tagged w/ ocean acidification
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Oyster hatcheries along the Washington and Oregon coastlines began experiencing calamitous die-offs beginning in 2006. Scientists suspected they were because of increased carbon dioxide levels in the air that were causing ocean acidification. That theory has now proved out, according to a study just published by the journal Limnology and Oceanography.
Researchers studied oysters at Oregon’s Whiskey Creek Hatchery in 2009 after the hatchery reported that oyster production had declined by as much as 80 percent in recent years. The scientists paid close attention to the seawater that had bathed the oysters. Oceans absorb a significant portion of carbon dioxide in the air and when they do so a chemical process takes place called acidification. Laboratory studies have already shown that elevated carbon dioxide changes the pH and reduces the availability of calcium carbonate in the seawater. And calcium carbonate minerals are the material that sea creatures like oysters and corals use for building shells and skeletons.
The study breaks new ground, according to its authors, because this is the first time these theories on the impact of ocean acidification that were tested in laboratories were verified on an actual commercial shellfish farm with ambient ocean waters. The findings linked the production failures of the farms to the carbon dioxide levels in the seawater in which the larval oysters were spawned and spent the first 24 hours of their lives. That is the time when oysters start to develop their first shells.
“I think that the clear take-home message from this research is that for the oceans, the Pacific Oyster larvae are the ‘canaries in the coal mines’ for ocean acidification. When the CO2 levels in the ocean are too high, they die; when we lower the CO2 levels, they live,” Richard A. Feely, a co-author of the study and senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a statement released by the Center for Biological Diversity.
The center is deeply invested in the findings because in 2009, it filed a lawsuit demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency address ocean acidification in the waters off Washington State under the Clean Water Act. In a settlement, the E.P.A. agreed that states had a duty to look at the impact of ocean acidification. But the implication for sea life is national and global in scale.
“Oyster die-offs are an unmistakable warning that our oceans are in trouble and we’ve got to cut the carbon pollution if we want to have oysters, corals and whales,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director for the center, which last week petitioned the White House and E.P.A. to develop a national plan to address ocean acidification.Oyster hatcheries along the Washington and Oregon coastlines began experiencing... more
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* Fossils seen supplying 85 pct of energy demand in 2050
* Financial, human and biodiversity costs all huge
* CO2 cut, global CO2 mkt delays make 2 degree limit harder
By Nina Chestney
LONDON, March 15 (Reuters) - Global greenhouse gas emissions could rise 50 percent by 2050 without more ambitious climate policies, as fossil fuels continue to dominate the energy mix, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Thursday.
"Unless the global energy mix changes, fossil fuels will supply about 85 percent of energy demand in 2050, implying a 50 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions and worsening urban air pollution," the OECD said in its environment outlook to 2050.
The global economy in 2050 will be four times larger than today and the world will use around 80 percent more energy.
But the global energy mix is not predicted to be very different from that of today, the report said.
Fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas will make up 85 percent of energy sources. Renewables, including biofuels, are forecast to make up 10 percent and nuclear the rest.
Due to such dependence on fossils, carbon dioxide emissions from energy use are expected to grow by 70 percent, the OECD said, which will help drive up the global average temperature by 3 to 6 degrees Celsius by 2100 - exceeding the internationally agreed warming limit of within 2 degrees.
Global carbon dioxide emissions from energy reached an all-time high of 30.6 gigatonnes in 2010, despite the economic downturn which reduced industrial production.
COST OF INACTION
The financial cost of taking no further climate action could result in up to a 14 percent loss in world per capita consumption by 2050, according to some estimates.
Human costs would also be high as premature deaths from pollution exposure could double to 3.6 million a year, the OECD said.
Demand for water could rise by 55 percent, increasing competition for supplies and resulting in 40 percent of the global population living in water-stressed areas, while plant and animal species could decline by a further 10 percent.
To prevent the worst effects of global warming, international climate action should start in 2013, a global carbon market be set up, the energy sector transformed to low carbon and all low-cost advanced technologies should be explored such as biomass energy and carbon capture.
However, a new international climate deal might not come into force until 2020 and carbon markets not linked until then, making it harder to achieve the 2 degree limit and requiring very rapid rates of emissions cuts after 2020 to catch up.
Current international emissions cut pledges fall short of what is required to limit temperature rises to safe levels so decisive action at the national level is needed, the OECD said.
More at the link* Fossils seen supplying 85 pct of energy demand in 2050
* Financial, human and... more
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The Earth's oceans are becoming more acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the past 300 million years due to increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, a new study shows.
The study "raises the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change," said Andy Ridgwell, a professor of planetary modeling at the University of Bristol who took part in the study. (photo: NOAA's National Ocean Service)
The study, published in the journal Science, details the work of 21 scientists from the U.S. and Europe.
"The geological record suggests that the current acidification is potentially unparalleled in at least the last 300 million years of Earth history, and raises the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change," said co-author Andy Ridgwell of Bristol University.
The Albany Times Union explains:
Ocean acidification works like this: Burning of fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas releases the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, There, the gas keeps more of the heat from the sun from radiating back into space, a process that an international scientific consensus says is gradually raising the planet's temperature.
