
"The oceans are more acidic than they have ever been for at least 20 million years," according to the report by the European Science Foundation. On current trends, seas could be 150 percent more acidic by 2100 than they were in pre-industrial times.
Sea water is acidifying because carbon dioxide, released to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, is slightly corrosive in water. That makes it harder for creatures such as corals, lobsters, crabs or oysters to build their protective shells.... Among worrying precedents were fossil records of a leap in ocean acidity 55 million years ago that caused a spasm of extinctions of creatures living on the ocean floor, he said. That pulse may have been caused by natural releases of methane. ...
Fri, May 7, 2010 from Channel 4 News: Concern over impact of rising ocean acidity Five yeas ago, no one outside a very small group of ocean scientists had heard of ocean acidification.
Now, it's one of the most worrying phenomena confronting those who care about the radical changes that seem to be happening on our planet. Worrying enough to compel a team of three UK scientists to camp on the sea ice floating on top of the Arctic Ocean for 35 days in conditions as tough as anywhere on the planet.... Their initial findings may suggest this pristine ocean is already more acidic than others, and that the chemical balance of the ocean may already be becoming unfavourable for the tiny plankton that live there.... Acidified oceans become worse at soaking up planet warming carbon dioxide. And that's a big deal-- like giant liquid rainforests-- they currently mop up half of the carbon dioxide we churn out. When it comes to the Arctic, it couldn't happen in a worse place.
Because it's so cold, the Arctic Ocean absorbs more than its fair share of carbon dioxide. Even though it's a small ocean compared to many, this makes it disproportionally important in cooling our planet. If you want to get a picture of how grave the problem of ocean acidification may be -- the Arctic is a smart place to start. ...
See? More proof that the scientific establishment is anti-progress!
Fri, Apr 30, 2010 from MNN: So long, shellfish: Oysters falling victim to ocean acidification Could seafood fans be saying goodbye to shellfish sometime soon? Millions of oyster larvae have been dying in Northwest farms due to increasingly acidic ocean waters, which robs them of their ability to grow their shells, according to ABC News. The world's oceans are absorbing more carbon dioxide than ever as greenhouse gas emissions increase on land. "The chemistry is very simple. It is 101. Carbon dioxide makes the water more acidic, that is irrefutable," said Oregon State University professor of oceanography Burke Hales.
Oyster farmers Mark Wiegardt and Sue Cudd of Tilamook, Oregon's Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery called in Hales and his team when their larvae suddenly started dying. The hatchery's 8,000 gallon tanks were pumping in water from the Pacific Ocean, which turned out to be increasingly acidic. But the oysters aren't alone. Clams, mussels, lobsters, shrimp and smaller-shelled sea creatures are all forming weaker shells due to the increased ocean pH dissolving calcium carbonate, the material that allows shells to harden or calcify.
"At first, scientists thought, oh, isn't this great, the ocean's taking up carbon dioxide that's resulting in less greenhouse warming. And it's only later that scientists realize this carbon dioxide in the oceans forms carbonic acid, and that attacks the shells of marine organisms," explains Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institute at Stanford University. ...
Heck, it's just the ocean. Besides, we're diluting it with melting icecaps. That'll take care of the problem, right?
Tue, Apr 20, 2010 from KTVU: Climate Damage Confirmed To Be Serious, Extensive Internationally respected Mbari ocean chemist Peter Brewer says 85 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from automobiles and fossil fuel power plants, their output equaling a million tons of carbon dioxide every hour dissolving into the ocean.
"In the long term future, where there'll be a huge swath of ocean, that will be inhospitable to marine life," said Brewer.
Research published Friday suggested that deep oceans are hiding heat that will likely accelerate global warming, spawn repeated El Nino's and quicken ocean catastrophes.... The net effect experts say, is greenhouse gas levels are greater now and rising faster than at any time humans have been on earth
"We're putting so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the biosphere just can't catch up," said Baldocchi.... But scientists like Brewer and Baldocchi are pessimistic, saying climate change is happening too fast.
"I think we're going to have these changes, I wish we didn't, we better work hard to try and undo them, but right now there's not a good path for doing that," said Brewer.
"Sure we'll live, we'll survive, it just might not be a very nice world.," said Baldocchi. ...
I ain't fallin' for it. I demand a 145,322nd opinion.
Fri, Apr 9, 2010 from Alaska Journal of Commerce: Research expands to 'sister' issue of global warming Rising temperatures and sea levels, melting glaciers and extreme weather dominate the discussion on global warming, but a parallel issue with potentially tremendous impact on Alaska's coastal waters is finally gaining attention.
Increased research into ocean acidification caused by the saturation of water with carbon dioxide is the focus of Jeremy Mathis of University of Alaska Fairbanks, who stepped onto the national stage for the first time recently in a briefing to a mix of Congressmen, Senators and staffers in Washington, D.C.... A positive response from holders of the purse strings is essential to making up research ground on ocean acidification, which Mathis calls a "sister" or co-equal problem to global warming. Studies of its potential effects on the food chain are few and the lack of baseline data on ocean pH levels is a stark contrast to decades of temperature monitoring from stations positioned around the globe.... A decrease in these mineral levels to food web base species like pteropods, also known as sea butterflies, which make up 45 percent of the diet for juvenile pink salmon, can cause cascading waves of disruption up the food chain.
Mathis' research shows a 10 percent decline in pteropod production can lead to a 20 percent reduction in the body weight of mature salmon.... ...
Mon, Apr 5, 2010 from McClatchy Newspapers: EPA may try to use Clean Water Act to regulate carbon dioxide The Environmental Protection Agency is exploring whether to use the Clean Water Act to control greenhouse gas emissions, which are turning the oceans acidic at a rate that's alarmed some scientists.
With climate change legislation stalled in Congress, the Clean Water Act would serve as a second front, as the Obama administration has sought to use the Clean Air Act to rein in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases administratively.
Since the dawn of the industrial age, acid levels in the oceans have increased 30 percent. Currently, the oceans are absorbing 22 million tons of carbon dioxide a day.
Among other things, scientists worry that the increase in acidity could interrupt the delicate marine food chain, which ranges from microscopic plankton to whales.
...
Sun, Apr 4, 2010 from PhysOrg.com: 'Evil twin' threatens world oceans, scientists warn "Ocean conditions are already more extreme than those experienced by marine organisms and ecosystems for millions of years," the researchers say in the latest issue of the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution (TREE).
"This emphasises the urgent need to adopt policies that drastically reduce CO2 emissions."
Ocean acidification, which the researchers call the 'evil twin of global warming', is caused when the CO2 emitted by human activity, mainly burning fossil fuels, dissolves into the oceans. It is happening independently of, but in combination with, global warming.... "Evidence gathered by scientists around the world over the last few years suggests that ocean acidification could represent an equal - or perhaps even greater threat - to the biology of our planet than global warming." ...
Mon, Mar 29, 2010 from Society for General Microbiology, via EurekAlert: Ecosystems under threat from ocean acidification Postgraduate researcher Mr Maguire, together with colleagues at Newcastle University, performed experiments in which they simulated ocean acidification as predicted by current trends of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The group found that the decrease in ocean pH (increased acidity) resulted in a sharp decline of a biogeochemically important group of bacteria known as the Marine Roseobacter clade. "This is the first time that a highly important bacterial group has been observed to decline in significant numbers with only a modest decrease in pH," said Mr Maguire.
The Marine Roseobacter clade is responsible for breaking down a sulphur compound called dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) that is produced by photosynthesising plankton. This end product is taken up and used by numerous bacteria as an important source of sulphur. A fraction of DMSP is turned into Dimethylsulfide (DMS) - a naturally occurring gas that influences the Earth's climate. DMS encourages the formation of clouds which reflect solar radiation back into space leading to a cooling of the earth's surface.... "Ocean acidification will not only have large scale consequences for marine ecosystems but also socio-economical consequences due to changes in fish stocks and erosion of coral reefs," he explained. ...
Fri, Mar 26, 2010 from Associated Press: Death of Coral Reefs Could Devastate Nations Coral reefs are dying, and scientists and governments around the world are contemplating what will happen if they disappear altogether. The idea positively scares them.
Coral reefs are part of the foundation of the ocean food chain. Nearly half the fish the world eats make their homes around them. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide -- by some estimates, 1 billion across Asia alone -- depend on them for their food and their livelihoods.
If the reefs vanished, experts say, hunger, poverty and political instability could ensue. ...
Sat, Mar 20, 2010 from Digital Journal: Expert Says Policy Makers Underestimate Climate Change Problems In a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Oceanography, March 2010, Greene, Cornell professor of Earth and Atmospheric Science, has published a paper called "A Very Inconvenient Truth" along with colleagues D. James Baker, professor of the William J. Clinton Foundation and Daniel H. Miller of the Roda Group, Berkeley, California. They conclude that the United Nations Panel on Climate Change of 2007 underestimated the specific dangers that man-made climate change has created. The social problems now and in the future are considerable, according to these scientists.... "Of course, greenhouse gas emissions will not stop tomorrow, so the actual temperature increase will likely be significantly larger, resulting in potentially catastrophic impacts to society unless other steps are taken to reduce the Earth's temperature."
...
Don't worry -- we'll get back to preindustrial levels eventually!
Tue, Mar 9, 2010 from McClatchy, via Miami Herald: Growing low-oxygen zones in oceans worry scientists In some spots off Washington state and Oregon, the almost complete absence of oxygen has left piles of Dungeness crab carcasses littering the ocean floor, killed off 25-year-old sea stars, crippled colonies of sea anemones and produced mats of potentially noxious bacteria that thrive in such conditions.... "The depletion of oxygen levels in all three oceans is striking," said Gregory Johnson, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle.
In some spots, such as off the Southern California coast, oxygen levels have dropped roughly 20 percent over the past 25 years. Elsewhere, scientists say, oxygen levels might have declined by one-third over 50 years."The real surprise is how this has become the new norm," said Jack Barth, an oceanography professor at Oregon State University. "We are seeing it year after year." ...
Mon, Mar 8, 2010 from Otago Daily Times (NZ): Tide of acid-ocean fear rolls over oyster industry The collapse began rather unspectacularly.
In 2005, when most of the millions of Pacific oysters in this tree-lined estuary failed to reproduce, the shellfish growers of Willapa Bay, Washington state largely shrugged it off.
In a region that provides one-sixth of the nation's oysters -- the epicentre of the West Coast's $US111 million ... oyster industry -- everyone knows nature can be fickle.
But then the failure was repeated in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
It spread to an Oregon hatchery that supplies baby oysters to shellfish nurseries from Puget Sound to Los Angeles.
Eighty percent of that hatchery's oyster larvae died, too.
Now, as the US oyster industry heads into the fifth summer of its most unnerving crisis in decades, scientists are pondering a disturbing theory.
They suspect water that rises from deep in the Pacific Ocean -- icy seawater that surges into Willapa Bay and is pumped into seaside hatcheries -- may be corrosive enough to kill baby oysters.
If true, that could mean shifts in ocean chemistry associated with carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuels may be impairing sea life faster and more dramatically than expected. ...
Thu, Feb 25, 2010 from Oceanography: A Very Inconvenient Truth (PDF) Once atmospheric temperature reaches
equilibrium at a certain peak-overall GHG concentration, it will not drop
markedly for the next thousand years
even as GHG concentrations decline.
