Climate change: Pacific Ocean acidity dissolving shells of key species

[CreekDog]

Source: San Jose Mercury News

Climate change: Pacific Ocean acidity dissolving shells of key species
By Paul Rogers

[e-mail]

POSTED: 04/30/2014 06:00:00 AM PDT23 COMMENTS| UPDATED: 87 MIN. AGO

In a troubling new discovery, scientists studying ocean waters off California, Oregon and Washington have found the first evidence that increasing acidity in the ocean is dissolving the shells of a key species of tiny sea creature at the base of the food chain.

The animals, a type of free-floating marine snail known as pteropods, are an important food source for salmon, herring, mackerel and other fish in the Pacific Ocean. Those fish are eaten not only by millions of people every year, but also by a wide variety of other sea creatures, from whales to dolphins to sea lions.

...

Scientists from NOAA and Oregon State University found that in waters near the West Coast shoreline, 53 percent of the tiny floating snails had shells that were severely dissolving -- double the estimate from 200 years ago.

...

But what many people do not realize is that nearly a third of carbon dioxide emitted by humans is dissolved in the oceans. Some of that forms carbonic acid, which makes the ocean more corrosive.

Over the past 200 years, the ocean's acidity has risen by roughly 30 percent. At the present rate, it is on track to rise by 70 percent by 2050 from preindustrial levels.


...

Some of the corrosive water near the shore could be a result of other types of pollution, such as runoff from fertilizer and sewage, said Stanford's Palumbi, who was not involved in the NOAA research. But because the study found rates of the snails' shells dissolving in deep water, far from the shore, human-caused carbon dioxide is the prime suspect, he added.

...

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25664175/climate-change-pacific-ocean-acidity-dissolving-shells-key

[BlancheSplanchnik]

1. sadly kicking and reccing

[groundloop]

2. DENY DENY DENY ...... LA LA LA LA LA ..... I SEE NOTHING, I KNOW NOTHING

This is something we should have seen coming, the oceans are a huge sink for the CO2 we put in the air and obviously it's turning them more acidic.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

3. Just another piece of evidence.

Of what our future will look like.

[Mondavi]

4. Global Warming, Acid Rain, British Petroleum, Fukushima

This would have seemed easy to predict given our levels of corporate pollution and destruction of nature.

This is just one more aspect of the compounding of Global Warming's effects.

[The Stranger]

5. It really all comes back to overpopulation.

Too much demand for energy and the luxuries of modern living.

Too many people on the planet.

[blkmusclmachine]

6. LALALA! CAN'T HEAR YOU! (And..."looking forward!")

[snowjob]

7. Support healthy oceans

Become a member of Oceana.org.

[progree]

8. Who the f**k cares. I hate fish. Speaking of oceans, any news on that Malaysian airliner?

I don't believe in science anyway. Science is the theology of Satan.

[Overseas]

9. Sad K&R.

[Lodestar]

10. Mystery: Starfish turn to ‘slime’ along Pacific coast — “We’re talking about a loss of millions

Reuters, Nov. 5, 2013: Mysterious disease turning starfish to ‘slime’ on U.S. West Coast [...] ravaging starfish in record numbers along the U.S. West Coast [...] “It’s pretty spooky because we don’t have any obvious culprit [...]” said Pete Raimondi, chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Lab. [...] Starfish have suffered from the syndrome on and off for decades but have usually been reported in small numbers, isolated to southern California and linked to a rise in seawater temperatures, which is not the case this time, Raimondi said. Since June, wasting starfish have been found in dozens of coastal sites ranging from south-east Alaska to Orange County, California, and the mortality rates have been higher than ever seen before, Raimondi said. [...]

http://enenews.com/mystery-disease-turns-starfish-to-slime-along-pacific-coast-compared-to-black-death-innards-become-exposed-they-fall-apart-cases-ballooning-in-alaska-video
________-

How could this remain "mysterious"? Sounds more like radioactivity issues than acidity...but I'm no "expert".

[CrispyQ]

11. Startling:

Over the past 200 years, the ocean's acidity has risen by roughly 30 percent. At the present rate, it is on track to rise by 70 percent by 2050 from preindustrial levels.

[Blue_Tires]

12. History has shown that humanity never lets science interfere with profit

Only when they find some way to profit more off of the solution than from contributing to the problem will we see any real progress...

[Duppers]

13. another sad k&r

[GliderGuider]

14. CO2 dissolves the bottom out of the food chain while we eat everything that's left at the top...

Last edited Thu May 1, 2014, 05:27 PM - Edit history (1)

[Uncle Joe]

15. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Creekdog.

[sakabatou]

16. So we're gonna kill ourselves as a species

Great.