Oceans are becoming acidified at the fastest rate in 300 million years

[twilyth]

CO2 + ocean = carbonic acid.

full story

The Earth’s oceans may be acidifying faster than at any point during the last 300 million years due to industrial emissions, endangering marine life from oysters and reefs to sea-going salmon, researchers said.

The scientists found surging levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere forced down the pH of the ocean by 0.1 unit in the last century, 10 times faster than the closest historical comparison from 56 million years ago, New York’s Columbia University, which led the research, said yesterday in a statement. The seas absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, forming carbonic acid. The lower the pH level in the seas, the more acidic they are.

Past instances of ocean acidification have been linked with mass extinctions of marine creatures so the current one could also threaten important species, according to Baerbel Hoenisch, the paleoceanographer at Columbia who was lead author of the paper that appeared in the journal Science.

“If industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about -- coral reefs, oysters, salmon,” Hoenisch said.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said ocean pH may fall another 0.3 units this century, according to Columbia. The closest change to the current pace occurred during the so-called Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 56 million years ago, when a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide may have pushed pH levels down by 0.45 units over 20,000 years, according to the researchers.

 

[DannibusX]

Acidifying the oceans. Groovy.

 

[EarthDog]

My hand........... ITS MELTING MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN.

 

[twicksisted]

Everyone freak out, we're all gonna die!!!

CO2 is actually a really good thing... i pay a lot of money to pump CO2 into my planted fishtank ecosystem which totally thrives off of it... the more CO2 i give it the more the plants bloom (which in turn generate oxygen and filter out air/water pollutants)

Dont get sucked into this eco-bullshit you hear in the mainstream media...their lies and propoganda are to shape the general (ignorant) publics opinions and beliefs on what to think, who to vote for, why its ok to invade countrys and steal their wealth because they are evil etc... Its all just fear mongering at the end of the day paid for by large corporations who want to bleed you dry with more taxes and scams

 

[EarthDog]

Yeah CO2 is good for my plants too.....

 

[AphexDreamer]

Everyone freak out, we're all gonna die!!!

CO2 is actually a really good thing... i pay a lot of money to pump CO2 into my planted fishtank ecosystem which totally thrives off of it... the more CO2 i give it the more the plants bloom (which in turn generate oxygen and filter out air/water pollutants)

Dont get sucked into this eco-bullshit you hear in the mainstream media...their lies and propoganda are to shape the general (ignorant) publics opinions and beliefs on what to think, who to vote for, why its ok to invade countrys and steal their wealth because they are evil etc... Its all just fear mongering at the end of the day paid for by large corporations who want to bleed you dry with more taxes and scams

CO2 good for plants sure, carbonic acid ehhhh.... not so good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

 

[erocker]

Looking forward to scientists finding some fix, only to either put people's lives at risk or screw another part of the ecosystem!

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

I know we could build pretty epic scrubbers but I worry how well would a localized drop in CO2 disseminate through the atmosphere? I think you'd have to do it in the desert because I'd worry about making air poisonous in the immediate vicinity.

 

[twicksisted]

EDIT, double post: see below...

 

[the54thvoid]

Looking forward to scientists finding some fix, only to either put people's lives at risk or screw another part of the ecosystem!

There is a fix. But no industrialised nation is willing to do anything about it. It's called reducing CO2 emissions.

I think the best thing to do is just ignore everything we're doing to our planet because until the Gene Roddenberry universe of credits and pseudo communism is in place, nobody wants to give up anything. We're a nasty little species and we deserve our lot.

And in typical fashion it'd just be the thing that in 100 years if we finally get everything sorted with Fusion, High efficency Photo-Voltaic panelling and curing all cancers that an amateur astronomer notices a 20 mile wide hunk of space iron flying straight at us.

For all we want to change/alter/improve/degrade our planet, ultimately, we have no say over our long term future. When our Extinction Level Event happens, it'll be awesome.

 

[twicksisted]

Sure the climate is changing, it has for many thousands/millions of years. At the end of the day us humans are comparible to bacteria clinging to some large rock thats hurtling through space, and although we like to think of ourselves as omnipotent beings, we will eventually go the same way as all the other millions of living organisms that once graced it's surface and fade into oblivion. People think the world (earth) is going to die, its not, it will carry on spinning through the galaxy whether we like it or not. Not even our most potent nuclear weapons could destroy this planet completely and stop it from doing so

Back on topic, climate change science is heavily funded by western governments to generate tax money (carbon taxes, control who does what and how they do it), stifle economic growth in 3rd world countrys (so that they dont overtake western economys) and to build up a premise in peoples minds that future "eco-wars" are there for the environment and not to kill, pillage resources and destroy other civilizations that stand in the way of NATO's plans once they can no longer use the terrorism card as a premise to murder innocent people.

These eco taxes and targets, set to stunt growth of emerging economys in non western countrys, are dwarfed by the environmental impact that our western war machine has and the industrial military complex on a whole... You have any idea how many people, bases, and vehicles are funded and kept running in unhospitable locations worldwide, nevermind the depleted uranium, phosphorous and other chemical agent weapons are used incognito of law when attacking a country or sponsoring rebel (terrorist) forces to do so "legally" in the name of democracy.


Our little "fishbowl" existance is never going to be the same again whether we like it or not and its naive to think that we can make things the same as they were before
Embrace change and more importantly, change things by getting rid of the blood sucking govenrments that are dictating our lives, these wars and destroying our civilization as we know it.


Thats how we will save the "world"!

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

I don't understand what people think arguing about this will accomplish. Well I do, I just don't understand why they can't see it's not going to end the way they want. The whole point of arguing against it is so we don't have to do anything. From the corporate perspective it's the "make money now rather than later at all costs" that drives them, and the let's hate science message they put in their news sources. While the whole "greater than ever before" thing should be sign enough that this is our fault, it really doesn't matter. The end result is the same. Oceanic conveyers shut off and we enter an ice age. No matter what the cause, we have to respond to it and take control of our climate.

 

[twicksisted]

we have to respond to it and take control of our climate.

Our environment? since when lol... when were you blessed with being able to control time, space and the earth? We just happened to exist here and we dont have it half as bad as most of the other few million species that cohabit with us.

All im pointing out is that we have no control over things like we think we do. Meddling and trying to gain control is what got us into mess in the first place. Tackle the real root cause of the problem and dont try and come up with yet another grand scheme plan to manipulate things to our one sided purpose. Life go's on, human or not.

 

[Arctucas]

Here we go again.

The Eco-Nazis failed with their Global Warming agenda, so they had to find some new psuedo-scientific shenanigans to promote their Green Communism.