Newsweek: The Disaster We’ve Wrought on the World’s Oceans May Be Irrevocable

[GliderGuider]

The Disaster We’ve Wrought on the World’s Oceans May Be Irrevocable

“There’s a profound game-changing event going on in the life of the sea,” says Callum Roberts, a professor of marine conservation at the University of York, England. “The fact is that changes in alkalinity are going to cause massive reorganization of marine life, impacts on marine food webs, productivity, all sorts of things. We’re heading for a car crash here.”

Many of these risks are caused by one of the world’s most pressing problems: climate change. Rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are causing global temperatures to rise, which is leading to the melting of the polar ice caps, which in turn has resulted in rising sea levels and a host of ecological issues.

It’s also causing the chemical makeup of the world’s oceans to change so rapidly. Carbon dioxide, one of the key perpetrators in the lineup of man-made greenhouse gases, is absorbed by seawater, causing a chemical reaction near the ocean surface that results in lowered pH levels. And about one-third of all the man-made carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere ends up absorbed by the oceans. Carles Pelejero, a scientist working less than a mile from La Boqueria at the Institut de Cienciès del Mar (ICM), on Barcelona’s seafront, calls it “climate change’s evil twin.”

He illustrates the basic mechanism to schoolchildren by getting them to take a straw and blow into a glass of water. A simple litmus test shows the children how the pH level drops as the carbon dioxide from their breath dissolves in the water. It’s a sign that naturally alkaline water is becoming less so—and it’s what is happening on a global scale as the oceans absorb a significant amount of the carbon dioxide we pump out through the burning of carbon fuels. “In preindustrial times the ocean’s pH was 8.2. It has already gone down to 8.1,” says Pelejero. “Depending on what we do, it will reach an average of 7.8 or 7.7 by 2100. It hasn’t been that low for 55 million years.” For reference, the pH scale runs from 0 to 14; the lower the number the more acidic, and the higher the more alkaline.

[chervilant]

1. Oh, but

The Almighty Dollar!

Free market capitalism!!

Lobsterfest!!!

(After I commented on our unusually cool weather, my boss remarked that global warming was invented by Al Gore to make money. He sincerely believes this!)

[progressoid]

12. Yes. That Gore 'did it for the money' thing is popular with the RW denialists.

[Enthusiast]

13. The idea that Gore created a global warming myth because he was motivated by money

is just absurd.

I am willing to entertain almost any conspiracy theory for about a minute, but I can dismiss this one in about five seconds.

[chervilant]

15. Indeed, I just laugh at him.

He is intractable. Nothing will pierce his defenses. The cognitive dissonance would paralyze him.

[Squinch]

2. Kicking. Sadly.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. One reason (of several) why artificial cloud cover to cut down warming is a bad idea

It would allow the acidification of the oceans to proceed without a solution.

[Dustlawyer]

4. 75% of our oxygen comes from the phytoplankton in the sea. Concentrations of phytoplankton

are already starting to drop. We are messing with things we cannot yet understand and may render ourselves and almost everything else extinct!

[Tetris_Iguana]

9. Well we had a good run while we lasted... Nt

[Moostache]

5. pH is a logarithmic scale...

That means a change of .1 units is actually 10X as much more acidic or alkaline than the next gradation. THAT is why going from pH 8.2 to 8.1 (and heading for the high 7's) is a profoundly disturbing trend. To change the pH of the volume of water in the oceans by that much has required an enormous amount of CO2 release and we haven't even slowed down globally (in fact its still accelerating world-wide).

If things do not radically change in the next 2-5 years (which looks to be impossible at the moment), the damage done with head past the final redlines and mass extinction will follow. It is a mathematical conclusion - not "a theory", "a hoax" or "a plot". God help those that are sentenced to live through the hell on Earth to come...

[DeSwiss]

6. K&R

- But I'm sure the oceans will return to their pristine beauty after we're gone.....

[mountain grammy]

7. Here's the rationale for the theocracy form of government.

Just pray the pollution away, because, you know, God, that way there's no need to spend the money that should be donated for the comfort and pleasure of church leaders. Bring on the rapture!

[rickyhall]

8. Rapture would create job openings, right?

[mountain grammy]

11. Ya think?

[navarth]

10. What can we do about it? That's the question for me

I pretty much feel like our species is going to get what it deserves. As it stands now we deserve to be extinct, sorry to say. The great shame of that is we take all the innocent species down with us.

If I talk about environmental collapse with colleagues, more than half will recite some denier bullshit; most probably because it gives them the excuse to not think about it.

The case has to be made to these people, and there's a huge pile of money and power that is hollering in the other ear about how it's some BS from Al Gore. The case has to be made somehow.

[GliderGuider]

14. Not much

In other words, nothing. Even if we stopped emitting any CO2 at all, the oceans would keep absorbing what we've already released. And we aren't going to stop burning fossil carbon any time soon.

We're fucked.