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Ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years

337 points by anon1385 13y ago

NatW 13y ago
some context: e.g: http://www.sciencebuzz.org/sites/default/files/images/OA_Graph_small.jpg http://www.sciencebuzz.org/sites/default/files/images/OA_Gra... more context: http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/chart.png http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/chart.png ..and a frightening projection: http://oceanacidification12.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/4/2/14422224/2688836_orig.jpg?0 http://oceanacidification12.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/4/2/14422...
AsymetricCom 13y ago
Kind of off-topic: if ocean temperatures are increasing, isn't this the same thing as the ocean having more potential energy? If energy generation from waves was increased substantially, would this cool the ocean or act as a dampener against the earth's rotation? Perhaps both?
- whatshisface 13y ago
  Heat, ocean waves and the earth's rotation are so many orders of magnitude apart in terms of frequency that a machine designed to dampen one could not possibly have an effect on the others.
kmfrk 13y ago
I hope you like jellyfish.
- kintamanimatt 13y ago
  In case anybody is wondering how jellyfish are relevant: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/rise-of-jellyfish-reveals-sickness-of-world-s-oceans-1.1310029 http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/rise-of-jellyfish-reveals-...
- memracom 13y ago
  Can humans eat jellyfish? Maybe part of the solution is to shift overfishing to the jellyfish population.
  - beambot 13y ago
    Personally, I love jellyfish salad (a common chinese dish).
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    Some jellyfish.
  - svachalek 13y ago
    They can be a bit like rubbery noodles if they're not thoroughly dried, or crispy like shredded cabbage if they are. I don't know if the edible ones don't sting or they do something to neutralize the stingers. (Jellyfish stingers are spring loaded and generally work quite well whether the jellyfish is alive or not.)
rubyalex 13y ago
What does 300m years mean? Is that 300 or 300 Million?
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  300 million.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
  Wasn't it 300 thousand?
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  I was confused by this, as well. Given the scale of geologic time, I'd assume they meant 300 million. But a single "M" often means thousand, especially if it's lowercase. So it's confusingly worded.
  - ksrm 13y ago
    >But a single "M" often means thousand, especially if it's lowercase. Where? I can find no reference to this.
    - jonnathanson 13y ago
      Most often in financial accounting, though conventionally, in other domains such as academia. Depending on the news outlet, some magazines and papers will also use "M" for thousand and "MM" for million, though that practice is probably dying out in the popular press. And of course, the "M" in "CPM" stands for thousand. "M" was originally an abbreviation for "mille," which is French for "thousand" (by way of Latin origins). Traditionally speaking, one "M" means thousand, and "MM" means thousand-thousand, or million. Example: http://blog.accountingcoach.com/what-does-m-and-mm-stand-for/ http://blog.accountingcoach.com/what-does-m-and-mm-stand-for...
- 13y ago
protomyth 13y ago
Can the CO2 be removed from the ocean and broken into C and O2? Is this geo-engineering we can do?
- na85 13y ago
  Not without a significant energy expenditure. But most of our energy sources of course produce CO2 and other products.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    I guess the Scifi question is can you build a nuclear ship with some apparatus that pulls the CO2 out of the ocean and breaks it into C (stored on ship) and O (released into atmosphere)?
    - na85 13y ago
      I don't see why you couldn't. Most large navies run nuclear reactors on board their ships. IIRC, nuclear submarines pull water and use a portion of reactor power to get fresh oxygen. But I'm also not sure that the reaction is as easy as it sounds. First of all, manufacturing such a ship would likely cause a great deal of greenhouse emissions. Would the ship's benefit offset the pollution it implicitly creates as it is built? How about the pollution generated by its operation? No engine emissions, but when the reactor gets decommissioned it'll have to be buried, likely by diesel-powered equipment and covered in concrete which is manufactured in a dirty process. Tugboats aren't nuclear powered. Re-fuelling apparatuses aren't nuclear-powered. Crew will produce waste, reactor needs to be cooled which introduces unwanted heat to the water, etc etc etc. Would it even be economically possible to build/operate? How many ships would be required to make a measurable impact?
    - pygy_ 13y ago
      You could build one ship, but you'd need to build and power millions of them to have any impact. You'd have to reduce the CO2 resulting from the combustion of coal and oil during the whole industrial era, or maybe a bit less, but it gives you an idea of the magnitude of the task at hand.
Smudge 13y ago
"This story has broken an embargo and will shortly be taken down. It will be relaunched to the site at 6.00am BST. Apologies" Interesting.
- civilian 13y ago
  In case they will be taking it down, here is the text: Ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years Overfishing and pollution are part of the problem, scientists say, warning that mass extinction of species may be inevitable By Fiona Harvey in Kiel The Guardian, Thursday 3 October 2013 Coral is particularly at risk from acidification and rising sea temperatures. Photograph: Paul Jarrett/PA The oceans are more acidic now than they have been for at least 300m years, due to carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, and a mass extinction of key species may already be almost inevitable as a result, leading marine scientists warned on Thursday. An international audit of the health of the oceans has found that overfishing and pollution are also contributing to the crisis, in a deadly combination of destructive forces that are imperilling marine life, on which billions of people depend for their nutrition and livelihood. In the starkest warning yet of the threat to ocean health, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) said: "This [acidification] is unprecedented in the Earth's known history. We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure. The next mass extinction may have already begun." It published its findings in the State of the Oceans report, collated every two years from global monitoring and other research studies. Alex Rogers, professor of biology at Oxford University, said: "The health of the ocean is spiralling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought. We are seeing greater change, happening faster, and the effects are more imminent than previously anticipated. The situation should be of the gravest concern to everyone since everyone will be affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on Earth." Coral is particularly at risk. Increased acidity dissolves the calcium carbonate skeletons that form the structure of reefs, and increasing temperatures lead to bleaching where the corals lose symbiotic algae they rely on. The report says that world governments' current pledges to curb carbon emissions would not go far enough or fast enough to save many of the world's reefs. There is a time lag of several decades between the carbon being emitted and the effects on seas, meaning that further acidification and further warming of the oceans are inevitable, even if we drastically reduce emissions very quickly. There is as yet little sign of that, with global greenhouse gas output still rising. Corals are vital to the health of fisheries, because they act as nurseries to young fish and smaller species that provide food for bigger ones. