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Carbon Emissions Creating Acidic Oceans Not Seen Since Dinosaurs
Chemical change placing 'unprecedented' pressure on marine life and could cause widespread extinctions, warn scientists
Human pollution is turning the seas into acid so quickly that the coming decades will recreate conditions not seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, scientists will warn today.
A gray whale (Eschrichtius robustus) at the Ojo de Liebre in the Baja California peninsula (Photograph: ALEJANDRO ZEPEDA/EPA) The rapid
acidification is caused by the massive amounts of carbon dioxide
belched from chimneys and exhausts that dissolve in the ocean. The
chemical change is placing "unprecedented" pressure on marine life such as shellfish and lobsters and could cause widespread extinctions, the experts say.
The study, by scientists at Bristol University, will be presented at a special three-day summit of climate scientists in Copenhagen, which opens today. The conference is intended to update the science of global warming and to shock politicians into taking action on carbon emissions.
The Bristol scientists cannot talk about their unpublished results until they are announced later today. But a summary of the findings seen by the Guardian predicts "dangerous" levels of ocean acidification and severe consequences for organisms called marine calcifiers, which form chalky shells.
It says: "We find the future rate of surface ocean acidification and environmental pressure on marine calcifiers very likely unprecedented in the past 65 million years." The scientists add that the situation in the deep sea is of even "greater concern".
The scientists compared the current acidification rate with a giant prehistoric release of greenhouse gas, which geologists know caused widespread extinction of deep water species.
The summary reads: "Because the rates of acidification between past and future are comparable, and [because] there was widespread extinction of benthic organisms [lowest living], one must conclude that a similar level of extinction is more likely than not in the future."
Concern about ocean acidification from carbon pollution has grown in recent years, but the issue receives much less attention than global warming - also caused by human carbon emissions.
The Bristol study is one of the first to predict the consequences of acid waters by looking at past events. It says future deep sea acidification must be limited to 0.2 pH units to avoid the worst effects. The pH of surface waters, where the CO2 is absorbed from the atmosphere, has fallen by about 0.1 units since the industrial revolution, though it will take longer for the acid to reach deeper water.
Ocean acidification is one of the key topics at the Copenhagen summit, with a series of presentations scheduled to examine the impacts.
Ken Caldeira, an expert on ocean acidification at the Carnegie Institution in California, will tell the conference that the next few decades could produce "profound" changes in the oceans. He will say: "The choice to continue emitting carbon dioxide means that we will be an agent of biological change of a force and magnitude exceeded only by the causes of the great mass extinction events. If we do not cut carbon dioxide emissions deeply and soon, the consequences of ocean acidification will stand out against the broad reaches of geologic time. Those consequences will remain embedded in the geologic record as testimony from a civilisation that had the wisdom to develop high technology, but did not develop the wisdom to use it wisely."
Other experts will report that acidification is already affecting marine life in the Arctic and Antarctic. They will also discuss a bizarre finding that acid waters carry sound more efficiently, so the ocean will be a much noisier place in future.
The conference comes ahead of a year of high-level political discussions on climate change, which culminate in international negotiations in Copenhagen in December, where officials will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto protocol.
Katherine Richardson, a marine biologist at the University of Copenhagen, who organised this week's event, has described it as "a deliberate attempt to influence policy". She said many scientists were concerned that politicians have not grasped the seriousness of the situation, despite increasingly gloomy predictions.
This week's meeting will publish an update to the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A number of studies published since the IPCC report was prepared show that carbon emissions are rising faster than expected and that existing greenhouse gas targets may not be enough to prevent catastrophic temperature rise.
It will also assess whether projected sea level rises have been underestimated, and if there is still a realistic chance that average global temperature rise can be limited to 2C.
Road to Copenhagen 2009
March: Scientific congress to update findings and issue new warning to policy-makers
June: Draft agreement proposed at UN meeting in Bonn
July: G8 summit in Italy
September: Possible special UN summit in New York
December: UN talks on new treaty in Copenhagen
- Posted in
48 Comments so far
Show AllOK lets just forget about the "controversial” Global Warming thingy.
We can definitely measure ocean acidity. We are absolutely certain that it is man made.
