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Antarctic Marine Wildlife Is Under Threat From Ocean Acidification, Study Finds
A study has found that a decreased pH level in the antarctic is damaging the shells of native wildlife. "Marine snails in seas around Antarctica are being affected by ocean acidification, scientists have found.
An international team of researchers found that the snails' shells are being corroded.
Experts says the findings are significant for predicting the future impact of ocean acidification on marine life.
The results of the study are published in the journal Nature Geoscience (abstract).
The marine snails, called "pteropods", are an important link in the oceanic food chain as well as a good indicator of ecosystem health. 'They are a major grazer of phytoplankton and... a key prey item of a number of higher predators - larger plankton, fish, seabirds, whales,' said Dr Geraint Tarling, Head of Ocean Ecosystems at the British Antarctic Survey and co-author of the report."
The lower the pH gets, the better chlorine will work. Being closer than ever to pool-quality water in the ocean, the Antarctic people should spin this and enjoy a boom in tourism! I bet they can't wait to see more people that those bearded scientists who don't spend a dime on penguin art.
lucm, indeed.
The BBC has had bias issues as far as politics is concerned, but I haven't heard any bias from them against science. That is unless you consider ocean acidification an indicator of global warming which certain fringe (stupid) groups consider to be politics.
The BBC has had bias issues as far as politics is concerned, but I haven't heard any bias from them against science. That is unless you consider ocean acidification an indicator of global warming which certain fringe (stupid) groups consider to be politics.
The big question to ask is cui bono? I think this is all a preconceived British plot to wipe out the French by depriving them of all their snails.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
'Less alkali' is not the same as 'acidic'...
But 'less alkali' is 'more acidic'. The shift in pH is surely the important point.
Remember, this is the BBC, who took a corporate decision in 2006 to pursue an alarmist reporting stance.
They took a decision that there was no case to be made for having always to 'balance' the reporting of mainstream science with opposing views, most of which are not represented in the scientific literature anyway. In the same way that a natural history programme should not have to balance each mention of evolution with a creationist argument.
CO2(aq) + H2O(l) H+(aq) + HCO3–(aq) [distilled water reaction]
2NaOH(aq) + CO2(g) Na2CO3(aq) + H2O(l) [sodium hydroxide reaction]
Explanatory:
Carbon dioxide reacts with water at standard temperature and pressure to form a weak acid and hydrogen ions (both in solution), adjusting pH *at saturation* from about 7.6-6.0. That it is known yet underreported that the world's oceans are the carbon sink to beat all others, puts lie to the CO2 problem and a simple classroom experiment with distilled water, a straw, sodium hydroxide solution and phenol indicator proves this.
Incidentally, for the carbon sink to fail would require the oceans to be heated to just below boiling. Not likely to happen yet for around 5 billion years.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
a friend of mine just started at portsmouth university, studying marine biology, and we happened to talk about this subject. the situation's actually much worse than being reported here, because the coral reefs are *also* being corroded. given that coral reefs are where the majority of the ocean's life-forms congregate, if that eco-system collapses we're in real serious trouble. i say trouble: the planet's likely to survive, and to re-generate life over the next hundred millenia or so. it's just that humans really won't be around to enjoy being here, that's all.
Study much, do you ??
I can't figure out why some smallish results from marine ecology are "news that matters" to nerds.
Given the inevitably rising CO2 levels and constantly changing ocean conditions, there will be lots of marine extinctions, just like there have been many times before in earth's history.
i wonderif someone wants to do a study on the fossil record to see if a weakening in shell strength of ocean dwelling pteropods is highly corellated to known extinctions
Here is a summary of the paper, as I understand it:
1)Deep ocean antarctic water is corrosive to pteropod shells (for various reasons, including water pressure, composition of the water, etc).
2)Normally, from time to time there are upwells of the deeper water, which theoretically can cause pteropod shells to corrode.
3)These scientists developed a technique to observe corrosion in the shells, and observed that at around 200m, the shells are indeed corroded.
4)If ocean acidification increases, then it will cause more corrosion.
If ocean acidification increases, it could cause problems for wildlife. There's nothing particularly controversial here.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Too bad you apparently stopped at chem 101. In Chem 102 one might learn that reactions are not instantaneous.
Have you ever tried to dissolve atmospheric carbon dioxide in water? If so, you will note that the rate of dissolution is not very high.
As a result, though the ocean is fully capable of dissolving the CO2 produced by burning of fossil fuels, it will do so very slowly -- over a multiple-century timescale. (And it will disrupt marine ecosystems in doing so.) Incidentally, this process is already incorporated into all climate models.
To make the CO2 dissolve faster, you could use a stirring system to incorporate gas into the bulk liquid and to distribute the bicarbonate evenly. Good luck finding one big enough to stir the ocean.
Alternatively, you could use a strong base, like hydroxide, to deprotonate bicarbonate and drive the process to completion. Unfortunately, strong bases are not available as raw materials. Their production results in the release of large amounts of acidic chemicals like chlorine, which must be disposed of or else they will acidify the ocean and cancel out the effect of all the hydroxide.
Brilliant post.
In 100 years, by the time the more alarmist predictions suggest we'll be dealing with 5 degrees more global heat, we'll be busy terraforming Mars,
That's really optimistic.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
mod parent up lol!
Yep, things change. 98% of all species are extinct. However, we're driving the car now. And heading into the cliff wall with it. No matter what happens, we probably won't be able to cause extinction of the human race, but we might get fairly close.