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by the seas – at least a third of the carbon that humans have released has been dissolved in this way, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and makes them more acidic. But IPSO found the situation was even more dire than that laid out by the world's top climate scientists in their landmark report last week. In absorbing carbon and heat from the atmosphere, the world's oceans have shielded humans from the worst effects of global warming, the marine scientists said. This has slowed the rate of climate change on land, but its profound effects on marine life are only now being understood. Acidification harms marine creatures that rely on calcium carbonate to build coral reefs and shells, as well as plankton, and the fish that rely on them. Jane Lubchenco, former director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a marine biologist, said the effects were already being felt in some oyster fisheries, where young larvae were failing to develop properly in areas where the acid rates are higher, such as on the west coast of the US. "You can actually see this happening," she said. "It's not something a long way into the future. It is a very big problem." But the chemical changes in the ocean go further, said Rogers. Marine animals use chemical signals to perceive their environment and locate prey and predators, and there is evidence that their ability to do so is being impaired in some species. Trevor Manuel, a South African government minister and co-chair of the Global Ocean Commission, called the report "a deafening alarm bell on humanity's wider impacts on the global oceans". "Unless we restore the ocean's health, we will experience the consequences on prosperity, wellbeing and development. Governments must respond as urgently as they do to national security threats – in the long run, the impacts are just as important," he said. Current rates of carbon release into the oceans are 10 times faster than those before the last major species extinction, which was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum extinction, about 55m years ago. The IPSO scientists can tell that the current ocean acidification is the highest for 300m years from geological records. They called for strong action by governments to limit carbon concentrations in the atmosphere to no more than 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent. That would require urgent and deep reductions in fossil fuel use. No country in the world is properly tackling overfishing, the report found, and almost two thirds are failing badly. At least 70 per cent of the world's fish populations are over-exploited. Giving local communities more control over their fisheries, and favouring small-scale operators over large commercial vessels would help this, the report found. Subsidies that drive overcapacity in fishing fleets should also be eliminated, marine conservation zones set up and destructive fishing equipment should be banned. There should also be better governance of the areas of ocean beyond countries' national limits. The IPSO report also found the oceans were being "deoxygenated" – their average oxygen content is likely to fall by as much as 7 per cent by 2100, partly because of the run-off of fertilisers and sewage into the seas, and also as a side-effect of global warming. The reduction of oxygen is a concern as areas of severe depletion become effectively dead. Rogers said: "People are just not aware of the massive roles that the oceans play in the Earth's systems. Phytoplankton produce 40 per cent of the oxygen in the atmosphere, for example, and 90 per cent of all life is in the oceans. Because the oceans are so vast, there are still areas we have never really seen. We have a very poor grasp of some of the biochemical processes in the world's biggest ecosystem." The five chapters of which the State of the Oceans report is a summary have been published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, a peer-reviewed journal.
genwin 13y ago
> imperilling marine life, on which billions of people depend for their nutrition and livelihood Nature always win in the end! Hopefully the plunge in human population can be handled mostly by attrition.
- jussij 13y ago
  If things get too bad for too many, I suspect the result in an increase in war and conflict.
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    What will make things really bad, but for many less people. Confirming the GP's argument, that Nature wins in the end. Winning is easier when you are not fighting anything.
    - e12e 13y ago
      Keep in mind that the last world war resulted in nuclear attacks. I don't think we have any guarantee that "mutually assured destruction" will be enough to save us if there is another truly global war between the remaining super/nuclear powers. And now we also have stuff like "depleted" uranium rounds which have pretty serious consequences on future generations.
colmvp 13y ago
The Seattle Times did an interactive article about this very subject last month: http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/ http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/...
- wiredfool 13y ago
  I read that just after reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Capitol trilogy. (40 days of rain, 50 degrees below, 60 days...) Yeah, it's science fiction, but it's plausible hard sf, not space opera. And the Time article sounded way too close to some of what was happening in the books. Ocean acidification was mentioned somewhat in passing in the last book as something that's very hard to reverse, partially because of the chemistry and partially because of the sheer amount of chemicals that would be required. That was in contrast to a multi hundred billion dollar salt transport to restart the thermo haline circulation.
- gtani 13y ago
  that was a really good series, including coverage of Puget Sound, which I thought was carefully protected, but you can only do so much Oyster breeders forced to move: http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/oysters-hit-hard/ http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/... rising levels of caffeine, PCBs and antibiotics in the Sound's waters: (I can't google for recent articles, but STimes has written about it last 6 months http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2002918517_pollution08m.html http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2002918517_pollution0...
moultano 13y ago
In a bit of cosmic irony, most fossil fuel was created from mass extinctions that accompanied changes in ocean chemistry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event
- perlpimp 13y ago
  Very cool I guess we will have to adapt. As current Industrial Complex is too large and unwieldy to react to such thing.
  - ommunist 13y ago
    The Industrial Complex is far too small to be even considered among such players as Litosphere and Biosphere.
    - Daishiman 13y ago
      This is absolutely false. The entire academic world says otherwise with a fantastically high margin of confidence.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
The short-term scenario is not good, but from the little I know about aquatic biology/chemistry, it might not be as catastrophical as the article pictures it. Increased CO2 levels should just cause algae/cyanobacteria blooms, which will balance CO2/O2 levels back again and foster primary consumers (solving over-fishing as a bonus). Also, H2CO3 gets buffered by all the Ca/Mg content in the ocean, so I don't think it's even possible for the pH to just drop forever (as in the graph someone posted in one of the comments here).
- dwiel 13y ago
  Do you know why this isn't already happening at a pace to keep up with the changes they are measuring? Do you expect that the effects you mention are currently, but will soon catch up? I am honestly curious.
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    what you're looking for is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equatio... A predator-prey model is essentially never just a stable population for both. Instead, you go through periods of increasing prey -> increasing predators -> decreasing prey -> decreasing predators. Here the prey would be atmospheric carbon dioxide and the predators would be the plankton.
    - jongraehl 13y ago
      So atmospheric carbon breeds?
      - 001sky 13y ago
        Its an anlogy, not a syllogism. It would seem enought that Co2 may be correlated with breeding. Which may or may not be technically correct, but its at least a coherent thought.
      - thaumasiotes 13y ago
j_baker 13y ago
They talk about the oxygen content falling by 7% by 2100. This makes me wonder: let's assume the worst and earth is headed for a mass extinction event. How long do these events usually take? Are they slow processes, or does everything just die one day?
- Daishiman 13y ago