At the same time, about a quarter of the increasing CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans, where it is converted into carbonic acid. This is steadily making the ocean more acidic, which among other things can harm the ability of sea creatures to thrive, or make hard shells or skeletons. Rising acidification can also affect marine organisms by causing slower growth, fewer offspring, muscle wastage and dwarfism.
Some scientists have called this gradual process the "evil twin" of climate change.
The study "raises the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change," said Andy Ridgwell, a professor of planetary modeling at the University of Bristol who took part in the study.
Agence France-Presse reports on the study:
The acidification may be worse than during four major mass extinctions in history when natural pulses of carbon from asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions caused global temperatures to soar, said the study in the journal Science. [...]
They found only one time in history that came close to what scientists are seeing today in terms of ocean life die-off -- a mysterious period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 56 million years ago.
Though the reason for the carbon upsurge back then remains a source of debate, scientists believe that the doubling of harmful emissions drove up global temperatures by about six degrees Celsius and caused big losses of ocean life. [...]
"We know that life during past ocean acidification events was not wiped out -- new species evolved to replace those that died off," said lead author Barbel Honisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
"But if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about -- coral reefs, oysters, salmon."
Honish and colleagues said the current rate of ocean acidification is at least 10 times faster than it was 56 million years ago.
Ars Technica adds:
While the authors frequently point out the difficulty in teasing apart the effects of ocean acidification and climate change, they argue that this is really an academic exercise. It’s more useful to consider the witches’ brew with all the ingredients—acidification, temperature change, and changes in dissolved oxygen—since, historically, those have come together. That combination produces unequivocally bad news.
The authors conclude, “[T]he current rate of (mainly fossil fuel) CO2 release stands out as capable of driving a combination and magnitude of ocean geochemical changes potentially unparalleled in at least the last ~300 [million years] of Earth history, raising the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change.”
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/05-1The Earth's oceans are becoming more acidic at a faster rate than at any time in... more
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“It would be immoral to leave these young people with a climate system spiraling out of control.”
by Dan Miller
NASA climate scientist James Hansen gave a talk at the TED conference in Long Beach, CA on February 29th where he laid out the case for taking urgent action to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Dr. Hansen’s talk began by describing his personal journey, originally studying Venus under Prof. James Van Allen and then working at NASA on an instrument to study Venus’ atmosphere. But after being asked to do some calculations of Earth’s greenhouse effect, Dr. Hansen resigned from the Venus mission to work full time studying Earth’s atmosphere “because a planet changing before our eyes is more interesting and important – its changes will affect all humanity.”
Dr. Hansen and some colleagues published a 1981 paper in Science Magazine that concluded that “observed warming of 0.4C in the prior century was consistent with the greenhouse effect of increasing CO2, — that Earth would likely warm in the 1980s, — and warming would exceed the noise level of random weather by the end of the century. We also said that the 21st century would see shifting climate zones, creation of drought prone regions in North America and Asia, erosion of ice sheets, rising sea levels, and opening of the fabled Northwest passage. All of these impacts have since either happened or are now well underway.”
Dr. Hansen went on to explain that, after speaking out for the need for an energy policy that would address climate change, the White House contacted NASA and Dr. Hansen was ordered to not speak to the media without permission. After informing the New York Times about the situation, the censorship was lifted and Dr. Hansen continued to speak out, justifying his actions with the first line of NASA’s Mission Statement’: “To understand and protect the home planet”. But there were consequences… the reference to the home planet was soon struck from NASA’s Mission Statement, never to return.
Dr. Hansen then went on to describe some of the recent science, including a detailed look at the Earth’s energy imbalance that was made possible by data from 3000 “Argo” floats that measure ocean temperature at different depths. Dr. Hansen said that the current imbalance of 0.6 watts/square meter (which does not include the energy already used to cause the current warming of 0.8°C) was equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs every day, 365 days per year.
Favorite denier myths such as “it’s the Sun” and “CO2 lags temperature” were addressed by Dr. Hansen and shown to be wrong or irrelevant. He also discussed how amplifying feedbacks in the past took small changes in temperature due to slight changes in the Earth’s orbit and either initiated or ended ice ages. He then said these same amplifying feedbacks will occur today if we do not stop the warming. ”The physics does not change.”
Besides the impacts that are already occurring, Dr. Hansen said that if we do not stop the warming, we should expect sea levels to rise this century by 1 to 5 meters (3 to 18 feet), extinction of 20 to 50% of species, and massive droughts later this century. He said that the recent Texas heat wave, Moscow’s heat wave the year before, and the 2003 heat wave in Europe we “exceptional” events that now occur 25 to 50 times more often than just 50 years ago. Therefore, he concluded, we can say with high confidence that these heat waves were “caused” by global warming.
More at the link“It would be immoral to leave these young people with a climate system spiraling... more
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Current rate of acidification faster than at any time during the past 300 million years
The world’s oceans are acidifying at 10 times the rate measured during some previous major climate shifts, a change that doesn’t bode well for many familiar ocean species.