This irreversibility comes about because
the atmosphere's loss of heat to the ocean
is even more gradual than its loss of CO2. The thermal inertia of the ocean, which
is delaying the rate of climate warming today, will delay the rate of climate
cooling in the future. A crucial point for
policymakers and the public to recognize
is that the global GHG stabilization level
reached during the twenty-first century
will have climatic consequences for the
remainder of the millennium. ...
I think that means we still have a decade or two to party!
Tue, Feb 16, 2010 from Yale 360: An Ominous Warning on the Effects of Ocean Acidification But when the scientists examined the sediment that had formed 55 million years ago, the color changed in a geological blink of an eye.
"In the middle of this white sediment, there's this big plug of red clay," says Andy Ridgwell, an earth scientist at the University of Bristol.
In other words, the vast clouds of shelled creatures in the deep oceans had virtually disappeared. Many scientists now agree that this change was caused by a drastic drop of the ocean's pH level. The seawater became so corrosive that it ate away at the shells, along with other species with calcium carbonate in their bodies. It took hundreds of thousands of years for the oceans to recover from this crisis, and for the sea floor to turn from red back to white.... Indeed, its speed and strength -- Ridgwell estimate that current ocean acidification is taking place at ten times the rate that preceded the mass extinction 55 million years ago -- may spell doom for many marine species, particularly ones that live in the deep ocean.
"This is an almost unprecedented geological event," says Ridgwell.
...
Only ten times as fast as before there was even an economy? We can do better!
Mon, Feb 15, 2010 from Telegraph.co.uk: Pollution creating acid oceans Researchers from the University of Bristol looked at how levels of acid in the ocean have changed over history.
They found that as ocean acidification accelerated it caused mass extinctions at the bottom of the food chain that could threaten whole ecosystems in the future. The rapid acidification today is being caused by the massive amount of carbon dioxide being pumped out by cars and factories every year, which is absorbed by the water. Since the industrial revolution acidity in the seas have increased by 30 per cent.... Dr Ridgwell said acidification is actually occurring much faster today than in the examples they looked at from the past therefore "exceeding the rate plankton can adapt" and theatening the basis of much of marine life. This would mean fish and other creatures further up the food chain that human beings eat may be affected as soon as the end of this century. ...
Plankton? We don't need plankton! We just need fish.
Thu, Feb 4, 2010 from PhysOrg.com: Oceans reveal further impacts of climate change, says UAB expert "The oceans are a sink for the carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere," says McClintock, who has spent more than two decades researching the marine species off the coast of Antarctica. Carbon dioxide is absorbed by oceans, and through a chemical process hydrogen ions are released to make seawater more acidic.
"Existing data points to consistently increasing oceanic acidity, and that is a direct result of increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere; it is incontrovertible," McClintock says. "The ramifications for many of the organisms that call the water home are profound."... "In addition, the increased acidity of the seawater itself can literally begin to eat away at the outer surfaces of shells of existing clams, snails and other calcified organisms, which could cause species to die outright or become vulnerable to new predators."
One study McClintock recently conducted with a team of UAB researchers revealed that the shells of post-mortem Antarctic marine invertebrates evidenced erosion and significant loss of mass within only five weeks under simulated acidic conditions.
McClintock says acidification also could exert a toll on the world's fisheries, including mollusks and crustaceans. He adds that the potential loss of such marine populations could greatly alter the oceans' long-standing food chains and produce negative ripple effects on human industries or food supplies over time. ...
It may be scientifically incontrovertible -- if you believe in "science."
Thu, Jan 21, 2010 from Seattle Times: Pacific's rising acid levels threatening marine life The most extensive survey of pH levels in the Pacific Ocean confirms what spot measurements have suggested: From Hawaii to Alaska, the upper reaches of the sea are becoming more acidic in concert with rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
"If you see these changes across an entire ocean basin, you can be assured it's happening on a global scale in other ocean basins around the world," said Robert Byrne, a marine chemist at the University of South Florida and lead author of an upcoming paper in Geophysical Research Letters.
Ocean acidification is a threat to shelled creatures and other marine life, and is a leading suspect in the ongoing crash of Pacific oyster populations in Washington.... As expected, the researchers found acidification was strongest in the top layer of water, closest to the atmosphere. Normal seawater is slightly alkaline, with a pH value of about 8. Over the past 15 years, average pH levels in the top 300 feet of the ocean dropped 0.026 pH units. That sounds tiny, but is equivalent to a 6 percent jump in acidity, Byrne said. ...
Mon, Jan 18, 2010 from Climate Dynamics, via EPOCA: Reversible and irreversible impacts of greenhouse gas emissions in multi-century projections with the NCAR global coupled carbon cycle-climate model The reversibility and irreversibility of impacts is quantified by comparing anthropogenically-forced regional changes with internal, unforced climate variability. We show that the influence of historical emissions and of non-CO2 agents is largely reversible on the regional scale. Forced changes in surface temperature and precipitation become smaller than internal variability for most land and ocean grid cells in the absence of future carbon emissions. In contrast, continued carbon emissions over the 21st century cause irreversible climate change on centennial to millennial timescales in most regions and impacts related to ocean acidification and sea level rise continue to aggravate for centuries even if emissions are stopped in year 2100. Undersaturation of the Arctic surface ocean with respect to aragonite, a mineral form of calcium carbonate secreted by marine organisms, is imminent and remains widespread. The volume of supersaturated water providing habitat to calcifying organisms is reduced from preindustrial 40 to 25 percent in 2100 and to 10 percent in 2300 for the high emission case. We conclude that emission trading schemes, related to the Kyoto Process, should not permit trading between emissions of relatively short-lived agents and CO2 given the irreversible impacts of anthropogenic carbon emissions. ...
Those scientists and their imaginary futures. I'm going back to playing "Halo 3."
Sun, Jan 10, 2010 from New York Times: Water Conservation Could Limit Suburban Lawns ...The all-American suburban lawn, the backdrop for everything from the illustrations in old Dick & Jane readers to House Beautiful, long ago began to fade in the drought-prone suburbs around San Francisco Bay.
But now a 2006 state law, designed to conserve water by altering landscaping practices, is taking effect, and the changes that began three decades ago are likely to accelerate. One proposal being considered in Menlo Park could restrict lawns on new or reconfigured landscapes to no more than 500 square feet per dwelling unit or to no more than 25 percent of the landscaped area, whichever is larger. ...
Sun, Jan 10, 2010 from National Oceanography Centre, Southampton via ScienceDaily: Echinoderms Contribute to Global Carbon Sink; Impact of Marine Creatures Underestimated The impact on levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere by the decaying remains of a group of marine creatures that includes starfish and sea urchin has been significantly underestimated. "Climate models must take this carbon sink into account," says Mario Lebrato, lead author of the study.... Calcifying organisms incorporate carbon directly from the seawater into their skeletons in the form of inorganic minerals such as calcium carbonate. This means that their bodies contain a substantial amount of inorganic carbon. When they die and sink, some of the inorganic carbon is remineralised, and much of it becomes buried in sediments, where it remains locked up indefinitely.... There is a worry that ocean acidification due to increased carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels could reduce the amount of calcium carbonate incorporated into the skeletons of echinoderms and other calcifying organisms. ...
In other words, these carbon sinks... may be sunk!
Fri, Dec 18, 2009 from Associated Press: Acid oceans, the 'evil twin' of climate change, overlooked in climate talks Far from Copenhagen's turbulent climate talks, the sea lions, harbor seals and sea otters reposing along the shoreline and kelp forests of this protected marine area stand to gain from any global deal to cut greenhouse gases.
These foragers of the sanctuary's frigid waters, flipping in and out of sight of California's coastal kayakers, may not seem like obvious beneficiaries of a climate treaty crafted in the Danish capital. But reducing carbon emissions worldwide also would help mend a lesser-known environmental problem: ocean acidification.... Another way to think of ocean acidification is as osteoporosis of the seas... ...
Wed, Dec 16, 2009 from COP15: New study: Substantial irreversible damage to ocean ecosystems According to the study, seas and oceans absorb approximately one quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other human activities. As more and more carbon dioxide has been emitted into the atmosphere, the oceans have absorbed greater amounts at increasingly rapid rates.
Without this level of absorption by the oceans, atmospheric CO2 levels would be significantly higher than at present and the effects of global climate change would be more marked.
However, the absorption of atmospheric CO2 has resulted in changes to the chemical balance of the oceans, causing them to become more acidic.... This dramatic increase is 100 times faster than any change in acidity experienced in the marine environment over the last 20 million years, giving little time for evolutionary adaptation within biological systems. ...
Fri, Dec 11, 2009 from Bloomberg News: Fishermen Say Carbon Dioxide Having 'Really Scary' Ocean Effect Jeremy Brown, a fisherman from the Pacific Northwest, is pulling things from the ocean he says are so disturbing that he came to Washington to warn U.S. lawmakers about it.... the ocean is becoming more acidic because of carbon-dioxide emissions that are damaging coral reefs, decimating populations of tiny animals at the base of the food chain and eating away at the shells of clams, mussels and oysters.
"Every so often we snag a piece of coral on the gear," Brown, of Bellingham, Washington, said in an interview. "It doesn't look healthy, the color has gone out of it. The evidence is that we have instabilities in the system, and this last year was really scary."...Small snails and other tiny animals at the base of the food chain are disappearing at alarming rates, jeopardizing the health of pink salmon and other fish that feed on them... ...
Wed, Dec 2, 2009 from SolveClimate: Increasing Ocean Acidification Is Tipping Fragile Balances within Marine Ecosystems Falling pH levels are particularly harmful for calcifying organisms such as coral and shellfish, which have a harder time building and maintaining their calcium-based exteriors as the ocean grows more acidic.... In fact, some ocean researchers fear that acidification will obliterate Earth's coral reefs in as few as 50 years. That's why they have begun to design cryogenically cooled coral preservation "arks" where polyps can be stored to stave off total extinction.... Corals aren't the only species likely to be affected by the ongoing acidification of the world's oceans. According to marine ecologist Joanie Kleypas, ocean acidification could affect ocean life forms ranging from tiny algae to giant whales in unpredictable ways.... Damage to populations of the tiniest plants and creatures, whether through rising water temperature, greater acidity or loss of habitat, can spread through an entire food chain, throwing it out of balance.
Consider, for example, the tiny pterapod, a marine snail whose shell is affected by changing pH. The pterapod is an important food source for young salmon, mackerel, herring and cod, which are important food sources for larger animals and economic sources for humans. ...
Sun, Nov 29, 2009 from Environmental Research Web: Arctic Ocean undersaturated for calcium carbonate Shelled organisms in the Canada Basin region of the Arctic Ocean could be about to experience a double whammy. Not only did increased ice melt lead to the area's surface waters becoming undersaturated in 2008 for aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate vital for shell-building, but the retreat of sea ice away from the coast means that undersaturated waters from the depths can now upwell and affect organisms living on the sea floor of the Arctic continental shelf.... "This is the first evidence of omega aragonite undersaturation in deep basin surface waters," Fiona McLaughlin of the Institute of Ocean Sciences, Canada, told environmentalresearchweb. "In a 2009 publication models predicted that the surface waters might be undersaturated in the Arctic within a decade. We're making those observations now, because the ice has melted so fast. Essentially the papers are almost being written at the same time."... Because the Arctic food web is quite simple and short, it could be extremely vulnerable to such changes. But McLaughlin says that it takes time to see how populations are decreasing. "I think this has identified that we need to go out and make counts and do a time series so that we can see whether there are effects and what these organisms' tolerance is," she explained. ...