  What would happen is that the rate of biodiversity drops drastically, and organisms that are simple and adaptable (like cockroaches, algae, jellyfich, certain classes of bacteria, small mammals, urban birds) adapt and thrive and consume the rest of the flora and fauna, and permanently adapt their environments making the situation extremely fragile for more complex and delicate birds and larger vertebrates. Also, the system goes out of the equilibrium slowly developed in the last climate age. As far as crops go, we'll see new varieties of plant illnesses appearing in places we hadn't seen them before. Unpredictable weather kills the more fragile species that depend on consistent climate. Some ecosystems become simply uninhabitable; the Siberian bog swamps which are beginning to melt and release a greater amount of methane than ever before seen by humanity will not support the current crop of bacteria and plants. However there are no mammals and complex predators that can effectively fill the niche that will be created (at least not for potentially many thousands of years). So what you'll have is the growth of tall grasses and bushes that can survive on the new climate, but lacking a sustaining ecosystem, there won't be birds or large predators. Since insects develop very rapidly they will probably thrive, but their impact on the new ecosystem will not be predictable. A lot of land probably won't be able to support crops, however the current state of industrial farming leaves the land depleted, so it will take many generations to replete the topsoil necessary for more balanced wildlife to survive. Amphibians are already at a stage of mass extinction; their porous skin allows for a very large degree of exchange with chemicals in their environment, and are already suffering the effects of pesticides and herbicides in the environment. If those things biodegrade effectively that effect will not be felt in a few decades, but the change of climate will probably be too much (it already is).
  - gizmo686 13y ago
    >organisms that are simple and adaptable I would be careful with the word simple. Adaptable is the important component, and that seems to be related more to being small and not particularly specialized. Simple sounds like a description of the amount of genetic data the species contains. It has been a while since I took biology, but if I recall correctly, even small and adaptable species have a lot of genetic data. When a mass extinction event happens, once the environment stabilizes, the doors are open for large animals again, and the small ones already have the genetic complexity needed to fill those niches relatively quickly.
samstave 13y ago
Checkout this crazy theory: http://thecommonsenseshow.com/2013/03/16/the-mother-of-all-conspiracies-pt-7/ http://thecommonsenseshow.com/2013/03/16/the-mother-of-all-c...
ancarda 13y ago
While I recognise this question might be abrasive, I feel compelled to ask it. Why does this belong on Hacker News? This isn't technology. This isn't legal news (i.e. software patents). This is in no way related to Hacker News. I have no problem with interesting articles being upvoted, but I feel we need a place to put these or a tagging system similar to lobsters.
- efnx 13y ago
  One could argue that this would affect any number of technological subjects. From the obvious 'no oceans, no life, no technology' to the subtle change in stocks due to the report that the article is covering.
- vincie 13y ago
  HN attracts some highly intelligent and resourceful people who do things that are radical and can change the way all other people do things. And I think these are the very people who can help to fix these sorts of real world problems.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > Why does this belong on Hacker News? You may want to re-read the guidelines. > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > I have no problem with interesting articles being upvoted What topics do you think should be on HN?
- obstacle1 13y ago
  >This is in no way related to Hacker News The vast majority of "show HN: my new disruptive pseudo-plagiarized wheel-reinventing RESTful scalable .js + go single-page site framework" or "_insert_valley_startup_here_ plans to revolutionize _trivial_consumer_SaaS_niche_" posts have little to do with actual hacking, either. Few complain about those. Here we have a post that points out a massive systemic problem we're facing as a species for which we have no current solution. Pretty sure we're in hacker territory. Much more so than in the case of the Yet-Another-Web-Framework or Disruptive-Instagram-For- Squirrels crap we normally get on the front page.
efnx 13y ago
It's sad to me that this is not the top post. It seems that fact is a reflection of the problem at hand. We don't care about the oceans as much as we care about Twitter. :(
- colmvp 13y ago
  It is the top post.
  - efnx 13y ago
    We did it! Maybe there is hope...
    - berntb 13y ago
      I don't know where you live, but the Swedish Green party still want to immediately start phasing out nuclear power. More CO2 for the world. (If the seas do have an ecological crash which makes the remaining eco systems go down, then any surviving Green party members will probably argue the advantage of this, pushing their carts down "The Road".) So, no hope. :-) :-(
      - prewett 13y ago
        I don't see nuclear power as a great solution. The waste contaminates the environment for thousands of years. And the system is not fault-tolerant, failing in ways which render the environment uninhabitable for who knows how long (Chernobyl, Fukushima). Yeah, it doesn't generate CO2. But at least you can live in a hotter world, can't live with nuclear waste/fallout. (Also, we don't know that a hotter climate is bad, we've never tried it before)
        eloff 13y ago
        Are you sure that's an objective assessment of the relative risks, numerically speaking, and not just a common human failing of seeing slow acting, nebulous threats like climate change as being less dangerous than fast and scary threats like nuclear disasters? Nuclear seems the less dangerous bedfellow to me.
JumpCrisscross 13y ago
How credible a source is IPSO, the author of the report backing this story? From what I can tell it's a U.K. non-profit hosted by the Zoological Society of London [1], itself a U.K. non-profit [2]. Alex Rogers, IPSO's Scientific Director [1], is also a Professor in Conservation Biology at the University of Oxford [3]. Paper article is based on: http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/Bijma-et-al-2013.pdf http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/Bijma-et-al-2013.pdf [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Programme_on_the_State_of_the_Ocean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Programme_on_the_... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoological_Society_of_London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoological_Society_of_London [3] http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/view/rogers_ad.htm http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/view/rogers_ad.htm
- Aloisius 13y ago
  Well ocean acidification is real and proven. At this point all we're arguing about is how many years we have left.
  - noonespecial 13y ago
    This is certainly true, but amount matters. If its 300 years then we have a problem, if its 3000, maybe not so much. Articles like this do not help give perspective.
    - cwoods 13y ago
      I guess there will be many who won't care about 300 years as well, since they won't be around.
    - venomsnake 13y ago
      Not at all ... if the acidification is moving some positive feedback loops (and it seems it is) we have much less.
      - ars 13y ago
        There are almost no positive feedback loops in nature, for the simple reason that they tend to get triggered by random variations and feedback on themself till they reach limit and convert to negative loops.
shire 13y ago
And this might get worse because population is increasing so rapidly.
eonil 13y ago
I think radioactive garbages in Pacific ocean from Fukushima would do better job.
- eloff 13y ago
  Are you high? What does radioactivity from Fukushima have to do with ocean acidification?
SCAQTony 13y ago
Let's presume it is all true. Gizmag quoted a study that 15-container ships (just 15) dole out the same amount of pollution as 760-million cars. (I shit you not): http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/ http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/ God knows what coal and power plants produce but nonetheless, why does the IPSO and The Guardian have to scare the shit out of everyone instead of offering some sort of real, solution? If this is all true and this is as dire as they say, one would think or suggest that the military take over the shipping duties of these 15-container-ships and use 15-nuclear-powered vessels instead? this would remove the carbon footprint of these polluting vessels and/or 750-million cars per day with way less waste? Next, onto the power plants instead of the barbecues and lawn mowers?
