The World Meteorological Organization’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin has some unhappy news for we earthlings. Last year saw the largest increase in greenhouse gas concentrations since 1984. Most people focus on the increased energy (temperature) in the atmosphere, but what has me most worried is actually the acidification of the oceans.
The WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reports on atmospheric concentrations – and not emissions – of greenhouse gases. Emissions represent what goes into the atmosphere. Concentrations represent what remains in the atmosphere after the complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere and the oceans. About a quarter of the total emissions are taken up by the oceans and another quarter by the biosphere, reducing in this way the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The ocean cushions the increase in CO2 that would otherwise occur in the atmosphere, but with far-reaching impacts. The current rate of ocean acidification appears unprecedented at least over the last 300 million years, according to an analysis in the report.
“We know without any doubt that our climate is changing and our weather is becoming more extreme due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.
“The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin shows that, far from falling, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere actually increased last year at the fastest rate for nearly 30 years. We must reverse this trend by cutting emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases across the board,” he said. “We are running out of time.”
“Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for many hundreds of years and in the ocean for even longer. Past, present and future CO2 emissions will have a cumulative impact on both global warming and ocean acidification. The laws of physics are non-negotiable,” said Mr Jarraud.
I can foresee ways to adapt to rising ocean levels or even to a world with more powerful storms and a changing climate. But I don’t know how to adapt to a world where our oceans are so acidic that that most life forms can’t survive.
Maybe its because we don’t live in our oceans that we don’t focus on this part of climate change as much as we should, but I think it’s the biggest danger that we face.
It’s definitely the most dangerous part of climate change and emissions. It’s also the most convincing argument to would be skeptics who don’t care about temperature rising or think it’s some natural cycle (if they’re the type who can be convinced of anything that is).
In fact, most dangerous shit happening is a change in ocean currents that are amplified by this acidification, causing more warming and becoming a breeding ground to anaerobic bacteria which releases toxic gases into the air to the point that the entire planet is uninhabitable without a gas mask. That’s of course absolute worst case apocalypse scenario, but when each new report keeps getting worse and worse…
The oceans won’t get nearly acid enough that most life forms can’t survive. They will get too acid for most shelled organisms, and become rather like a never-cleaned swimming pool.
It’s a food chain problem. In the relatively near-term, the oceans won’t be too acidic for marine life, excepting those that need lots of calcium. But animals can go extinct if their food supply goes extinct.
Goodbye, coral reefs. We will miss you.
It’s not just a food chain problem. Quite a few of the more important phytoplankton groups have calcareous shells. These also produce a lot of the world’s oxygen. We need oxygen. http://dgrnewsservice.org/2012/05/04/ocean-acidification-may-weaken-or-kill-plankton-responsible-for
-half-of-worlds-oxygen-production/
Between the dying oceans and the interminable drought in California, whic produces more than half of the food in the US, I spend a lot of time worrying about what’s coming.
Honestly, I don’t see a fix. It’s much too late for nibbling around the edges. But the upheaval a drastic change would entail would be unfathomable.
It’s like the whole world is playing out a Lord of the Flies analogy. Only in the book Lord of the Flies (spoiler alert) in the end the adults come to fix things. Who will be the adult that fixes things for the human species this time? We have proven beyond any doubt that we are socially incapable of solving this problem, despite clear foreknowledge.
And yet the party that, both as policy and in practice, denies that any of this is happening appears poised to gain control of both houses of Congress.
As a group we Americans are fatally stupid.
fatal stupidity vs. collective schizophrenia–we (our scientists) know burning fossils fuels will certainly destroy us, but our actual energy policy is Drill Baby Drill. If there’s oil anywhere, we’re drillin’ it. (this with a Dem prez).
Eat, drink and be merry! Over-harvest the oceans while you can!
Note also that acidification from CO2 emissions can’t be “cured” via bio-engineering schemes that block sunlight from entering the atmosphere. You burn ever more fossil fuels, the oceans acidify, end of story.
The smallest ocean creatures are the most susceptible–and they form the basis of the food chain, so the collapse will be total.
Is the acidification limited to dissolved carbon dioxide or cabonic acid?
What are the ocean forms of other greenhouse gases (NO2, methane, etc.) that are also being released?
When can we take Congress to the beach and have them notice it?
Is the Atlantic Sagassum Sea forest having a big CO2 party?
My big anxiety is about the state of the Gulf Stream. Our summer has been cooler and wetter than normal and last winter was relatively mild. That has consequences for Western Europe’s agriculture. The East Coast might get a phantom period of cooling just from the ice melt cooling out the Gulf Stream.
On the environment, Americans need to take the sandbucket challenge. Pull your head out and look around at what’s happening.
And that’s not to mention the continuing overfishing as people partially go vegan.
from the intertubes:
“Once dissolved in seawater, CO2 reacts with water, H2O, to form carbonic acid, H2CO3: CO2 + H2O ↔ H2CO3. Carbonic acid dissolves rapidly to form H+ ions (an acid) and bicarbonate, HCO3-(a base). Seawater is naturally saturated with another base, carbonate ion (CO3−2) that acts like an antacid to neutralize the H+, forming more bicarbonate. The net reaction looks like this: CO2 + H2O + CO3−2→ 2HCO3-
As carbonate ion gets depleted, seawater becomes undersaturated with respect to two calcium carbonate minerals vital for shell-building, aragonite and calcite. Scientific models suggest that the oceans are becoming undersaturated with respect to aragonite at the poles, where the cold and dense waters most readily absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide. The Southern Ocean is expected to become undersaturated with respect to aragonite by 2050, and the problem could extend into the subarctic Pacific Ocean by 2100 (Orr et al., 2005).”