If we do nothing about it then SLIME wins and man looses.
POWER DOWN NOW!
(and yes I already have)
"We can definitely measure ocean acidity. We are absolutely certain that it is man made."
But wait! Similar levels occurred during the time of the dinosaurs. Was that manmade? Where's the analysis of the causes of those levels and evidence that similar conditions do not currently exist? This is really bad reasoning folks. Pretend science. Besides, the AGW argument posits that all the manmade CO2 is going into the atmosphere to cause the greenhouse global warming effects. Someone hasn't done their arithmetic. There's just not enough manmade CO2 to have caused both the atmospheric and the oceanic changes that are being claimed.
In any case, one needn't have any opinion at all on climate change to argue forcefully for the need for sustainable, renewable, decentralized energy and energy conservation. The petroleum industry is a protected monopoly which continues to profit enormously from taxpayer-funded wars and other forms of corporate subsidy while polluting our bodies and our environment with a plethora of known toxic compounds. To my mind this is the best reason for energy policy change.
Mr. March,
You're evidently new to the climate science debate. The math was done long ago, and it's well understood that the CO2 released by human civilization goes three places. Some goes into the ocean; some is taken up by plants; and some goes into the atmosphere.
Conditions during the dinosaurs' era were quite different than today's. The continents were in different places; ocean circulation was different; the mountain ranges were different (the number 1 carbon sink is geologic action - the Himalayas are one of the major reasons the earth is cooler than it used to be). Overall, it was hotter, and for various reasons, hotter climates have higher CO2 levels.
One often hears this false line or reasoning: "We didn't cause climate change (x amount of time ago) so we must not be causing it now." This ignores the simple fact that different paths can lead to the same outcome. Just because the flu makes you throw up doesn't mean that drinking too much beer can't make you throw up, or spinning around too fast can't make you throw up. The climate has changed numerous times in the past without us causing it. Now we're causing it, and unless we're much more poorly adapted to the environment than seems possible, the change is going to be mainly for the worse.
I urge anyone interested in climate change to visit Realclimate. Among many excellent posts is this 2007 article on the ocean as a carbon sink: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/11/is-the-ocean-carbon-sink-sinking/
Air pollution...water pollution...measurable right now...how can the media give the polluters a platform for their denile?
crazy huh?
Every day it is something else. Just keeps getting better and better. Way overpopulated.
Ecocide.
damn that evil carbon dioxide.
but industrial and nuclear waste, pharmaceutical waste, they dont play a part. detonating nukes underwater is completely fine, doesnt contribute to acidity, or destroy marine life.
"Late Cretaceous/Early Tertiary background pCO2 levels of 350–500 ppm by volume, but with a marked increase to at least 2,300 ppm by volume within 10,000 years of the KTB."
Edited by Robert A. Berner, Yale University, New Haven, CT, and approved April 1, 2002
What point are you trying to make?
---USAn---
How can any of this be changed for the better with a world capitalist system in place? It can't.
"The Bristol study is one of the first to predict the consequences of acid waters by looking at past events. It says future deep sea acidification must be limited to 0.2 pH units to avoid the worst effects. The pH of surface waters, where the CO2 is absorbed from the atmosphere, has fallen by about 0.1 units since the industrial revolution, though it will take longer for the acid to reach deeper water."
How about developing a sodium bicarbonate that will reduce the acidity in oceans? If lakes can be saved from over-acidity, why not oceans?
Do we not have the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet?
Technological fixes to fix problems caused by technology often cause greater problems. Halting CO2 production now is the goal.
Yeah, but if they can't halt CO2 fast enough, we stand to lose a major source of food on this planet.
Fish and aquatic organisms thrive only in neutral water. Too much acidity or alkalinity is fatal to both.
So much for being stewards of Nature.
Its not the climate change deniers who need their faces rubbed in it.
Its the human supremacists. How anyone with normal intelligence can believe that humans are equal to other lifeforms based on humanity's own subjective arbitrary criteria for value(patience, moderation, civility, altruism, reason) and not inferior by design is beyond me. Arguing that humans are superior is so sad in its infantile delusion and topsy turvy view of reality. Being able to build a rocket or compose a symphony means nothing in the stretch of Time(and ignoring that 99 percent of humans do neither lofty activity). The great works of Ozymandias etc.