I'm kind of divided as to whether or not this is a good thing in the long run. The sad part about it is that we can effect a much more gradual change to the environment - one that will leave the planet more or less the same (and remember, WE like it the way it is). It just looks like we aren't going to take that road.
Hang on to your butts.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you consider their decision to not waste time (ours and theirs) with nonsense like giving air to "opposing viewpoints" as "alarmist", I suppose we could say that's the case. Most of us, however, don't consider the rantings of superstitious fools (or those of a particular political ax to grind) as "opposing viewpoints" in the arena of science. There are rules to that game, and "...because the Bible says..." does not qualify as "research". So, no. Your attempt to divert the discussion into a questioning of the BBC's credibility fails, this time. Nice try. Thanks for playing.
A seaman has virgin boys? I thought they would be strictly captain's privilege.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Okay, lets put the dots really close together for you. No, the oceans acidity doesn't change all the time. That last time it changed like this the planet changed from a snowball into a sauna bath and it followed perhaps the largest extinction indecent in the planet's history (read up on the snowball earth.) This is not a minor change. This isn't a "Okay so we lose the parrotfish.. who the 'F' cares about parrotfish?" This is a global change in ocean chemistry attacking one of the primary constituents of zooplankton.
I'm guessing you're not a biologist, so let me give you an example. If something came along and wiped out all the grass. You're immediate response would be big whoop, no more mowing. The problem is that all grains are grasses. So everything that eats grass or grain get's impacted immediately. No more bread, or rice, or oats or barely or corn or millet (you want to think about what proportion of the human diet is grain based, its the only thing keeping large parts of the third world alive.) So no more milk. No more beef. In fact Cows, Pigs, Chickens, Turkeys, Horses, Deer, basically every grass eating animal, mammals including rodents at the bottom of the food chain, birds, insects... all gone, see yah, then the predators that eat them... like you and me... gone, gone, gone. Can you see the implications now. No Grass BAD!!!
So, animals with shells all have a larval stages and are at the bottom of the oceans food chain. Anything that kills them is EQUALLY BAD for all the critters up the food chain (again that includes us human beings.) The sudden loss of zooplankton causes a subsequent super bloom in phytoplakton (also a potentially bad thing all by itself.) This is not some far off maybe someday event. Coral Reef are bleaching this very moment as I write (one of the largest and more diverse ecosystems on the planet responsible for more kinds of fish, crustaceans, cephalopods, you name it) is on the verge of catastrophic collapse. You can't geoengineer extinct. Gone is gone. You think the cost of cutting back on burning carbon is expensive, figure out how much it'll cost replace the services that nature provides for free with manmade alternatives. You can't unscramble an egg. You can't fix this once you're satisfied its broken, because you'll be in a moving train barreling down the tracks and the only thing you'll be able to do is gird yourself for the crash.
Its all tied together. Its all based on Carbon. There's too much where it doesn't belong and now its beginning to be a real problem. Soon it will be a problem for which human beings will be unable to address. Why would anybody with the vaguest hint of sanity let something get so bad. Sorry, its inconvenient. Expensive. Even hurtful to developing people, who always take the brunt of what fails in the world. Simply letting it get worse will ensure the impact on those same people will be nothing less than devastating. Playing Russian Roulette with the future of humanity is far more irresponsible than acting now to reduce carbon, improve efficiency, develop alternative energy sources, and come up with new technologies to better sequester the byproducts of our civilization. Wake up, the coffee is burning! Right Now.
I don't know what planet you live on, but the one I live on is tangled up in bureaucrats and a collapsing middle class. Think for a moment. We haven't been on the moon in nearly 45 years. You think we can put enough people on Mars to make a difference if we break our ecosystem? By when? The numbers are all in. The hottest years in history all this decade. The ocean is rising. The oceans chemistry it getting dangerously unbalanced. Please read about the rise of slim. Lakes dying and changing to Hydrogen Sulfide cycles below a 100 feet. The list is huge, but its all point at the inescapable certainty than man is toxic and poisoning his mater. I agree that a human diaspora to the stars is the answer, but destroying the ecosystem before you can leave is just stupid.
Not really. Mars One, for instance, is claiming to have a plan to permanently colonize Mars beginning in 2023, at a fairly modest cost. That, of course, is really optimistic, but at the same time, it'd be really pessimistic to say that nobody will be living on Mars in 2070. And once there are people on Mars, odds are good that they'll be starting some kind of terraforming effort almost immediately, if only as a small-scale experiment to see how easy it is to affect change. Now, I don't expect them to have much success within this century... terraforming is a very long-term project. But something would have to go drastically wrong (engineered pandemic, asteroid strike, or some similar civilization-ending cataclysm) in order to stop us from at least getting started.
And why the hell do we need to terraform a planet that is hostile to life when we have one that's pretty sweet right here and now ?
I don't know, we haven't even had much luck yet with biodome's here on earth. And that was a lot easier.....
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"Those species which can adapt to the new conditions, do so, and thrive. Those which cannot, die off. The view that we should somehow intervene to save species which are being selected against is baffling to me."
Not even for Homo sapiens? Okay, we aren't going extinct. But civilization as we know it might during the stress of dealing with climate change, and I'm not consoled by the fact that humans would probably tough it out in caves somewhere to technically survive. Yay, we're not extinct. Great future for the kids.
"So, say you're right, and the coral reefs do get wiped out. That's not something that'll happen immediately, for one thing; we'll have plenty of warning to see it happening, and plenty of opportunity to do something about it."
