5 ms·

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.

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
      Well, plankton does. Atmospheric carbon increases and (potentially) decreases, and the question I responded to wanted to know why plankton didn't respond to an increase in supply by having already come into existence in the past so that the atmospheric concentration never varied. It's because (just like the predator-prey model) it's difficult for the feeding population to respond in the present to an increased future supply of food.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  Algae/cyanobacteria blooms are already a reality [1]. The ocean is such a big system though, that I wouldn't expect the long-term effects of these blooms to be observable in a timeframe measured in decades. [1] http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/07/chinas-massive-algae-bloom-could-leave-the-oceans-water-lifeless/ http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/07/chinas-mas...
Daishiman 13y ago
The ocean's effect as a buffer is fading very rapidly. The growth of cyanobacteria may have extremely harmful events. No organism on this planet has ever seen a rate of change as strong as this, so this is completely unpredictable territory.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  > No organism on this planet has ever seen a rate of change as strong as this, so this is completely unpredictable territory. It isn't unpredictable, it already happened, and still the world is not overtaken by cyanobacter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria#Earth_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria#Earth_history
  - Daishiman 13y ago
    The fact that it's predictable in the span of several hundreds of thousands of years doesn't mean that we're in for massive, massive two hundred years (or more) or unpredictable events. Systems may take a looong time before they stabilize.
    - j_baker 13y ago
      If we've sped up the extinction, why can't we speed up the regrowth?
gizmo686 13y ago
Your right in the sense that there is nothing catastrophic from a the perspective of geological time. There have been mass extinctions before. The problem is that we would like to continue living in an environment similar to what we evolved in, and we would like to continue to have large amounts of bio-diversity and biological services available on a timeline that is useful to us. There is nothing particularly magical about the environment we want to live in, other than it happens to be about what it would be now if not for recent human actions. Unfortunately, those actions didn't just change the system, they re-introduced raw materials that have previously been removed from the system. There is no reason to believe that the new equilibrium is the same as the old one. An interesting corollary to this is the idea that the natural environment is itself unsustainable. For billions of years it has been using up the planets supply of carbon and trapping it in what is now called fossil fuels. If this continues unchecked, we will run out of available carbon and life on this planet will die off. Thankfully, we humans have averted this catastrophe by finding a way to recycle the formerly lost carbon and return it to the environment. If only we had a large number of planets at varying stages of having life (including being long dead).
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  > The problem is that we would like to continue living in an environment similar to what we evolved in, and we would like to continue to have large amounts of bio-diversity and biological services available on a timeline that is useful to us. I'm adept of the view that the environment influences the organisms as much as organisms influence their environment, or rather that there isn't a clear distinction between environment and the organisms in it [1]. It should be an unrealistic notion to have living human beings and expect the environment to stay the same as before humans [2]. Events like increased CO2 levels in the ocean should be seen as the way things are, rather than one-off catastrophes. These events are what push back on our species, and we are expected to either adapt (be it consciously, with counter-measures, or by accident) or die altogether. > An interesting corollary to this is the idea that the natural environment is itself unsustainable. (...) Thankfully, we humans have averted this catastrophe by finding a way to recycle the formerly lost carbon and return it to the environment. This is indeed an interesting perspective, which I subscribe too, and aligns well with the Gaia theory. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene
randomfool 13y ago
I live in Seattle and in just the past few years, beaches which used to be absolutely covered in oysters are now barren because of acidification. And by covered, I mean you need a path through them to walk (they are sharp), and the most difficult thing when picking them was to pick up a single one rather than cluster. This was on the Hood canal for anyone in the area. http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/?prmid=4939 http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/... It absolutely amazed me how fast everything disappeared. It really shocked me.
- ommunist 13y ago
  Local insignificant event.
  - Daishiman 13y ago
    The appearance of multiple local effects is a clear indicator or a global trned.
- MrZongle2 13y ago
  Playing devil's advocate here: how is this change in a specific location any more "proof" of ocean acidification than especially cold weather in a different location "disproves" global warming? Aren't both of these cases instances of cherry-picking?