But then again, the christian types will say the earth must be destroyed to reach paradise(sounds like Satan talking), and the secular science worshipers will be saying: we can fix it. Or we will colonize another planet!
And meanwhile, you have people advocating that we
drag nets at the bottom of the ocean to collect the fish, and as Canada does, slaughter seals who are minding their own business as an excuse for human greed and stupidity.
and drive other creatures out of the acidifying ocean and onto the dry, deadly beach, committing suicide as their only option to avoid the horrors of sonar...how is a sonar-driven beached whale different than one of the people forced to leap from the burning World Trade Center? both are desperation on display...
"Widespread extinctions predicted as ocean acidity climbs"
Republicans optimistic, predict new market for stuffed whales
Those whales will fit nicely in their McMansions.
Please send $19.95 (+ %5.95 S&H) for my new cookbook "1001 Ways to Prepare Jellyfish".
H. Simpson
742 Evergreen Terr.
Springfield, @;*}#/[%, 00^!>
Bring all the troops home and put them to work building a new industry based on green sources of power. Instead of being the number one weapons dealer worldwide, we could become the major supplier of green technology.
So simple, so effective, so not gonna happen.
Sad.
Here's my scream:
In 1950s Alabama, Black people who wanted the right to vote were required to take a test on the arcane parts of the Alabama state constitution. This was an exclusionary tactic.
If you are two guys in a garage (my friend's garage) and you happen to have patents for $2/gallon biofuels, maybe even cheaper, the Department of Energy will throw massive regulatory blocks against your getting one of their grants which happen to be due at 5:00 today. They exclude small outsiders! Only fatsos need apply.
NASA is worse. If you can cut NASA's per-mission carbon footprint by 50% across the board, and even if you are peer-reviewed, patented, and everything works, NASA will close up every one of the loopholes in its armor.
There is no hope whatsoever for a factor of ten price/performance improvement in transit, not because the improvements aren't sitting around now, but because the private industry entry fee is $100 million, and GM would rather die than create an improvement. In the end, it apparently will be GM's funeral. Worse, the US Department of Transportation won't get off the dime either.
The corals will be dead because our government is still pretty dead, even with President Obama. Obstreperous is as obstreperous does. Heckuva job, Brownie.
I never thought about NASA, that's interesting. I would like to know why airline travel - commercial & private never comes up in these debates, just cars. The days following 9/11 as I watched the 24-hr news programs, I remember 1 graphic in particular--they kept showing a map of the US with all the flight traffic over the US before and after all planes were grounded. Before the FAA? grounded all the flights you could barely even make out the individual states--just a bunch of planes covering every inch of the US map. Now expand that globally! WTF? right? I'm not saying it is not way past hard decision time for us all but come on! Lets look at ALL causes here.
Also if acid waters carry sound more efficiently than our military should be forced to stop its sonar testing because that is adding to the problem too.
Oh and lets remember this fabulous quote from the dictator-
"Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." heh..heh..
Air travel can be made as energy-efficient as you want. Remember that 10 years ago a guy flew across the English Channel on pedal power alone. I would love to see a Southwest Airlines flight where everybody pedals, but we don't have to be quite that cheap. A factor of 2 or a factor of 10 improvement in energy efficiency would be welcome.
agreed - just put it all out there because unless the majority are forced into it I don't think we have a chance - the only airline news I hear about lately is not about energy-efficiency..just heroes and pay-toilets
It appears that none of you have been following the anti-Heathrow expansion movement in England? Greenpeace even held a sit in on a runway. Can you imagine what would happen if they tried that here?
Air travel is about as carbon emitting as a 1-2 occupant compact car, but much less efficient than a 50-passenger bus (about 350 passenger miles per gal) or trains - especially electric trains.
---USAn---
NASA could have its hydrogen made from water using nuclear power instead of natural gas. That would reduce its carbon footprint some.