We're *there* now. Coral bleaching events are becoming more common. This is a bad sign.
You want to put all your efforts in geoengineering? You think we can figure it out, AND deploy it on a big enough scale to matter? I'm skeptical. If things start turning as bad as you seem to think they need to before we should lift a finger, it may be freaking difficult to do anything. It may be like stopping a train by hurling peanuts at the front of it. Or if we deploy it, it may go horribly wrong. Changing the Earth on a grand scale when we don't fully understand it is risky. An act of desperation. I'd rather not get backed into a corner so much that we have only desperate options left. Because if we really are that desperate, humans have a bad habit of starting to shoot each other instead of pulling together. Then we'll have multiple problems to try to deal with.
Don't mistake me. I don't mean to suggest that this is not at all a problem; my point was that it's not an urgent problem. Yes, it's a change, in a system that doesn't normally change. But it's a slow change, and even blind natural selection does pretty well at dealing with slow changes. And we've got intelligent problem-solving, which can handle much faster changes. Accordingly, we've got time to solve it. In fact, we've got time to sit around scratching our heads and researching whole new fields of science to develop better tools for solving it. We don't have forever, of course, but we've got time for a measured, deliberate response.
And if things do suddenly jump the gaps, and get worse faster than expected, than we can get up off our asses and start implementing some of the more drastic solutions that we know about. The reason why we're not currently employing geoengineering, for example, is because it's a completely new field of scientific endeavor, and it's kinda sensible to do some basic investigation into the consequences before we start deliberately fucking around with the climate. But if things change suddenly, or new data comes in suggesting we have less time than anticipated... then we can jump right in and see what happens. Indeed, we'll have no choice. Fortunately, our preliminary studies of geoengineering suggest that making intentional modifications to the planet is much faster and more effective at changing the climate than making minuscule adjustments to the levels of waste we're emitting.
And then they lied about it.
I wonder why they did that if it was all above board? Could it be because the 'top scientists' they claimed had given them the OK to do this turned out to be Greenpeace? After they had spent GBP 1.3m trying to keep this information secret from a FOIA request?
If it looks like corruption, and smells like corruption, I wonder why you defend it?
This is just one of the realistic doomsday scenarios that people need to take seriously- the collapse of food chain in the oceans.
Remember, it doesn't have to be that oceans are completely and totally dead for people to start acting as if they are. It's enough that they no longer provide food or jobs for a lot of people, especially in developing nations. When the oceans are seen to be moving inevitably and inexorably to that condition , then it's as good as real, just like a stock that people understand is going to zero is as good as worthless even when it's price is still positive.
If the really small things that support the fisheries- thing like phytoplankton which support the zooplankton which in turn support start to fail it takes with it the krill, mackerel, sardines, anchovies, tuna then upwards to the fish we eat -and we'll know if it starts to happen- then there will be price-panic food buying with the result that right then, tens of millions start to starve and economies start to collapse.
It doesn't have to be in full effect for the full societal reaction to get going, it just has to be *seen* as going into full effect. That's when the chaos, the insane inflation of food, the rioting, the wars and uncontrollable immigration and nation destabilizing kicks in. That's when the civil wars break out and the uber-terrorism- uniting the entire 3rd and 2nd worlds in a death-lust for the West kicks in.
Do you like your life? Do you like sitting down at your computer and surfing and learning and enjoying life? Would you like to continue in the same vein? Would you like things to generally keep going progressing slowly forward? Would you like your culture and civilization to continue? Are you *conservative* in that large sense of the word? Because right now the "conservatives" in America are the most reactionary, radical literally suicidal and culture-cidal group of cretins ever created.
Perhaps the real conservatives can step forward at this time. The guys who were in the Rod and Gun clubs, the sportsmen who were conservationists, like the WWII vets who started the ski resorts in the Rockies, maybe the people *like that* would like to step forward and reclaim their party and protect the earth from the coke snorter conservatives, the narcissist conservatives, the Aspberger conservatives for whom politics comes down to single issues like taxes or Obamacare or abortion. I'm talking about The Glenn Becks the Sara Palins the Grover Norquists the Ralph Reeds the fucking Christian Right and their one-Jesus-fixes-all-problems fucking form of goddamned mental retardation. I can't even think of one person that fits description of a real conservative in the whole motherfucking Republican Party. Oh, wait. John Huntsmen. OK. One. One motherfucker in the entire fucking party.
The deniers war against reality and taking immediate dramatic action while it still has the chance of being effective and economically viable isn't LIKE WWIII, it IS WWIII. It IS the reason that the next wave of tens of millions of people are going die and worse, it's a foreseable, preventable well-predicted event.
It's go time, Mr. President. It's waaaayyy past time to stop trying to diddle Congress's clit just right on this topic. It's time for the Executive to unilaterally declare global warming to be an urgent matter of national security and Executive Action to initiated unilaterally towards alternative fuels, towards conservation, towards binding treaties and against those voices in our society who have declared themselves to be terrorists determined to set off the global warming bomb and kill billions. There is nothing more to talk about , it's time for action- Executive Action. It's time to silence, disable, undermine, discredit, and dismantle those individuals and organizations who are sewing the seeds of doubt. Their careers need to be ended as ignominiously as possible and failing that their voices need to be silenced as discretely as possible. This is war. This is what war is. This is wha
That's not really meaningful. A lot can change in 60 years, after all; we'll be a lot better equipped to tackle the problem by the time we're actually in a position to land there and start setting up shop. Any specifics at this point, would be pure speculation... but if you're not averse to fiction, I'd refer you to Red Mars. If the goal isn't 'immediately fabricate a habitable environment from scratch', but instead 'make small, incremental changes, leading in the direction of the environment you want', the problem is much easier. Anywhere you can add extra heat, oxygen, or water to the system is a net win; the question is simply how to most effectively do this on a large scale. And there's lots of things you can do to push the process along in small ways, which you can do on the side as you study the big picture.