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
    Well, plankton does. Atmospheric carbon increases and (potentially) decreases, and the question I responded to wanted to know why plankton didn't respond to an increase in supply by having already come into existence in the past so that the atmospheric concentration never varied. It's because (just like the predator-prey model) it's difficult for the feeding population to respond in the present to an increased future supply of food.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
Algae/cyanobacteria blooms are already a reality [1]. The ocean is such a big system though, that I wouldn't expect the long-term effects of these blooms to be observable in a timeframe measured in decades. [1] http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/07/chinas-massive-algae-bloom-could-leave-the-oceans-water-lifeless/ http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/07/chinas-mas...

Daishiman 13y ago

The ocean's effect as a buffer is fading very rapidly. The growth of cyanobacteria may have extremely harmful events. No organism on this planet has ever seen a rate of change as strong as this, so this is completely unpredictable territory.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> No organism on this planet has ever seen a rate of change as strong as this, so this is completely unpredictable territory. It isn't unpredictable, it already happened, and still the world is not overtaken by cyanobacter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria#Earth_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria#Earth_history
- Daishiman 13y ago
  The fact that it's predictable in the span of several hundreds of thousands of years doesn't mean that we're in for massive, massive two hundred years (or more) or unpredictable events. Systems may take a looong time before they stabilize.
  - j_baker 13y ago
    If we've sped up the extinction, why can't we speed up the regrowth?

gizmo686 13y ago

Your right in the sense that there is nothing catastrophic from a the perspective of geological time. There have been mass extinctions before. The problem is that we would like to continue living in an environment similar to what we evolved in, and we would like to continue to have large amounts of bio-diversity and biological services available on a timeline that is useful to us. There is nothing particularly magical about the environment we want to live in, other than it happens to be about what it would be now if not for recent human actions. Unfortunately, those actions didn't just change the system, they re-introduced raw materials that have previously been removed from the system. There is no reason to believe that the new equilibrium is the same as the old one. An interesting corollary to this is the idea that the natural environment is itself unsustainable. For billions of years it has been using up the planets supply of carbon and trapping it in what is now called fossil fuels. If this continues unchecked, we will run out of available carbon and life on this planet will die off. Thankfully, we humans have averted this catastrophe by finding a way to recycle the formerly lost carbon and return it to the environment. If only we had a large number of planets at varying stages of having life (including being long dead).

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> The problem is that we would like to continue living in an environment similar to what we evolved in, and we would like to continue to have large amounts of bio-diversity and biological services available on a timeline that is useful to us. I'm adept of the view that the environment influences the organisms as much as organisms influence their environment, or rather that there isn't a clear distinction between environment and the organisms in it [1]. It should be an unrealistic notion to have living human beings and expect the environment to stay the same as before humans [2]. Events like increased CO2 levels in the ocean should be seen as the way things are, rather than one-off catastrophes. These events are what push back on our species, and we are expected to either adapt (be it consciously, with counter-measures, or by accident) or die altogether. > An interesting corollary to this is the idea that the natural environment is itself unsustainable. (...) Thankfully, we humans have averted this catastrophe by finding a way to recycle the formerly lost carbon and return it to the environment. This is indeed an interesting perspective, which I subscribe too, and aligns well with the Gaia theory. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene

randomfool 13y ago

I live in Seattle and in just the past few years, beaches which used to be absolutely covered in oysters are now barren because of acidification. And by covered, I mean you need a path through them to walk (they are sharp), and the most difficult thing when picking them was to pick up a single one rather than cluster. This was on the Hood canal for anyone in the area. http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/?prmid=4939 http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/... It absolutely amazed me how fast everything disappeared. It really shocked me.

ommunist 13y ago
Local insignificant event.
- Daishiman 13y ago
  The appearance of multiple local effects is a clear indicator or a global trned.
MrZongle2 13y ago
Playing devil's advocate here: how is this change in a specific location any more "proof" of ocean acidification than especially cold weather in a different location "disproves" global warming? Aren't both of these cases instances of cherry-picking?