Do you have any idea how fast nuclear subs are? Neither do I, its classified, but I've heard stories of subs covering vast distances in incredible time. We can replace intercity air wih electric high speed rail, and intercontinental air with high speed nuclear ships. BTW, just think about how much fuel FedEx and UPS burn just for the convenience of overnight packages.
BTW #2. There was a huge protest about the Heathrow Airport expansion. People are aware that jets produce lots of CO2.
This would be a good time to loft a time capsule to the moon telling of our attempt at civilization. It should contain the best we had to offer.
It should be placed center perihelion, if that is a correct term , so that it would reflect the suns rays flashing earth when the sun,earth and moon line up.
The civilizations that ended 120,000 years ago at the end of the emian interglacial left no trace. Maybe we can.
I understand the goal that you want. How about, "perpendicular to the ecliptic"?
When the sun, earth and moon line up exactly, a lunar eclipse occurs and no sunlight will be available to be reflected.
This terrible photograph tells a thousand words about the quality of our waters. Imagine having your skin stripped bare by chemicals in the water you bathe in- this is the quality of life we are subjecting wildlife to by having lax laws regarding economic and environmental practices.
It does nothing of the sort. It is one picture. Animals and fish all get sick and get diseases, just like people. That nuclear testing we did in the oceans have probably done a ton of damage, it probably has radiation poisoning. Who knows.
Sheesh!! That is what gray whales look like!
From Wikipedia: "The Gray Whale is a dark slate-gray in color and covered by characteristic gray-white patterns, scars left by parasites which drop off in the cold feeding grounds."
"Carbon Emissions Creating Acidic Oceans Not Seen Since Dinosaurs"
Okay fine, so every 4000 years the oceans change in acidity. So what? We're human, we survived whatever fate took the dinosaurs, and we'll survive whatever fate takes the whales. No one even eats them any more, so I don't see what everyone is getting so upset about. Plenty of other fish in the sea!
You are joking right? I mean, are you being sarcastic?
How do you mean "we survived whatever fate took the dinosaurs?" There are millions of years separating our existence on earth.
And as far as regarding species we don't eat as dispensable-- how can you be so short-sighted? Whether you choose to recognize it or not, as humans we are very much a part of this natural world. We are connected to it in every way. (Remember the food chain?- and that's just one way in which we are connected.) Even if we do not eat a certain species, it still plays a special role in the balancing of it's ecosystem. Let's consider the honeybee-- we don't eat them either and they annoy us by buzzing around and occasionally stinging people- so let's hope they're on their way out too. Oh, but wait, that WILL affect our quality of life- so maybe they are worth keeping around. Or what about man's best friend, few people serve them up on their dinner plates- but oh how I'd miss Rover's friendly greeting when I get home. Best to keep him around too-- at least until we develop a robot similar enough to a real dog that I won't notice the difference. Am I to assume that you assign value to creatures based on their immediate benefit to human life?
But I'll go along with your philosophy, for kicks. Just that, after thinking about it-- no one is eating you either. So, can we get rid of you?
If you were being sarcastic, I apologize-- it just didn't translate.
Hopefully people realize the oceans are actually alkaline, and the pH dropping makes it less alkaline, but not acidic.
I thought the oceans were unable to absorb much more CO2 which would accelerate the rise in atmospheric CO2; at least according to some articles I have read here. Many doubted this, and apparently so do the authors of this article.
Of course, it could be that rising sea levels over the past 12,000 years have contributed to a lower pH, all that freshwater from melted ice, and not higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere. But then, mans CO2 is to blame for rising sea levels levels over the last 150 years, so lets just forget what happened over the previous 11,850 years.
There is 41,000 GT of CO2 in the oceans, 780 GT Co2 in the atmposhere. Man releases 8 GT of CO2 (half from fossil fuels and cement production), half of which stays in the atmosphere, for centuries they say. About 30% of mans CO2 falls into the oceans as rain or is absorbed, that is 2.4 GT of CO2 per year, or about 1/20,000 the of the total CO2 in the oceans.
That 0.02% per year added CO2 from man. Of course, some say that of the 92 GT CO2 absorbed by the oceans, only 1% of that is from man as that is mans contribution to the 780 GT of CO2 (by math where nature does not discriminate against mans CO2 and selectively leaves it in the atmopshere). That would bring it down to 0.008% oceans increased CO2 per year from man.
