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Massive oyster die-offs show acidification has arrived
Ocean acidification — which makes it difficult for shellfish, corals, sea urchins, and other creatures to form shells — was supposed to be a problem of the future. But because of patterns of ocean circulation, Pacific Northwest shellfish are already on the front lines of these potentially devastating changes in ocean chemistry.
According to a recent article by Yale 360 (http://t.co/5Elb4dQV), the acidification of our oceans from an excess of carbon dioxide emissions has already begun. A recent die-off of oysters in the Pacific Northwest is a reminder that these changes to ocean conditions will have widespread impacts throughout the ocean food chain and coastal economies.
Scientists in the Yale 360 article called oysters a bellweather, and say the recent die-off is just a harbinger of things to come if greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar. The fate of today's shellfish is actually dependent on the carbon release from tailpipes and smokestacks in the 1960's and '70s.
Because of the way seawater circulates around the world, the deep water now washing ashore in Oregon and Washington is actually 30 to 50 years old. This time lag is important because oceans absorb about 50 percent of the carbon released by burning fossil fuels, emissions that have been rising dramatically in recent decades.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ocean acidity has increased approximately 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution, and if wecontinue our current rate of carbon emissions, global oceans could be 150 percent more acidic by the end of the century than they have been for 20 million years.
Scientists in the Yale 360 article called oysters a bellweather, and say the recent die-off is just a harbinger of things to come if greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar. The fate of today's shellfish is actually dependent on the carbon release from tailpipes and smokestacks in the 1960's and '70s.
Because of the way seawater circulates around the world, the deep water now washing ashore in Oregon and Washington is actually 30 to 50 years old. This time lag is important because oceans absorb about 50 percent of the carbon released by burning fossil fuels, emissions that have been rising dramatically in recent decades.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ocean acidity has increased approximately 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution, and if wecontinue our current rate of carbon emissions, global oceans could be 150 percent more acidic by the end of the century than they have been for 20 million years.
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What’s missing from so many articles about CO2 in the ocean is some mention of the paired nature of CO2 on this blue planet. The first half of the CO2 problem is that CO2 already emitted into air and oceans is about 1 trillion tonnes, yesterdays CO2. This already emitted CO2 is slowly being converted via H20+C02=H2C03, into acid and ocean death. The other part of the CO2 issue is the CO2 yet to be emitted, it will surely add a second lethal dose of CO2 to the oceans, tomorrow’s CO2.
But first things first… yesterday’s first trillion tonne dose of CO2 is lethal, as demonstrated by the crisis of shellfish, our ocean sentinal species. What can be done about this first lethal dose?
Surely all of the attention being focused on the reduction of new emissions will hopefully slow down the administration of a second lethal dose of CO2 to the oceans. Though all of the emission reduction effort will be in vain if the first lethal dose kills the patient. That patient is all important and there is only one of her, Mother Ocean.
There is ONLY ONE Earthly mechanism that can mitigate the first lethal dose of CO2 and prevent it from becoming acid death. That ONE means was revealed by the late great John Martin who in the 1980′s reported on the crisis of CO2 in the oceans, the declining ocean plant life, and the simple affordable solution… Only restoration of ocean plants, the phytoplankton, and their photosynthesis can divert those trillion tonnes of CO2 that are destined to become acid and turn it into ocean LIFE.
Only if we choose LIFE instead of acid ocean death does higher life in the oceans have any chance. The ocean science community has been arguing for 25 years over Martin’s prescription for ocean life. We now have mere years to succeed at restoring ocean phytoplankton lest, following the dying shellfish we see today, we watch the remainder of higher ocean life become extinct as the oceans return to a sea of cyanobacterial slime from when all life on this blue planet sprung a billion years ago.
Choose ocean LIFE.
Read about John Martin by Googling “John Martin On the Shoulders of Giants”, his epitaph by NASA. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Martin/
But first things first… yesterday’s first trillion tonne dose of CO2 is lethal, as demonstrated by the crisis of shellfish, our ocean sentinal species. What can be done about this first lethal dose?
Surely all of the attention being focused on the reduction of new emissions will hopefully slow down the administration of a second lethal dose of CO2 to the oceans. Though all of the emission reduction effort will be in vain if the first lethal dose kills the patient. That patient is all important and there is only one of her, Mother Ocean.
There is ONLY ONE Earthly mechanism that can mitigate the first lethal dose of CO2 and prevent it from becoming acid death. That ONE means was revealed by the late great John Martin who in the 1980′s reported on the crisis of CO2 in the oceans, the declining ocean plant life, and the simple affordable solution… Only restoration of ocean plants, the phytoplankton, and their photosynthesis can divert those trillion tonnes of CO2 that are destined to become acid and turn it into ocean LIFE.
Only if we choose LIFE instead of acid ocean death does higher life in the oceans have any chance. The ocean science community has been arguing for 25 years over Martin’s prescription for ocean life. We now have mere years to succeed at restoring ocean phytoplankton lest, following the dying shellfish we see today, we watch the remainder of higher ocean life become extinct as the oceans return to a sea of cyanobacterial slime from when all life on this blue planet sprung a billion years ago.
Choose ocean LIFE.
Read about John Martin by Googling “John Martin On the Shoulders of Giants”, his epitaph by NASA. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Martin/
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