There is no "if" about it. The decreasing pH (AKA acidification) of the oceans has been documented and there is no prospect that it will stop until the oceans are saturated with CO2 again.
"..If you consider their decision to not waste time (ours and theirs) with nonsense like giving air to "opposing viewpoints" as "alarmist", I suppose we could say that's the case. Most of us, however, don't consider the rantings of superstitious fools (or those of a particular political ax to grind) as "opposing viewpoints" in the arena of science..."
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death my right not to let you say it.
However, we're driving the car now. And heading into the cliff wall with it.
The problem isn't the car, it's the number of people - as population grows WE all suffer.
i.e less people, less power required, less agriculture, less environmental stresses. The opposite is basically true too.
Everyone who has, or has had multiple children are the root multiplier of the problems we are facing today. To blame any single technology as the problem is disingenuous.
but instead 'make small, incremental changes, leading in the direction of the environment you want', the problem is much easier. Anywhere you can add extra heat, oxygen, or water to the system is a net win; the question is simply how to most effectively do this on a large scale.
Hmmm that is an interesting point. I would suggest again though, that it is not as easy as it sounds; for example, we've been burning coal here on earth at a massive scale for a hundred years, and it's barely made a detectable difference in earth's temperature. Do you think we'd be able to come anywhere near that output on Mars?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You appear to be operating from a flawed assumption. In what way would a mass human die-off be bad for Gaia?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Remember, this is the BBC, who took a corporate decision in 2006 to pursue an alarmist reporting stance.
Technique one - ad homineum attack on the messenger. A study was done. That study was reported. Attempt to discredit the study by attacking the credibility of the entity doing the reporting. Instead considering the worth of the study itself, the hope is the integrity of the study will be smeared by smearing the entity that reported it.
Technique two- change the topic. We were talking about the effect of global warming on the oceanic food web , now we're going to start talking instead about the BBC and whether they're biased or not.
The original paper says that this is only a pilot study, and that it cannot definitely point to any disadvantage to the animals - 'they MAY suffer increased predation' is a typical comment
Technique three, misrepresent normal and appropriate scientific qualification of results as a license to dismiss the study's findings. The fact is, no single study is definitive. That's normal science. The certainty increases as each successive study is confirmed, amplified, and new studies support the same conclusions using different approaches. Each study considered individually comes with caveats; the picture of reality emerges from an aggregation of such studies. This is called "normal science" and it's how science gets to truth. This study fits into that framework.
Technique four- decontextualize the study from the larger supporting body of related evidence. Closely related to technique three above, the mass of evidence pointing to the devastating effects of oceanic acidification on the food web is incontrovertible. This study reinforces and elaborates this finding with new evidence. Seen in its proper context, this study's relevance increases because its findings are congruent with other studies showing the same disturbing trend- acidification of the oceans is assaulting the food web in the ocean.
The smallest part of the omitted scientific context:
http://www.ocean-acidification.net/FAQeco.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/10/ocean-acidification-epoca
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/opinion/acid-test-for-oceans-and-marine-life.html?_r=0
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/02/436193/science-ocean-acidifying-so-fast-it-threatens-humanity-ability-to-feed-itself/
http://oceana.org/en/our-work/climate-energy/ocean-acidification/learn-act/effects-of-ocean-acidification-on-marine-species-ecosystems
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/06/local/la-me-acidic-oceans-20121007
http://www.examiner.com/article/lethal-carbon-dioxide-and-ocean-acidification-threaten-marine-life
On Mars you would not use CO2 as a greenhouse gas for terraforming but Methan and later Tetrafluoromethane (CF4) or other polymers which are about 10k as potent as CO2.
(Note: in the canions of Mars you already have a quite high air pressure and during summer at daytime the temperature is above 0 degrees most of the time)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."
Every supposed crisis is an opportunity for a government power grab. If you want to promote government power, you want to generate crises. By a strange coincidence, crises are also good for the media.
Is that why Fox news doesn't have liberals most of the time? They are considered so out of touch with reality that there isn't a need for their viewpoint anymore?
Funny how when I said the same thing it suddendly doesn't sound as great as when you said it? I guess censorship either way should be considered bad.
Less alkali is "more neutral" if you're starting off alkali.
Less alkali is "more acidic" if you're starting off acidic.
Because we're going to fuck this one up pretty bad, and petroleum executives and shareholders will need a new place to live.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
mod up: Parent, incredibly, is begging the question while employing a strawman and malapropism – and all are neatly wrapped in an ad hominem. This is troll poetry, sirs!
Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation comes to mind
"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."
Beware of science with to many "may become" and "likely to". This article has the taste of grant application where peer review has been replaced by buddy review.
And why the hell do we need to terraform a planet that is hostile to life when we have one that's pretty sweet right here and now ?
Eggs, baskets, distribution ratios...I dunno, there's a saying.
i.e less people, less power required, less agriculture, less environmental stresses. ;-)
<pedant mode>
*fewer* people, less power required, less agriculture, *fewer* environmental stresses.