Of course nature is perfectly in balance, and her 90 GT of CO2 into the oceans is offset by the oceans releasing 90 GT into the atmosphere. But if nature is in balance, and in equilibrium, how did the sea levels rise and CO2 increase 12,000 years before man began burning fossil fuels?
Did we have pH meters when the dinosauers were roaming the earth? Of course not, so thats an estimate with large uncertainties that can not be verified. Not hard science. But we have a 0.1 drop since the industrial age. But we did not have pH meter at the beginning of the industrial age, unless we want to use the measurements by scientists of the 19th century who made the CO2 measurements we discarded as being too high. The pH meter was invented in 1934.
Also, is not man part of nature. Why the discrimination?.
Inconvenient Truth, you must be getting a kick out of posting "scientific sounding" garbage and hoping to bamboozle people around here. Either that or someone is feeding you this drivel, or you have convinced yourself that you are somehow smarter than all the scientists who study the climate, the atmosphere, the oceans, marine life, etc., COMBINED!
Scientists have been warning of 'acidification' of the oceans - which means the pH dropping. 'Acidification' does not mean it's turned into acid. Marine life that has adapted to live in a certain pH range over long periods of time suddenly face a decreasing pH. The problem with all these man-made changes is the rate at which they happen - life cannot adapt to these changes fast enough.
What is your point about doing the math on CO2 emission and a part of it being absorbed by the ocean? That it is too small and therefore would not have any effect?
You think the only way to measure pH is with a pH meter? Haven't you heard of estimates? Or concepts such as gas-liquid equilibrium?
Speaking of 19th century scientists, ever heard of a man called Arrhenius? Svante August Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist published a paper in 1896 (that's right, 1896) where he wondered about the effect of all the additional CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by burning all that coal at that time. He predicted that the climate would become warmer - due to greenhouse effect, and he even made some rough estimates. Of course he knew that the atmosphere was more than 99% made of nitrogen and oxygen and that CO2 was only in parts per million - but that was his genius. I mention Arrhenius only to counter the deniers' claim that somehow all this climate change concept started in recent years.
You say man is part of nature and ask, why the discrimination? Should I even try to answer that question? Nah...it's too silly.
"Swedish scientist published a paper in 1896 (that's right, 1896) where he wondered about the effect of all the additional CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by burning all that coal at that time."
Of course, there was no peer review in those days, not that this is a bad thing, and wondering is hardly scientific. He might not have been published today as Big Oil might have censored him. But yes, to his credit, he identified CO2 as a GHG, and he probably recognized the urban island heat effect if he lived in a city.
"You think the only way to measure pH is with a pH meter? Haven't you heard of estimates? Or concepts such as gas-liquid equilibrium?"
Forgive me for my desire for accuracy in measurements rather than estimates. The pH meter was the first accurate test at the time. When you talk of change in pH of 0.1 since the start of the Industrial Age, and your uncertainty in measurement exceeds the difference you observe, some would call this a statistical uncertainty. They measured CO2 as well, with results much higher than today, but these are discarded as being inaccurate.
"or you have convinced yourself that you are somehow smarter than all the scientists who study the climate, the atmosphere, the oceans, marine life, etc., COMBINED!"
Actually, much of my information comes from scientists, those who do not get the headlines from the alarmist MSM.
"Marine life that has adapted to live in a certain pH range over long periods of time suddenly face a decreasing pH. The problem with all these man-made changes is the rate at which they happen - life cannot adapt to these changes fast enough."
I don't know, they seem to have adopted to the end of the ice age and higher sea levels. And how do we know they are not adopting. Those that survive evolve. Some biologists today suggest species can evolve quickly. Bacteria seem able to adopt quickly to antibiotics. We do not have good historical data on PH to say the changes we have observed are rapid.
"What is your point about doing the math on CO2 emission and a part of it being absorbed by the ocean? That it is too small and therefore would not have any effect?"
Just giving persepective and to show mans role may not be as significant as some would like us to think.
