New X Prize Quest: Sensors To Probe Oceanic Acid Levels

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New X Prize Quest: Sensors To Probe Oceanic Acid Levels

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 10, 2013 @04:51AM from the deeper-and-deeper dept.

cold fjord notes that the X Prize Foundation has opened up a new mission: to quantify the acidification of the world's oceans, excerpting from a description on Nature's blog of the project's focus: "Scientists who study ocean acidification must confront a fundamental problem: It is hard to measure exactly how much the ocean's pH is changing. Today's sensors don't work well at depth or over long periods of time, and they are too expensive to deploy widely. That is where the US$2 million Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health X Prize comes in. The 22-month competition will award two $1 million prizes, one to the best low-cost sensor and one to the most accurate. The competition's organizers decided to award two prizes because the two goals present different engineering challenges. ... As carbon dioxide levels rise in the atmosphere, ocean water takes up some of the gas and becomes more acidic. This can harm shell-building marine life like coral, whose calcium carbonate skeletons dissolve in the increasingly acidic water. All of this research is bedeviled by the simple lack of technology to monitor ocean pH in real time across the world."

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Whey do they need real-time results? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-10 05:04 · Score: 2, Insightful

Why do they need real-time results? If you can get clean samples and ship them back to the lab, what's wrong with that?
1. Re:Whey do they need real-time results? by presidenteloco · 2013-09-10 05:12 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The real issue is not real-time but automated data collection and gathering.
  For this to be helpful there would need to be many many of these operating (at a range of depths) worldwide.
  The logistics and costs of gathering the data manually from each would probably be prohibitive.
  
  --
  
  Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
2. Re:Whey do they need real-time results? by PPH · 2013-09-10 05:28 · Score: 2
  
  So set up an autonomous buoy with standard instrumentation and a sampling tube/pump system suspended to the depths of interest. One could either use a series of tubes set to fixed depths or one with inlet valves at various points. Solar powered on the surface with a satellite uplink.
  Send my $2 mill. to the local pub. I'll be running a tab.
  
  --
  Have gnu, will travel.
3. Re:Whey do they need real-time results? by interkin3tic · 2013-09-10 15:27 · Score: 2
  
  I'd be fine with free market economics if they showed any sign of solving such a huge externalized cost or self-regulating, but they never have and never will.
Your Global Warming Conspiracy by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-10 05:08 · Score: 2, Funny

Argh, stop trying to measure global warming and climate change, us faithful aren't going to let you fix these problems. The world has to die so that Jesus comes faster, stop trying to screw it up!
1. Re:Your Global Warming Conspiracy by presidenteloco · 2013-09-10 05:15 · Score: 2
  
  Seriously how much do you get paid to be nearly first in with asinine comments like that to pollute this sort of conversation?
  
  --
  
  Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
2. Re:Your Global Warming Conspiracy by PPH · 2013-09-10 05:21 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  And are they hiring?
  
  --
  Have gnu, will travel.
3. Re:Your Global Warming Conspiracy by Urkki · 2013-09-10 05:30 · Score: 2
  
  Argh, stop trying to measure global warming and climate change, us faithful aren't going to let you fix these problems. The world has to die so that Jesus comes faster, stop trying to screw it up!
  That unfairly portrays people of a flavor of Christian faith as evil. Let me try a more reasonable and agnostic version:
  Argh, stop trying to measure global warming and climate change. It is inevitable that oceans absorb carbon and increase in acidity, but this has nothing what so ever to do with our negligible carbon emissions or global cooling trend of past decade. Results will only be used as alarmist propaganda, in an attempt to destroy our way of life, and let the communists like Al Gore and EU take over the world.
Paelo History by Pino+Grigio · 2013-09-10 05:22 · Score: 2, Interesting

I think animals with shells survived well enough in the past when atmospheric CO2 levels were far, far higher. They'll adapt.
1. Re:Paelo History by edibobb · 2013-09-10 05:48 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The object is to learn what's happening in the ocean, not to change it. Whether something can adapt to changes is a completely different issue. Even if everything can adapt to pH changes in the ocean, it's no reason not to study whether the ocean is changing and why or why not. In addition, developing low cost, accurate remote sensors will undoubtedly have applications several other fields.
2. Re:Paelo History by GameboyRMH · 2013-09-10 06:02 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  No he's trying to point you to a previous mass extinction caused by ocean acidification. Technically life did "adapt" but it took a length of time to recover that I wouldn't say is tolerable for a human civilization.
  Open up for spoon feeding! Here comes the choo-choo!
  http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/april/prehistoric-mass-extinction-042710.html
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
3. Re:Paelo History by GameboyRMH · 2013-09-10 06:03 · Score: 2
  