“What we’re doing today really stands out,” said researcher Bärbel Hönisch, referring to emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases. Hönisch is lead author of a recent paper that compares the current episode of acidification with four other great extinction events.
“We know that life during past ocean acidification events was not wiped out. New species evolved to replace those that died off. But if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about—coral reefs, oysters, salmon, said Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
Published in Science, the study is the first of its kind to survey the geologic record for evidence of ocean acidification over this vast time period.
The decisions we make over the next few decades could have significant implications on a geologic timescale,” said Richard Feely, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It may take decades before ocean acidification’s effect on marine life shows itself, he explained. Until then, the past is a good way to foresee the future.
“These studies give you a sense of the timing involved in past ocean acidification events—they did not happen quickly,” he said.
The oceans act like a sponge to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the air; the gas reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid, which over time is neutralized by fossil carbonate shells on the seafloor. But if CO2 goes into the oceans too quickly, it can deplete the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and some plankton need for reef and shell-building.
That is what is happening now. In a review of hundreds of paleoceanographic studies, a team of researchers from five countries found evidence for only one period in the last 300 million years when the oceans changed even remotely as fast as today: the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, about 56 million years ago.
Previous research showed that, within a span of about 5,000 years, a mysterious surge of carbon doubled atmospheric concentrations, pushed average global temperatures up by about 6 degrees celsius, and dramatically changed the ecological landscape.
Carbonate plankton shells littering the seafloor dissolved, leaving brown mud that was the telltale sign for paleoclimatologists who discovered the layer near Antarctica.
As many as half of all species of benthic foraminifers, a group of single-celled organisms that live at the ocean bottom, went extinct, suggesting that organisms higher in the food chain may have also disappeared, said study co-author Ellen Thomas, a paleoceanographer at Yale University who was on that pivotal Antarctic cruise.
“It’s really unusual that you lose more than 5 to 10 percent of species over less than 20,000 years,” Thomas said. “It’s usually on the order of a few percent over a million years.” During this time, scientists estimate, ocean pH—a measure of acidity–may have fallen as much as 0.45 units. (As pH falls, acidity rises.)
In the last hundred years, atmospheric CO2 has risen about 30 percent, to 393 parts per million, and ocean pH has fallen by 0.1 unit, to 8.1–an acidification rate at least 10 times faster than 56 million years ago, according to Hönisch.
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In a recent study, scientists from Stony Brook University found that the larvae of bay scallops and hard clams grow best at pre-industrial pH levels, while their shells corrode at the levels projected for 2100. Off the U.S. Pacific Northwest, the death of oyster larvae has recently been linked to the upwelling of acidic water there.
In parts of the ocean acidified by underwater volcanoes venting carbon dioxide, scientists have seen alarming signs of what the oceans could be like by 2100. In a 2011 study of coral reefs off Papua New Guinea, scientists writing in the journal Nature Climate Change found that when pH dropped to 7.8, reef diversity declined by as much as 40 percent. Other studies have found that clownfish larvae raised in the lab lose their ability to sniff out predators and find their way home when pH drops below 7.8.
“It’s not a problem that can be quickly reversed,” said Christopher Langdon, a biological oceanographer at the University of Miami who co-authored the study on Papua New Guinea reefs. “Once a species goes extinct it’s gone forever. We’re playing a very dangerous game.”
More at the linkCurrent rate of acidification faster than at any time during the past 300 million... more
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– The acidification of the world’s oceans from an excess of CO2 has already begun, as evidenced recently by the widespread mortality of oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest. Scientists say this is just a harbinger of things to come if greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar.
by elizabeth grossman– The acidification of the world’s oceans from an excess of CO2 has... more
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AGW believers keep bringing up ocean acidification as a possible problem with increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. Dr J Floor Anthoni doesn't buy the alarmism. He runs Seafriends, which has a Sea Conservation website out of New Zealand. I found his website, Seafriends.org.nz, recommended on the Geology.com website.
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/acid.htm
"Opening with these thoughts, the (bio)chemistry of the sea is so complicated and unknown that the scare for acidic oceans is entirely unjustified. "
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"As far as the science of ocean acidification goes, there are some major errors and conflicts, and the amount of missing knowledge is much larger than what we know. Scientists have uncritically accepted the findings of the IPCC with critically low 'pre-industrial' levels of CO2, but has anyone tried to grow plants and seedlings at 180ppmv CO2?"
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"What annoys me is that an entirely hypothetical threat is blown up out of all proportions, while at the same time the foremost threat to our seas, that of degradation (eutrophication), remains insufficiently acknowledged and investigated. In the world's degrading coastal seas, many questions can be studied that also relate to ocean acidification, for acidification is also a symptom of degradation. What is the main threat to the world's coral reefs - hypothetical decalcification or actual degradation?"
He says that increasing CO2 in the sea is a good thing for sea life:
"The most important limiting factor in aquatic ecosystem is the dearth of hydrogen ions (H+), which has also been overlooked. The more acidic the water, the higher biological productivity becomes, and the denser the amount of life. In the sea this is borne out by the observed fact that highly productive upwelling areas are more acidic [note 1 below]. In other words, acidic seas are a good thing."
