I’ve often said that the primary way in which climate chaos will impact human beings in the short run will be through the availability of fresh water for personal consumption, hygiene, crop irrigation, electricity generation, and industrial uses. Not far behind fresh water on climate chaos’ hit parade is the horror known as ocean acidification.[1] Even if you want to take the truly astonishing leap of anti-science and choose to believe the deniers’ claims that CO2 doesn’t trigger a greenhouse effect and/or the climate isn’t warming and/or it is warming but there’s nothing we can do about it, then we’re still faced with the enormous threat of major disruptions to the oceans’ food chain, and therefore to a great deal of food human beings depend on.
On that cheery note, let me present a small sampling of the worthwhile ocean and water related items I’ve spotted in the last few days…
NRDC: Ocean Acidification: The Other CO2 Problem:
A more acidic ocean could wipe out species, disrupt the food web and impact fishing, tourism and any other human endeavor that relies on the sea.
The change is happening fast — and it will take fast action to slow or stop it. Over the last 250 years, oceans have absorbed 530 billion tons of CO2, triggering a 30 percent increase in ocean acidity.
Before people started burning coal and oil, ocean pH had been relatively stable for the previous 20 million years. But researchers predict that if carbon emissions continue at their current rate, ocean acidity will more than double by 2100.
The polar regions will be the first to experience changes. Projections show that the Southern Ocean around Antarctica will actually become corrosive by 2050.
A sidebar in the same article says:
ACID TEST: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification
This groundbreaking NRDC documentary explores the startling phenomenon of ocean acidification, which may soon challenge marine life on a scale not seen for tens of millions of years. The film, featuring Sigourney Weaver, will air on Discovery Planet Green throughout Blue August, a month devoted to on-air and online programming about the wonders and mysteries of the oceans.
TreeHugger: The Ocean Has Issues: 7 Biggest Problems Facing Our Seas, and How to Fix Them:
The oceans are among our biggest resource for life on earth, and also our biggest dumping grounds. That kind of paradox could give anyone an identity crisis. We seem to think we can take all the goodies out and put all our garbage in, and then expect them to keep happily ticking away indefinitely. However, while it’s true the oceans can provide us with some amazing eco-solutions like alternative energy, they’re are undergoing some serious stress factors. Here are the seven biggest problems, plus some light at the end of the tunnel.
See the article for the unnerving list of seven problems, andf a suggestion that part of the solution might be this radical, totally new and untested concept called “conservation”.
Global warming is a major threat to life in the oceans — and humans who depend on that life (see Ocean dead zones to expand, “remain for thousands of years”). As one recent study found:
Global warming may create “dead zones” in the ocean that would be devoid of fish and seafood and endure for up to two millennia….
Its authors say deep cuts in the world’s carbon emissions are needed to brake a trend capable of wrecking the marine ecosystem and depriving future generations of the harvest of the seas.
Jane Lubchenco — Obama’s terrific choice for administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — discussed the threat to the ocean from global warming in a long interview on NPR’s Diane Rehm show yesterday (mostly in the second 20 minute segment). You can catch it here.
If you want to understand ocean acidification better, see this BBC story, which explains:
Man-made pollution is raising ocean acidity at least 10 times faster than previously thought, a study says.
Go read it all.
Ocean Acidification Dangerous: World’s science academies:
A strongly worded statement was released last week, signed by seventy science academies (including our own National Academy of Sciences) about ocean acidification.
From InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (PDF):
Ocean acidification, one of the world’s most important climate change challenges, may be left off the agenda at the United Nations Copenhagen conference, the world’s science academies warned today…. 70 national science academies signed the statement…. “The implications of ocean acidification cannot be overstated. Unless we cut our global CO2 emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 and thereafter, we could be looking at fundamental and immutable changes in the makeup of our marine biodiversity. The effects will be seen worldwide, threatening food security, reducing coastal protection and damaging the local economies that may be least able to tolerate it.”
Scientists: Global warming has already changed oceans:
Researchers, scientists and Jacques Cousteau’s granddaughter painted a bleak picture Tuesday of the future of oceans and the “blue economy” of the nation’s coastal states.
The hearing before the oceans subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee was expected to focus on how the degradation of the oceans was affecting marine businesses and coastal communities. Instead, much of the testimony focused on how the waters that cover 70 percent of the planet are already changing because of global warming.
Ocean acidification or diseases that thrive in acidified, oxygen-depleted seawater could be responsible for oysters not reproducing in Washington state , said Brad Warren , who oversees the ocean health and acidification program of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership in Seattle . A federal study found that two-thirds of larval blue crabs died when exposed to acidity levels like those currently measured off the West Coast , he said.
