| Study: Oceans Acidifying Faster Than They Have in Past 300 Million Years |
I have been covering climate change and its effects since 1991 and the one constant through all of this has been the collapse of the timeline. That is things once thought to happen in 500 years, then were predicted to occur in 200, then 50. This is one such effect, and it is a very big deal because the entire food chain of the ocean hinges on acidification and its effects on the nurseries of the sea, the coral reefs. -Stephan A. Schwartz, www.schwartzreport.net |
| DAVE LEVITAN - onearth |
| Fifty-six million years ago, a surge of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raised the acidity of the world's oceans substantially. Many single-celled organisms, and most likely larger creatures farther up the food chain, went extinct. The carbon dioxide that humans are pumping into the atmosphere now is causing a similar acidification effect -- only 10 times faster. In a study published today in the journal Science, researchers compared the current rates of ocean change to other major acidification events going back 300 million years, and what they found is shocking: never in that long period did the ocean pH fall as rapidly as it is falling right now (lower pH means higher acidity). Ocean pH has already dropped 0.1 units to 8.1 -- it is a logarithmic scale, meaning the drop represents about a 30 percent change in acidity. Within another hundred years, it could drop to 7.8. |
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Comments: 17
It will do no good arguing with the clueless. Here is an article about how one of their Global Warming leaders jumped ship. This is just one.. there are more who are jumping the Climate Alarmist Ship.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981299245
Remember,John... just because you're too stupid or ignorant to understand it doesn't mean it's wrong, and making fun of the science won't make it change.
How do you know that, Chucky? Have a vision, did you? ; )
Reading outside your (obviously extremely limited) scientific comfort zone won't kill you, and you'll learn fascinating stuff. But if your own ignorance satisfies you...
You won't get through to John's fear-based mindset. Many have tried. His "comfort zone" is sadly limits allowing anything that he feels is a threat to be considered impartially. This applies to science, religion and so on for John . He could learn a lot from the Dalai Lama's excellent books if he was willing to take the risk, for example, with an open mind. But nothing you or I say is likely to be taken seriously by John.
I often agree with some of John's views, I should add. He takes my observation that his fear-based mind-set is an obstacle is stupid and even not based on goodwill. So he mocks me as a fool etc etc. No big deal for me. I don't feel afraid of being told when I am wrong in what I say.
I recently read and liked Toward a True Kinship of Faiths because he describes in a personal way his own long learning process regarding the modern world, science, religions .
OK and thanks for responding. It is my post, so I chose to comment here on John's input according to what I think is appropiate. John has a long history on Gather. which I have not chosen to comment on.
Talk about "Global Warming" whew... friggin climate alarmists.. none of you have {EXACT CLIMATE SCIENCE} .. not even your heralded climate leaders are staying on board anymore.. geeze...
And this particular man can't possibly be overstating the certainty with which humans can speak of the rate of change in the acidity of the oceans at any point over the last three hundred millions years? Because . . you say so? You say there is an absolutely reliable record of all changes in global oceanic acidity fluctuations, and I'm supposed to accept that as if a scientific fact?
Dude, I am a man of science, I can't just pretend this or that person is an absolute authority about something so incredibly easy to mess up on . . gas bubbles and fossil remnants, over a three hundred million year span . . and you don't even question that claim? "They" said so, and that makes it a scientific fact to you? No chance you're being hyped, right?
"In a review of hundreds of paleoceanographic studies, the researchers found evidence for only one period in the last 300 million years when the oceans changed as fast as today: the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM."
The study finds two other analogs for modern day ocean acidification--the extinctions triggered by massive volcanism at the end of the Permian and Triassic eras, about 252 million and 201 million years ago, respectively.
But the authors caution that because ocean sediments older than 180 million years have been recycled back into the deep Earth, scientists have fewer records to work with. This is one study, so more research would be prudent.
Out of the extinctions throughout history, one of them actually killed off 96% of life on the planet. The dinosaur extinction is the most "notorious", here they say that "This study finds that the most notorious of all extinctions, the one that ended the Age of Dinosaurs with a falling asteroid 65 million years ago, may not have been associated with ocean acidification."
fascinating stuff.