Mon, Nov 23, 2009 from AP, via Raw Story: Oceans rising faster than expected as climate change exceeds grimmest models Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated -- beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.
As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.... "The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought," Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.... "The message on the science is that we know a lot more than we did in 1997 and it's all negative," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Things are much worse than the models predicted." ...
That's what makes science so exciting: unpredictability!
Sun, Nov 22, 2009 from BBC (UK): Acid oceans leave fish at more risk from predators Ocean acidification could cause fish to become "fatally attracted" to their predators, according to scientists.
A team studying the effects of acidification - caused by dissolved CO2 - on ocean reefs found that it leaves fish unable to "smell danger".
Young clownfish that were reared in the acidified water became attracted to rather than repelled by the chemical signals released by predatory fish.... In the test, the fish reared in normal water avoided the stream of water that their predators had been swimming in. They detected the odour of a predator and swam away from it.
But, Ms Dixson said, fish raised in the more acidic water were strongly attracted to both the predatory and the non-predatory flumes. ...
Thu, Nov 19, 2009 from New York Times: Seas Grow Less Effective at Absorbing Emissions The Earth's oceans, which have absorbed carbon dioxide from fuel emissions since the dawn of the industrial era, have recently grown less efficient at sopping it up, new research suggests.
Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels began soaring in the 1950s, and oceans largely kept up, scientists say. But the growth in the intake rate has slowed since the 1980s, and markedly so since 2000, the authors of a study write in a report in Thursday's issue of Nature.
The research suggests that the seas cannot indefinitely be considered a reliable "carbon sink" as humans generate heat-trapping gases linked to global warming.
The slowdown in the rise of the absorption rate resulted from a gradual change in the oceans' chemistry, the study found. "The more carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs, the more acidic it becomes and the less carbon dioxide it can absorb," said the study's lead author, Samar Khatiwala... ...
Mon, Oct 26, 2009 from BBC: 'Freezer plan' bid to save coral A meeting in Denmark took evidence from researchers that most coral reefs will not survive even if tough regulations on greenhouse gases are put in place.
Scientists proposed storing samples of coral species in liquid nitrogen.
That will allow them to be reintroduced to the seas in the future if global temperatures can be stabilised.... At this meeting, politicians and scientists acknowledged that global emissions of carbon dioxide are rising so fast that we are losing the fight to save coral and the world must develop an alternative plan. ...
Fri, Oct 9, 2009 from New York Times: Report on Future Fish Catches: everything will be okay, just different Global warming will not necessarily change the amount of fish caught half a century from now, but it will shift catches away from the tropics toward the poles, researchers reported. The researchers, from the University of British Columbia and elsewhere, used a computer model including environmental factors and data on 1,066 fish species ranging from sharks to shrimplike creatures at the bottom of the food chain. Together those species accounted for most of the world's catch from 2000 to 2004. The findings were reported in the journal Global Change Biology. By 2055, the scientists predicted, countries like China, Chile, Indonesia and the United States (excepting Alaska and Hawaii) will see catches decline, while catches off Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Russia will rise. ...
Sun, Oct 4, 2009 from London Guardian: Arctic seas turn to acid, putting vital food chain at risk Carbon-dioxide emissions are turning the waters of the Arctic Ocean into acid at an unprecedented rate, scientists have discovered. Research carried out in the archipelago of Svalbard has shown in many regions around the north pole seawater is likely to reach corrosive levels within 10 years. The water will then start to dissolve the shells of mussels and other shellfish and cause major disruption to the food chain. By the end of the century, the entire Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic....About a quarter of the carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by factories, power stations and cars now ends up being absorbed by the oceans. That represents more than six million tonnes of carbon a day.
This carbon dioxide dissolves and is turned into carbonic acid, causing the oceans to become more acidic. "We knew the Arctic would be particularly badly affected when we started our studies but I did not anticipate the extent of the problem," said Gattuso. ...
Fri, Sep 4, 2009 from Guardian (UK): How global warming sealed the fate of the world's coral reefs If you thought you had heard enough bad news on the environment and that the situation could not get any worse, then steel yourself. Coral reefs are doomed. The situation is virtually hopeless. Forget ice caps and rising sea levels: the tropical coral reef looks like it will enter the history books as the first major ecosystem wiped out by our love of cheap energy.... "The future is horrific," says Charlie Veron, an Australian marine biologist who is widely regarded as the world's foremost expert on coral reefs. "There is no hope of reefs surviving to even mid-century in any form that we now recognise. If, and when, they go, they will take with them about one-third of the world's marine biodiversity. Then there is a domino effect, as reefs fail so will other ecosystems. This is the path of a mass extinction event, when most life, especially tropical marine life, goes extinct." ...
I wish these scientists would speak in less "technical" language. Oh, and more good news, willya?
Mon, Aug 17, 2009 from New Scientist: As Arctic Ocean warms, megatonnes of methane bubble up It's been predicted for years, and now it's happening. Deep in the Arctic Ocean, water warmed by climate change is forcing the release of methane from beneath the sea floor.
Over 250 plumes of gas have been discovered bubbling up from the sea floor to the west of the Svalbard archipelago, which lies north of Norway. The bubbles are mostly methane, which is a greenhouse gas much more powerful than carbon dioxide.... "Hydrates are stable only within a particular range of temperatures," says Minshull. "So if the ocean warms, some of the hydrates will break down and release their methane."... Just because it fails to reach the surface doesn't mean the methane is harmless, though, as some of it gets converted to carbon dioxide. The CO2 then dissolves in seawater and makes the oceans more acidic. ...
The worst-case scenario regarding really rapid greenhouse effects...? We may have to revise it.
Fri, Aug 14, 2009 from National Oceanographic Centre, via EurekAlert: Nitrogen fixation and phytoplankton blooms in the southwest Indian Ocean Nitrogen-fixing bacteria convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen compounds that organisms can then use as food. This process is thought to be important in areas of the ocean where nitrogen-based nutrients are otherwise in short supply, and the researchers confirm that this is indeed the case in the region south of Madagascar.
But there were some surprises. Previously, it has been thought that the large-scale autumn bloom that develops in this region is driven by nitrogen-fixing blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, called Trichodesmium, colonies of which the researchers found to be abundant. However, the 2005 bloom was dominated by a diatom -- a type of phytoplankton -- the cells of which play host to another nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium called Richella intracellularis, with [the blue-green algae] Trichodesmium apparently playing second fiddle.... Diatoms have relatively large cells, and when they die they sink down the water column, carrying with them carbon that is ultimately derived from carbon dioxide drawn from the atmosphere though the process of photosynthesis. ...
Fri, Aug 14, 2009 from University of Alaska Fairbanks via EurekAlert: New findings show increased ocean acidification in Alaska waters The same things that make Alaska's marine waters among the most productive in the world may also make them the most vulnerable to ocean acidification. According to new findings by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist, Alaska's oceans are becoming increasingly acidic, which could damage Alaska's king crab and salmon fisheries.... When he tested the samples' acidity in his lab, the results were higher than expected. They show that ocean acidification is likely more severe and is happening more rapidly in Alaska than in tropical waters. The results also matched his recent findings in the Chukchi and Bering Seas.... Ocean acidification makes it more difficult to build shells, and in some cases the water can become acidic enough to break down existing shells. Mathis' recent research in the Gulf of Alaska uncovered multiple sites where the concentrations of shell-building minerals were so low that shellfish and other organisms in the region would be unable to build strong shells."It seems like everywhere we look in Alaska's coastal oceans, we see signs of increased ocean acidification," said Mathis. ...
pHrankly, I find these pHindings pHenomenally pHrightening.
Tue, Aug 11, 2009 from ARC Center, via ScienceDaily: Humans 'Damaging The Oceans' In Profound Ways Man-made carbon emissions "are affecting marine biological processes from genes to ecosystems over scales from rock pools to ocean basins, impacting ecosystem services and threatening human food security," ... rates of physical change in the oceans are unprecedented in some cases, and change in ocean life is likely to be equally quick.
These include changes in the areas fish and other sea species can inhabit, invasions, extinctions and major shifts in marine ecosystems.... Man-made carbon emissions are now above the 'worst case' scenario envisioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), causing the most rapid global warming seen since the peak of the last Ice Age. At the same time the carbon is acidifying the oceans, with harmful consequences for certain plankton and shellfish. ...
Whoops. Our bad. How do you hit Restart on this game?
Sat, Aug 8, 2009 from University of Hawaii, via ScienceDaily: Researchers Reveal Ocean Acidification At Station ALOHA In Hawaii Since the beginning of the industrial age, CO2-driven acidification of the surface oceans has already caused a 0.1 unit lowering of pH, and models suggest that another 0.3 pH unit drop by the year 2050 is likely. Continued acidification of the sea may have a host of negative impacts on marine biota, and has the potential to alter the rates of ocean biogeochemical processes.
Despite the global environmental importance of ocean acidification, there are few studies of sufficient duration, accuracy and sampling intensity to document the rate of change of ocean pH and shed light on the factors controlling its variability.... [However,] Dore, along with SOEST co-authors Karl, Lukas, Matt Church and Dan Sadler, found that over the two decades of observation, the surface ocean grew more acidic at exactly the rate expected from chemical equilibration with the atmosphere. However, that rate of change varied considerably on seasonal and inter-annual timescales, and even reversed for one period of nearly five years. The year-to-year changes appear to be driven by climate-induced changes in ocean mixing and attendant biological responses to mixing events. ...
In this case, "exactly as expected" may be "worse than we imagined."
Fri, Jul 24, 2009 from VOA News: Report: 85 Percent of World's Oyster Reefs Have Been Lost A recent study by environmental organizations found that nearly 85 percent of the oyster reefs worldwide have been lost. But beyond providing food around the world, oyster reefs play a key role in the oceans....
"The issue is that oysters face a multitude of stresses in coastal environments; from water quality to algae blooms, to high sediment loads and some of the places are too far gone," he said.
Oysters are ecosystem engineers that filter water and remove pollution and excess nutrients that can spark algae blooms. But, Luckenback says, their capacity has a limit and research shows that oysters expose to a variety of toxins have been shown to be more susceptible to diseases and death. ...
Wed, Jul 22, 2009 from SouthCoast Today: NOAA's chief poses 'grand' ocean challenge "In our fisheries, the rich biodiversity of life swimming in and flying above the oceans, and our own well being all depend upon the actions we take this year and this decade," said Lubchenco, a marine ecologist who taught at Oregon State University before President Barack Obama appointed her as head of NOAA. "Too much is at stake to continue on our present path," she said. "Too much is at risk if we ignore either oceans or climate change."... Changes in ocean temperature could cause fish species to migrate northward and could throw current predator-prey relationships out of balance.
Ocean acidification related to the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could make it difficult for scallops, oysters, mussels, clams, lobsters and other shellfish to produce and maintain hard shells or skeletons.
"This is a relatively recently uncovered problem," she said. "And we don't yet know how every single species will respond. But for most species it will be increasingly challenging for them." ...
You're saying "our present path" is unsustainable? Haven't you heard that "the American way of life is non-negotiable"?