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"Note1: In upwelling areas, cool deep water reaches the photic (light-) zone. This water is more acidic and it also contains nutrients. Those nutrients were produced from sinking biomatter that became decomposed by bacteria, in the dark underneath the photic zone. As the nutrients became available as soluble salts, also the water became more acidic (less alkaline). In the process, also more CO2 dissolved into the water. When the deep water reaches the surface, the nutrients start plankton blooms which also make the water more alkaline, which in turn limits productivity. However, it is observed that upwelling areas remain relatively acidic, thereby promoting productivity. It could also be that a high turnover of nutrients, possible by active planktonic decomposition, lowers pH in upwelling areas. "
Chris ShakerAGW believers keep bringing up ocean acidification as a possible problem with... more
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The ocean surface is 30 percent more acidic today than it was in 1800, much of that increase occurring in the last 50 years - a rising trend that could both harm coral reefs and profoundly impact tiny shelled plankton at the base of the ocean food web, scientists warn.
Despite the seriousness of such changes to the ocean, however, the world has yet to deploy a complete suite of available tools to monitor rising acidification and other ocean conditions that have a fundamental impact on life throughout the planet.
Marine life patterns, water temperature, sea level, and polar ice cover join acidity and other variables in a list of ocean characteristics that can and should be tracked continuously through the expanded deployment of existing technologies in a permanent, integrated global monitoring system, scientists say.
The Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO), representing 38 major oceanographic institutions from 21 countries and leading a global consortium called Oceans United, will urge government officials and ministers meeting in Beijing Nov. 3-5 to help complete an integrated global ocean observation system by target date 2015.
It would be the marine component of a Global Earth Observation System of Systems under discussion in Beijing by some 71 member nations of the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations.
The cost to create an adequate monitoring system has been estimated at $10 billion to $15 billion in assets, with $5 billion in annual operating costs.
Some 600 scientists with expertise in all facets of the oceans developed an authoritative vision of characteristics to monitor at a 2009 conference on ocean observations.
Furthermore, as documented in the forthcoming proceedings of the 2009 conference (to be published shortly by the European Space Agency), the value of such information to the world's financial interests and to human security would dwarf the investment required.
"Although the US and European Union governments have recently signaled support, international cooperation is desperately needed to complete a global ocean observation system that could continuously collect, synthesize and interpret data critical to a wide variety of human needs," says Dr. Kiyoshi Suyehiro, Chairman of POGO.
"Most ocean experts believe the future ocean will be saltier, hotter, more acidic, and less diverse," states Jesse Ausubel, a founder of POGO and of the recently completed Census of Marine Life. "It is past time to get serious about measuring what's happening to the seas around us."
The risks posed by ocean acidification exemplify the many good reasons to act urgently.
POGO-affiliated scientists at the UK-based Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science recently published a world atlas charting the distribution of the subset of plankton species that grow shells at some point in their life cycles.
Not only are these shelled plankton fundamental to the ocean's food web, they also play a major role in planetary climate regulation and oxygen production. Highly acidic sea water inhibits the growth of plankton shells.
The Foundation says the average level of pH at the ocean surface has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 units, "rendering the oceans more acidic than they have been for 20 million years," with expectations of continuing acidification due to high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Because colder water retains more carbon dioxide, the acidity of surface waters may increase fastest at Earth's high latitudes where the zooplankton known as pteropods are particularly abundant. Pteropods (see links to images below) are colorful, free-swimming pelagic sea snails and sea slugs on which many animals higher in the food chain depend.
Scientists caution that the overall global marine impact of rising carbon dioxide is unclear because warming of the oceans associated with rising greenhouse gases in the air could in turn lead to lower retention of carbon dioxide at lower latitudes and to potential countervailing effects.
cont.The ocean surface is 30 percent more acidic today than it was in 1800, much of that... more
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latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-ocean-20100719,0,1686762.story
Obama to launch ocean initiative
The stewardship policy embraces a controversial zoning practice that could change how the U.S. regulates drilling, fishing and other maritime activities.
By Jim Tankersley, Tribune Washington Bureau
July 19, 2010
Reporting from Washington
President Obama on Monday is set to create a national stewardship policy for America's oceans and Great Lakes, including a type of zoning that could dramatically rebalance the way government regulates offshore drilling, fishing and other marine activities.
The policy would not create new regulations or immediately alter drilling plans or fisheries management. But White House documents and senior administration officials suggest it would strengthen conservation and ecosystem protection.
The initiative culminates more than a year of work by a federal Ocean Policy Task Force, which Obama established last year. After the task force releases its final recommendations, the president is expected to sign an executive order directing federal agencies to adopt and implement them.
Calling the BP oil spill ravaging the Gulf of Mexico a "stark reminder of how vulnerable our marine environments are," the recommendations center on creating a National Ocean Council to coordinate regulation of oceans and the Great Lakes, and on a principle of "ecosystem-based management" for marine areas.
The council would include top federal scientists and officials from a variety of agencies, including national security experts, environmental regulators and managers of ocean commerce.