- icegreentea 13y ago
  The study talks about other pollutants (like Sulfur Oxide and other particulates), but not CO2. The amount of CO2 emited by these ships is not stated in the article, but can be estimated from their rate of fuel consumption. That said, in general ships are more efficient than cars, especially at this scale. It's entirely likely that the CO2 per mass of freight per distance covered by container ship is of the order of magnitude, or lower than in a car.
- nrmilstein 13y ago
  Not all journalism or scientific reporting is about presenting solutions, and pointing out the problems (especially of this severity, if the article is to be believed) is an important step. Furthermore, as the article says, I don't think anyone knows the solution. Even if we drastically reduce carbon emissions, it probably won't help. I often find an attitude of dismissal and disdain towards environmental reporting like this on Hacker News. I think it stems from how we're so used to the optimism and can-do attitude of Silicon Valley that it's hard to digest how we may have created a problem we can't solve. It feels better to think "oh, they're just not being innovative enough in their solutions" and present oneself as above the fray. But the stark reality, if the science is to be believed, is that we're on the path towards major environmental changes in the foreseeable future, and as of right now, we don't have a solution.
graycat 13y ago
Yup, why do I suspect that this article is more of the same from the big movement to claim that humans are evil, carbon is filthy, filthy humans are ruining the planet with evil carbon, or evil humans are ruining the planet with filthy carbon, and the only hope for the planet is massive, UN directed carbon cap and trade to send massive amounts of money from the evil, rich nations to the noble, poor nations, and that humans should junk their cars and either walk or use bicycles, and the rich nations should feel ashamed and guilty for their grossly excessive use of the finite resources of our pure, precious, pristine, delicate planet, right at the tipping point of total devastation? Do I have that about right? Or we could borrow from the Mayans and kill people and pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky or, in this case, save the planet from filthy carbon from evil humans. Or, we need a boys' band complete with uniforms to counter the sin and corruption of a pool table in town. Let's have some more flim-flam, fraud scams!
Demiurge 13y ago
Is there any reason no one is talking about terraforming seriously yet? What kind of technologies can be used to draw the CO2 out of the atmosphere, how much would it cost to make a difference?
- waps 13y ago
  Basic thermodynamics can provide a lower limit : at least 9x more energy than was gained by burning it (except for oil burned in power plants, where it'd be 6-7x, but that's not much). That seems to mean that without massive expansions in nuclear power it's just not in the cards.
  - Demiurge 13y ago
    But like with nuclear power, we don't have to do all the work. We don't need to generate electricity and then run conventional a CO2 filter. Hypothetically, if we dump 1 trillion dollars into genetic engineering, why can't we design some biological chain reaction that would do all the work?
    - waps 13y ago
      Actually I sort of like the medieval approach : government prizes. We want this done, why not create a competition ? If a company can solve this problem, document how you've done it (AFTER the fact) and present it to a board of government scientists. If they believe you, you get the prize money. And make the prize money something like $5 billion or so. Chump change for what you're asking for. Besides, it has to be an amount that would provide decades of comfort for a company of at least a dozen people + a nice reward for any investors. This worked for draining swamps in the late middle ages. It worked for building things like clocks and compasses, and these sorts of prizes is how ocean-capable ships were designed in the first place. I would argue that the (early) prizes were for 'allow a ship to navigate without any visible markers on the ground', about as nebulous a concept as 'lower atmospheric co2 by 50% - or at least prove you can do it' would be.
      - 13y ago
krugmanlol 13y ago
Bogus
krugmanlol 13y ago
The ocean itself is the biggesr destroyer of coral.
xsace 13y ago
It's like playing Sim Earth on my dad SE30 as a kid. I could never get it right and always ended up with a desert or icy planet :(
ommunist 13y ago
This is one more 'climate change' BS. It does not stop fascinate me how self important climate change advocates are. Humans are not geological factor. Besides no one really have time machine to check validity of such claims. And we know very small about actual chemistry of the oceans, especially when it is deeper than SF beaches. Disclaimer: I participated in research of lake sediments looking for insights about metal pollutant trends.
- guscost 13y ago
  One of the saddest parts of this whole saga is how the carbon dioxide alarmists have hijacked research budgets and public interest which could be spent dealing with legitimate environmental concerns.
- Daishiman 13y ago
  Wait, so you're saying that despite the fact that: - We have accurate measurements of ocean Ph and CO2 concentrations for the past 50 years - We have a clear understanding of the emissions of CO2 from manmade sources and a record that goes back since the beginning of the industrial age - We understand the effects of acidification on a large variety of ocean species - We see a trend of ocean absorbtion of CO2 absolutely consistent with out knowledge of atmospheric chemistry That means that it's BS? If you had some evidence to back up the fact as to why a set of multiple thousands of studies in oceanography are flawed when they point out to a singular trend, with a margin of confidence greater than most of the so-called scientific facts that are out there, I wouldn't think what you write is plain denialism.
16s 13y ago
The sun is going to burn out some day. When that happens, no one will care about ocean acidity.
IanDrake 13y ago
Just thinking out loud here... Can anyone think of other cases where science is used to predict the future of complex systems more than 2 years in advance? I'm not talking about moore's law, but statistical models used to predict the future. How many solar flares will there be in 2020? What will the DOW be in 2050? How many democrats will be in congress in 2021? Stuff like that. So far, the only ones I can think of are models that always spit out the same message... "The earth is dying and we're at fault." I'm just curious if anyone knows of any predictive models that weren't created to scare the shit out of people.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Can anyone think of other cases where science is used to predict the future of complex systems more than 2 years in advance? Every empirically-based plan for business, long-term policy, etc., ever. The forward-looking aspect of the science of cosmology. Lots more. > So far, the only ones I can think of are models that always spit out the same message... "The earth is dying and we're at fault." That's more indicative of the biases through which you filter the available information (perhaps most importantly, the bias in the information sources from which you receive information -- e.g., if the main place you get information about "science used to predict the future of complex systems" is the mainstream commercial media, there's a pretty heavy bias in what predictions you are going to hear about.)
  - IanDrake 13y ago
    >Every empirically-based plan for business, long-term policy, etc., ever. Sure, all business do forecasting. That's pretty simple stuff. >if the main place you get information about "science used to predict the future of complex systems" is the mainstream commercial media That's true, where should I be looking? Can you link to specific examples?
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Sure, all business do forecasting. That's pretty simple stuff. Lots of it involves predicting the behavior of complex economic and social systems using empirically-tested (scientific) methodologies. > That's true, where should I be looking? Can you link to specific examples? If you want to know about where science is used to predict the behavior of complex systems, one place to look would be the scientific literature of fields which are concerned with the behavior of complex systems.
ffrryuu 13y ago
Acidic loving species rejoice!