</pedant mode>
Thank you for taking this as a possible learning opportunity rather than grammar nazism as it helps alleviate the brain unsettlement caused by reading that
thinking that it is is and the world should accord your opinion the gravitas and authority of people who have actually EARNED through WORK the right to have that gravitas implies you suffer from narcissistic personality disorder:
If you do indeed hold a PhD in psychology or an MD in psychiatry, then I will retract my accusation.
Otherwise, you do have to recognize the irony & hypocrisy of your rant.
Also, "diagnosing" people via internet posts and via Wikipedia quotes? Really? Are you 12?
hmmmm interesting points. We've been releasing a lot of methane on earth too, though, so I'm not sure it would be much better.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The real issue is that none of the "solutions" advocated by the vast, vast, vast majority of the AGW crowd would remotely solve oceanic acidification. It would perhaps drop the saturation point in 100 years from what the high would be without said plans, but since saturation is so slow and we are already seeing effects that means virtually nothing. Which means the only solutions are either killing off the vast majority of humanity and hoping land based carbon sinks grow fast enough to offset the current acidification, or for humans to engineer a massive man-made carbon sequestration scheme.
Not even for Homo sapiens? Okay, we aren't going extinct. But civilization as we know it might during the stress of dealing with climate change
Yes, lets not mention that fact that 'civilization as we know it' for the readers of slashdot is quite a bit different from the global median already. The fact is that civilization as WE know it is not perpetually sustainable regardless of the climate.
I for one hope we can sustain it for the rest of my life, and the way to do that is to continue exploiting cheap energy. As far as I am concerned, future generations are imaginary people, and in my imagination they too will exploit the cheapest form of energy available.
"His name was James Damore."
It is worse than that, in the UK get a compulsary licence fee, and have a Royal Charter that Requires Balance, they are in no position to change that AT ALL.
Further they would be better rooting out Paedophiles (Savile) in their ranks and defaming innocent people (McAlpine).
The BBC is rotten to the core.
MFG, omb
And you're not getting it. This isn't a slow change. Natural changes occur over millions of years, This has precipitated in just a few human generations. It's looking more and more like an exponential change, because multiple feedbacks are beginning to tilt. Melting permafrost releasing huge amounts of methane and CO2, the continued slash and burn of the tropical forests around the world. All these sinks are breaking at the same time because we failed to address the problem and so now instead of a linear progress of the atmospheric carbon we planned for, we're beginning to see what may in fact be very nonlinear results. Unpredictable results which in a sentence mean results for which we will be unable to plan. The rate of change that "A Natural System" can happily accommodate is about 500 to 5,000 times slower than the rate we're inducing currently. You are perfectly correct that life will succeed and evolve its way out of any mess we make. But first virtually everything dies. Life will go on, it just won't be with anything resembling a human being in the neighborhood.
The only sudden changes we need to bring are the changes surrounding the use of our planet as a toilet for our industry. That should be sudden, and it should begin some time yesterday. Its becoming alarmingly clear that we've already missed the boat to get out of this without taking a beating. Now the outlooks grow increasingly dismal. However, it still doesn't have to be fatal. We are going to lose virtually all the iconic animals you're familiar with in this century. All the big animals of Africa (Elephants, Lions, Cheetahs, Giraffes, Hippo...) and Asia... gone. Virtually all of the higher primates, done. Whales, dolphins, fish, and crustaceans are currently a coin toss, but the prospects are pretty grim. Nothing has happened at this level in millions of years and we are busy cutting the floor out from beneath our own feet. There's an old saying. When you find yourself at the bottom of a deep hole, STOP DIGGING.
Car analogy? Please!! So 1960s!
We are riding a party jambojet and the booze is flowing. There is a cliff 1km ahead, pilot is passed out puking in the bathroom. Everyone is looking at the mountain and more than half the passengers are wagering it is nothing but a cloud. Quarter of the plane is telling the "alarmists" to sit down and shut up because turning the plane to avoid a cloud will spill the booze or worse!
Full throttle ahead we go!
However, we're driving the car now. And heading into the cliff wall with it.
The problem isn't the car, it's the number of people - as population grows WE all suffer.
i.e less people, less power required, less agriculture, less environmental stresses. The opposite is basically true too.
Everyone who has, or has had multiple children are the root multiplier of the problems we are facing today. To blame any single technology as the problem is disingenuous.
No they're not. Population has become the proxy argument for people who want to make the problem seem "unsolvable" so they can justify doing nothing. The population in nearly all western countries - those with the highest GHG emissions per capita - is stable or even into negative growth (Japan). Even if you fixed the number of people in the world, you'd still be burning fossil fuels and releasing the emissions into the atmosphere. It's a cumulative process.
And then of course you have supply issues: let's say the world population was only 1 billion, and for whatever reason was not increasing. The supply of fossil fuels would be just as large as it is today (with voracious consumption thereof), but the demand would be proportionally lower. "Gas" would be incredibly cheap. So cheap that the idea of the electric car, hybrids etc. would probably still be decades away. The American auto-industry would still be selling enormous gas guzzling SUVs since they'd be as cheap as any small car to run. Efficiency measures would likely be back where they were in the 1970s (look at all the people on /. who are just outraged they can't simply waste electricity if they choose to).
Population growth is laughably divorced from the problem of global warming, since increased population != increased GHG emission. Conversion to running a renewable energy mix in western nations would let GHG emission decline while population increased.