Mon, Jul 20, 2009 from YouTube, et al.: 'Doc Michael lets loose the dogs of fear In June of 2009, I gave what I consider my most important speech to date, at the Association of American University Presses' annual meeting. It was the last presentation in the last Plenary session of the meeting, and allowed me to talk about the two issues that matter most to me: saving scholarly publishing, and saving civilization. In 16 minutes.
My friend Paul Murphy, of RAND Publishing, took guerrilla video footage of most of the speech, and then edited my Powerpoint in, bless his heart. It is available below, via YouTube. (Thanks, Paul!)... "But CO2 does something much worse. While we bicker with global-warming deniers, the ocean is getting more acidic. Excess CO2 plus ocean produces carbonic acid. Ocean acidification is a clear and present danger. A slight rise in acidity dramatically affects calcium-carbonate-based lifeforms, like most plankton, shellfish, and coral, the cornerstones of the ocean biosphere.... If, over the next decade, humans continue doing what we have done for the last fifty years, then we will construct our own hell, and our grandchildren will curse our names."
...
Does a speech count as news, even from the heart, if it happens at a conference? Of scholarly publishers?
Tue, Jul 7, 2009 from Reuters: Reefs could perish by end of century, experts warn Increasingly acidic oceans and warming water temperatures due to carbon dioxide emissions could kill off the world's ocean reefs by the end of this century, scientists warned on Monday.
The experts told a meeting in London the predicted pace of emissions means a level of 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere will be reached by 2050, putting corals on a path to extinction in the following decades.... "The kitchen is on fire and it's spreading around the house," Alex Rogers of the Zoological Society of London and the International Program on the State of the Ocean, said in a statement. ...
Maybe... just maybe... the right metaphor will be the turning point.
Mon, Jul 6, 2009 from Guardian (UK): Just add lime (to the sea) -- the latest plan to cut CO2 emissions Putting lime into the oceans could stop or even reverse the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, according to proposals unveiled at a conference on climate change solutions in Manchester today.
According to its advocates, the same technique could help fix one of the most dangerous side effects of man-made CO2 emissions: rising ocean acidity.
The project, known as Cquestrate, is the brainchild of Tim Kruger, a former management consultant. "This is an idea that can not only stop the clock on carbon dioxide, it can turn it back," he said, although he conceded that tipping large quantities of lime into the sea would currently be illegal.... Kruger admits there are challenges to overcome: the world would need to mine and process about 10 cubic kilometres of limestone each year to soak up all the emissions the world produces, and the plan would only make sense if the CO2 resulting from lime production could be captured and buried at source. ...
Management consultants make recommendations, and make up catchy branding. They rarely analyze unintended consequences.
Fri, Jul 3, 2009 from New Scientist: Meadows of the sea in 'shocking' decline Seagrass meadows are disappearing at an accelerating pace, according to a new report, which is the first to look at the problem on a global scale.
Seagrass meadows, along with coral reefs, mangrove forests, and salt-marshes, provide valuable ecosystem services like nutrient cycling. They also protect edible crustaceans, like shrimps and crabs, and juvenile fish such as salmon. In addition, seagrass meadows provide habitats for endangered species like dugongs, manatees, and sea turtles.
While marine ecologists have been measuring localized seagrass loss for decades, they had never before pooled their information to get a global perspective. So a team led by Michelle Waycott of James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, Australia pooled data from 215 regional studies, from 1879 to 2006.
They found that the total area of known seagrass meadow had decreased by 29 per cent over the 127 years. They also found that the rate of loss had accelerated, from less than 1 per cent per year in the 1940s to 7 per cent per year since the 1990s.... Overall, the rate of loss is comparable to that for tropical rainforests and coral reefs. ...
Those meadows are probably having problems because we're not mowing them often enough.
Sat, Jun 27, 2009 from Western Morning News (UK): Marine life 'at risk' from CO2 THE Arctic Ocean could become corrosive to marine life within a matter of decades, according to leading scientists who will be attending a critical meeting in Plymouth next week.
More than 100 marine scientists specialising in ocean acidification will gather at the Plymouth University on Monday to discuss their research into the dramatic effects of excess carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere into the oceans.
Ocean acidification, often referred to as "the other C02 problem", is a relatively recently recognised consequence of C02 emissions and threatens to corrode shell or skeleton-forming marine organisms. The oceans are a natural sink for C02 and, because of their sheer collective size, were once thought too big to be affected by humans.... Dr Carol Turley, senior scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, said: "Ocean acidification is real, it's happening and it's happening now, so it is essential for us to gain as much insight as possible to help us understand and plan for the effects that are inevitable.
"Even small changes are likely to have major impacts on the ocean and its food webs, including the oxygen we breathe and the fish we eat, and that means it will affect all of us." ...
Fri, Jun 26, 2009 from New Scientist: Ozone hole has unforeseen effect on ocean carbon sink The Southern Ocean has lost its appetite for carbon dioxide, and now it appears that the ozone hole could be to blame.
In theory, oceans should absorb more CO2 as levels of the gas in the atmosphere rise. Measurements show that this is happening in most ocean regions, but strangely not in the Southern Ocean, where carbon absorption has flattened off. Climate models fail to reproduce this puzzling pattern.
The Southern Ocean is a major carbon sink, guzzling around 15 per cent of CO2 emissions. However, between 1987 and 2004, carbon uptake in the region was reduced by nearly 2.5 billion tonnes -- equivalent to the amount of carbon that all the world's oceans absorb in one year. ...
Good grief -- this is good for ocean acidification, bad for global warming... or is it the other way around?
Tue, Jun 16, 2009 from Carnegie Institution, via EurekAlert: Global sunscreen won't save corals Emergency plans to counteract global warming by artificially shading the Earth from incoming sunlight might lower the planet's temperature a few degrees, but such "geoengineering" solutions would do little to stop the acidification of the world oceans that threatens coral reefs and other marine life, report the authors of a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters*. The culprit is atmospheric carbon dioxide, which even in a cooler globe will continue to be absorbed by seawater, creating acidic conditions.... Rising levels of carbon dioxide make seawater more acidic, leading to lower mineral saturation. Recent research has indicated that continued carbon dioxide emissions will cause coral reefs to begin dissolving within a few decades, putting the survival of these ecosystems at extreme risk.
Geoengineering's minimal effect on ocean acidification adds another factor to the debate over the advisability of intentionally tampering with the climate system. ...
You mean there's no universal technological fix? But that's unamerican!
Wed, Jun 10, 2009 from McClatchy Newspapers: Scientists: Global warming has already changed oceans In Washington state, oysters in some areas haven't reproduced for four years, and preliminary evidence suggests that the increasing acidity of the ocean could be the cause. In the Gulf of Mexico, falling oxygen levels in the water have forced shrimp to migrate elsewhere.... Federal studies also found acidity levels in the North Pacific and off Alaska are unusually high compared to other ocean regions. The high acidity is already taking a toll of such tiny species as pteropods, which are an important food for salmon and other fish.
As greenhouse gas emissions increase, billions of tons of carbon dioxide from smokestacks and vehicle tailpipes are absorbed by the oceans. The result is carbonic acid, which dilutes the "rich soup" of calcium carbonate in the seawater that many species, especially on the low end of the food chain, thrive in... ...
Mon, Jun 1, 2009 from InterAcademy Panel on International Issues: Ocean acidification must be on the Copenhagen agenda, world's scientists warn Ocean acidification, one of the world's most important climate change challenges, may be left off
the agenda at the United Nations Copenhagen conference, the world's science academies warned
today.... 70 national science academies signed the statement.... "The implications of ocean acidification cannot be overstated. Unless we cut
our global CO2 emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 and thereafter, we could be looking at fundamental
and immutable changes in the makeup of our marine biodiversity. The effects will be seen
worldwide, threatening food security, reducing coastal protection and damaging the local economies
that may be least able to tolerate it."
...
Fundamental and immutable means the ocean as we know it will die. Or, perhaps most frighteningly, "no more Filet o' Fish McSandwiches."
Mon, Jun 1, 2009 from Institute of Physics, via EurekAlert: Anticipating ocean acidification's economic consequences on commercial fisheries Ocean acidification, a direct result of increased CO2 emission, is set to change the Earth's marine ecosystems forever and may have a direct impact on our economy, resulting in substantial revenue declines and job losses.... Ocean acidification and declining carbonate ion concentration in sea water could directly damage corals and mollusks which all depend on sufficient carbonate levels to form shells successfully. Subsequent losses of prey such as plankton and shellfish would also alter food webs and intensify competition among predators for nourishment.... "The worldwide political, ethical, social and economic ramifications of ocean acidification, plus its capacity to switch ecosystems to a different state following relatively small perturbations, make it a policy-relevant "tipping element" of the earth system." ...
"Policy-relevant tipping element"? Is this a bad acid trip?
Fri, May 22, 2009 from Mongabay: 85 percent of oyster reefs gone The first global report on the state of shellfish was released today at the International Marine Conservation Congress in Washington, DC. Painting a dire picture for shellfish worldwide, the report found that 85 percent of oyster reefs have vanished.... "We're seeing an unprecedented and alarming decline in the condition of oyster reefs, a critically important habitat in the world's bays and estuaries," said Mike Beck, senior marine scientist at The Nature Conservancy and lead author of the report. Oyster reefs in North America, Europe, and Australia are particularly hard-hit with many of the reef systems considered functionally extinct. Still the majority of wild oysters come from the east coast of North America, where even these productive reefs are in decline. ...
Sat, May 16, 2009 from Inter Press Service: Deep CO2 Cuts May Be Last Hope for Acid Oceans Ocean acidification offers the clearest evidence of dangers of climate change. And yet the indisputable fact that burning fossil fuels is slowly turning the oceans into an acid bath has been largely ignored by industrialised countries and their climate treaty negotiators, concluded delegates from 76 countries at the World Oceans Conference in Manado, Indonesia.
Oceans and coastal areas must be on the agenda at the crucial climate talks in Copenhagen in December, they wrote in a declaration. "We must come to the rescue of the oceans," declared Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the opening of high-level government talks on Thursday in the northern city of Manado.... Each day, the oceans absorb 30 million tonnes of CO2, gradually and inevitably increasing their acidity. There is no controversy about this basic chemistry. ...
"No controversy"??? Come on, skeptics! Quit yer slackin'!
Fri, May 15, 2009 from Associated Press: Enviros sue EPA over ocean acidification An environmental group is suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, seeking to have Washington coastal waters listed as impaired because carbon dioxide is making the ocean more acidic.
The Center for Biological Diversity said the EPA has failed to consider how ocean acidification is adversely affecting water quality and marine animals.
The complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Seattle alleges the EPA violated the federal Clean Water Act by not listing Washington ocean waters as impaired, even though the group says research shows carbon dioxide in seawater is threatening marine ecosystems. ...
You know you're in trouble when ya gotta sue somebody into doing their job!
Wed, Apr 1, 2009 from Vancouver Sun: Not your ordinary fish story "Fish are essential to human life in all kinds of ways, but we're losing them at such a rate that they'll never recover. I used to go fishing with my dad all the time and sit in a rowboat and catch cutthroat trout, we'd jig for halibut, and we could drop a line anywhere at the mouth of the Fraser and catch sturgeon," he says.... The worst-case scenario approaches science-fiction, he says, because as commercial over-fishing and climate change begin to change ecosystems, the quality of the oceans begins to change as well.
