Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Posted: Wed May 28, 2008 10:41 am Post subject: Re: The Oceans are Dying
The threat is emmerging and in localized accounts there are dead zones but we have only seen the start of it if a worst case climate change event befalls us. Policymakers should take this seriosuly now, howver it would mean advocating for reduction in GHGe's at a time when the global economy is struggling with higher oil prices. Only the most severe form of demand estruction would make a dent since the GHG's already out there ar elagged in effect, we would not see a change for some time.
Alot of folks talk about the global conveyor shutting off and that correcting for warming. Well it would if we do not overshoot that mechanism but it is possible that we shut the belt down and it gets cold for a few years and then because we kept dumping more and more GHGe's into the atmoshpere the system runs right through that feedback and it starts getting warmer again. The mechanism that was always big enough under natural fluctuations is not guaranteed to remain under an artificially induced and severe event. We could break the feedback mechanism just as you break a thermostat by hitting it with a hammer.
This cool summer (we are seeing that up here) is not a reason to hope that climate change has abated.
The politicians cannot do anything about what is going on. They cannot tell people to accept limits on fossil fuel emissions and get reelected in most disctricts. A senator might be able to get elected, but a representative has to tell his district hat jobs and the economy and security are his first priorities. A president might be able to ge elected with that plank but I doubt the political systems has the answer. It will have to be grass roots. That is where those of us who know about alternative energy can help mitigate on behalf of our grandchildren. However, we do have the rising of price of oil to contend with. It seems lkike it would be a help and it will be, but I do not believe it will be enough to avoid the blowback we have already built into the climate system.
'And the second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became blood like that of a dead man; and every living thing in the sea died'
The acidic seawater is moving closer to shallow waters containing the bulk of marine life, according to a recent article in the journal Science.
One of the article's authors, Christopher Sabine, said Tuesday he watched small marine snails placed in water of similar acidity to that recorded last summer off the northern California coast.
"We actually saw the shells dissolving off these living organisms. They were dissolving off the terapods as they were swimming around," Sabine said. Such creatures comprise as much as 40 percent of the Pacific king salmon's diet.
"This acidity dissolves calcium carbonate, which is the thing that shells are made out of. If diatoms, corals, clams and oysters succumb to this it not only wipes out the shellfish industry but potentially the entire marine food chain," said Bishop, a fifth-generation shellfish harvester. _________________ In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
It riles them to believe that you perceive the webs they weave. - Moody Blues
Joined: May 27, 2007 Posts: 1758 Location: The Post Peak Oil Historian
Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 9:35 pm Post subject: Re: The Oceans are Dying
Ocean Acidification will worsen, No way to stop it
The scientists said they also discovered the corrosive, acidified water that's being upwelled seasonally from the deeper ocean is probably 50 years old. That suggests future ocean acidification levels will increase, since atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have increased rapidly during the past half century.
When the upwelled water was last at the surface, it was exposed to an atmosphere with much lower CO2 levels than today's, said OSU Associate Professor Burke Hales. "The water that will upwell off the coast in future years already is making its undersea trek toward us, with ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide and acidity.
The coastal ocean acidification train has left the station, Hales added, and there's not much we can do to derail it.
Geoengineering Could Slow Down The Global Water Cycle
"Because the global water cycle is more sensitive to changes in solar radiation than to increases in CO2, geoengineering could lead to a decline in the intensity of the global water cycle" Bala said.
A recent study showed that there was a substantial decrease in rainfall over land and a record decrease in runoff and discharge into the ocean following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. The ash emitted from Pinatubo masked some of the sunlight reaching the earth and therefore decreased surface temperatures slightly, but it also slowed down the global hydrologic cycle.
"Any research in geoengineering should explore the response of different components of the climate system to forcing mechanisms," Bala said.
For instance, Bala said, sunshade geoengineering would not limit the amount of CO2 emissions. CO2 effects on ocean chemistry, specifically, could have harmful consequences for marine biota because of ocean acidification, which is not mitigated by geoengineering schemes.
"While geoengineering schemes would mitigate the surface warming, we still have to face the consequences of CO2 emissions on marine life, agriculture and the water cycle," Bala said. _________________ In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
It riles them to believe that you perceive the webs they weave. - Moody Blues
Joined: May 27, 2007 Posts: 1758 Location: The Post Peak Oil Historian
Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 12:47 am Post subject: Re: The Oceans are Dying
US FOARAM ACT
The Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act (FOARAM), introduced in 2007, is a bill under consideration in both the House (Bill 4174) and the Senate (Bill 1581) to establish an Interagency Committee on Ocean Acidification.