The real issue is that none of the "solutions" advocated by the vast, vast, vast majority of the AGW crowd would remotely solve oceanic acidification. It would perhaps drop the saturation point in 100 years from what the high would be without said plans, but since saturation is so slow and we are already seeing effects that means virtually nothing. Which means the only solutions are either killing off the vast majority of humanity and hoping land based carbon sinks grow fast enough to offset the current acidification, or for humans to engineer a massive man-made carbon sequestration scheme.
Which "solutions" are you referring to. There's a lot of them. How do they fail to address ocean acidification?
Not flawed at all, Gaia is and has always been fine with or without the presence of human beings. It just seems a shame to spawn a sentient race only to have it snuff itself out because it couldn't get its own basist primate instincts under control. We have so much to offer, if we just be responsible for our monkey urges. You know, stop slinging shit, stop trying to take it all, and stop freaking out at those different then ourselves. These are all hardwired behaviors, and most people simply operate below the conscious threshold necessary to curb their instincts instead preferring to go off like serial time bombs crapping all over society and the scenery at large. Gaia might miss us, but the universe without us is poorer for the lack.
It's got to be very fucked up to be as inhospitable as Mars. And it has to be more inhospitable than Mars since the Earth is still a lot closer.
We're not even sure that enough of the plants we need will grow well enough on Mars. If they don't then there's no great benefit to all that land on Mars. Might as well be growing plants in space colonies.
What if this is how the earth works? PH levels rise, and the ice caps start melting to balance crap out? What do we really know? The earth has been here for billions of years, and we have knowledge of it's weather and stuff for maybe 100 years?
That like taking 100 days of my life and basing my whole health history on how i was during that time.
Be seeing you...
Free source of gravity, free radiation deflector (if it has a magnetosphere), and relatively easily obtained materials makes a planet the most promising prospect for efficient colonization.
We won't get to Mars in sufficient numbers to sustain a population if we don't take care of Terra. We are quite capable of ruining our own economy/ecology to the point where we will too busy fighting the elements to spare the resources, and seem to be on such a course at present, barring a commercially viable breakthrough in fusion or a more serious committment to renewables.
Someone had to do it.
The BBC reporting on research by NOAA and the University of East Anglia... so clearly going to be a nice balanced article explaining the science involved with no overstatement . OMFG WE'RE ALL DOOMED!
1) Is 38% g enough for sustainable human life? We could build space stations with 1g by using tethers.
2) It doesn't have enough of a magnetosphere: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast31jan_1/
3) The moon and the asteroids would be more convenient sources of materials than Mars.
We should build space stations with artificial gravity first. Then we can do 38% g and 1g for as long as we want and see how well humans do on those in the long term (you have two groups one at 0.38g and one at 1g for comparison - same environment, same air, same radiation, but different g).
Talking about Mars without even planning to build such space stations is talking about jumping before even learning to stand. Once you can build such space stations and then colonies, Mars actually becomes an expensive curiosity. We won't really need to go there for our needs.
I heard on NPR a couple of days ago that the ocean's acidity has increased 30% since the dawn of the industrial age. The pH certainly didn't drop 30%, so maybe the pH dropped 7.00001 to 7.000013 or something similar. The ocean is huge -- it cannot change its chemical composition rapidly from the atmosphere. There are just not enough atmospheric molecules for that.
That is the natural state of humans. We deserve to die.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Take a break from Stratfor & other big oil think tank designed bs. If civilization as we know it continues doing what its doing, this anthropogenic mass extinction event we're driving is going to force human civilization to change. Of course it will be too late for all non-human life, which is suffering greatly right now. Are human beings capable of correcting major mistakes and throttling back on reckless expansion & destructive processes? Clearly Koch Bros. & equivs are banking on a "no". Everyone else better be doing what they can to help invent our way out of this.
A quick googling indicates that the ocean pH have dropped from around 8.15 to around 8.05 from 1800 to 2000. That corresponds to an increase in the concentration of H+ of around 26%, or 3*10 %, as we only have one significant digit. So the 30% values seems in the right neighborhood, while your numbers are off by 5 orders of magnitude.
Well then let us find an unnatural state then. If that means becoming people worth being, then so be it.
Except that oceans actually release CO2 as they get warmer.
I know, the reports about hurrican Sandy have run completely out of proportion, there was just some gentle breeze, and a small, light wave washing along the shore. But the media and the government in its greed for power had made it into a big storm and some major flooding. Whenever a crisis is reported or a catastrophe looming, never believe it! It's just made up by the media and stirred up by the government to grab more power.
Oh, if we really want to invite opposing viewpoints, why not invite some quetchua indian or a central african witch doctor or the guy sitting opposite of you in the bar, if your house's plumbing starts to leak? There are people who are actually doing some research and are occupying themselves with the matter and have seen in motion what they are talking about, and then there are people who just want to sell an opinion. Before you ask "cui bono" (which is a valid question), you have to ask "what happens". If I want to know who profits from a fictional event, I go read some SF or fantasy. In each scientific discussion, I want at first people who know how to read the instruments and how to record events and how to make sense from it. If in a climate discussion, someone appears who really has the instrumental records to dispute the course of events the other site plots them, I am ok with it. If it's just someone calling people names without a record of his own, there is no point of him being there. He literally has no clue what he's talking about.
