Increased carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly making the world’s oceans more acidic and, if unabated, could cause a mass extinction of marine life similar to one that occurred 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology will present this research at the AGU/ASLO Ocean Sciences meeting in Honolulu, HI on Monday, Feb 20.
Caldeira’s computer models have predicted that the oceans will become far more acidic within the next century. Now, he has compared this data with ocean chemistry evidence from the fossil record, and has found some startling similarities. The new finding offers a glimpse of what the future might hold for ocean life if society does not drastically curb carbon dioxide emissions.
“The geologic record tells us the chemical effects of ocean acidification would last tens of thousands of years,” Caldeira said. “But biological recovery could take millions of years. Ocean acidification has the potential to cause extinction of many marine species.”
A civilization here, a species there. Nothing that would bother our politicians.
What an uplifting morning read.
The ocean acidity which is credited with mass extincttions 65 million years ago was sulphuric acid. Dissolved carbon dioxide is carbonic acid. Carbonic acid, which is far weaker and is one of the several acids you drink in soft drinks, is sequestered by marine organisms in calcium carbonate shells, while sulphuric acid dissolves shells and releases carbon. You can’t compare the effects of the two sources of acidity without noting that there is an enormous carbon sink in the world’s oceans, and considering whether and how much that sink will expand as CO2 levels rise.
“we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.”
Discover magazine 1989 Steven Schneider
“Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue”
James Hansen 2004 Scientific American, the same guy who says NASA is censoring him.
ok….I’ll show my ignorance. I didn’t know the dinosaurs were aquatic animals. And I thought it ended on a bright sunny day in Central America when the big one hit from space.
But seriously…..I have a lot of problems with these computor models, that all these scientists love to use. Especially when computor models can’t correctly predict tomorrows weather let alone events 100 to 10,000 years in the future.
I would just like someone to correctly tell me I can have a damn BBQ on Saturday without breaking out the water wings and canoe.
The headline for the paper published through the Carnegie Institution claims:
Oceans may soon be more corrosive than when the dinosaurs died
http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/news_releases/news_0602_20.html
Yet there is nothing in the article to suggest that the acidity will surpass that of 65 million years ago. Nor is there any indication of what the acidity of the oceans was back then.
Me
Ed, and the other editors, posts these subjects for general comments. There is nothing here to suggest that he believes the paper, subscribes to the author’s viewpoints, or is advocating some extreme lifestyle change. If you want to ridicule the paper or article then fine, but to ridicule the messenger or forum is unfair.
I’m happy that your flatulence produces CO2. Most gas produced via flatulence is nitrogen, with hydrogen sulphide and methane. For the rest of us, any CO2 is from air we have swallowed.
(Facts on farts) http://www.heptune.com/farts.html
As for flatulence producing more CO2 then industry, I can’t even begin to guess where you came up with that number. Every time we burn something, be it coal or natural gas to produce electricity or gasoline in our cars produce CO2. The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is what concerns most scientists. Every breath you and every other air breathing creature take also expels carbon dioxide.
>>Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one
>>time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of
>>the global warming issue”
So. What’s appropriate now, that the decision makers are fully aware (but are too happy lining their pockets give a shit) to do anything, and the public wants something done, but have no power to do anything?
And “Me”, it seems that some of that CO2 flatulence (you must have very special farts) is coming out of your keyboard. Wow. I’m speechless over that post.
One of my favorite teachers in high school liked to poke fun at articles like these. If he were here he’d say something like this, “So between rising sea levels, bird flu, global warming, gigantic meteors, falling space garbage, dwindling oil supplies, killer tsunamis, West Nile Virus, and acidic oceans…we. are. All. DOOMED!!!”
That is not to say that things like these might not happen (though probably on a sub-apocalyptic level), it’s just that the melodramatic way in which they are always presented gets very old. See: the boy who cried wolf.
“Cowfarts (and mine) produce more carbon dioxide than industry.”
I’d like to see a source for that.
“Earth exists to serve humans needs – period.”
But I would be REALLY interested in seeing your sources on that. I’m particularly curious why you’re so arrogant to think it serves you needs but not my children’s needs.
This is the type of science you get when university faclties lean so far to the left. They just fired Larry Summers at Harvard for suggesting men and women don ‘t have the same interests. Anyone who gives contrary views on global warming don’t get a fair shake in the university climate.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that we as humans are incapable of destroying the earth. You heard my right, we aren’t that good. I bet next they’ll be blaming the acidity level from 65 million years ago was the fault of time travelers polluting to cut down on government fines by polluting the earth before the government existed. It’s all hogwash.
We’re doing this, we’re so aweful, blah blah blah. The earth has a natural cycle… who says we can change it in any noticable way? Global warming would be happening if we weren’t here… we know this because it DID happen when we weren’t here. Or maybe, it was the cars and energy plants the dinosaurs made that did it last time. Yeah, thats the ticket.
I have just finished reading State of Fear by Michael Criton. Might help some put this kind of stuff in better perspective.
It takes a special kind of illogic to posit (1) “you can’t tell me that…” or (2) computer modeling doesn’t work for anything! or (3) my personal favorite, universities have too many liberal ideas, therefore we’re going to hell in a handbasket.
