Ocean Acidification

[biffvernon]

I've said before on this forum that I think ocean acidification is our absolute biggest problem, the more so because nobody notices it till it's far too late.

This paper is very important:

http://plymouth.academia.edu/JasonHallS ... dification

[UndercoverElephant]

Biggest problem? Bigger than climate change? Bigger than overpopulation?

It's a big problem, but not the biggest.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

I've said before on this forum that I think ocean acidification is our absolute biggest problem, the more so because nobody notices it till it's far too late.

This paper is very important:

http://plymouth.academia.edu/JasonHallS ... dification

Scares the hell out of me.

The stability of our atmosphere is heavily dependant on the mini-beasts that soak up CO2 and produce oxygen by return.

[biffvernon]

Biggest problem? Bigger than climate change? Bigger than overpopulation?

It's a big problem, but not the biggest.

Well.... I think we need to think this one through carefully. What are the implications for acidification? Will they be more profound sooner than other problems?

[PS_RalphW]

Maybe not sooner, but the oceans are the bottom rung of many food chains on land, as well as the largest single driving force behind gaia - if you subscribe to that feedback mechanism.

When the earth when through its snowball phases, most of the species to survive were ocean dwellling.

If the food chain collapses in the oceans we probably face the biggest mass etinction of species in the history of this planet.

[biffvernon]

Yep, and the Hall-Spencer paper suggests that a large proportion of marine species are going to be in trouble this century.

The effect on the biosphere will be much greater and swifter than temperature rise.

Or as somebody tweeted from the AAAS meeting:

"Where are you going?" "0cean acidification." "Oh, the ocean people are the only ones here more depressed than climate scientists." #AAASmtg

[biffvernon]

Another new paper on the subject.

http://networkedblogs.com/uDAmv

Ocean acidification may have severe consequences for marine ecosystems; however, assessing its future impact is difficult because laboratory experiments and field observations are limited by their reduced ecologic complexity and sample period, respectively. In contrast, the geological record contains long-term evidence for a variety of global environmental perturbations, including ocean acidification plus their associated biotic responses. We review events exhibiting evidence for elevated atmospheric CO2, global warming, and ocean acidification over the past ~300 million years of Earth’s history, some with contemporaneous extinction or evolutionary turnover among marine calcifiers. Although similarities exist, no past event perfectly parallels future projections in terms of disrupting the balance of ocean carbonate chemistry—a consequence of the unprecedented rapidity of CO2 release currently taking place.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6 ... a8370809bf

[UndercoverElephant]

Yep, and the Hall-Spencer paper suggests that a large proportion of marine species are going to be in trouble this century.

A lot of them are in trouble already, because of all the other things we are doing to the oceans, from polluting them with agricultural runoff to smashing up the ocean floor by bottom-trawling.

[emordnilap]

Only a few percent off topic: blue ice.

The color of the ice is related the amount of air which remains trapped inside. As the ice is trapped in higher depths and is more compressed, the air escapes and the ices becomes more and more blue. Those icebergs seen by my colleague hadn't seen the light of the sun for a long time; perhaps centuries..

[biffvernon]

Joe Romm on acid

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/0 ... ed-itself/