[A] Royal Charter that Requires Balance
Yes, and what they are required to balance is evidence, they are not required to provide a soap-box for corporate and/or political propaganda, that's Rupert's job, he does it well and dislikes competition. The BBC is supposed to be the antithesis to "tabloid journalism" and everything I see says that it is the closest thing the western world has to that ideal that is also a household name on a global scale. The BBC employees involved in the McAlpine case who failed to correctly weigh the evidence before broadcasting have apologized on numerous occasions and are now out of a job due to their negligence, there was no evidence of malice just plain old incompetence.
Now let's look at who stirring the outrage pot, going by what I see in the Daily Fail, I would say their policy is to reward rather than punish journalistic incompetence. The reason I trust the BBC to be a good approximation to the "truth" is that I have seen it attacked by both sides of politics and subsequently vindicated by history. If McAlpine had been a left wing MP we would be hearing the same conspiratorial bullshit flowing from the other side of the house, left-wing partisans would be just as eager to make the exact same accusations you allude to in your post, and they would do it for the exact same reasons.
The BBC is rotten to the core.
It looks like that because your wearing your partisan goggles which are designed by their manufacturer to filter out uncomfortable ideas and events. What remains is gossip and innuendo, Eleanor Roosevelt described the phenomena much better than I can, she said; Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. The BBC discusses all three and heavily promotes the dissemination of ideas and factual information via subsidiaries such as BBC Earth, in this respect it is superior to every privately owned mass media organization on the planet and has a long history of political independence that most apolitical Brits are rightly proud of.
Disclaimer: Born in Manchester, spent the last 48yrs living in Australia where the equivalent of the BBC is ABC, sometimes called "Aunty" because of a strange but funny Aussie sitcom from the 70's revolving around a character called Aunty Jack.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
So we are looking for an atmosphere full of methane and tetrafluoromethane as an replacement for an overheated and increasingly acidic biosphere on earth?
This is why I still love slashdot, where else can you find a devestatingly rational post from someone with a name like "woofygoofy"?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"The ocean is huge" - I get it now, the ocean is too big to fail, right?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It just seems a shame to spawn a sentient race only to have it snuff itself out because it couldn't get its own basist primate instincts under control. We have so much to offer, if we just be responsible for our monkey urges. You know, stop slinging shit, stop trying to take it all, and stop freaking out at those different then ourselves.
I'm afraid you are missing the obvious: being nice to each other IS the digging that put us at the bottom of this hole. If we were living under a despotic rule without rights and without entitlement to luxuries and choices, without valuing single human life (sometimes even less then a single human life, but a single human lifestyle) over preservation of whole species, we, and not just we, would stand a chance of putting climate change under control and surviving. Enforcing painful changes is incompatible with "being nice". So, we are either doomed to perish or doomed to live under rule of an iron fist of, basically, fanatic eco-terrorists risen to power.
And you're not getting it. You seem to be suffering under the delusion that people are monolithic, and will all act in concert given evidence to suggest a threat on the order of centuries. We aren't. That doesn't mean that we can't solve a problem like this, though.
There are three general types of solutions out there... unanimous solutions, which require everyone's cooperation, and fail if anyone defects; majority solutions, which require most people to cooperate, but fails unless most people cooperate; and minority solutions, which are effective if only a handful of people cooperate, regardless of what anyone else does. Climate is not the sort of problem that requires a unanimous solution (fortunately, as unanimous solutions are generally unworkable). Majority solutions are the type which most people are trying now... unsuccessfully, as it takes a great deal of effort to enact a majority change, and anyone who defects benefits. For that matter, anyone who contributes less to the problem than the rest benefits. Emission reductions is a huge political issue that the big players can fight about all day, as an excuse to bash at their rivals and engage in economic warfare... but it's ultimately pointless, as the best case scenario only slows the process down, and the best case scenario is ludicrously unrealistic. The really effective solutions are minority solutions, which don't require everyone to cooperate; all they need is for people to enact them. Geoengineering is something that single wealthy individuals could successfully engage in. There are proposed schemes which could have a notable impact on climate which would merely cost millions of dollars, rather than the trillions fought over at the level of majority solutions.
Accordingly, when it comes down to it, that's what'll happen; some people who've seen it coming will get together the funds needed to enact change, and they'll just do it. Not, as you seem to think, utter catastrophe and the end human life. Change on the order of centuries is something we humans can deal with, easily. Shame about the lions and tigers, but most people don't really care that much about them... and if we should happen to find ourselves regretful at some future date, we'll be able to clone them back up from stored samples,
Well... yes and no. It is true that a warm fluid - be it the ocean or Coca-Cola - cannot hold as much CO2 as the same fluid when cold. So when a cold fluid that is in equilibrium with the atmosphere warms, a portion of the dissolved gas is given off. But that's not the only thing that is going on. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are also increasing, and on the whole that is what is forcing CO2 concentrations in the ocean. The ocean is far from being saturated with CO2 at any temperature, which means that the concentration of CO2 in the ocean is driven almost entirely by the concentration in the atmosphere. On the whole, these must be in equilibrium with each other, and they are able to do so pretty quickly.
No, your (or my) parent was asking how terraforming on Mars would work in a "reasonable" timeframe.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Much of the Earth's CO2 is trapped within shells and rocks. This acidic water degrades both, releasing even more CO2 and continuing the cycle. It won't be long now till Earth looks just like Venus.
What? Still here?
I guess you want OTHER PEOPLE to die, hmm? So much more convenient than you having to be responsible in your actions.
