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Oceans Could Soon Not Have Enough Oxygen To Support Marine Life (iflscience.com)
An anonymous reader writes: As the climate continues to change in response to the increasing amount of carbon humans pump into the atmosphere, the oceans are being particularly hard hit from melting Arctic sea ice, acidification, and warming surface temperatures. Yet those are not the only difficulties that marine life has to deal with, as a new study reports that the oceans are also losing oxygen. As the majority of marine life relies on the oxygen dissolved in the oceans, it is worrying that noticeable differences have been observed in the gas concentrations in the world's waters. The reduction in oxygen will have profound effects on ocean biodiversity, though as the study published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles shows, not all regions will be affected in the same way or over the same period of time."Loss of oxygen in the ocean is one of the serious side effects of a warming atmosphere, and a major threat to marine life," said lead author Matthew Long of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it's been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change. This new study tells us when we can expect the impact from climate change to overwhelm the natural variability."
I propose the installation of a giant aquarium bubbler at the bottom of the ocean.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
I wouldn't want to be a dolphin right now.
The polar caps are melting. They are melting even faster than anticipated. However, if you do not trust scientists you can just measure the CO2 levels of your ocean next to you. It is not really difficult. You can google how to build a proper probe. Beside that you could trust the scientists, as they would all keep their jobs in case of no global warming, because we would still want to know how the atmosphere works, how the see works etc.
They were wrong about the ice caps melting,
The arctic ice cap is melting much faster than predicted: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicen...
Get Billy Mays to use his stuff, it'll fix it. You may also get your clothes cleaned at the same time.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The use of "could" makes the entire statement unfalsifiable and therefor non-scientific. We get these in popular press — /. included — about weekly.
For several decades now such doom-sayers have been predicting disasters "soon" without a single one of them getting anywhere close. When the predicted time passes and anyone still has the attention span to ask: "Hey, was that wrong?" — the answer, if any, is: "We never said, it will happen, only that it could."
Basing public policy on these "predictions" is completely bogus. Geico's "promise" of "15 minutes could save you 15%" is as reliable — and more fun too.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Look at the paper. It doesn't say that oxygen is decreasing to dangerous levels. It says that computers think that by 2030 it might be possible to measure a certain decrease in oxygen in certain places. The change is too small to measure at present, if that change is happening.
I just got this package delivered fedex...
It's a kind of vase thingy with the words 'So long, and thanks for all the fish.' etched into it.
Really pretty, but I think it means that the dolphins are going to be OK.
Al Gore
DRINK!
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
-The ocean is alkaline, which means that stronger base electrolytes (as compared to the weak carbonic acid) still dominate the charge balance.
however the ocean is becoming more acidic, and that trend will continue. saying it's still basic is not reassuring in the least.
-This is an El Nino year, the higher surface temperature will release more oxygen from the ocean because gas solubility decreases with increasing temperature.
chances are good that El Nino year's will become more common, in part because the oceans' average temperatures will contiune to rise. so we can expect the ocean to continue to lose more oxygen.
-Most of the world's oxygen comes from the phytoplankton [earthsky.org], and their population dynamics are remarkably challenging to model. However, if they are not dying en masse, then the oxygen production will remain about the same; some may be redistributed.
what is en masse ? do you think we could detect a population drop of 5% or 10% ? is that en masse ? would it affect ocean oxygen levels ? yes, yes it would.
-The sky indeed is remaining above us, and not falling.
oh it absolutely is falling. slowly perhaps, maybe it will take 1 or 2 centuries. maybe a lot less.
And your point is that I shouldn't listen to the warnings from scientists, because they're all hysterical, but i should listen you ?
so we should do nothing until we're sure we're all going to die or something ?
Absolute statements are never true
How to tell if your post is racist: Replace the politically correct racial target with a politically incorrect one making the exact same statement and wait for SJWs to attack.
Racist much?
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Simple fact: Most of the oxygen you breath comes from the ocean.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
odd that you missed the point even though you specifically stated it:water holds less dissolved oxygen as it gets warmer.
the ocean is getting warmer. O2 content is measurably going down, even without the effects if El Nino. phytoplankton oxygen production is completely irrelevant to that discussion.
and yes the ocean is currently alkaline, but that doesn't mean it's not acidifying. acidifying != acidic. to be acidic pH needs to be below 7, but to be acidifying it merely needs to be moving from a higher pH to a lower pH, which it is measurably doing.
your post is meaningless deflection, and certainly not insightful.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
To cut through this natural variability and investigate the impact of climate change, the research team—including Curtis Deutsch of the University of Washington and Taka Ito of Georgia Tech—relied on the NCAR-based Community Earth System Model, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy...Using the simulations to study dissolved oxygen gave the researchers guidance on how much concentrations may have varied naturally in the past. With this information, they could determine when ocean deoxygenation due to climate change is likely to become more severe than at any point in the modeled historic range.
Note to readers of research papers: phrases such as "relied on", "gave the researchers guidance", and "is likely to become" are all code words for "we don't have any real data."
Let us know when you do. Otherwise, file this report in the fiction section.
Climate change is real, and something needs to be done about it, but this chicken little "the sky is falling" articles hurt rather than help the cause. They give specific worst case targets that are unlikely to be true just to get a headline. These can then be used by climate deniers to minimize the real impacts of climate change.