337 points by anon1385 13y ago

NatW 13y ago

some context: e.g: http://www.sciencebuzz.org/sites/default/files/images/OA_Graph_small.jpg http://www.sciencebuzz.org/sites/default/files/images/OA_Gra... more context: http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/chart.png http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/chart.png ..and a frightening projection: http://oceanacidification12.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/4/2/14422224/2688836_orig.jpg?0 http://oceanacidification12.weebly.com/uploads/1/4/4/2/14422...

AsymetricCom 13y ago

Kind of off-topic: if ocean temperatures are increasing, isn't this the same thing as the ocean having more potential energy? If energy generation from waves was increased substantially, would this cool the ocean or act as a dampener against the earth's rotation? Perhaps both?

whatshisface 13y ago
Heat, ocean waves and the earth's rotation are so many orders of magnitude apart in terms of frequency that a machine designed to dampen one could not possibly have an effect on the others.

kmfrk 13y ago

I hope you like jellyfish.

kintamanimatt 13y ago
In case anybody is wondering how jellyfish are relevant: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/rise-of-jellyfish-reveals-sickness-of-world-s-oceans-1.1310029 http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/rise-of-jellyfish-reveals-...
memracom 13y ago
Can humans eat jellyfish? Maybe part of the solution is to shift overfishing to the jellyfish population.
- beambot 13y ago
  Personally, I love jellyfish salad (a common chinese dish).
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Some jellyfish.
- svachalek 13y ago
  They can be a bit like rubbery noodles if they're not thoroughly dried, or crispy like shredded cabbage if they are. I don't know if the edible ones don't sting or they do something to neutralize the stingers. (Jellyfish stingers are spring loaded and generally work quite well whether the jellyfish is alive or not.)

rubyalex 13y ago

What does 300m years mean? Is that 300 or 300 Million?

JohnTHaller 13y ago
300 million.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
Wasn't it 300 thousand?
jonnathanson 13y ago
I was confused by this, as well. Given the scale of geologic time, I'd assume they meant 300 million. But a single "M" often means thousand, especially if it's lowercase. So it's confusingly worded.
- ksrm 13y ago
  >But a single "M" often means thousand, especially if it's lowercase. Where? I can find no reference to this.
  - jonnathanson 13y ago
    Most often in financial accounting, though conventionally, in other domains such as academia. Depending on the news outlet, some magazines and papers will also use "M" for thousand and "MM" for million, though that practice is probably dying out in the popular press. And of course, the "M" in "CPM" stands for thousand. "M" was originally an abbreviation for "mille," which is French for "thousand" (by way of Latin origins). Traditionally speaking, one "M" means thousand, and "MM" means thousand-thousand, or million. Example: http://blog.accountingcoach.com/what-does-m-and-mm-stand-for/ http://blog.accountingcoach.com/what-does-m-and-mm-stand-for...
13y ago

protomyth 13y ago

Can the CO2 be removed from the ocean and broken into C and O2? Is this geo-engineering we can do?

na85 13y ago
Not without a significant energy expenditure. But most of our energy sources of course produce CO2 and other products.
- protomyth 13y ago
  I guess the Scifi question is can you build a nuclear ship with some apparatus that pulls the CO2 out of the ocean and breaks it into C (stored on ship) and O (released into atmosphere)?
  - na85 13y ago
    I don't see why you couldn't. Most large navies run nuclear reactors on board their ships. IIRC, nuclear submarines pull water and use a portion of reactor power to get fresh oxygen. But I'm also not sure that the reaction is as easy as it sounds. First of all, manufacturing such a ship would likely cause a great deal of greenhouse emissions. Would the ship's benefit offset the pollution it implicitly creates as it is built? How about the pollution generated by its operation? No engine emissions, but when the reactor gets decommissioned it'll have to be buried, likely by diesel-powered equipment and covered in concrete which is manufactured in a dirty process. Tugboats aren't nuclear powered. Re-fuelling apparatuses aren't nuclear-powered. Crew will produce waste, reactor needs to be cooled which introduces unwanted heat to the water, etc etc etc. Would it even be economically possible to build/operate? How many ships would be required to make a measurable impact?
  - pygy_ 13y ago
    You could build one ship, but you'd need to build and power millions of them to have any impact. You'd have to reduce the CO2 resulting from the combustion of coal and oil during the whole industrial era, or maybe a bit less, but it gives you an idea of the magnitude of the task at hand.

Smudge 13y ago

"This story has broken an embargo and will shortly be taken down. It will be relaunched to the site at 6.00am BST. Apologies" Interesting.