Acidity levels are rising and carbon dioxide levels are at the point of maximum saturation. If we continue on the same track, Suzuki says within 50 years waterfront homes will be as desirable as a yurt on a garbage dump as the water becomes slick, acidic, stinky and laden with jellyfish. ...
Sat, Mar 21, 2009 from Pocono Record: What jellyfish can tell us about climate change Acidic ocean water has already affected sea life, from hearty sea corals to the shells of open ocean snails called pteropods, which swim on the surface. The shells of these snails are made out of calcium carbonate, which is starting to dissolve from the acid.
Hunt and his fellow researchers observed a startling cascade effect, noting that the young red paper lantern jellyfish roost in the shells of these snails. As the snails have started to wilt from acidic oceans, it has left young red paper lantern jellyfish vulnerable.
"If that snail goes, the red lantern goes. If the red lantern goes, maybe the sea spider and shrimp will go. We just don't know," Hunt said. "If we're not careful, we may well hinder some network of species that does impact us." Hunt and his fellow researchers were caught off guard by the speed with which acidic water affected creatures on the ocean surface, which, in turn, rippled thousands of feet below. ...
Wed, Mar 18, 2009 from Gulf Times (Qatar): Warning over ocean acidity The study predicts "dangerous" levels of ocean acidification and severe consequences for organisms called marine calcifiers, which form chalky shells. It says: "We find the future rate of surface ocean acidification and environmental pressure on marine calcifiers very likely unprecedented in the past 65mn years." ... He said: "If we do not cut carbon dioxide emissions deeply, and soon, the consequences of ocean acidification will stand out against the broad reaches of geologic time. Those consequences will remain embedded in the geologic record as testimony from a civilisation that had the wisdom to develop high technology but did not develop the wisdom to use it wisely." ...
Fri, Mar 13, 2009 from Telegraph.co.uk: World's leading scientists in desperate plea to politicians to act on climate change In what was described as a watershed moment, more than 2,500 leading environmental experts agreed a statement that called on governments to act before the planet becomes an unrecognisable -- and, in places, impossible -- place to live.
At an emergency climate summit in Copenhagen, scientists agreed that "worst case" scenarios were already becoming reality and that, unless drastic action was taken soon, "dangerous climate change" was imminent.... In a strongly worded message that, unusually for academics, appealed directly to politicians, they said there was "no excuse for inaction" and that "weak and "ineffective" governments must stand up to big business and "vested interests"....
Steps should be "vigorously and widely implemented", they said, to reduce greenhouse gases. Failure to do so would result in "significant risk" of "irreversible climatic shifts", the statement added...
Prof Kevin Anderson, the research director at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Manchester, said: "Scientists have lost patience with carefully constructed messages being lost in the political noise. We are now prepared to stand up and say enough is enough." ...
Thu, Mar 12, 2009 from New York Times: Rise in Ocean Acidity May Lead to Thinner Plankton Shells There's now a good piece of direct evidence that the increasing acidification of the oceans, brought on by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, is affecting the ability of small marine organisms to create shells.... Andrew D. Moy and William R. Howard of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Center in Hobart, Tasmania, and colleagues found that the shells of one modern species in the Southern Ocean were lighter than shells of the same species in core samples from the ocean floor. Those core shells predate the industrial age, when CO2 levels started rising and the acidity of the ocean, caused by the absorption of the gas, began to increase. The researchers, who reported on their work in Nature Geoscience, found that the modern shells were 30 to 35 percent lighter than older shells of the same size range. "We actually think the shells are thinner," Dr. Howard said. ...
As if I care about plankton. What have they ever done for me?
Tue, Mar 10, 2009 from London Guardian: Carbon emissions creating acidic oceans not seen since dinosaurs Human pollution is turning the seas into acid so quickly that the coming decades will recreate conditions not seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, scientists will warn today.
The rapid acidification is caused by the massive amounts of carbon dioxide belched from chimneys and exhausts that dissolve in the ocean. The chemical change is placing "unprecedented" pressure on marine life such as shellfish and lobsters and could cause widespread extinctions, the experts say.
The study, by scientists at Bristol University, will be presented at a special three-day summit of climate scientists in Copenhagen, which opens today. The conference is intended to update the science of global warming and to shock politicians into taking action on carbon emissions.
The Bristol scientists cannot talk about their unpublished results until they are announced later today. But a summary of the findings seen by the Guardian predicts "dangerous" levels of ocean acidification and severe consequences for organisms called marine calcifiers, which form chalky shells. ...
And in those days, cavemen had no means of recording this phenomenon.
Mon, Mar 9, 2009 from Mongabay: Seven new species of deep sea coral discovered In the depths of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which surrounds ten Hawaiian islands, scientists discovered seven new species of bamboo coral. Supported by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the discoveries are even more surprising in that six of the seven species may represent entirely new genus of coral.
"These discoveries are important, because deep-sea corals support diverse seafloor ecosystems and also because these corals may be among the first marine organisms to be affected by ocean acidification," said Richard Spinrad, NOAA's assistant administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. ...
Mon, Mar 9, 2009 from Carnegie Institution, via EurekAlert: Coral reefs may start dissolving Stanford, CA— Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the resulting effects on ocean water are making it increasingly difficult for coral reefs to grow, say scientists. A study to be published online March 13, 2009 in Geophysical Research Letters by researchers at the Carnegie Institution and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem warns that if carbon dioxide reaches double pre-industrial levels, coral reefs can be expected to not just stop growing, but also to begin dissolving all over the world. ... Prospects for reefs are even gloomier when the effects of coral bleaching are included in the model. Coral bleaching refers to the loss of symbiotic algae that are essential for healthy growth of coral colonies. Bleaching is already a widespread problem, and high temperatures are among the factors known to promote bleaching. According to their model the researchers calculated that under present conditions 30 percent of reefs have already undergone bleaching and that at CO2 levels of 560 ppm (twice pre-industrial levels) the combined effects of acidification and bleaching will reduce the calcification rates of all the world's reefs by 80 percent or more.... "If we don't change our ways soon, in the next few decades we will destroy what took millions of years to create." ...
Unfortunately, that's what we do every day when we drive in to work.
Mon, Mar 9, 2009 from Reuters: Rising ocean acidity cutting shell weights - study Acidifying oceans caused by rising carbon dioxide levels are cutting the shell weights of tiny marine animals in a process that could accelerate global warming, a scientist said on Monday.
William Howard of the University of Tasmania in Australia described the findings as an early-warning signal, adding the research was the first direct field evidence of marine life being affected by rising acidity of the oceans.
Oceans absorb large amounts of CO2 emitted by mankind through the burning of fossil fuels. The Southern Ocean between Australia and Antarctica is the largest of the ocean carbon sinks.
But scientists say the world's oceans are becoming more acidic as they absorb more planet-warming CO2, disrupting the process of calcification used by sea creatures to build shells as well as coral reefs. ...
Maybe they can just buy their shells at Shells "R" Us!
Sun, Mar 8, 2009 from Cape Cod Times: Man-made chemicals tied to sick lobsters In research conducted this summer, Hans Laufer found that common man-made chemicals used in plastics, detergents and cosmetics had infiltrated the blood and tissue of lobsters, making them more vulnerable to a particularly virulent strain of shell disease... "It looks like the shell has been eroded away by acid," said Robert Glenn, a state Division of Marine Fisheries senior biologist and director of the state's lobster program. Glenn said more research needs to be done to pinpoint the cause of the problem. "We don't have enough of a handle on the mechanism causing the disease," he said.
First seen in Long Island Sound in the mid-1990s, the shell disease quickly spread up the coast into Southern New England and corresponded with a steep drop-off in the lobster harvest. ...
Looks like acid erosion, quacks like acid erosion... I think it's a duck.
Sun, Mar 8, 2009 from Telegraph.co.uk: The toxic sea: the other CO2 problem They are calling it "the other CO2 problem". Its victim is not the polar bear spectacularly marooned on a melting ice floe, or an eagle driven out of its range, nor even a French pensioner dying of heatstroke. What we have to mourn are tiny marine organisms dissolving in acidified water.
In fact we need to do rather more than just mourn them. We need to dive in and save them. Suffering plankton may not have quite the same cachet as a 700-kilo seal-eating mammal, but their message is no less apocalyptic. What they tell us is that the chemistry of the oceans is changing, and that, unless we act decisively, the limitless abundance of the sea within a very few decades will degrade into a useless tidal desert. ... On average, each person on Earth contributes a tonne of carbon to the oceans every year. The result is a rapid rise in acidity -- or a reduction in pH, as the scientists prefer to express it -- which, as it intensifies, will mean that marine animals will be unable to grow shells, and that many sea plants will not survive. With these crucial links removed, and the ecological balance fatally disrupted, death could flow all the way up the food chain, through tuna and cod to marine mammals and Homo sapiens. As more than half the world's population depends on food from the sea for its survival, this is no exaggeration. ...
It's just a little evolutionary pressure. Come on, species, get with it!
Thu, Feb 26, 2009 from The Daily Climate: Saving the oceans: 'Mission Possible' ...[oceanographer and coral reef geologist Jeonie] Kleypas is one of the world's experts on the effects of climate change on the world's coral reefs, testifying to Congress and presenting papers around the world. She believes that societies must immediately and drastically reduce worldwide carbon emissions, but is also training her research to see if there are ways "to bolster coral reef health so they can weather the climate crisis."....Like many scientists, she struggles to find ways to impart the importance of biodiversity to humans in ways both poetic and prosaic. Losing a third of the coral species on a reef, she says, "is like losing a third of the colors from a Van Gogh painting." Reaching for a different demographic, she adds, "The loss of biodiversity is like having a football team with only tight ends."
...
Or maybe it's like losing all the vowels from the word " p c l ps ."
Wed, Feb 25, 2009 from Courier-Mail (Australia): Human activity seen as a threat to marine echinoderms CREATURES are falling victim to human activities, and scientists say it could interfere with the evolutionary process and lead to extinctions.
Known as echinoderms, the species are essential for keeping ecosystems healthy and if their populations either crash or multiply, degraded seascapes may result.... "Each of these 28 cases was experiencing difficulties because of human activity, including over-fishing, nutrient run-off from the land, species introductions and climate change," Dr Uthicke said.
"We suggest that human-induced disturbance, through its influence on changes to echinoderm population densities, may go beyond present ecosystems impacts and alter future evolutionary trends."
In the Caribbean, sea urchins have died off and on the Great Barrier Reef an over-fished sea cucumber area closed six years ago has not recovered.
...
Starfish, sea urchins, sand dollars, even sea cucumbers -- all the cute sea critters. Time for a save-the-echinoderms campaign?
Tue, Feb 24, 2009 from AAAS: Dwindling Resources of Soil, Water and Air Require 'CDC for Planet Earth' In her plenary address to the 2009 AAAS Annual Meeting, Kieffer called for the creation of a "CDC for Planet Earth"--an organization that could respond to planetary threats such climate change with the same kind of coordination the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed during the SARS and bird flu outbreaks of the late 1990s.... Ocean acidification, spreading deserts, dry aquifers and degraded soils are stealth disasters, altering the planet in ways that "will undermine our survival and evolution into the civilized global society that we might become," warned Kieffer.... And for the first time in history, "societies of the whole planet are so interconnected that Planet Earth is essentially one island," where the stealth disasters of one region can become a crisis for the whole globe, she suggested. ...