So, most of the trashbags responsible for continuing our poisoning of the planet or for the coverup of the poisoning of our planet will be dead.
Nothing will be done.
“I don’t know how to adapt to a world where our oceans are so acidic”
Baking soda. Lots of it.
Or to borrow from Roy Scheider: “We’re going to need a bigger box of Arm and Hammer.”
Remember, “our way of life is nonnegotiable.” That is the American mindset at this point. They want their wasteful suburbs and convenience. Some call that stupidity the “American Dream.” We also have a Nimrod contingent(about 1/3 of the population) that are incorrigible and will obstruct any attempts to do anything. The outstanding jerkoffs at Google believe some Hail Mary technology will save us.
There are fixes. It’s going to take sacrifice to implement them so the world can maintain around 10 billion people.
I suspect the social, economic, and political upheaval generated by the pressures of climate change and our subsequent fighting over the scraps will do us in before purely environmental forces get the chance.
Spink
Who could have predicted that continuously increasing carbon emissions every year would increase the C02 levels in the atmosphere and oceans?
Or After years of decline, U.S. carbon emissions rose 2 percent in 2013 would contribute to increased atmospheric CO2? Interesting notes from that WAPO report:
Not mentioned is the outsourcing of US industrial production during those years. What changed in 2013?
Whoa. Isn’t the US the KSA of natural gas? (Germany etal. may want to think twice about the US offer to replace Russian natural gas.)
Burn, baby, burn because the world has three huge garbage dumps for carbon:
In 2012, CO2 Now reported a minor upset in that 1/1/2 ratio:
If the biosphere absorption limit has been reached, the atmosphere and oceans will have to absorb all of the increases.
Through developers who clearcut the trees, stipmine the topsoil (and all the helpful critters), and even blast out rock for crushed stone before they terraform the land for housing, commercial, and industrial development.
And through no restoration of those elements of the biosphere that could offset carbon…
And that’s in the US before you start talking about what has happened in Brazil, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”–Puck, Shakepeare’s A Midsummers Night’s Dream
Increased GDP, baby. And that’s our primary measure of progress, good economies, and rising standard of living. Who cares if in some future generations the human lifespan plummets to thirty years — we will have gotten our four score plus ten years.
GDP is the very metric that shows how terrible capitalism is.
We basically have to burn this whole fucking planet down in order to keep “growing” the economy.
Because freedumb = hoarded wealth.
freedumb = hoarded wealth for the 5%
freedumb = dumb and excessive consumption for at least 65%.
Consumerism has replaced citizenship. Our whole country has become a consumerocracy. While there are a million ways to describe our broken, anachronistic economic system, consumerocracy seems pretty accurate.
If you are a supply-sider who thinks that if we just cut taxes on the MakersTM and jobCreatorsTM, that everything will get better because everything you need will be dirt cheap.
Hell, even politicians refer to Amuricans as consumers rather than citizens. And considering the amount of people who don’t vote, and those who do but aren’t remotely knowledgeable about what they are voting for…they’re probably right in doing so.
Everything is for sale and it all becomes garbage in short order. Otherwise GDP stagnates. And we can’t have that.
GDP aims to produce as much garbage as possible, so there’s room for new crap to sell.
USians equate being middle class with having lots of crap. Outsourcing manufacturing has facilitated this illusion. Transport anyone fifty years and younger to a working or middle class home of the 1950s and they’d think they’d landed in on poverty row because there wasn’t a ton of crap. What they wouldn’t be able to see is that those people had twenty year mortgages, savings accounts, little to no consumer debt, health care that wouldn’t bankrupt them, free public education, and their children that wanted to go to college could do so without incurring huge debt.
Exactly.
Most have been trained to invest their sense of self into the things they own. Huge TVs with nothing worth watching. Fancy cars with nowhere of importance to go. A brand new phone to stare at instead of using to communicate with other people.
My idea of middle class is being able to weather 6 months of no income because of savings, plenty of unused credit, and a safety net.
Everything else is literally stuff you just throw away.
LOL —
Realized a few days ago that I’d cut way back on my movie going this year because there’s so little that’s not derivative, SCI-Fi, action-adventure, thriller and/or comedy minus anything funny. Left the theater after seeing “Chef” and shaking my head with wtf — a high-production value mash-up of a cooking show, parent-child relationship dysfunction, divorced parents that were impossible to see as ever having been a couple, ex-wife extremely wealthy (either alimony or some job that was never defined), unbelievable work blow-up and it got worse from there. Worst of all, stripped of the the crap, a potentially funny and charming concept was lost.
Most US coal is on federal lands and sold for less than dirt – literally – to coal companies. This amounts to a hidden federal subsidy, one of many the fossil fuel companies enjoy that total net of hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
But the real scandal is that electric vehicles don’t pay federal gasoline tax, don’t you know.