civilian 13y ago
In case they will be taking it down, here is the text: Ocean acidification due to carbon emissions is at highest for 300m years Overfishing and pollution are part of the problem, scientists say, warning that mass extinction of species may be inevitable By Fiona Harvey in Kiel The Guardian, Thursday 3 October 2013 Coral is particularly at risk from acidification and rising sea temperatures. Photograph: Paul Jarrett/PA The oceans are more acidic now than they have been for at least 300m years, due to carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, and a mass extinction of key species may already be almost inevitable as a result, leading marine scientists warned on Thursday. An international audit of the health of the oceans has found that overfishing and pollution are also contributing to the crisis, in a deadly combination of destructive forces that are imperilling marine life, on which billions of people depend for their nutrition and livelihood. In the starkest warning yet of the threat to ocean health, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) said: "This [acidification] is unprecedented in the Earth's known history. We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure. The next mass extinction may have already begun." It published its findings in the State of the Oceans report, collated every two years from global monitoring and other research studies. Alex Rogers, professor of biology at Oxford University, said: "The health of the ocean is spiralling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought. We are seeing greater change, happening faster, and the effects are more imminent than previously anticipated. The situation should be of the gravest concern to everyone since everyone will be affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on Earth." Coral is particularly at risk. Increased acidity dissolves the calcium carbonate skeletons that form the structure of reefs, and increasing temperatures lead to bleaching where the corals lose symbiotic algae they rely on. The report says that world governments' current pledges to curb carbon emissions would not go far enough or fast enough to save many of the world's reefs. There is a time lag of several decades between the carbon being emitted and the effects on seas, meaning that further acidification and further warming of the oceans are inevitable, even if we drastically reduce emissions very quickly. There is as yet little sign of that, with global greenhouse gas output still rising. Corals are vital to the health of fisheries, because they act as nurseries to young fish and smaller species that provide food for bigger ones. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by the seas – at least a third of the carbon that humans have released has been dissolved in this way, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – and makes them more acidic. But IPSO found the situation was even more dire than that laid out by the world's top climate scientists in their landmark report last week. In absorbing carbon and heat from the atmosphere, the world's oceans have shielded humans from the worst effects of global warming, the marine scientists said. This has slowed the rate of climate change on land, but its profound effects on marine life are only now being understood. Acidification harms marine creatures that rely on calcium carbonate to build coral reefs and shells, as well as plankton, and the fish that rely on them. Jane Lubchenco, former director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a marine biologist, said the effects were already being felt in some oyster fisheries, where young larvae were failing to develop properly in areas where the acid rates are higher, such as on the west coast of the US. "You can actually see this happening," she said. "It's not something a long way into the future. It is a very big problem." But the chemical changes in the ocean go further, said Rogers. Marine animals use chemical signals to perceive their environment and locate prey and predators, and there is evidence that their ability to do so is being impaired in some species. Trevor Manuel, a South African government minister and co-chair of the Global Ocean Commission, called the report "a deafening alarm bell on humanity's wider impacts on the global oceans". "Unless we restore the ocean's health, we will experience the consequences on prosperity, wellbeing and development. Governments must respond as urgently as they do to national security threats – in the long run, the impacts are just as important," he said. Current rates of carbon release into the oceans are 10 times faster than those before the last major species extinction, which was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum extinction, about 55m years ago. The IPSO scientists can tell that the current ocean acidification is the highest for 300m years from geological records. They called for strong action by governments to limit carbon concentrations in the atmosphere to no more than 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent. That would require urgent and deep reductions in fossil fuel use. No country in the world is properly tackling overfishing, the report found, and almost two thirds are failing badly. At least 70 per cent of the world's fish populations are over-exploited. Giving local communities more control over their fisheries, and favouring small-scale operators over large commercial vessels would help this, the report found. Subsidies that drive overcapacity in fishing fleets should also be eliminated, marine conservation zones set up and destructive fishing equipment should be banned. There should also be better governance of the areas of ocean beyond countries' national limits. The IPSO report also found the oceans were being "deoxygenated" – their average oxygen content is likely to fall by as much as 7 per cent by 2100, partly because of the run-off of fertilisers and sewage into the seas, and also as a side-effect of global warming. The reduction of oxygen is a concern as areas of severe depletion become effectively dead. Rogers said: "People are just not aware of the massive roles that the oceans play in the Earth's systems. Phytoplankton produce 40 per cent of the oxygen in the atmosphere, for example, and 90 per cent of all life is in the oceans. Because the oceans are so vast, there are still areas we have never really seen. We have a very poor grasp of some of the biochemical processes in the world's biggest ecosystem." The five chapters of which the State of the Oceans report is a summary have been published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, a peer-reviewed journal.

genwin 13y ago

> imperilling marine life, on which billions of people depend for their nutrition and livelihood Nature always win in the end! Hopefully the plunge in human population can be handled mostly by attrition.

jussij 13y ago
If things get too bad for too many, I suspect the result in an increase in war and conflict.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  What will make things really bad, but for many less people. Confirming the GP's argument, that Nature wins in the end. Winning is easier when you are not fighting anything.
  - e12e 13y ago
    Keep in mind that the last world war resulted in nuclear attacks. I don't think we have any guarantee that "mutually assured destruction" will be enough to save us if there is another truly global war between the remaining super/nuclear powers. And now we also have stuff like "depleted" uranium rounds which have pretty serious consequences on future generations.

colmvp 13y ago

The Seattle Times did an interactive article about this very subject last month: http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/ http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/...

wiredfool 13y ago
I read that just after reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Capitol trilogy. (40 days of rain, 50 degrees below, 60 days...) Yeah, it's science fiction, but it's plausible hard sf, not space opera. And the Time article sounded way too close to some of what was happening in the books. Ocean acidification was mentioned somewhat in passing in the last book as something that's very hard to reverse, partially because of the chemistry and partially because of the sheer amount of chemicals that would be required. That was in contrast to a multi hundred billion dollar salt transport to restart the thermo haline circulation.
gtani 13y ago
that was a really good series, including coverage of Puget Sound, which I thought was carefully protected, but you can only do so much Oyster breeders forced to move: http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/oysters-hit-hard/ http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/... rising levels of caffeine, PCBs and antibiotics in the Sound's waters: (I can't google for recent articles, but STimes has written about it last 6 months http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2002918517_pollution08m.html http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2002918517_pollution0...

moultano 13y ago

In a bit of cosmic irony, most fossil fuel was created from mass extinctions that accompanied changes in ocean chemistry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event

perlpimp 13y ago
Very cool I guess we will have to adapt. As current Industrial Complex is too large and unwieldy to react to such thing.
- ommunist 13y ago
  The Industrial Complex is far too small to be even considered among such players as Litosphere and Biosphere.
  - Daishiman 13y ago
    This is absolutely false. The entire academic world says otherwise with a fantastically high margin of confidence.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

The short-term scenario is not good, but from the little I know about aquatic biology/chemistry, it might not be as catastrophical as the article pictures it. Increased CO2 levels should just cause algae/cyanobacteria blooms, which will balance CO2/O2 levels back again and foster primary consumers (solving over-fishing as a bonus). Also, H2CO3 gets buffered by all the Ca/Mg content in the ocean, so I don't think it's even possible for the pH to just drop forever (as in the graph someone posted in one of the comments here).

dwiel 13y ago
Do you know why this isn't already happening at a pace to keep up with the changes they are measuring? Do you expect that the effects you mention are currently, but will soon catch up? I am honestly curious.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  what you're looking for is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equatio... A predator-prey model is essentially never just a stable population for both. Instead, you go through periods of increasing prey -> increasing predators -> decreasing prey -> decreasing predators. Here the prey would be atmospheric carbon dioxide and the predators would be the plankton.
  - jongraehl 13y ago
    So atmospheric carbon breeds?
    - 001sky 13y ago
      Its an anlogy, not a syllogism. It would seem enought that Co2 may be correlated with breeding. Which may or may not be technically correct, but its at least a coherent thought.
    - thaumasiotes 13y ago

j_baker 13y ago

They talk about the oxygen content falling by 7% by 2100. This makes me wonder: let's assume the worst and earth is headed for a mass extinction event. How long do these events usually take? Are they slow processes, or does everything just die one day?