It doesn't take a genius to figure this stuff out -- heck, we did!
Tue, Feb 24, 2009 from Science Alert (Australia): Warm oceans slow coral growth It's official: the biggest and most robust corals on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have slowed their growth by more than 14 per cent since the "tipping point" year of 1990. Evidence is strong that the decline has been caused by a synergistic combination of rising sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification.... "It is cause for extreme concern that such changes are already evident, with the relatively modest climate changes observed to date, in the world's best protected and managed coral reef ecosystem," according to AIMS scientist and co-author Dr Janice Lough.... "The data suggest that this severe and sudden decline in calcification is unprecedented in at least 400 years," said AIMS scientist and principal author Dr Glenn De'ath. ...
I don't wanna hear no scientists saying "severe and sudden" or "extreme concern" about anything.
Mon, Feb 23, 2009 from American Chemical Society: Off-Balance Ocean Marine scientists who have measured the pH of the ocean's surface waters for decades see that it has been dropping. They say that the pH is currently about 8.1, down from about 8.2 in the 18th century. If CO2 emissions continue at current rates, they expect the pH to fall by approximately 0.3 more units in the next 50-100 years. And as the ocean becomes more acidic, scientists anticipate myriad changes to the ocean's chemistry.... For example, almost all reaction rates are pH dependent, so acidification may change processes in the ocean ranging from enzyme activity to the adsorption of metals onto particle surfaces in seawater... Many sea organisms without shells, such as anemones and jellyfish, may be especially susceptible to even the smallest changes in ocean pH because their internal pH tends to vary with that of the surrounding seawater. These organisms cannot actively regulate their internal pH as mammals do. ...
ApocHaiku: we apologize that our carbon bootprint now tramples the ocean
Fri, Feb 20, 2009 from SciDev.net: World's fisheries face climate change threat Researchers examined the fisheries of 132 nations to determine which were the most vulnerable, based on the potential environmental impact of climate change, how dependent their economy and diet were on fisheries, and the capacity of the country to adapt.
Climate change can affect the temperature of inland lakes, the health of reefs and how nutrients circulate in the oceans, the researchers say.
They identified 33 countries as "highly vulnerable" to the effects of global warming on fisheries.
These countries produce 20 per cent of the world's fish exports and 22 are already classified by the UN as "least developed". Inhabitants of vulnerable countries are also more dependent on fish for protein -- 27 per cent of dietary protein is gained from fish, compared with 13 per cent in other countries. Two-thirds of the most vulnerable nations identified are in tropical Africa.
...
Surely Nature operates on the same supply/demand laws that the economy does: it'll just produce more fisheries. Because poor people demand it.
Wed, Feb 18, 2009 from NOAA, via Mongabay: CO2 levels rise to a new record Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations climbed 2.28 parts-per-million (ppm) in 2008 to the highest level in at least 650,000 years -- and possibly 20 million years -- reports NOAA.
The average annual growth rate of CO2 concentrations this decade is now 2.1 ppm a year or 40 percent higher than that of the 1990s. CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are increasing at four times the rate of the previous decade.... Some scientists, including James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warn that CO2 levels must be kept below 350 ppm to avoid serious impacts from climate change. CO2 concentrations are presently around 386 ppm.
...
Mon, Feb 2, 2009 from New York Times (US): Rising Acidity Is Threatening Food Web of Oceans, Science Panel Says [As CO2] dissolves, it makes seawater more acidic. Now an international panel of marine scientists says this acidity is accelerating so fast it threatens the survival of coral reefs, shellfish and the marine food web generally.... "Severe damages are imminent," the group said Friday in a statement summing up its deliberations at a symposium in Monaco last October. The statement, called the Monaco Declaration, said increasing acidity was interfering with the growth and health of shellfish and eating away at coral reefs, processes that would eventually affect marine food webs generally.
Already, the group said, there have been detectable decreases in shellfish and shell weights, and interference with the growth of coral skeletons. ...
Fri, Jan 30, 2009 from BBC: Acid oceans 'need urgent action' The world's marine ecosystems risk being severely damaged by ocean acidification unless there are dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions, warn scientists.
More than 150 top marine researchers have voiced their concerns through the "Monaco Declaration", which warns that changes in acidity are accelerating.... It says pH levels are changing 100 times faster than natural variability. ... The researchers warn that ocean acidification, which they refer to as "the other CO2 problem", could make most regions of the ocean inhospitable to coral reefs by 2050, if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to increase.
They also say that it could lead to substantial changes in commercial fish stocks, threatening food security for millions of people.
"The chemistry is so fundamental and changes so rapid and severe that impacts on organisms appear unavoidable," said Dr James Orr, chairman of the symposium.
"The questions are now how bad will it be and how soon will it happen." ...
Tue, Jan 27, 2009 from NPR: Global Warming Is Irreversible, Study Says "People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years," Solomon says.
This is because the oceans are currently soaking up a lot of the planet's excess heat -- and a lot of the carbon dioxide put into the air. The carbon dioxide and heat will eventually start coming out of the ocean. And that will take place for many hundreds of years.... The answer, he says, is sooner rather than later. Scientists have been trying to advise politicians about finding an acceptable level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The new study suggests that it's even more important to aim low. If we overshoot, the damage can't be easily undone. Oppenheimer feels more urgency than ever to deal with climate change, but he says that in the end, setting acceptable limits for carbon dioxide is a judgment call. ...
Mon, Jan 12, 2009 from Telegraph.co.uk: Climate change fears spiral as warmer seas 'absorbing less carbon dioxide' Warmer waters -- themselves said to be the result of the changing climate -- are believed to have caused the decline.
Samples taken from the Sea of Japan last year were compared with analysis of water collected in the past.
The findings suggest that it is absorbing only half as much carbon dioxide as during the 1990s.
It could mean that governments would have to increase targets for cutting carbon emissions more sharply than previously thought.
Scientists believe that a slight change in the temperature of the water appears to have reduced a process known as "ventilation" which helps reabsorb about a quarter of the carbon dioxide produced around the world. ...
The good news: less ocean acidification. The bad news: more global warming.
Sat, Jan 3, 2009 from Science Daily (US): Hot Southern Summer Threatens Coral With Massive Bleaching Event A widespread and severe coral bleaching episode is predicted to cause immense damage to some of the world's most important marine environments over the next few months. A report from the US Government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts severe bleaching for parts of the Coral Sea, which lies adjacent to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, and the Coral Triangle, a 5.4 million square kilometre expanse of ocean in the Indo-Pacific which is considered the centre of the world's marine life.
"This forecast bleaching episode will be caused by increased water temperatures and is the kind of event we can expect on a regular basis if average global temperatures rise above 2 degrees," said Richard Leck, Climate Change Strategy Leader for WWF's Coral Triangle Program.... The bleaching, predicted to occur between now and February, could have a devastating impact on coral reef ecosystems, killing coral and destroying food chains. There would be severe impacts for communities in Australia and the region, who depend on the oceans for their livelihoods. ...
Fri, Jan 2, 2009 from New York Times: Signs of Another California Drought Year SAN FRANCISCO-- California, just finished with its second consecutive year of drought, might well be facing a third. If so, state authorities may be forced to impose water rationing on farmers, homes and businesses.
With the rainy season well under way, early partial measurements indicate that the amount of water stored in the Sierra snowpack, the state's natural reservoir, is higher than the amount at this time last year but well below average, said the state's meteorologist, Elissa Lynn.
The deficit can be made up if January, February and March are full of big Pacific storms. But this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the weather phenomenon known as La Nina, which is characterized by cooler waters in the western Pacific Ocean and drier conditions, had returned for the second consecutive year. ...
Fri, Jan 2, 2009 from The Economist: Troubled waters -- the ocean collapse The evidence abounds. The fish that once seemed an inexhaustible source of food are now almost everywhere in decline: 90 percent of large predatory fish (the big ones such as tuna, swordfish and sharks) have gone, according to some scientists. In estuaries and coastal waters, 85 percent of the large whales have disappeared, and nearly 60 percent of the small ones. Many of the smaller fish are also in decline. Indeed, most familiar sea creatures, from albatrosses to walruses, from seals to oysters, have suffered huge losses.
All this has happened fairly recently. Cod have been caught off Nova Scotia for centuries, but their systematic slaughter began only after 1852; in terms of their biomass (the aggregate mass of the species), they are now 96 percent depleted. The killing of turtles in the Caribbean (99 percent down) started in the 1700s. The hunting of sharks in the Gulf of Mexico (45-99 percent, depending on the variety) got going only in the 1950s. ...
You mean the ocean is a finite resource? Why didn't anyone tell me?
Thu, Jan 1, 2009 from Guardian (UK): Slowdown of coral growth extremely worrying, say scientists Coral growth across the Great Barrier Reef has suffered a "severe and sudden" slowdown since 1990 that is unprecedented in the last four centuries, according to scientists.
The researchers analysed the growth rates of 328 coral colonies on 69 individual reefs that make up the 1,250 mile-long Great Barrier Reef, off north-east Australia. They found that the rate at which the corals were laying down calcium in their skeletons dropped by 14.2 percent between 1990 and 2005.... the most probable explanation for the drop in the growth rate of the corals' calcium carbonate skeletons is acidification of the water due to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. More acid water makes it more difficult for the coral polyps to grab the minerals they need to build their skeletons from the sea water. ...
Wed, Dec 31, 2008 from The Economist: A sea of troubles -- an ocean wrapup The worries begin at the surface, where an atmosphere newly laden with man-made carbon dioxide interacts with the briny. The sea has thus become more acidic, making life difficult, if not impossible, for marine organisms with calcium-carbonate shells or skeletons. These are not all as familiar as shrimps and lobsters, yet species like krill, tiny shrimp-like creatures, play a crucial part in the food chain: kill them off, and you may kill off their predators, whose predators may be the ones you enjoy served fried, grilled or with sauce tartare. Worse, you may destabilise an entire ecosystem.... And then there are the red tides of algal blooms, the plagues of jellyfish and the dead zones where only simple organisms thrive. All of these are increasing in intensity, frequency and extent. All of these, too, seem to be associated with various stresses man inflicts on marine ecosystems: overfishing, global warming, fertilisers running from land into rivers and estuaries, often the whole lot in concatenation. ...
Concatenation, concentration, feedback loops, the underwater stripmining of biomass.... Lucky we can't see it, or we'd be adding our tears to the salt in the sea!
Fri, Dec 19, 2008 from Christian Science Monitor: World's oceans turning acidic faster than expected Parts of the world's oceans appear to be acidifying far faster than scientists have expected.
The culprit: rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere pumped into the air from cars, power plants, and industries.
The Southern Ocean represents one of the most high-profile examples. There, scientists estimate that the ocean could reach a biologically important tipping point in wintertime by 2030, at least 20 years earlier than scientists projected only three years ago. Among the vulnerable: a tiny form of sea snail that serves as food for a wide range of fish.
Similar trends are appearing in more temperate waters, say researchers.
The studies suggest the CO2-emission targets being considered for a new global warming treaty are likely to be inadequate to prevent significant, long-lasting changes in some ocean basins. ...
The only thing going slower than expected is us, doing something about it!
