Reply #52: "Environmentalists" who block solar power are dooming thousands of marine species to extinction [View All]

[txlibdem]

Here's a little tip to all the so-called "environmentalists" who are trying to block solar power projects in the desert:

Edit to add. Paraphrasing:

Due to rising atmospheric CO2 levels over the past century there has been a 26 percent increase in ocean acidification. This acidification has occurred with "startling" rapidity, scientists say - perhaps 100 times faster than anything Earth's sea life has experienced in millions of years.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x271375

We are already seeing sea corals dying off due to rising ocean acidity:

Ocean acidification reaches deep-sea corals

Published 15 December 2010
With increasing levels of carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere and moving into the world’s oceans, marine waters have become more acidic, scientists have shown. The long hand of acidification is reaching far down in The Deep. Corallium rubrum (pictured here) and other deep-sea corals are now being affected.

To address the growing concern for acidifying marine ecosystems, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded 21 grants under the Ocean Acidification theme of its Climate Research Investment. The awards are supported and managed by NSF’s Office of Polar Programs, Directorate for Geosciences and Directorate for Biological Sciences. Projects will support research on the nature, extent and effects of ocean acidification on marine environments and organisms in the past, present and future — from tropical systems to icy seas.

Animal species from pteropods — delicate, butterfly-like planktonic drifters — to hard corals are affected by ocean acidification; so, too, are the unseen microbes that fuel ocean productivity and influence the chemical functioning of ocean waters. As oceans become more acidic, the balance of molecules needed for shell-bearing organisms to manufacture shells and skeletons is altered. The physiology of many marine species, from microbes to fish, may be affected.

http://oceanacidification.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/ocean-acidification-reaches-deep-sea-corals/

Increasing Acid Could Kill Most Coral by 2050

By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 13 December 2007 02:01 pm ET
SAN FRANCISCO — The world’s coral reefs face almost certain death as increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are absorbed by the oceans, acidifying the water in which corals live, a new study warns.

...snip...

“Before the industrial revolution, over 98 percent of warm water coral reefs were bathed with open ocean waters 3.5 times supersaturated with aragonite, meaning that corals could easily extract it to build reefs,” said study co-author Long Cao, also of the Carnegie Institution. “But if atmospheric CO2 stabilizes at 550 ppm—and even that would take concerted international efforts to achieve—no existing coral reef will remain in such an environment.”

At greatest risk of these changes are Australia’s iconic Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest living structure, and the reefs of the Caribbean Sea.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/071213-coral-acid.html

They aren't environmentalists. They're self-serving hypocrites.