Daishiman 13y ago
What would happen is that the rate of biodiversity drops drastically, and organisms that are simple and adaptable (like cockroaches, algae, jellyfich, certain classes of bacteria, small mammals, urban birds) adapt and thrive and consume the rest of the flora and fauna, and permanently adapt their environments making the situation extremely fragile for more complex and delicate birds and larger vertebrates. Also, the system goes out of the equilibrium slowly developed in the last climate age. As far as crops go, we'll see new varieties of plant illnesses appearing in places we hadn't seen them before. Unpredictable weather kills the more fragile species that depend on consistent climate. Some ecosystems become simply uninhabitable; the Siberian bog swamps which are beginning to melt and release a greater amount of methane than ever before seen by humanity will not support the current crop of bacteria and plants. However there are no mammals and complex predators that can effectively fill the niche that will be created (at least not for potentially many thousands of years). So what you'll have is the growth of tall grasses and bushes that can survive on the new climate, but lacking a sustaining ecosystem, there won't be birds or large predators. Since insects develop very rapidly they will probably thrive, but their impact on the new ecosystem will not be predictable. A lot of land probably won't be able to support crops, however the current state of industrial farming leaves the land depleted, so it will take many generations to replete the topsoil necessary for more balanced wildlife to survive. Amphibians are already at a stage of mass extinction; their porous skin allows for a very large degree of exchange with chemicals in their environment, and are already suffering the effects of pesticides and herbicides in the environment. If those things biodegrade effectively that effect will not be felt in a few decades, but the change of climate will probably be too much (it already is).
- gizmo686 13y ago
  >organisms that are simple and adaptable I would be careful with the word simple. Adaptable is the important component, and that seems to be related more to being small and not particularly specialized. Simple sounds like a description of the amount of genetic data the species contains. It has been a while since I took biology, but if I recall correctly, even small and adaptable species have a lot of genetic data. When a mass extinction event happens, once the environment stabilizes, the doors are open for large animals again, and the small ones already have the genetic complexity needed to fill those niches relatively quickly.

samstave 13y ago

Checkout this crazy theory: http://thecommonsenseshow.com/2013/03/16/the-mother-of-all-conspiracies-pt-7/ http://thecommonsenseshow.com/2013/03/16/the-mother-of-all-c...

ancarda 13y ago

While I recognise this question might be abrasive, I feel compelled to ask it. Why does this belong on Hacker News? This isn't technology. This isn't legal news (i.e. software patents). This is in no way related to Hacker News. I have no problem with interesting articles being upvoted, but I feel we need a place to put these or a tagging system similar to lobsters.

efnx 13y ago
One could argue that this would affect any number of technological subjects. From the obvious 'no oceans, no life, no technology' to the subtle change in stocks due to the report that the article is covering.
vincie 13y ago
HN attracts some highly intelligent and resourceful people who do things that are radical and can change the way all other people do things. And I think these are the very people who can help to fix these sorts of real world problems.
DanBC 13y ago
> Why does this belong on Hacker News? You may want to re-read the guidelines. > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > I have no problem with interesting articles being upvoted What topics do you think should be on HN?
obstacle1 13y ago
>This is in no way related to Hacker News The vast majority of "show HN: my new disruptive pseudo-plagiarized wheel-reinventing RESTful scalable .js + go single-page site framework" or "_insert_valley_startup_here_ plans to revolutionize _trivial_consumer_SaaS_niche_" posts have little to do with actual hacking, either. Few complain about those. Here we have a post that points out a massive systemic problem we're facing as a species for which we have no current solution. Pretty sure we're in hacker territory. Much more so than in the case of the Yet-Another-Web-Framework or Disruptive-Instagram-For- Squirrels crap we normally get on the front page.

efnx 13y ago

It's sad to me that this is not the top post. It seems that fact is a reflection of the problem at hand. We don't care about the oceans as much as we care about Twitter. :(

colmvp 13y ago
It is the top post.
- efnx 13y ago
  We did it! Maybe there is hope...
  - berntb 13y ago
    I don't know where you live, but the Swedish Green party still want to immediately start phasing out nuclear power. More CO2 for the world. (If the seas do have an ecological crash which makes the remaining eco systems go down, then any surviving Green party members will probably argue the advantage of this, pushing their carts down "The Road".) So, no hope. :-) :-(
    - prewett 13y ago
      I don't see nuclear power as a great solution. The waste contaminates the environment for thousands of years. And the system is not fault-tolerant, failing in ways which render the environment uninhabitable for who knows how long (Chernobyl, Fukushima). Yeah, it doesn't generate CO2. But at least you can live in a hotter world, can't live with nuclear waste/fallout. (Also, we don't know that a hotter climate is bad, we've never tried it before)
      - eloff 13y ago
        Are you sure that's an objective assessment of the relative risks, numerically speaking, and not just a common human failing of seeing slow acting, nebulous threats like climate change as being less dangerous than fast and scary threats like nuclear disasters? Nuclear seems the less dangerous bedfellow to me.

JumpCrisscross 13y ago

How credible a source is IPSO, the author of the report backing this story? From what I can tell it's a U.K. non-profit hosted by the Zoological Society of London [1], itself a U.K. non-profit [2]. Alex Rogers, IPSO's Scientific Director [1], is also a Professor in Conservation Biology at the University of Oxford [3]. Paper article is based on: http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/Bijma-et-al-2013.pdf http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/Bijma-et-al-2013.pdf [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Programme_on_the_State_of_the_Ocean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Programme_on_the_... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoological_Society_of_London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoological_Society_of_London [3] http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/view/rogers_ad.htm http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/view/rogers_ad.htm

Aloisius 13y ago
Well ocean acidification is real and proven. At this point all we're arguing about is how many years we have left.
- noonespecial 13y ago
  This is certainly true, but amount matters. If its 300 years then we have a problem, if its 3000, maybe not so much. Articles like this do not help give perspective.
  - cwoods 13y ago
    I guess there will be many who won't care about 300 years as well, since they won't be around.
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    Not at all ... if the acidification is moving some positive feedback loops (and it seems it is) we have much less.
    - ars 13y ago
      There are almost no positive feedback loops in nature, for the simple reason that they tend to get triggered by random variations and feedback on themself till they reach limit and convert to negative loops.

shire 13y ago

And this might get worse because population is increasing so rapidly.

eonil 13y ago

I think radioactive garbages in Pacific ocean from Fukushima would do better job.

eloff 13y ago
Are you high? What does radioactivity from Fukushima have to do with ocean acidification?