Tue, Dec 16, 2008 from New Scientist: Jumbo squids in acid: What future oceans hold in store Swimming through warmer, more acidic oceans will feel like swimming through molasses for jumbo squid.... Jumbo squid blood carries very little oxygen -- with each cycle through its body, the oxygen can be used up entirely. This means they must "recharge" constantly, and makes the animals very dependent on what oxygen is available in the water around them. Yet, the warmer water is, the smaller the amount of oxygen it can hold.... To make matters worse, the squid's blood cells are able to carry even less oxygen in acidic water.... Last year, the first study to simultaneously track a predator and its prey suggested that sperm whales may take advantage of moments when jumbo squid slow down to catch them. ...
It's like a bad dream -- the predator is gaining on you, and you seem to be running in slo-mo...
Thu, Dec 11, 2008 from Mongabay: Climate change will transform the chemical makeup of the ocean "The ocean's calcium cycle is closely linked to atmospheric carbon dioxide and the processes that control seawater's acidity," co-author of the paper, Ken Caldeira, adds. Already, increasing acidification of the ocean is decimating certain populations of coral. In past research Caldeira has pointed out that an increasingly acidic ocean will doom the world's fishing industry and degrade 98 percent of the world's coral reefs in less than fifty years.... "as CO2 increases and weather patterns shift, the chemical composition of our rivers will change, and this will affect the oceans. This will change the amount of calcium and other elements in ocean salts." "What we learned from this work is that the ocean system is much more sensitive to climate change than we have previously appreciated," Griffith adds. ...
At least nothing in the ocean depends on calcium! Whew!
Wed, Dec 10, 2008 from AFP: Fifth of world's corals already dead, say experts Almost a fifth of the planet's coral reefs have died and carbon emissions are largely to blame, according to an NGO study released Wednesday.
The report, released by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, warned that on current trends, growing levels of greenhouse gases will destroy many of the remaining reefs over the next 20 to 40 years.
"If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions," said Clive Wilkinson, the organisation's coordinator. ...
Any way to turn back time, so we might learn from our mistakes?
Mon, Dec 8, 2008 from Science Daily (US): California's Deep Sea Secrets: New Species Found, Human Impact Revealed Scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego returning from research expeditions in Mexico have captured unprecedented details of vibrant sea life and ecosystems in the Gulf of California, including documentations of new species and marine animals previously never seen alive. Yet the expeditions, which included surveys at unexplored depths, have revealed disturbing declines in sea-life populations and evidence that human impacts have stretched down deeply in the gulf.... Large schools of fish documented in earlier expeditions at locations such as El Bajo seamount have vanished.... "We have lots of evidence of ghost nets with trapped animals at many depths, along with pollution, including beer cans, in each deep location we studied." ...
Mon, Nov 24, 2008 from University of Chicago, via EurekAlert: Ocean growing more acidic faster than once thought University of Chicago scientists have documented that the ocean is growing more acidic faster than previously thought. In addition, they have found that the increasing acidity correlates with increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a paper published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Nov. 24.... "The acidity increased more than 10 times faster than had been predicted by climate change models and other studies," Wootton said. "This increase will have a severe impact on marine food webs and suggests that ocean acidification may be a more urgent issue than previously thought, at least in some areas of the ocean."
The ocean plays a significant role in global carbon cycles. When atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in water it forms carbonic acid, increasing the acidity of the ocean. During the day, carbon dioxide levels in the ocean fall because photosynthesis takes it out of the water, but at night, levels increase again. The study documented this daily pattern, as well as a steady increase in acidity over time. ...
Tue, Nov 11, 2008 from The Daily Climate: The ocean's acid test ...according to a new report issued today by Oceana ... today’s ocean chemistry is already hostile for many creatures fundamental to the marine food web. The world’s oceans – for so long a neat and invisible sink for humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions – are about to extract a price for all that waste.
The effects are not local: Entire ecosystems threaten to literally crumble away as critters relying on calcium carbonate for a home – from corals to mollusks to the sea snail – have a harder time manufacturing their shells. Corals shelter millions of species worldwide, while sea snails account for upwards of 45 percent of the diet of pink salmon. ...
For Whom the Shell Tolls....? it tolls for us all!
Thu, Oct 30, 2008 from NASA via ScienceDaily: Climate Change Seeps Into The Sea Good news has turned out to be bad. The ocean has helped slow global warming by absorbing much of the excess heat and heat-trapping carbon dioxide that has been going into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
All that extra carbon dioxide, however, has been a bitter pill for the ocean to swallow. It's changing the chemistry of seawater, making it more acidic and otherwise inhospitable, threatening many important marine organisms. ...
Wed, Oct 29, 2008 from BBC: Earth on course for eco 'crunch' The planet is headed for an ecological "credit crunch", according to a report issued by conservation groups.
The document contends that our demands on natural resources overreach what the Earth can sustain by almost a third.
The Living Planet Report is the work of WWF, the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network.
It says that more than three quarters of the world's population lives in countries where consumption levels are outstripping environmental renewal. ...
Maybe it's time for about 2 billion of us to check out the exciting new planet Mars!
Mon, Oct 27, 2008 from Guardian (UK): Climate deal may be too late to save coral reefs, scientists warn A new global deal on climate change will come too late to save most of the world's coral reefs, according to a US study that suggests major ecological damage to the oceans is now inevitable.
Emissions of carbon dioxide are making seawater so acidic that reefs including the Great Barrier Reef off Australia could begin to break up within a few decades, research by the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California suggests. Even ambitious targets to stabilise greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, as championed by Britain and Europe to stave off dangerous climate change, still place more than 90 percent of coral reefs in jeopardy. ...
Sun, Oct 5, 2008 from London Observer: Seas turn to acid as they soak up CO2 The Bay of Naples is renowned for its breathtaking beauty and glittering clear waters... But beneath the waves, scientists have uncovered an alarming secret. They have found streams of gas bubbling up from the seabed around the island of Ischia. 'The waters are like a Jacuzzi - there is so much carbon dioxide fizzing up from the seabed,' said Dr Jason Hall-Spencer, of Plymouth University. 'Millions of litres of gas bubble up every day.'
The gas streams have turned Ischia's waters into acid, and this has had a major impact on sea life and aquatic plants. Now marine biologists fear that the world's seas could follow suit. ...
The world's seas full of acid ... now that would be one bad trip!
Sat, Oct 4, 2008 from Washington Post (US): Shrinking Oyster Population Focus of River Summit "When I got out of the Army in 1970, . . . you could make a good living," Smith said.
But the number of oyster boats has dwindled, as have the shucking operations throughout the Chesapeake Bay area. Although state and federal oyster restoration efforts have cost nearly $60 million since 1994, the number of oysters has declined, according to a recent Environmental Protection Agency estimate. Experts say the oyster population in the bay is at 1 percent of historic highs in the 1880s. ...
One percent!? That means the oyster beds are 99 percent pure emptiness.
Wed, Oct 1, 2008 from Science: Acidic Oceans Getting Noisy, Too The ocean is becoming a noisier place. As seawater turns more acidic, due to absorption of carbon dioxide (CO2) building up in the atmosphere, it allows sound waves to travel farther, according to new research. That's potentially bad news for a host of marine animals, including whales and dolphins, that rely on sound for hunting and communication--and that are easily stressed by background noise from ship traffic and military sonar. ...
Thank goodness we can all rely on our iPods to drown it out.
Sun, Sep 14, 2008 from The Province (Canada): World's oceans could become 'soupy swill': expert Our seas are suffocating under a layer of slime. That slime -- algae feasting on pollutants and fertilizers and starving the ocean of oxygen - is growing rapaciously and killing off sea life at an alarming rate.... A new study published in August reveals the world's dead zones have doubled in size every decade since 1960. Coastal waters with once rich marine life -- Chesapeake Bay, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and off Peru, Chile and Namibia -- are rapidly losing species. ...
I'd rather keep them "fish chowder." Or better: like an ocean environment.
Sat, Aug 23, 2008 from KUOW Radio: Oyster Larvae Dying Off at Alarming Rates The oyster industry in the Pacific Northwest could be facing serious trouble. In recent years, hatcheries have seen oyster larvae die off at unusually high rates. No one knows what's killing the young oysters, but scientists have two theories....
ONE THEORY IS THAT THE BACTERIA THRIVE IN THE SO-CALLED DEAD ZONE. THAT'S AN AREA OF LOW OXYGEN WATER THAT HAS RECENTLY APPEARED OFF THE OREGON COAST....
DAVIS SUSPECTS THE WATER IS MORE ACIDIC THAN NORMAL, BUT IT'S HARD TO SAY, SINCE SCIENTISTS HAVEN'T KEPT RECORDS OF PH LEVELS IN THE SOUND.
...
Wed, Aug 20, 2008 from Christian Science Monitor: New sea change forecasts present a slimy picture Earth's oceans are on the brink of massive change. You see it in such details as the hordes of Pacific mollusks that researchers have identified as ready to invade the North Atlantic as a thawing Arctic Ocean opens the way. You also see it in broad trends: A new overview warns that such relentless human impacts as overfishing or agricultural pollution -- as well as global warming -- threaten mass extinctions of marine life.
Jeremy Jackson at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who made that overview, notes that this is "not a happy picture."
He says that "the only way to keep one's sanity and try to achieve real success is to carve out sectors of the problem that can be addressed in effective terms and get on with it as quickly as possible." ...
Other ways to keep one's sanity: denial, rose colored glasses, blaming the victim, changing the subject.
Sat, Aug 16, 2008 from Reuters: Acid ocean imperils more than shells SYDNEY -- Rising ocean acidity could reduce fertilization of marine invertebrates and might eventually wipe out colonies of sea urchins, lobsters, mussels and oysters, according to a study.
Scientists knew that ocean acidification was eating away at the shells of marine animals, but the new study has found that rising acidity hindered marine sperm from swimming to and fertilizing eggs in the ocean. ...
Sun, Aug 3, 2008 from Cell Press, via EurekAlert: More acidic ocean could spell trouble for marine life's earliest stages Increasingly acidic conditions in the ocean—brought on as a direct result of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere—could spell trouble for the earliest stages of marine life, according to a new report.... " If other marine species respond similarly -- and there's no evidence yet that they don't -- then we're in trouble," said Jon Havenhand of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. "The analogies are quite simple: we observed a 25 percent reduction in fertilization success at reduced pH, which is equivalent to a 25 percent reduction in the spawning stock of the species. Apply equivalent changes to other commercially or ecologically important species, such as lobsters, crabs, abalone, clams, mussels, or even fish, and the consequences would be far-reaching. It could be enough to 'tip' an ecosystem from one state to another." ...
That is, if we haven't fished the ocean to emptiness first.
Thu, Jul 17, 2008 from Discover: Ocean Acidification: A Global Case of Osteoporosis "It all seemed so convenient: As our smokestacks and automobile tailpipes spewed ever more carbon dioxide into the air, the oceans absorbed the excess. Like a vast global vacuum cleaner, the world's seas sucked CO2 right out of the atmosphere, mitigating the dire consequences of global warming and forestalling the melting of glaciers, the submergence of coastlines, and extremes of weather from floods to droughts... The problem was that, having swallowed hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse gases since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the oceans were becoming more acidic. And not just in a few spots. Now the chemistry of the entire ocean was shifting, imperiling coral reefs, marine creatures at the bottom of the food chain, and ultimately the planet's fisheries." ...
From global vacuum cleaner ... to global heartbreak.