>>>Jim Eldon wrote: Someone hasn't done their arithmetic. There's just not enough manmade CO2 to have caused both the atmospheric and the oceanic changes that are being claimed.
Wrong! All IPCC reports routinely subtract a large amount (e.g., in 2001, it was 1.8 Gigatonnes of carbon - that's 1 followed by 9 zeroes) of emissions that is absorbed by the ocean, and only the rest is used in their mass balance calculations - of how much is produced, how much goes into the atmosphere, how much gets absorbed by trees, etc. One thing they didn't do (not sure if they started doing now) was to consider potential negative impacts of this absorption on marine biocapacity. So, if anything, many of their projections have been underestimating the danger.
FOR THE LAST WOLVERINE by James Dickey
They will soon be down
To one, but he still will be
For a little while still will be stopping
The flakes in the air with a look,
Surrounding himself with the silence
Of whitening snarls. Let him eat
The last red meal of the condemned
To extinction, tearing the guts
From an elk. Yet that is not enough
For me. I would have him eat
The heart, and, from it, have an idea
Stream into his gnawing head
That he no longer has a thing
To lose, and so can walk
Out into the open, in the full
Pale of the sub-Arctic sun
Where a single spruce tree is dying
Higher and higher. Let him climb it
With all his meanness and strength.
Lord, we have come to the end
Of this kind of vision of heaven,
As the sky breaks open
Its fans around him and shimmers
And into its northern gates he rises
Snarling complete in the joy of a weasel
With an elk's horned heart in his stomach
Looking straight into the eternal
Blue, where he hauls his kind. I would have it all
My way: at the top of that tree I place
The New World's last eagle
Hunched in mangy feathers giving
Up on the theory of flight.
Dear God of the wildness of poetry, let them mate
To the death in the rotten branches,
Let the tree sway and burst into flame
And mingle them, crackling with feathers,
In crownfire. Let something come
Of it something gigantic legendary
Rise beyond reason over hills
Of ice SCREAMING that it cannot die,
That it has come back, this time
On wings, and will spare no earthly thing:
That it will hover, made purely of northern
Lights, at dusk and fall
On men building roads: will perch
On the moose's horn like a falcon
Riding into battle into holy war against
Screaming railroad crews: will pull
Whole traplines like fibers from the snow
In the long-jawed night of fur trappers.
But, small, filthy, unwinged,
You will soon be crouching
Alone, with maybe some dim racial notion
Of being the last, but none of how much
Your unnoticed going will mean:
How much the timid poem needs
The mindless explosion of your rage,
The glutton's internal fire the elk's
Heart in the belly, sprouting wings,
The pact of the "blind swallowing
Thing," with himself, to eat
The world, and not to be driven off it
Until it is gone, even if it takes
Forever. I take you as you are
And make of you what I will,
Skunk-bear, carcajou, bloodthirsty
Non-survivor.
Lord, let me die but not die
Out.
Copyright © 1966 by James Dickey
Reforest the Earth. Convert ranch land into forest. Ban grass lawns. Ban housing in desert areas. Require all lawns to be woodland or food producing garden. More forests will suck up more CO2. Gardens will provide local food production. Require a percentage of all food in grocery stores to be locally sourced. Conserve. Ban SUV's and vehicles that get crappy gas mileage. Recycle them into wind turbines. Don't have children. Reduce the population, reduce the carbon footprint of humanity. Bring back rail in the US. It seems like every town in eastern Europe has a working electric tram system, and those are the poor European nations, while very few cities in the US offer anything as efficient.
HelpUsObi, great suggestions all!(except one: I happen to believe one child per loving couple will be great - when the rich reduce their consumption, a lot of the problems can be tackled). And you are not even talking of newer, more efficient technologies yet! Even with reduced consumption, there is room for replacing older, inefficient technologies with better ones - of course, making sure the total footprint goes down.
Grassland actually stores more carbon than forests. You will earn more carbon credits by converting your woodland to grass lawns or golf courses.
Under the new food safety bill, all food production facilities will be regulated by the Federal government. Your gardens must be registered and may be inspected (no pets). Carbon trading will make it more profitable to convert cropland to forests (or golf courses). Hence, we will have less food and food prices will go up.