SCAQTony 13y ago

Let's presume it is all true. Gizmag quoted a study that 15-container ships (just 15) dole out the same amount of pollution as 760-million cars. (I shit you not): http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/ http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/ God knows what coal and power plants produce but nonetheless, why does the IPSO and The Guardian have to scare the shit out of everyone instead of offering some sort of real, solution? If this is all true and this is as dire as they say, one would think or suggest that the military take over the shipping duties of these 15-container-ships and use 15-nuclear-powered vessels instead? this would remove the carbon footprint of these polluting vessels and/or 750-million cars per day with way less waste? Next, onto the power plants instead of the barbecues and lawn mowers?

icegreentea 13y ago
The study talks about other pollutants (like Sulfur Oxide and other particulates), but not CO2. The amount of CO2 emited by these ships is not stated in the article, but can be estimated from their rate of fuel consumption. That said, in general ships are more efficient than cars, especially at this scale. It's entirely likely that the CO2 per mass of freight per distance covered by container ship is of the order of magnitude, or lower than in a car.
nrmilstein 13y ago
Not all journalism or scientific reporting is about presenting solutions, and pointing out the problems (especially of this severity, if the article is to be believed) is an important step. Furthermore, as the article says, I don't think anyone knows the solution. Even if we drastically reduce carbon emissions, it probably won't help. I often find an attitude of dismissal and disdain towards environmental reporting like this on Hacker News. I think it stems from how we're so used to the optimism and can-do attitude of Silicon Valley that it's hard to digest how we may have created a problem we can't solve. It feels better to think "oh, they're just not being innovative enough in their solutions" and present oneself as above the fray. But the stark reality, if the science is to be believed, is that we're on the path towards major environmental changes in the foreseeable future, and as of right now, we don't have a solution.

graycat 13y ago

Yup, why do I suspect that this article is more of the same from the big movement to claim that humans are evil, carbon is filthy, filthy humans are ruining the planet with evil carbon, or evil humans are ruining the planet with filthy carbon, and the only hope for the planet is massive, UN directed carbon cap and trade to send massive amounts of money from the evil, rich nations to the noble, poor nations, and that humans should junk their cars and either walk or use bicycles, and the rich nations should feel ashamed and guilty for their grossly excessive use of the finite resources of our pure, precious, pristine, delicate planet, right at the tipping point of total devastation? Do I have that about right? Or we could borrow from the Mayans and kill people and pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky or, in this case, save the planet from filthy carbon from evil humans. Or, we need a boys' band complete with uniforms to counter the sin and corruption of a pool table in town. Let's have some more flim-flam, fraud scams!

Demiurge 13y ago

Is there any reason no one is talking about terraforming seriously yet? What kind of technologies can be used to draw the CO2 out of the atmosphere, how much would it cost to make a difference?

waps 13y ago
Basic thermodynamics can provide a lower limit : at least 9x more energy than was gained by burning it (except for oil burned in power plants, where it'd be 6-7x, but that's not much). That seems to mean that without massive expansions in nuclear power it's just not in the cards.
- Demiurge 13y ago
  But like with nuclear power, we don't have to do all the work. We don't need to generate electricity and then run conventional a CO2 filter. Hypothetically, if we dump 1 trillion dollars into genetic engineering, why can't we design some biological chain reaction that would do all the work?
  - waps 13y ago
    Actually I sort of like the medieval approach : government prizes. We want this done, why not create a competition ? If a company can solve this problem, document how you've done it (AFTER the fact) and present it to a board of government scientists. If they believe you, you get the prize money. And make the prize money something like $5 billion or so. Chump change for what you're asking for. Besides, it has to be an amount that would provide decades of comfort for a company of at least a dozen people + a nice reward for any investors. This worked for draining swamps in the late middle ages. It worked for building things like clocks and compasses, and these sorts of prizes is how ocean-capable ships were designed in the first place. I would argue that the (early) prizes were for 'allow a ship to navigate without any visible markers on the ground', about as nebulous a concept as 'lower atmospheric co2 by 50% - or at least prove you can do it' would be.
    - 13y ago

krugmanlol 13y ago

Bogus

krugmanlol 13y ago

The ocean itself is the biggesr destroyer of coral.

xsace 13y ago

It's like playing Sim Earth on my dad SE30 as a kid. I could never get it right and always ended up with a desert or icy planet :(

ommunist 13y ago

This is one more 'climate change' BS. It does not stop fascinate me how self important climate change advocates are. Humans are not geological factor. Besides no one really have time machine to check validity of such claims. And we know very small about actual chemistry of the oceans, especially when it is deeper than SF beaches. Disclaimer: I participated in research of lake sediments looking for insights about metal pollutant trends.

guscost 13y ago
One of the saddest parts of this whole saga is how the carbon dioxide alarmists have hijacked research budgets and public interest which could be spent dealing with legitimate environmental concerns.
Daishiman 13y ago
Wait, so you're saying that despite the fact that: - We have accurate measurements of ocean Ph and CO2 concentrations for the past 50 years - We have a clear understanding of the emissions of CO2 from manmade sources and a record that goes back since the beginning of the industrial age - We understand the effects of acidification on a large variety of ocean species - We see a trend of ocean absorbtion of CO2 absolutely consistent with out knowledge of atmospheric chemistry That means that it's BS? If you had some evidence to back up the fact as to why a set of multiple thousands of studies in oceanography are flawed when they point out to a singular trend, with a margin of confidence greater than most of the so-called scientific facts that are out there, I wouldn't think what you write is plain denialism.

16s 13y ago

The sun is going to burn out some day. When that happens, no one will care about ocean acidity.

IanDrake 13y ago

Just thinking out loud here... Can anyone think of other cases where science is used to predict the future of complex systems more than 2 years in advance? I'm not talking about moore's law, but statistical models used to predict the future. How many solar flares will there be in 2020? What will the DOW be in 2050? How many democrats will be in congress in 2021? Stuff like that. So far, the only ones I can think of are models that always spit out the same message... "The earth is dying and we're at fault." I'm just curious if anyone knows of any predictive models that weren't created to scare the shit out of people.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> Can anyone think of other cases where science is used to predict the future of complex systems more than 2 years in advance? Every empirically-based plan for business, long-term policy, etc., ever. The forward-looking aspect of the science of cosmology. Lots more. > So far, the only ones I can think of are models that always spit out the same message... "The earth is dying and we're at fault." That's more indicative of the biases through which you filter the available information (perhaps most importantly, the bias in the information sources from which you receive information -- e.g., if the main place you get information about "science used to predict the future of complex systems" is the mainstream commercial media, there's a pretty heavy bias in what predictions you are going to hear about.)
- IanDrake 13y ago
  >Every empirically-based plan for business, long-term policy, etc., ever. Sure, all business do forecasting. That's pretty simple stuff. >if the main place you get information about "science used to predict the future of complex systems" is the mainstream commercial media That's true, where should I be looking? Can you link to specific examples?
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Sure, all business do forecasting. That's pretty simple stuff. Lots of it involves predicting the behavior of complex economic and social systems using empirically-tested (scientific) methodologies. > That's true, where should I be looking? Can you link to specific examples? If you want to know about where science is used to predict the behavior of complex systems, one place to look would be the scientific literature of fields which are concerned with the behavior of complex systems.

ffrryuu 13y ago

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