3 ms·
The Pacific Ocean is so acidic that it's dissolving Dungeness crabs' shells
- jfengel 7y agoMy big question was "how much", and TFA was really thin on that. The actual article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720301200?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972... And the answer, from the abstract: we estimate an 8.3% increase in external carapace dissolution over the last two decades
- istorical 7y agoOcean acidification should be much more worrying to us than sea level rise or even drought and food price increases. Cities can be moved but large swathes of phytoplankton going exctinct is much more concerning considering they provide 50 to 85 percent of oxyten. We can live in a world without wild animals or fish in the ocean but we can't live in a world without a functioning carbon cycle. Would love to see a survey on what percentage of political leaders are educated on sea level rise or carbon emissions vs threat of ocean acidification. Seems like a failure of our media or our educational institutions that this isn't more widely known.
- frogperson 7y agoI recently finished reading a book called The Sixth Extinction. It has an entire chapter devoted to ocean acidification, it's causes and repercussions. The whole thing was terrifying and weirdly calming at the same time. On one hand it feels too late to do anything meaningful to even effect the anthropocene. On the other hand, if the course is unchangeable, them maybe the only thing left to do is to sit back and watch the train wreck happen.
- rdtwo 7y agoIt won’t take a huge shift to really knock the ocean out of balance. Anyone who has ever had a saltwater tank knows how sensitive the balance is to minor swings and how fast the entire system can crash