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biffvernon
Joined: 24 Nov 2005
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Location: Lincolnshire
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UndercoverElephant
Joined: 10 Mar 2008
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 Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2012 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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Biggest problem? Bigger than climate change? Bigger than overpopulation?
It's a big problem, but not the biggest. |
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JavaScriptDonkey
Joined: 02 Jun 2011
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Location: SE England
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| Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2012 9:05 pm Post subject: Re: Ocean Acidification |
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Scares the hell out of me.
The stability of our atmosphere is heavily dependant on the mini-beasts that soak up CO2 and produce oxygen by return. |
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biffvernon
Joined: 24 Nov 2005
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Location: Lincolnshire
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| Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2012 9:36 pm Post subject: |
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| UndercoverElephant wrote: | Biggest problem? Bigger than climate change? Bigger than overpopulation?
It's a big problem, but not the biggest. |
Well.... I think we need to think this one through carefully. What are the implications for acidification? Will they be more profound sooner than other problems?
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RalphW
Joined: 24 Nov 2005
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Location: Cambridge
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| Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2012 10:12 pm Post subject: |
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Maybe not sooner, but the oceans are the bottom rung of many food chains on land, as well as the largest single driving force behind gaia - if you subscribe to that feedback mechanism.
When the earth when through its snowball phases, most of the species to survive were ocean dwellling.
If the food chain collapses in the oceans we probably face the biggest mass etinction of species in the history of this planet. |
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biffvernon
Joined: 24 Nov 2005
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Location: Lincolnshire
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| Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2012 11:39 pm Post subject: |
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Yep, and the Hall-Spencer paper suggests that a large proportion of marine species are going to be in trouble this century.
The effect on the biosphere will be much greater and swifter than temperature rise.
Or as somebody tweeted from the AAAS meeting:
| Quote: | | "Where are you going?" "0cean acidification." "Oh, the ocean people are the only ones here more depressed than climate scientists." #AAASmtg |
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biffvernon
Joined: 24 Nov 2005
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Location: Lincolnshire
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| Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2012 11:55 pm Post subject: |
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Another new paper on the subject.
http://networkedblogs.com/uDAmv
| Hönisch et al wrote: | | Ocean acidification may have severe consequences for marine ecosystems; however, assessing its future impact is difficult because laboratory experiments and field observations are limited by their reduced ecologic complexity and sample period, respectively. In contrast, the geological record contains long-term evidence for a variety of global environmental perturbations, including ocean acidification plus their associated biotic responses. We review events exhibiting evidence for elevated atmospheric CO2, global warming, and ocean acidification over the past ~300 million years of Earth’s history, some with contemporaneous extinction or evolutionary turnover among marine calcifiers. Although similarities exist, no past event perfectly parallels future projections in terms of disrupting the balance of ocean carbonate chemistry—a consequence of the unprecedented rapidity of CO2 release currently taking place. |
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6072/1058.abstract?sid=ab457464-c62e-4802-90e6-d9a8370809bf
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UndercoverElephant
Joined: 10 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:15 pm Post subject: |
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| biffvernon wrote: | Yep, and the Hall-Spencer paper suggests that a large proportion of marine species are going to be in trouble this century.
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A lot of them are in trouble already, because of all the other things we are doing to the oceans, from polluting them with agricultural runoff to smashing up the ocean floor by bottom-trawling. |
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emordnilap
Joined: 05 Sep 2007
Posts: 9471
Location: way out west
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| Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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Only a few percent off topic: blue ice.
| Quote: | | The color of the ice is related the amount of air which remains trapped inside. As the ice is trapped in higher depths and is more compressed, the air escapes and the ices becomes more and more blue. Those icebergs seen by my colleague hadn't seen the light of the sun for a long time; perhaps centuries.. |
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The human appears to have no idea what its ideal diet should be; has self-inflicted diet-related diseases; causes extensive environmental destruction through basic food production & creates pathogenic infestations that widely infect its food supply. |
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biffvernon
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