Guess someone is taking it seriously.
http://www.ocean-acidification.net/ _________________ In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
It riles them to believe that you perceive the webs they weave. - Moody Blues
Joined: May 27, 2007 Posts: 1758 Location: The Post Peak Oil Historian
Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 9:06 pm Post subject: Re: The Oceans are Dying
Rising ocean acidity poses threat
Rising acidity in the ocean caused by seas absorbing greenhouse carbon dioxide could make low-lying island nations like Kiribati and the Maldives more vulnerable to storms as their coral reefs struggle to survive, say scientists.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at its highest level in the past 650,000 years, possible 23 million years, and half has now been dissolved into the oceans making them more acidic.
"If ocean acidification weakens the structure of reef-forming corals and algae, tropical systems (islands) will be more vulnerable to physical impacts from storms and cyclones," said a new report by some of the world's leading marine scientists.
"The Southern Ocean is a biogeochemical 'harbinger' for the impacts of acidification that will spread throughout the global ocean," said the report.
By 2060, Antarctic polar waters will experience carbonate ion concentrations so low that one form of calcium carbonate, aragonite, will not be available for organisms to build shells.
Ocean acidification will also interfere with the respiration of fish, the larval development of marine organisms and the ability of oceans to absorb nutrients and toxins.
The report said ice cores showed that the current rate of increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 100 times greater than the most rapid increases experienced in the last 650,000 years. Sedimentary records suggest carbon dioxide levels are higher than at anytime in the last 23 million years.
"Many (marine) species have taken millennia to evolve and it is unknown whether they can (or will) be able to adapt to the relatively rapid rate of ocean acidification, in the order of decades not millennia," said the report.
Joined: May 27, 2007 Posts: 1758 Location: The Post Peak Oil Historian
Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:54 pm Post subject: Re: The Oceans are Dying
Nearly 200 countries imposed a moratorium on 'eco-hacking' the oceans last week, putting the fortunes of several ocean iron fertilisation (OIF) companies in jeopardy.
The ban occurred at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Bonn, where countries discussed the prospect of geo-engineering – using large-scale scientific projects to try and avert global warming.
OIF is one method that private companies had been exploring. It involves seeding the oceans with iron or other particles that would encourage phytoplankton growth.
As the phytoplankton die and fall to the sea floor, companies such as Climos claim that they would take carbon dioxide with them, sequestering it on the ocean floor. Climos is one of several firms hoping to pursue OIF commercially.
However, environmentalists have repeatedly raised concerns that the practice could disrupt delicate marine ecosystems and have questioned whether the process will provide a safe and effective means of sequestering carbon dioxide.
Now 191 countries concerned about the effects of the activity have imposed a ban on everything but small-scale scientific OIF studies, said Jim Thomas, a researcher for environmental group ETC.
link _________________ In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
It riles them to believe that you perceive the webs they weave. - Moody Blues
Research leader Jason Hall-Spencer from the University of Plymouth said that atmospheric CO2 concentrations were now so high that even a sharp fall in emissions would not prevent some further acidification.
"It's clear that marine food webs as we know them are going to alter, and biodiversity will decrease," he told BBC News.
"Those impacts are inevitable because acidification is inevitable - we've started it, and we can't stop it."
"If [pH 7.8] is a universal 'tipping point', then it indicates that sections of the western coast waters off North America may have passed this threshold during periods when this upwelling of waters high in CO2 occurs," commented Carol Turley from Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), who was not involved in the Mediterranean Sea study (PML is not affiliated with Plymouth University). _________________ In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
It riles them to believe that you perceive the webs they weave. - Moody Blues
Joined: May 27, 2007 Posts: 1758 Location: The Post Peak Oil Historian
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 4:52 pm Post subject: Re: The Oceans are Dying
The urgency of reducing emissions of CO2 has never been greater. The science of climate change has revealed that the risks are much higher and more imminent than we had estimated only a few years ago. But just as with a deadly emergency in a heavy passenger jet: the crew should never, ever rush into hasty actions that will ultimately make a very bad situation a lot worse. Ocean disposal of CO2 is one such option.
A careful, rational and scientific analysis of the option of CO2 disposal in the ocean leads to the conclusion that it is not viable. In 2006 the German government's scientific Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) came down against this option: "introducing CO2 into seawater should be prohibited, because the risk of ecological damage cannot be assessed and the retention period in the oceans is too short." The main arguments were "the largely incalculable ecological risk" and the fact that over longer timeframes a significant fraction of the stored CO2 would get back to the atmosphere.
link _________________ In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell
It riles them to believe that you perceive the webs they weave. - Moody Blues
Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 5:34 pm Post subject: Re: The Oceans are Dying
We need some industrial analog of the calcium carbonate formation of coral polyps and other plankton. Calcium is not rare. If we could lock up 27 billion tons of CO2 per year then we would be OK. Of course this is all meaningless speculation since there is no estimate of the energy involved.
Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 1:19 pm Post subject: Re: The Oceans are Dying
I just don't understand why humanity is so insane as to plunder every last natural resource so that the next 2-3 years remain "comfortable". Do we really want to fall off a steep cliff or start conservation measure snow and learn to live sustainable? What is wrong with humans?
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