Being dependent on local food production makes you more susceptible to weather. If your area has a drought or flood, you will go hungry, even if you can afford the food.
Wind turbines are mostly made outside the US. The blades are fiberglass, meaning oil must be used. The windmills must be anchored in concrete, tons of concrete per windmill, scattered all over the country side. Roads will need to be made to access the windmills for maintenance. Hundreds and thousands of miles of newly paved roads. Also, the turbines/blades are noisy. And don't forget, you need a back up power source for when the wind does not blow (burning coal or gas). When the fan blades ice up and then the wind picks up, your country stroll will involve ducking the ice being flung at 200 mph. Pity the poor birds and animals.
We no longer make trains in the US. The trains must be imported.
Hitler and Stalin tried to reduce population, that didn't work out so well, maybe you should propose how to do that.
Better rethink this.
Inconvenient Truth, this comment of yours seems shorter than usual. Also, it's highly illustrative of your thinking - almost like a snapshot of your thinking. Excellent! Now, let me move on to pointing out why you are wrong: :)
>>Grassland actually stores more carbon than forests. You will earn more carbon credits by converting your woodland to grass lawns or golf courses.
Of all your preposterous claims, this one takes the cake. Let me introduce you to a concept called "Ecological Footprint". Basically it's a measure of our demand for the various resources - converted into an equivalent land area, sort of as an indicator, but more like an accounting tool. For accounting purposes, the following land types are used: cropland, forest, pasture, fisheries, and built-up land—that provide economically useful concentrations of renewable resources. (yes, even fisheries get assigned a 'land area'). Since all land areas are not the same, researchers use a concept called "equivalence factor" - basically it's a measure of productivity of each land type (which is directly related to its carbon absorbing potential) relative to the world average potential productivity of all bioproductive areas. Cropland, for example, is more productive than grassland or pasture, and so has a larger equivalence factor than pasture. Cropland has an equivalence factor of just over 2.0, forests have an equivalent factor of 1.4, AND your grassland has an equivalence factor of 0.5 - that is, roughly 1/3rd that of forests and about 1/4th that of croplands. Of course, not all pastures and croplands are the same all over the world - so there is another parameter called "yield factor" that is used to normalize a specific country's land to the global average. Anyway, you get the drift.
Reading your other points almost feels like I am sitting in a school debate club - where the topic is 'assigned' by the teacher, and the poor students have to argue for or against something, even if their personal beliefs are different. So they try to come up with all kinds of arguments - usually looking pretty desperate to counter the opponent's points. I have to ask you this - do you really believe what you have written here?
We all make mistakes - but if I were you, having made a ridiculous statement such as "Grassland actually stores more carbon than forests. You will earn more carbon credits by converting your woodland to grass lawns or golf courses" in a public forum, and having my bluff called, I would take a sabbatical from posting comments, go back to educating myself for a while. The world can wait, surely.
My understanding of carbon trading and carbon credits is it has nothing to do with ecological foot print or common sense. You are right, it is absurd to convert cropland to grassland, unless you want to earn carbon credits in a carbon credit bubble. But the same folks who do derivative trading are driving the carbon credit and trading scheme.
As for carbon storage, here is my source anyways:
http://www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSreports/07Apr/RL31432.pdf
"Not all land use changes have comparable carbon consequences. ..... in temperate zones, carbon sequestration might actually increase if native grassland replaces forest, since temperate grasslands store 50% more carbon on average than do temperate forests; but, if the temperate deforestation is for crop production, less carbon would be sequestered, since croplands store only half as much carbon on average as temperate forests.... "
Of course, I don't think you can cut the grass or use it for grazing (grin) to earn the credits, so might be hard to find that golf ball.
As for everything else, probelms with wind farms, trains (I am pro trains), food safety acts impact on small farmers, the dangers of relying too much on locally grown food and government regulating how much comes from local sources, yeah, thats what I believe at the moment until I learn otherwise.
Grow grass on your rooftops.
The causes of the oceans being out of whack are:
Agricultural pesticide and herbicide runoff.
Industrial toxic waste.
Human waste.
Overfishing.
Trash accumulation, like the Texas sized Pacific Garbage Vortex.