Mon, Jul 7, 2008 from Science, via Science Daily: Acidifying Oceans Add Urgency To Carbon Dioxide Cuts [H]uman emissions of carbon dioxide have begun to alter the chemistry of the ocean--often called the cradle of life on Earth. The ecological and economic consequences are difficult to predict but possibly calamitous, warn a team of chemical oceanographers in the July 4 issue of Science, and halting the changes already underway will likely require even steeper cuts in carbon emissions than those currently proposed to curb climate change.... Although the ocean's chemical response to higher carbon dioxide levels is relatively predictable, the biological response is more uncertain. The ocean's pH and carbonate chemistry has been remarkably stable for millions of years--much more stable than temperature. ...
Sun, Jul 6, 2008 from Nature Geoscience, via ScienceDaily: New Pathway For Methane Production In The Oceans Discovered A new pathway for methane production has been uncovered in the oceans, and this has a significant potential impact for the study of greenhouse gas production on our planet. The article, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, reveals that aerobic decomposition of an organic, phosphorus-containing compound, methylphosphonate, may be responsible for the supersaturation of methane in ocean surface waters.... Interest in this research crosses many specialties. Oceanographers will be excited because it offers a solution to the long standing methane paradox. Microbiologists will be excited because it shows an aerobic production pathway of methane, which goes against everything that is currently known about methane, and Climatologists will be interested because it's a potent greenhouse gas that we don't have constraints on, and this new pathway is very exciting. ...
Tue, Jul 1, 2008 from Xinhua (China): Crustaceans, squid found where once there were fish Researchers are pointing fingers at global warming again, saying it has caused dramatic shifts in some aquatic communities in which fish populations die off and crabs, lobsters and squid take over.
The finding comes from a new analysis of 50 years worth of fish-trawling data collected in Narragansett Bay and adjacent Rhode Island Sound but may apply elsewhere, researchers said.... "We think there has been a shift in the food web resulting in more of the productivity being consumed in the water column," Collie explained. "Phytoplankton are increasingly being grazed by zooplankton, which are then eaten by planktivorous fish, rather than the phytoplankton sinking to the bottom and being consumed by bottom fish. It's a rerouting of that production from the bottom to the top." ...
A warming tide lifts all phytoplankton. It's morning in the top layer. The "trickle up" theory in action.
Thu, Jun 12, 2008 from Seattle Times: Acidified ocean water rising up nearly 100 years earlier than scientists predicted In surveys from Vancouver Island to the tip of Baja California, the scientists found the first evidence that large amounts of corrosive water are reaching the continental shelf -- the shallow sea margin where most marine creatures live. In some places, including Northern California, the acidified water was as little as four miles from shore.
"What we found ... was truly astonishing," said oceanographer Richard Feely, of [NOAA's] Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. "This means ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on the continental shelf right now." ...
Sat, Jun 7, 2008 from Sydney Morning Herald (Australia): Putting sea life to the acid test "A new report by the Antarctic research centre, released at the Hobart meeting, says that about half the fossil fuel carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by humans has now dissolved into the oceans. If we keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at the current projections, by 2100 the ocean acidification will be three times that experienced at the end of the glacial period, 15,000 years ago." ...
Thu, Jun 5, 2008 from StraightGoods: Climate change casts marine science adrift Climate change is altering the world's oceans in so many ways scientists cannot keep pace, and as a result there is no comprehensive vision of its present and future impacts, say experts. Rising sea levels, changes in hurricane intensity and seasonality, declines in fisheries and corals are among the many effects attributed to climate change. In an attempt to put some order to their disconcerting findings, more than 450 scientists from some 60 countries gathered in the northern Spanish city of Gijón for the symposium "Effects of Climate Change on the World's Oceans...." ...
Wed, May 28, 2008 from The New York Times via Associated Press: Scientists warn of rising Pacific Coast acidity "A panel of marine scientists are warning that the Pacific Coast's increasing acidity could disrupt food chains and threaten the Pacific Northwest's shellfish industry... The data indicates acidic water is appearing along the Pacific Coast decades earlier than expected. The acidified water does not pose a threat to humans, but it could dissolve the shells of clams, oysters and other shellfish." ...
Whoa, dude. Not a threat to humans? WE ARE ALL CONNECTED.
Sat, May 24, 2008 from Science News: Ocean reflux "Seawater with the potentially shell-disrupting chemistry predicted for the open ocean after 2050 has already surfaced along North America's West Coast, scientists report. In spring 2007, the corrosive, deep water rose temporarily to the Pacific surface some 40 kilometers roughly west of the California-Oregon border, says Richard Feely of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle." ...
Fri, May 23, 2008 from European Science Foundation, via EurekAlert: Ocean acidification -- another undesired side effect of fossil fuel-burning "Ocean acidification is more rapid than ever in the history of the earth and if you look at the pCO2 (partial pressure of carbon dioxide) levels we have reached now, you have to go back 35 million years in time to find the equivalents"... A maximum allowed change in pH, where the system is still controllable, needs to be found. This is a major challenge considering the multifaceted unknowns that still are to be clarified. This so-called "tipping point" is currently estimated to allow a drop of about 0.2 pH units, a value that could be reached in as near as 30 years. More research and further modeling needs to be undertaken to verify the predictions. ...
Um, yeah. More research is needed to determine this point before we tip it.
Fri, May 16, 2008 from Science, via EurekAlert: Atmosphere threatened by pollutants entering ocean, prof says Human-caused atmospheric nitrogen compounds are carried by wind and deposited into the ocean, where they act as a fertilizer and lead to increased production of marine plant life. The increase in plant life causes more carbon dioxide to be drawn from the atmosphere into the ocean. This process results in the removal of about 10 percent of the human-caused carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thus potentially reducing the climate warming potential, according to the team's paper.... However, some of the nitrogen deposited in the ocean is re-processed to form another nitrogen compound called nitrous oxide, which is then released back into the atmosphere from the ocean. Nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas itself – about 300 times more powerful per molecule than carbon dioxide – thus cancelling out about two-thirds of the apparent gain from the carbon dioxide removal, Duce explained. "But of course, the whole system is so complex that we're still rather unsure about what some of the other impacts might be within the ocean," he said. ...
Wed, Apr 9, 2008 from Reuters: Warming trends rise in large ocean areas: study "Warming trends in a third of the world's large ocean regions are two to four times greater than previously reported averages, increasing the risk to marine life and fisheries, a U.N.-backed environmental study said.
Overfishing, coastal pollution and degradation of water quality were common in all 64 large marine ecosystems studied by scientists who contributed to the U.N. Environmental Program report presented at an international conference on oceans, coasts and islands in Vietnam this week." ...
That fish are gonna be so hot you won't even need to cook 'em before you eat 'em!
Sat, Mar 1, 2008 from National Geographic News: Climate Change Hitting the Sea "When it comes to climate change, polar bears and sharks may grab the bulk of the headlines—but it's the threat to the sea's tiniest creatures that has some marine scientists most concerned. Malformed seashells show that climate change is affecting even the most basic rungs of the marine food chain—a hint of looming disaster for all ocean creatures—experts say. Climate change could drastically reduce sea urchin populations in particular, according to Gretchen Hofmann, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara." ...
"Please, sir, I'm just a street urchin, sir, may I have a tuppence, sir, please, just for a spot o' gruel, sir."
Tue, Feb 19, 2008 from The Australian: Snail loss catastrophic for food chain "GLOBAL warming is threatening the future of a tiny marine snail which, if lost, could trigger a catastrophic collapse of Antarctica's food chain, experts say. Pteropods have been dubbed the "potato chip" of the oceans because they provide food for so many different species. But the lentil-sized snails - eaten by fish and other lower life forms, which are in turn eaten by species higher up the food chain - are highly sensitive to temperature and acidity, both of which are affected by climate change. Carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere is expected to make the oceans more acidic. This could have dire consequences for pteropods, impairing their ability to make shells." ...
They call these snails the "potato chips" of the oceans -- bet they're delicious with that tasty chicken of the sea dish.
Fri, Feb 15, 2008 from Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Scientists fear Tipping Point for Pacific Ocean "Where scientists previously found a sea bottom abounding with life, two years ago they discovered the rotting carcasses of crabs, starfish and sea worms, swooshing from side to side in the current. Most fish had fled -- and those that didn't or couldn't joined the deathfest on the sea floor. Extraordinarily low oxygen levels were to blame -- swept up from the deep ocean into normally productive waters just off the Pacific Northwest coast by uncharacteristically strong winds....It looks like the Pacific has reached a "tipping point," a threshold where low-oxygen levels are becoming the rule, researchers said."
...
The scientists conclude the ocean may be "poised for significant reorganization" -- sciencespeak for "we're screwed."
Thu, Feb 14, 2008 from Associated Press: Study says people impact all oceans "Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop pristine, might be the lament of today's Ancient Mariner. Oceans cover more than 70 percent of the planet, and every single spot has been affected by people in some way. Researchers studying 17 different activities ranging from fishing to pollution compiled a new map showing how and where people have impacted the seas. Our results show that when these and other individual impacts are summed up, the big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was certainly a surprise to me," said lead author Ben Halpern, an assistant research scientist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara." ...
Fri, Feb 8, 2008 from Salt Lake Tribune, via Scripps: Carbon dioxide could saturate seas first, kill plant life that supplies oxygen "Greenhouse emissions' warming effect on the atmosphere is bad enough, but their bigger threat is the ecological chaos they are causing as the world's oceans become more acidic, according to a marine scientist. Oceans are absorbing the glut of atmospheric carbon dioxide -- stemming from two centuries of rampant burning of fossil fuels -- at the rate of 1 million metric tons an hour. Reacting with seawater, the absorbed carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid and throws marine chemistry out of whack. Without a major effort to curb emissions, massive die-off will occur in coral reefs, the shells of crucial mollusk species will dissolve and key marine plant life, which produces half the world's atmospheric oxygen, will disappear..." ...
This article covered a visiting lecturer Marcia McNutt, a geophysicist who heads California's Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. We bet everybody went out drinking after this cheery talk.
Fri, Dec 14, 2007 from Science Daily (US): Carbon Crisis lethal for coral reefs "If world leaders do not immediately engage in a race against time to save the Earth's coral reefs, these vital ecosystems will not survive the global warming and acidification predicted for later this century. That is the conclusion of a group of marine scientists from around the world in a major new study published in the journal Science on Dec. 13.... "This crisis is on our doorstep, not decades away. We have little time in which to respond, but respond, we must!" says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, lead author of the Science paper, The Carbon Crisis: Coral Reefs under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification." ...
When any highly respected scientist uses an (!) exclamation mark, perk up your ears. They were trained in Respected Scientist School never to do that.
Tue, Dec 11, 2007 from Journal of Carbon Balance and Management: Projected climate change impact on oceanic acidification "Future projections of ocean acidification will therefore mainly be dependent on the future level of atmospheric CO2. The consequences of a small but sustained decrease in oceanic pH on marine phytoplankton are virtually unknown. It will be important for marine ecologists in the future to better understand the sensitivities of phytoplankton growth to pH in particular, so as to better quantify the likely future biological changes at the regional and global scale." ...
Our favorite part from the abstract (as only scientists could say it): "This suggests the only way to slowdown or mitigate the potential biological consequences of future ocean acidification is to significantly reduce fossil-fuel emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere."