A perfect example I like to use:
Objective reporting: "Experts say Earth is round, 'Flat-Earthers' entirely wrong"
Balanced reporting: "Debate rages on over potential roundness of Earth"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You joke but that's a common line of thought among denialists. "How could we be so arrogant to think a little human activity could change the climate of this mighty planet?" or "God won't let that happen" or something like that.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The less Al can lie the better I always say!
What's the plan for generating a magnetic field to keep the atmosphere from being blown off by solar wind?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
LOL mod parent Funny or Insightful!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
For starters, none of the emissions/pollution reduction stuff (the favored sort of political solution) will undo what's already been done. If humanity were to be wiped out instantly, as some of the more rabid environmentalists seem to want, the changes we've made will remain, since the chemistry has in fact been altered, and won't spontaneously change back on it's own. To reverse it, we'll need to make the oceans more alkali, back the way they were, which is a different problem. The kinds of a solutions that'd be needed are chemical (dump large quantities of certain chemicals into the oceans and atmosphere, to reverse the trend), biological (engineer organisms that can not only survive in an acidic environment, but make it more alkali over time by it's waste products), or something of the same sort.
They took a decision that there was no case to be made for having always to 'balance' the reporting of mainstream science with opposing views, most of which are not represented in the scientific literature anyway. In the same way that a natural history programme should not have to balance each mention of evolution with a creationist argument.
No they actually took the stance that they would no longer be impartial in these matters as per the advice of their secret panel of experts
and while the Beeb won by arguing that they weren't subject to FOI requests in this matter, they failed by publishing the list of the secret conclave's participants on their website and then removing it; which meant that a search of the internet way-back machine revieled
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Original AC here.
That's only true if the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere above them hasn't increased. There's a balance between any gas dissolved in a solution and the level of that gas in the atmosphere above the solution. The level of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere has increased around 40% in the past 150 years. Despite warming up the oceans haven't fully caught up with that increase yet.
Actually the carbon dioxide does get removed from the system naturally as it gets absorbed by plants to become cellulose - we're just pumping gigatons of additional CO2 into the atmosphere faster than that can happen. If we somehow did manage to completely eliminate emissions (an admittedly... problematic goal), the CO2 concentration in both the atmoosphere and ocean would immediately begin falling again - presuming of course that we managed it before we throw the chemical balance so out of whack that the phytoplankton could no longer flourish.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Google doesn't show much about H2S cycles in lakes and the ocean above or below 100 ft I'm curious if this is something just discovered that has been occurring unnoticed or naturally occurring and previously noticed. Personally I've often found noticeable amount of H2S in my Koi pond sludge so I'm honestly skeptical that this really is something new or predominately anthropogenic.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
That last time it changed like this the planet changed from a snowball into a sauna bath
This is wrong. We aren't seeing the same changes that occurred during the Permian extinction. There's no massive volcanism inserting more than just vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The rest of your post is as a result, hysterical garbage.
Yep, and they are often the same people who deride the "X is too big to fail" claim made by some economists.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Whenever a crisis is reported or a catastrophe looming, never believe it! It's just made up by the media and stirred up by the government to grab more power.
Yes, that's exactly what I was saying! Glad you're on board!
OK, so we are facing imminent ecological catastrophe from burning fossil fuels. Stipulated. So, the question is, what can we do about it. Well, I suppose we could stop burning fossil fuels, and live like cave men, but you and I both know there's a snowball's chance in hell of that happening. The only program that has the faintest hope of ever getting traction is one where we replace the energy produced by fossil fuels with energy produced by other means. So, what other means have the capability of *significantly* replacing fossil fuels? Only one - nuclear fission. But almost no one wants to face this inconvenient truth. So, no matter how righteous it makes you feel to explain just how serious the situation is, unless you spend at least as much effort promoting fission, you are worse than the deniers - they at least have the excuse of ignorance...
Social Credit would solve everything...
By then we'll have met Vulcans and will have the ability to bang hot alien chicks, I refer you to Star Trek. Yes I have read Red Mars, it's a very enjoyable read, but to try and base the future of the earth on what it says about terraforming is insane.
"pretty quickly" being constrained by the stirring efficiency of the oceans, otherwise you only get the parts of the ocean in contact with the atmosphere in equilibrium with the atmosphere.
While we've got the ocean's thermohaline circulation going, that's a mere millennium or two per circulation. If the circulation shuts down, then until something else starts circulating the ocean basins, the system will be taking MUCH longer to approach equilibrium. (I'll leave it to Xeno whether it will ever actually get there.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Try comparing the number of molecules in the atmosphere to the number of molecules in the ocean. The ocean is huge compared to the atmosphere, in terms of mass, atoms, or molecules.
Is that why Fox news doesn't have liberals most of the time? They are considered so out of touch with reality that there isn't a need for their viewpoint anymore?
Funny how when I said the same thing it suddendly doesn't sound as great as when you said it? I guess censorship either way should be considered bad.
But we are not talking about "censorship", at all. No...., we do not have the "right" to say anything, at any time, anywhere. Arguments based on religion have no place in scientific discourse, nor in public policy deliberations. You may rant about The Flying Spaghetti Monster in the public square all you want, but you don't have the right to disrupt the business of others (scientists, policy makers, etc.) with your unrelated noise.
Is there a reason why you gargle with the seaman of virgin boys?
mod up: Parent, incredibly, is begging the question while employing a strawman and malapropism – and all are neatly wrapped in an ad hominem. This is troll poetry, sirs!
RAWR! It's actually haiku .
Observe:
Well done, poetic troll!