  Climate change 10x faster than evolution:
  http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2013/pr-climate-change-speed-080113.html
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
4. Re:Paelo History by Anonymous Coward · 2013-09-10 08:37 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I think animals with shells survived well enough in the past when atmospheric CO2 levels were far, far higher. They'll adapt.
  Oh, the irony.
  The actual paleobiological literature suggests this statement is wrong in every particular. Not only is ocean acidification implicated in the worst mass extinction in the history of mulitcellular life (see here [PDF] or here)-- although it may not have been the main kill mechanism-- it may actually be a general cause of mass extinctions (see here). If it is, that would be very interesting; it would be the only general mechanism for mass extinctions that I am aware of.
  Moreover, natural selection operates differently during a mass extinction. Selective pressures are wildly different from those operating "normally." The usual rules do not apply-- traits that were previously advantageous no longer matter, or may even be detrimental. One of the very few qualities which seems to enhance the odds of survival is species-level geographic range, and in a really bad mass extinction, even that can stop being important, giving way to clade-level geographical range. I'm astonished that you could make a blithe statement like "they'll adapt" without consulting the relevant literature; in particular, we have strong evidence that animals with calcium carbonate shells fared very poorly in the past when atmospheric CO2 levels were far, far higher, and did not "survive well enough."
Doing this sort of thing for years... by Frosty+Piss · 2013-09-10 05:27 · Score: 3, Informative

These people have been doing this sort of thing for years.
http://cmdac.oce.orst.edu/osu/history.html
http://kepler.oce.orst.edu/

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If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
1. Re:Doing this sort of thing for years... by DrData99 · 2013-09-10 05:36 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  You do realize that current meters measure water speed, not pH. Right?
Re:Never has so much been spent for hype by DiamondGeezer · 2013-09-10 05:41 · Score: 2, Informative

Quite so. Even if all of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were to get absorbed into the oceans it would barely register as a change in pH. For all of that money, why not train some environmentalists in basic chemistry?

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Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Oceans are basic... by hsthompson69 · 2013-09-10 05:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

...any sensors will be measuring ocean *neutralization* as pH moves down towards 7.
1. Re:Oceans are basic... by GameboyRMH · 2013-09-10 06:05 · Score: 2
  
  You're arguing semantics.
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
2. Re:Oceans are basic... by DiamondGeezer · 2013-09-10 06:05 · Score: 2
  
  But that doesn't sound scary - who will fund a study of ocean neutralization?
  
  --
  Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
3. Re:Oceans are basic... by GameboyRMH · 2013-09-10 06:37 · Score: 2
  
  Actually after doing a little research, it looks like you're wrong:
  http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/lsuatoni/can_we_keep_discussions_about.html
  
  For instance, he plays unproductive semantic games, arguing that because ocean pH is not predicted to fall below the ‘neutral point’ of 7.0, the term ‘ocean acidification’ is a misnomer. This ignores the fact that scientists refer to a drop in pH as ‘acidification’, regardless of where you are on the scale. The term is simply used to describe the direction of change.
  
  --
  "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Re:Never has so much been spent for hype by DiamondGeezer · 2013-09-10 06:03 · Score: 2

That's easy - the claimed acidification was between a guesstimate between what it might have been in the 17th Century and today.
Since the change in pH claimed is nowhere near the range of variation in the oceans, we can safely call bullshit. There are shelled organisms that live right next to carbon dioxide seeps in the tropical oceans that thrive in these supposedly acidified waters.
As Walter White would say "Always respect the chemistry"

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Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Re:Never has so much been spent for hype by GameboyRMH · 2013-09-10 06:17 · Score: 2

Huh so you didn't even hit up the Wikipedia page on the topic. You're ballsy, I'll give you that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification#Acidification
How about a measured increase between when Mega Man 3 came out and today?
And why should a shelled creature be harmed by living near a natural CO2 seep? I don't think just bubbling CO2 through water will create a large, concentrated change in the immediate vicinity. You know how diffusion works right?

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"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel