Industrial carbon dioxide is turning the oceans acidic, threatening the foundation of sea life.

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by Kathleen McAuliffe, Discover Magazine

Image courtesy of NOAA

It all seemed so convenient: As our smokestacks and automobile tailpipes spewed ever more carbon dioxide into the air, the oceans absorbed the excess. Like a vast global vacuum cleaner, the world's seas sucked CO2 right out of the atmosphere, mitigating the dire consequences of global warming and forestalling the melting of glaciers, the submergence of coastlines, and extremes of weather from floods to droughts. So confident were we in the seas' seemingly limitless capacity to absorb our gaseous waste that, by the turn of the millennium, the United States, Germany, and Japan were actually proposing to compress CO2 from power plants into a gooey liquid and pipe it directly into the abyss.

The first tests of the plan were an eye-opener. When the compressed material was introduced into laboratory tanks, the spines of sea urchins and the shells of mollusks dissolved. Surprised, researchers launched studies to see how marine animals in laboratory tanks and in the wild would fare with CO2 concentrations much lower than those in the original tests. They were stunned. "We found that mere absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere into the ocean was enough to harm marine creatures," says Ken Caldeira, a chemical oceanographer now at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, California.

The problem was that, having swallowed hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse gases since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the oceans were becoming more acidic. And not just in a few spots. Now the chemistry of the entire ocean was shifting, imperiling coral reefs, marine creatures at the bottom of the food chain, and ultimately the planet's fisheries.

In 2003 Caldeira reported these findings in the journal Nature, coining the term "ocean acidification." One might think the news would spread around the world with the speed and force of a tsunami. But scientific discoveries take time to be digested and disseminated. Only recently have the far-flung implications of this development begun to register beyond the rarefied sphere of marine biologists.

"It's the most profound environmental change I've seen in my entire career, and nobody saw it coming," says Thomas E. Lovejoy, a biologist and president of the H. J. Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington, D.C.

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/16-oc...of-osteoporosis

[IAMX 3,055]

All in all, humans are overpopulating the planet, and destroying their own environment for their own habitability. It's pretty much how every apex predator comes and goes. Too bad we're not into appreciating what we have and preserving it as best we can.

Edited August 4, 2008 by SRVT

[one...two...tree 2,762]

All in all, humans are overpopulating the planet, and destroying their own environment for their own habitability. It's pretty much how every apex predator comes and goes.

Overconsumption...the carbon footprint among people around the world varies drastically.

[IAMX 3,055]

All in all, humans are overpopulating the planet, and destroying their own environment for their own habitability. It's pretty much how every apex predator comes and goes.

Overconsumption...the carbon footprint among people around the world varies drastically.

Right, but there's more to it than just carbon footprint. An apex predator keeps multiplying until it's environment cannot sustain them. Then comes a drastic change, either they run out of resources and die off entirely, or population plummets greatly. We can keep our carbon footprint low and still be screwed. This is just one of the ways we're doing it, by drastically changing our own ecosystem which will ultimately result in loss of habitability for us.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

All in all, humans are overpopulating the planet, and destroying their own environment for their own habitability. It's pretty much how every apex predator comes and goes.

Overconsumption...the carbon footprint among people around the world varies drastically.

Right, but there's more to it than just carbon footprint. An apex predator keeps multiplying until it's environment cannot sustain them. Then comes a drastic change, either they run out of resources and die off entirely, or population plummets greatly. We can keep our carbon footprint low and still be screwed. This is just one of the ways we're doing it, by drastically changing our own ecosystem which will ultimately result in loss of habitability for us.

The trends in birth rates have shown otherwise. Many developed countries are facing aging populations. European countries are looking for more immigrants to help sustain their economies. I'm sorry but I don't buy this idea that we're going to killing ourselves by making too many babies. If we destroy life as we know it, it will be from the overconsumption of natural resources.