The recommendations embrace a controversial practice called marine spatial planning, a zoning process of sorts that seeks to manage waters in the way some cities manage factories and strip malls. The process could result in confining activities such as drilling, shipping and conservation to areas the planners deem best-suited to each use.
Nine regional groups — consisting of state, federal and tribal officials — would draft plans for conservation and use of ocean resources that would have to be approved by the National Ocean Council. Federal agencies have agreed to abide by the plans.
If the Great Lakes regional body designated certain lake areas for offshore wind farms, for example, the Interior Department would agree to approve wind farms only within those areas.
The same would be true for any new offshore drilling projects. Currently, Interior officials develop drilling plans under a public comment process within their department.
In Southern California, the heavy focus on "ecosystem-based management" could cause the U.S. Navy to retool its fleet deployment, with an eye on how its operations affect water quality or whales.
The recommendations do not specify their effect on offshore drilling. Administration officials said the new policy would not prejudge or conflict with future findings of the bipartisan commission Obama had charged with investigating the oil gusher.
But the administration says coordinated, stewardship-heavy ocean management is likely to "really change" practices in nearly every marine activity, drilling included. The final task force report predicts that the changes would help restore fish populations, protect human health and "rationally allow" for ocean uses such as energy production.
"This sets the nation on a path toward much more comprehensive planning to both conservation and sustainable use of [ocean] resources," said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the policy had not been officially announced.
The first draft of the policy, released in September, drew heavy criticism from some quarters, including industry and recreational anglers concerned that sport fishing might be restricted or banned.
After a deluge of criticism and meetings with fishing and boating groups, the administration modified the recommendations to emphasize the importance of fishing and ocean recreation, calling them "critical to the economic, social and cultural fabric of our country."
The recommendations do not include curbs on recreational fishing. But the mere prospect of marine spatial planning has drawn skepticism from ocean users.
Oil and gas officials are concerned too. They have repeatedly urged the administration not to adopt any planning process that could restrict offshore drilling.
Last fall, for example, a representative of the American Petroleum Institute testified at a task force field hearing, "The oil and natural gas industry's presence in the Gulf [of Mexico] has successfully coexisted with other ocean uses like tourism, fishing, the U.S. military and shipping for many years, demonstrating that the current system of governance works well."
The new plan would emphasize nine areas under the broad banner of marine stewardship and conservation, including improved scientific research and mapping; helping coastal communities adapt to climate change and ocean acidification, particularly in the Arctic; and enhancing water quality on land to boost ocean water quality.
jtankersley@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Timeslatimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-ocean-20100719,0,1686762.story... more
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The Gulf oil spill dwarfs comprehension, but we know this much: it's bad. Carl Safina scrapes out the facts in this blood-boiling cross-examination, arguing that the consequences will stretch far beyond the Gulf -- and many so-called solutions are making the situation worse.The Gulf oil spill dwarfs comprehension, but we know this much: it's bad. Carl... more
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A sobering new report warns that the oceans face a "fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation" not seen in millions of years as greenhouse gases and climate change already have affected temperature, acidity, sea and oxygen levels, the food chain and possibly major currents that could alter global weather.A sobering new report warns that the oceans face a "fundamental and irreversible... more
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The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster, but it may pale compared to what scientists say is brewing in the world's oceans due to everyday consumption of fossil fuels.
The billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide sent wafting into the atmosphere each year through the burning of oil, gas and coal are profoundly affecting the oceans, says a series of reports published Friday in the journal Science.
One says there is mounting evidence that "rapidly rising greenhouse gas concentrations are driving ocean systems toward conditions not seen for millions of years, with an associated risk of fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation."
Another says that the effects are already rippling through the food web in Antarctica.
And a third says humans, and their ever-increasing carbon emissions, are acidifying the ocean in a "grand planetary experiment" that could have devastating impacts.
Marine scientists Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, at the University of Queensland in Australia, and John Bruno, at University of North Carolina, describe how the oceans act as a "heat sink" and are slowly heating up along with the atmosphere as greenhouse gas emissions climb.
The warming, they say, is "likely to have profound influences on the strength, direction and behaviour" of major ocean currents and far-reaching impacts on sea life.
The oceans also soak up close to a third of the carbon dioxide that humans put into the atmosphere and it reacts with sea water to form acidic ions. The rising acidity "represents a major departure from the geochemical conditions that have prevailed in the global ocean for hundreds of thousands, if not million of years," the scientists report.
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"The impacts of anthropogenic (human) climate change so far include decreased ocean productivity, altered food web dynamics, reduced abundance of habitat-forming species, shifting species distributions and a greater incidence of disease," they say.
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A news report, accompanying the Science papers on the oceans, says by increasing the ocean's acidity "humans are caught up in a grand planetary experiment" that could take a "potentially devastating toll on marine life." The rising acidity could erode the calcium carbonate shells and skeletons of corals, mollusks and some algae and plankton — and there is some evidence it is already starting to occur.
Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/Carbon%20emissions%20having%20harmful%20lasting%20impact%20oceans%20Reports/3166754/story.html#ixzz0rYITQnUEThe oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster, but it may pale compared to what... more
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Is human activity altering the planet on a scale comparable to major geological events of the past? Scientists are now considering whether to officially designate a new geological epoch to reflect the changes that homo sapiens have wrought: the Anthropocene.
The Holocene — or “wholly recent” epoch — is what geologists call the 11,000 years or so since the end of the last ice age. As epochs go, the Holocene is barely out of diapers; its immediate predecessor, the Pleistocene, lasted more than two million years, while many earlier epochs, like the Eocene, went on for more than 20 million years. Still, the Holocene may be done for. People have become such a driving force on the planet that many geologists argue a new epoch — informally dubbed the Anthropocene — has begun.
In a recent paper titled “The New World of the Anthropocene,” which appeared in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, a group of geologists listed more than a half dozen human-driven processes that are likely to leave a lasting mark on the planet — lasting here understood to mean likely to leave traces that will last tens of millions of years. These include: habitat destruction and the introduction of invasive species, which are causing widespread extinctions; ocean acidification, which is changing the chemical makeup of the seas; and urbanization, which is vastly increasing rates of sedimentation and erosion.
Human activity, the group wrote, is altering the planet “on a scale comparable with some of the major events of the ancient past. Some of these changes are now seen as permanent, even on a geological time-scale.”
Prompted by the group’s paper, the Independent of London last month conducted a straw poll of the members of the International Commission on
Are we living in the Anthropocene? The answer, the group of geologists concluded, was probably yes.Stratigraphy, the official keeper of the geological time scale. Half the commission members surveyed said they thought the case for a new epoch was already strong enough to consider a formal designation.
“Human activities, particularly since the onset of the industrial revolution, are clearly having a major impact on the Earth,” Barry Richards of the Geological Survey of Canada told the newspaper. “We are leaving a clear and unique record.”
The term “Anthropocene” was coined a decade ago by Paul Crutzen, one of the three chemists who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for discovering the effects of ozone-depleting compounds. In a paper published in 2000, Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer, a professor at the University of Michigan, noted that many forms of human activity now dwarf their natural counterparts; for instance, more nitrogen today is fixed synthetically than is fixed by all the world’s plants, on land and in the ocean. Considering this, the pair wrote in the newsletter of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, “it seems to us more than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology by proposing to use the term ‘anthropocene’ for the current geological epoch.” Two years later, Crutzen restated the argument in an article in Nature titled “Geology of Mankind.”
The Anthropocene, Crutzen wrote, “could be said to have started in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when analyses of air trapped in polar ice showed the beginning of growing global concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane.”
Soon, the term began popping up in other scientific publications. “Riverine quality of the Anthropocene” was the title of a 2002 paper in the journal Aquatic Sciences.
“Soils and sediments in the anthropocene,” read the title of a 2004 editorial in the Journal of Soils and Sediments.
Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist at the Britain’s University of Leicester, found the spread of the concept intriguing. “I noticed that Paul Crutzen’s term was
One argument against the idea is that humans have been changing the planet for a long time.appearing in the serious literature, in papers in Science and such like, without inverted commas and without a sense of irony,” he recalled in a recent interview. At the time, Zalasiewicz was the head of the stratigraphic commission of the Geological Society of London. At a luncheon meeting of the commission, he asked his fellow stratigraphers what they thought of the idea.
“We simply discussed it,” he said. “And to my surprise, because these are technical geologists, a majority of us thought that there was something to this term.”
In 2008, Zalasiewicz and 20 other British geologists published an article in GSA Today, the magazine of the Geological Society of America, that asked: “Are we now living in the Anthropocene?” The answer, the group concluded, was probably yes: “Sufficient evidence has emerged of stratigraphically significant change (both elapsed and imminent) for recognition of the Anthropocene... as a new geological epoch to be considered for formalization.” (An epoch, in geological terms, is a relatively short span of time; a period, like the Cretaceous, can last for tens of millions of years, and an era, like the Mesozoic, for hundreds of millions.) The group pointed to changes in sedimentation rates, in ocean chemistry, in the climate, and in the global distribution of plants and animals as phenomena that would all leave lasting traces. Increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, the group wrote, are predicted to lead to “global temperatures not encountered since the Tertiary,” the period that ended 2.6 million years ago.
continuedIs human activity altering the planet on a scale comparable to major geological events... more
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ACID TEST, a film produced by NRDC, was made to raise awareness about the largely unknown problem of ocean acidification, which poses a fundamental challenge to life in the seas and the health of the entire planet. Like global warming, ocean acidification stems from the increase of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Leading scientific experts on the problem, many of whom appear in the film and the outtakes below, believe that it's possible to cut back on global warming pollution, improve the overall health and durability of our oceans, and prevent serious harm to our world, but only if action is taken quickly and decisively.
The film originally aired on Discovery Planet Green. An Entertainment Industry Foundation grant provided the core funding for this film. Cinematographers Howard and Michele Hall and Nel Boshoff provided footage, and many other people assisted greatly in the making of ACID TEST. To learn more about the movie and who was responsible for it (and get an idea of what it was like to work with narrator Sigourney Weaver), read co-director Daniel Hinerfeld's blog.ACID TEST, a film produced by NRDC, was made to raise awareness about the largely... more
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NRDC: Ocean Acidification: The Other CO2 Problem
ACID TEST, a film produced by NRDC, was made to raise awareness about the largely unknown problem of ocean acidification, which poses a fundamental challenge to life in the seas and the health of the entire planet. Like global warming, ocean acidification stems from the increase of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Leading scientific experts on the problem, many of whom appear in the film and the outtakes below, believe that it's possible to cut back on global warming pollution, improve the overall health and durability of our oceans, and prevent serious harm to our world, but only if action is taken quickly and decisively.
http://www.nrdc.org/oceans/acidification/aboutthefilm.aspNRDC: Ocean Acidification: The Other CO2 Problem
ACID TEST, a film produced by... more
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Where are the Whales?
Whale-watchers are dismayed by what they're not seeing. San Diego.
By NOAKI SCHWARTZ
Updated 3:02 PM PDT, Sun, Apr 11, 2010
Gazing past the rolling whitecaps in the middle of San Diego's whale-watching season, boat captain Bill Reese was dismayed by what he wasn't seeing.
"Where are the whales?" said Reese. "Where are the whales?"
Long held as an environmental success story after being taken off the endangered list in 1994, California gray whales draw legions of fans into boats or atop cliffs to watch the leviathans lumber down the coast to spawning grounds in Baja.
But whale-watching skippers became alarmed after sightings dropped from 25 a day in good years to five a day this season. Such anecdotal evidence has left conservationists and state officials worried about the whale's future, especially now.
The federal government's monitoring of the mammals has fallen off in recent years. And the International Whaling Commission in June will consider allowing 1,400 gray whales to be hunted over the next decade.
The decision will rely on a report that says the population is flourishing -- a study critics say is spotty and outdated.
"If you count 2,500 animals, all you really know rock solid for sure is there are more than 2,500. Beyond that you're using models and assumptions," said Stanford University marine biology professor Steve Palumbi. "The problem comes when you say, 'We do know how many whales there are and we're going to start making unalterable management decisions on that basis."'
The study draws on annual population estimates dating from 1967, but in the past decade only three census counts have been released, the most recent in 2006.
Since than, the estimated number of calves has plunged from more than 1,000 in 2006 to 312 in 2009. In addition, the species suffered a die-off of several thousand whales in 2000.
"You can't set specific quotas for 10 years based on 2006 data," said Sara Wan, a California Gray Whale Coalition member who is also a state coastal commissioner. "It's irresponsible."
In January, the California Coastal Commission pressed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for an updated gray whale study. The count is done but the analysis won't be finished until long after the whaling commission's decision.
NOAA scientists say their population estimates are reliable because the numbers have remained relatively consistent over time. They say the drop in calf numbers may reflect nature thinning out the herd.
The population is still more than double what it was in the 1960s and has been fairly stable of the past couple decades, said Paul Wade, one of the study's co-authors and a member of the commission's scientific committee.
"If it truly does go into an important decline, it's not going to happen overnight. We're going to see it," he said.
The gray whale's success has created a complex dynamic for NOAA researchers, who recently have focused on more threatened, less charismatic whales such as the North Atlantic Right whales, whose population may be as low as 30.
Over the years, scientists have been able to do a great amount of research on gray whales because they are so accessible and popular with the public. Any indication of trouble galvanizes countless fans.
"Gray whales are our pets, they're in our backyard," said David Rugh, a NOAA biologist who oversaw gray whale counts for years. "Of course we have a concern about them going through so many environments from Mexico to the Arctic but there are other species out there that we're also concerned about."
Gray whales migrate thousands of miles each fall from Alaska to Baja, then back north between February and May. They spend summers in the Bering Sea and Arctic.
Biologists sit in a little stand on California's central coast, counting adult whales as they swim south. Calves are counted as the whales make the return trip north. The counts are used to extrapolate overall population and monitor reproduction.
When gray whales were listed as endangered in 1970, an estimated 12,000 remained. A moratorium on commercial hunting and close monitoring helped the population rebound to more than 20,000.
Deemed recovered, the whales only needed to be monitored every five years, instead of annually, and there was no longer dedicated funding for the whale, which cost about $170,000 a season to count.
The 2006 count yielded about 2,500 whales, leading researchers to calculate about 20,000 whales total. The most recent calf count of 2009, however, revealed the fewest since 2001.
"These are troubling numbers," said Randy Reeves, chair of the Cetacean specialist group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. "If they're being reinforced by comments from whale watching guys, then it gets that much more troubling."
Wayne Perryman, who oversees NOAA gray whale counts, said he believes there is a correlation between lower reproduction rates and colder winters when lingering ice blocks whales from getting to feeding grounds. He also does not see reason to panic.
"I think it's like in a room when someone yells 'fire!"' Perryman said.
The whaling commission allows the Russian Chukotka people and the Makah Indian tribe in Washington to hunt 140 gray whales per year. While they typically revisit the issue every five years, the panel is considering limits through 2020.