Federal studies also found acidity levels in the North Pacific and off Alaska are unusually high compared to other ocean regions. The high acidity is already taking a toll of such tiny species as pteropods, which are an important food for salmon and other fish.
California’s Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country’s Food Supply:
“I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen. We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California. I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going,” [US Secretary of Energy] Steven Chu told the Los Angeles Times in February, shortly after taking office in January. “I’m hoping that the American people will wake up,” he added, just in case there was any confusion about the gravity of the situation.
That kind of apocalyptic foresight has made Chu a breath of fresh, dystopian air. For eight nearly insufferable years, the American public has had no shortage of political tools telling it everything is going to be all right, that the United States is the greatest country in the world, that reports of our impending environmental devastation have been greatly exaggerated, and so on. By contrast, Steven Chu is a Cassandra on a mission from reality. But few, especially in the state he singled out, feel like buying what he is selling.
“Dr. Chu is not a climate scientist,” argued Jim Metropulos, senior advocate at Sierra Club’s California chapter, echoing the same conditional given in the Los Angeles Times article in which Chu was quoted. “Obviously, he’s versed on it, but he’s taking an apocalyptic view. I think it’s not sustainable in its current form. We rely on imported water to grow high-value crops, but maybe the agriculture we have today may not be the agriculture we have decades from now.”
That’s a big maybe.
TreeHugger: Out of Water? How We Might Make More:
Stand at the edge of a reservoir, river, or ocean and it’s hard to imagine that the planet could ever run out of water; even just a day at the beach makes your one small shower a day seem like less of a threat. But with overuse an ever-growing problem, it may be just a matter of time until we find ourselves murmuring that old lost-at-sea refrain, “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” Of course, technology can do anything—which means making more water might not be as hard as it sounds with these future-forward breakthroughs.
See the article for details on desalination, water purification, and making water from humidity.
Scientific American: Report: Climate change will force millions to move, prompting “tensions and violence”:
Flooded farmland has already forced thousands of Bangladeshis to higher ground, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, of the numbers of people who will need to move because of climate change in the coming decade, according to a report released by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University, the United Nations University and CARE International today.
As climate change alters weather patterns—hastening desertification in some places and sopping others—increases the strength of natural disasters—from cyclones to landslides—and raises sea levels world wide, it will make many areas and livelihoods untenable, say the authors.
“Climate is the envelope in which all of us lead our daily lives,” Alexander de Sherbinin, a geographer at CIESIN, said in a statement. “This report sounds warning bells.”
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that by 2050, about 200 million people will have been uprooted by climate change. A sea level rise of 3.28 feet (1 meter) could affect 23.5 million people on the low-lying Ganges, Mekong and Nile river deltas alone, according to the report.
NYTimes.com: Water Scarcity and the Western Oil Shales:
Vast technical and environmental challenges have long stood in the way of commercial oil shale production.
But it is water – or more specifically, its scarcity – that is likely to be shale oil’s greatest stumbling block in the arid West.
The United States Geological Survey recently estimated that there may be as many as 1.525 trillion barrels of oil trapped in the rock of Colorado’s Piceance Basin, the region’s richest shale field. And a report released in March by the non-profit Western Resource Advocates, an environmental group based in Boulder, Colo., suggested that oil companies have acquired water rights at hundreds of locations in the upper Colorado River basin, which could be used for future oil shale production.
“There is this theoretical idea that if you could somehow extract all of the oil” from the Piceance Basin, said David Abelson, an author of the report, “you would have more oil than Saudi Arabia.”
The W.R.A. report, citing figures from the Bureau of Land Management and the RAND Corporation, argued that increased water use for oil shale development could hamper urban growth in the Rocky Mountain Front Range, threaten agriculture and critical habitat for endangered fish and increase the likelihood that Lower Basin states like Nevada, Arizona and California would issue a “call” — a legal decree that forces junior upstream water rights holders to reduce, or eliminate altogether, water use until senior downstream rights are met.
[1] Let me take a stab at ending the latest they-think-you’re-dumber-than-a-sack-of-rocks talking point from the denierbots who swarm online sites. They love to point out that since the PH level of the oceans is still above 7.0 (“neutral”) and has not crossed into the “acid” range below that level, the ocean is not actually acidifying. This is almost suffocatingly absurd, and one has to wonder what mixture of ignorance and desperation leads otherwise functional adults to say such things. Just so there’s no misunderstanding, this is like saying that when the outside temperature drops from 100F to 90F it’s not really cooling because 90F isn’t a cool temperature, in absolute terms.
I consider this tactic to be the surest sign yet of how serious ocean acidification is: The deniers can’t attack it with any of the other fabricated idiocy they use regarding climate chaos, so instead they resort to a pathetic semantic game that I would expect any moderately bright 12-year old to see through.