None of this is mentioned in this article, or much anywhere these days, now that AGW has forced it's way into the spotlight. Therein lies the rub because these are the issues that we should be doing something about.
The actual causes of oceanic acidification are listed above, while the reasons that an increase, or even a decrease in atmospheric CO2, causing a change in PH are negligible, are as follows.
CO2 is involved in a chemical reaction producing carbonic acid but the atmospheric and aqueous dilution factor renders this reaction negligible. Pressure and temperature dictate how much CO2 the oceans can hold in solution. Ironically, higher oceanic temperatures equals lower concentrations of CO2 while lower oceanic temperatures equals higher concentrations of CO2. Given that the atmospheric pressure is realtively constant, temperature is the deciding factor in soluble CO2 concentrations. Putting more CO2 into the atmosphere will not affect the amount of CO2 that the oceans will abosorb. When oceanic temperatures rise, they actually release CO2, for which plants are surely grateful.
CO2 released by a past volcanic event as a cause of global oceanic PH changes is purely conjecture and speculation, relying on a very limited historic sampling. There have been many ups and downs in atmospheric CO2 concentrations throughout history and so far I have not seen an empirical correlation to atmospheric CO2 and significant changes to oceanic PH.
Decomposition of Roundup herbicide (glyphosate), ultimately results in water, phosphate and...CARBONIC ACID. How many other agricultural or industrial chemicals released into the environment are outright acidic or decompose into acids generally or carbonic acid specifically?
Cutting CO2 emissions will do nothing about this and if more agricultural land is devoted to crops for bio-fuel production to ostensibly curb CO2 emissions, the increased use of Roundup and other herbicides on those GMO crops will only produce more carbonic acid to ultimately runoff into the oceans resulting in increased acidification. Kinda ironical huh?
Yes, we seriously need to clean up our act and reduce all pollution as much as we can, but in reality, CO2 doesn't even begin to scratch the surface compared to all of the real toxins pumped into our environment every day.
I forgot to mention some of the most harmful fossil fuel emissions like carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and benzene, all of which ultimately and readily turn to acids, as well as petro-chemical fertilizers that contain nitrogen and phosphates which result in algae blooms, and algae excrete glycolic acid which is very acidic and soluble.
The point is that there are a number of more serious and viable vectors to be concerned about, for lowering the PH of the oceans, than CO2.
And if human beings had lived like us Indians then more than quite possibily they wouldn't be destroying the earth by their own hands. The destruction of the earth is foretold in our prophecies, and the prophecies of many other peoples so this is expected.
Very little actually works over a long period of time when it comes to living upon the earth. When "Money" was invented that was pretty much it as through all Cause & Effect you have this world as it is now.
There were Tribes who did not desire to learn the knowledge of the arriving Europeans because they thought such knowledge was forbidden. It is interesting they had the concept of forbidden knowledge. Forbidden by whom?
Perhaps they were right? Perhaps they were far more right than they knew? The
Prophet's of Israel said the increase in knowledge but they did not talk about this thing in any good light at all & thus the wisdom of Creator/God.
In the Book of Revelation it is written God is the destroyer of those who pollute the earth. Uh-oh, actually sounds like Creator/God is a tree hugger.
Prophecy interpretations are that Jesus will either refurbish this earth or there will be a new Heavens & earth.
However he decides to do things is fine with me.
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
Why do you refer to "God" as a "he"? And the bible? C'mon, get real! It's a European book, created in the 4th century in Rome, present day Italy. It's a fiction based on earlier written texts. European Theological fiction.
And I laugh at how you start out: "if human beings had lived like us Indians..." What, are "Indians" not human beings? You are confused! We need to quit separating ourselves into races. We are one people, all of us human beings. And we are not separated from any form of life. All brothers and sisters in life.
I do like your ending however. Very positive. Perhaps your angry, prophetic, "tree-hugger" "God" will also take the stance that "it's always best to forgive". Then perhaps "he" won't destroy us "polluters".
Everybody knows those polluting dinosaurs created this problem to begin with by producing so much carbon dioxide, now look @ the problem. Oh those dinosaurs......I say we dig them up and tax them all!