Douglas DeMaster, the U.S. delegation's deputy commissioner, the number is about half of 1 percent of the current estimated population.
"This is a very conservative number and provides subsistence needs to aboriginals," he said.
But Liz Alter, a marine biologist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said, "Given that we have very little ability to predict what climate change, ocean acidification and other threats will mean to the whale population for the coming years, it seems reckless to me to set catch limits for that length of time."
Images: Rare Whale Sightings - Click on Link AboveWhere are the Whales?
Whale-watchers are dismayed by what they're not... more
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Biodiversity loss. Land use. Freshwater use. Nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Stratospheric ozone. Ocean acidification. Climate change. Chemical Pollution. Aerosol loading in the atmosphere.
A team of 30 scientists across the globe have determined that the nine environmental processes named above must remain within specific limits, otherwise the "safe operating space" within which humankind can exist on Earth will be threatened. Amid some controversy, the group has set numeric limits for seven of the nine so far (chemical pollution and aerosol loading are still being pinned down). And the researchers have determined that the world has already crossed the boundary in three cases: biodiversity loss, the nitrogen cycle and climate change.
Jon Foley, director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, and a leader of the group, lays out the limits and their implications for human action in an article in Scientific American's April issue.
He also discusses the issues in a podcast with our own Steve Mirsky.
Foley's team was so moved by the research effort that it put together a compelling video (see below) dramatizing the situation, generated entirely with typography, graphics and energizing music. You can learn more about the team's work at its research site, too.
Image: Earth graphic from Foley videoBiodiversity loss. Land use. Freshwater use. Nitrogen and phosphorus cycles.... more
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U.S. EPA settled a lawsuit yesterday by agreeing to use the Clean Water Act to address ocean acidification, a move that some see as opening a side door to federal curbs on greenhouse gases that scientists link to problems in the marine environment.
The settlement with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity directly addresses EPA's failure to require Washington state to list its marine waters as impaired by rising acidity. The deal requires EPA to begin a rulemaking aimed at helping states identify and address acidic coastal waters.
The effort could lead to the first Clean Water Act effort to protect acidifying marine waters -- a move the center sees leading to restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions, just as the water law led to regulation of air emissions of mercury and pollution that causes acid rain.
Oceans absorb about a third of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities and are becoming more acidic as they absorb more carbon, said Miyoko Sakashita, a senior attorney at the center's San Francisco office.
Ocean acidification, Sakashita said, is "global warming's evil twin."
Scientists estimate that ocean water is 30 percent more acidic than it was before factories, cars, planes and other users of fossil fuels became widespread.
Rising acidity threatens marine life, scientists say. Several studies have suggested that shifting ocean chemistry is particularly dangerous for shellfish, corals and other animals that grow calcium carbonate shells. If water becomes too acidic, it can dissolve those shells, sometimes faster than creatures can rebuild them.
States have taken steps to address rising acidity in lakes and streams, but the settlement represents the first time EPA has agreed to take on ocean acidity. The center's legal complaint started in Washington state, but the group has petitioned every coastal state to address the issue, Sakashita said.
more at link...U.S. EPA settled a lawsuit yesterday by agreeing to use the Clean Water Act to address... more
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The JOIDES Resolution looks like a bizarre hybrid of an oil rig and a cargo ship. It is, in fact, a research vessel that ocean scientists use to dig up sediment from the sea floor. In 2003, on a voyage to the southeastern Atlantic, scientists aboard the JOIDES Resolution brought up a particularly striking haul.
They had drilled down into sediment that had formed on the sea floor over the course of millions of years. The oldest sediment in the drill was white. It had been formed by the calcium carbonate shells of single-celled organisms — the same kind of material that makes up the White Cliffs of Dover. But when the scientists examined the sediment that had formed 55 million years ago, the color changed in a geological blink of an eye.
“In the middle of this white sediment, there’s this big plug of red clay,” says Andy Ridgwell, an earth scientist at the University of Bristol.
In other words, the vast clouds of shelled creatures in the deep oceans had virtually disappeared. Many scientists now agree that this change was caused by a drastic drop of the ocean’s pH level. The seawater became so corrosive that it ate away at the shells, along with other species with calcium carbonate in their bodies. It took hundreds of thousands of years for the oceans to recover from this crisis, and for the sea floor to turn from red back to white.
The clay that the crew of the JOIDES Resolution dredged up may be an ominous warning of what the future has in store. By spewing carbon dioxide into the air, we are now once again making the oceans more acidic.
Today, Ridgwell and Daniela Schmidt, also of the University of Bristol, are publishing a study in the journal Natural Geoscience, comparing what happened in the oceans 55 million years ago to what the oceans are experiencing today. Their research supports what other researchers have long suspected: The acidification of the ocean today is bigger and faster than anything geologists can find in the fossil record over the past 65 million years. Indeed, its speed and strength — Ridgwell estimate that current ocean acidification is taking place at ten times the rate that preceded the mass extinction 55 million years ago — may spell doom for many marine species, particularly ones that live in the deep ocean.
MUCH more at link....The JOIDES Resolution looks like a bizarre hybrid of an oil rig and a cargo ship. It... more
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