Reality intervenes, once in a while and (1) no one can tell someone with a closed mind anything. Nothing new about that. Or productive. (2) You’re probably driving a car that was computer modeled — or utilizing the occasional meds (I hope) resulting from computational analysis — or maybe even investing a few bucks with a firm that’s rooted in computer-modeled historic analysis — and on and on. Just another Luddite copout. And, then, there’s (3) from the proudly ignorant who resents every scholar who advanced the well being of our species — instead of dedicating their energies to furthering the profits, bigotries, spooky sociology of every robber baron who rolled down the pike to his favorite gun club.
Threw in the gun club for those pretend-hunters who think shooting 70 captive pheasants on a South Dakota preserve is “sport”.
“Anyone who gives contrary views on global warming don’t get a fair shake in the university climate. ”
What makes you say that. And how come believing the prevailing hypothesis and discounting what the petroleum industry wants to believe makes one a liberal?!
“I have just finished reading State of Fear by Michael Criton. Might help some put this kind of stuff in better perspective.”
Yeah, hopefully it will teach you not to believe a fiction author who got a journalism award from the petroleum institute for a piece of fiction that has a crappy plot anyway. Especially when his other bokos have been full of inaccuracies.
But, then, would I be OT if I assumed some of these commenters think the Disruptive Technologies Office is something intendeed to protect the Republican Convention.
Drew,
Your children are human aren’t they? I said human’s needs, not just mine. I want your children to grow up into a world where they can each have 1 or 2 SUVs and a 3000 sq. ft. garage to park them in and a mile long driveway to drive them down.
I hope all humanity eventually has at least those minimums toward a worthwhile standard of living.
Looks like I had a post dropped so to summarize:
Speaking of so-called climactic science, I’m old enough to remember the big scare in the 70’s: Global Cooling… I think you can infer the rest.
If you want me to change something about my lifestyle first prove the problem better than this, then prove my changing anything will affect anything.
“Speaking of so-called climactic science, I’m old enough to remember the big scare in the 70’s: Global Cooling… I think you can infer the rest.”
They used to believe that the earth was flat and motion was absolute, so how can they be trusted to tell us it’s round and motion is relative.
“If you want me to change something about my lifestyle first prove the problem better than this, then prove my changing anything will affect anything. ”
Gravity, evolution, and the atom, are all theories that are not proven. Global warming is the most commonly accepted hypothasis, if that’s not good enough then nothing is.
Computer models do not prove theory; they are not “proof” of global warming. How can they be, when they are subject to the whims of a programmer?
Take the very best computer climate model in existence. Input the known weather conditions that existed in 1900. Use that model to predict global weather conditions for each year up to 2000. Compare predictions against actuals on a year-by-year basis. If the predictions match up well with actuals (i.e., r2 greater than .90), then I will allow that the model’s prediction for 2100 may have some value.
But they can’t get the models to do that because the system is chaotic. And I laugh at the whole concept that modeling global climate for decades is valid when predicting local weather conditions for next month isn’t; as if there is a weather equivalent of the Ideal Gas Law.
I begin to doubt that climatology is an actual science. It seems to have more in common with religion than science. (I apologize to those who really do follow the tenets of science in their research, but we can’t hear you over all of the caterwauling from your colleagues.)
‘Anyone who gives contrary views on global warming don’t get a fair shake in the university climate. ”
What makes you say that.
‘
You’ve got it backwards. Take a look at Summers’ being thrown out at Harvard. They just couldn’t handle any contrary views being said. That’s what makes me suspect this is the case with global warming as well.
Look Smith, maybe this story is not reliable because it used comuter models. MAYBE. Computer models are more reliable than you are making them seem.
But to discount computer models does not discount global warming. It’s not like the only evidence for global warming is because of some computer model. Most scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. The debate is really about what effects climate change will have. That is where they use computer models and that’s where it gets iffy.
Proving global warming is happening and proving mankind is causing it are two very different animals.
Global warming certainly could be happening (as a natural cycle). Among other things. there is evidence, easily found, that the sun’s output has increased recently – directly resulting in Mar’s polar ice caps shrinking. I’m sure mankind caused that.
This site is a little over the top, but far less hysterical than the main stream media and left-wing university types. There’s also plenty to read from many sources: http://www.oism.org/news/ Look at Dan Rather, I’d trust this type of info far more than what you get in the mainstream news.
Even if Global Warming is somehow proven, the proper response is to learn to adapt, not give up everything worthwhile in life in the vain hope it will reverse. Earlier in this thread, I was called arrogant. Is it not the same arrogance for someone else to tell me to live my life a different way? That’s what freedom is. If someone else wants to cut everything worthwhile out of their life, it’s their choice, but thay have no right to tell me to do the same.
“They used to think the Earth is flat – now they don’t.” 20 years from now, I predict they will be saying “They used to think mankind caused global warming, now we know better.”
No….wait a minute…… I just realized that our president is known as “GW” ……. Hmmmm……GW……GW……..Global Warming !?!?!?!? Oh, My, God,…..I take it all back……….It must all be true…..we’re all going to DIE!!!!!!!
Drew, by the way Michael Crichton is Medical Doctor who studied anthropology and has been a visiting lecturer on such. He is quite qualified to speak about human nature. One of his speeches is about how religion cannot be eliminated from society, it always manifests somewhere – such as the current religion of Global Warming.
CRICHTON, (John) Michael. American. Born in Chicago, Illinois, October 23, 1942. Educated at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, A.B. (summa cum laude) 1964 (Phi Beta Kappa). Henry Russell Shaw Travelling Fellow, 1964-65. Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University, England, 1965. Graduated Harvard Medical School, M.D. 1969; post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, La Jolla, California 1969-1970. Visiting Writer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988.