My latest film is a beautiful, independent documentary called Acid Test that explores the urgent problem of rising ocean acidity caused by our burning of fossil fuels. The 22-minute film premiered in August on Discovery Planet Green and is now available online.
The website enables you to see the whole film, take action to reduce carbon dioxide pollution, see extended interviews with top ocean scientists, learn about the science of acidification, and request a free DVD and action kit for home screenings with friends and family. (I hope many people will take advantage of this. Acid Test is a fascinating, frightening but ultimately hopeful film, and a home screening is a great way to begin making a difference for our oceans.)
Scientists have known for decades that when carbon dioxide mixes with ocean water it creates an acid, but only recently did they begin to realize what this growing quantity of acid would mean for ocean life. As you can see in the film, this new understanding has some of the world's leading ocean scientists quite freaked out.
What they can say with assurance is that if we continue burning fossil fuels as we are now, we will double the ocean's natural acidity by the end of the century. What's less clear is how damaging that will be for ocean life.
Scientists believe many organisms may not survive so radical a shift in chemistry. And some of those organisms -- plankton and corals, for instance -- form the foundation of the ocean food web.
If they perish, what happens to the hundreds of thousands of species further up the chain?
Scientists just don't know. But their fear is summed up in the film by Dr. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution: "We're moving from a world of rich biological diversity, essentially into a world of weeds."
The scientists are freaked out, but they still have hope, as do millions of other Americans. Hope that our policy makers, will listen to the scientific facts, take them to heart and begin America's transition to a clean energy economy. An economy based on efficiency and renewable power that will build a workable future for all living things. What could be more important now than telling our policy makers to move quickly and boldly to adopt strong, clean energy legislation? You can do that right here.
Watch Acid Test online now:
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We must start to rethink everything we do to try and find a better more sustainable approach.
With this in mind it becomes evident that the argument of whether or not we are responsible for the environmental changes that we see becomes moot. Because regardless, we must change.
We must begin to think about balance instead of endless growth. Endless growth is what cancers do.
If you don't believe that what we do on a daily basis has a very significant impact on the planet, consider this;
Animal populations were dropping dramatically in Africa. Scientists set out to find out why. They discovered it was due to more wild animals in meat markets. This was due to the fact that there were severe declining fish stocks off the coast and fewer fish in markets. Declining fish stocks were due to massive die-offs of fish periodically covering the coast for hundreds of miles. The die off was caused by a periodic plume of toxic gasses erupting from the ocean floor. The gasses were formed by massive die-off of protozoa which was caused from an over abundance of protozoa which was caused by overfishing of the sardines that eat protozoa.
I tried to find the video for this but was unsuccessful. An amazing scientifically documented story that reveals how delicately balanced the ecosystem is and what happens when we meddle with it.
But no, let's just keep dumping giga tons of cr@p into the atmosphere and see what happens.
Let's keep up the wars for oil, the mountain and water destruction for coal, Let's keep letting the Enrons yank our chain, and nuke keep proliferating WMD.
All when we can get all our energy and fuel from 3 cent rooftop solar and Waste biofuels, clean, safe, cheaper and forever. see my profile.
You'll still be find reasons why it's not out fault when the Earth is a dead cinder.
Look at the pH with depth. It drops to 7.6 at about 800 meters.
Mix it up and the pH goes down - a hell of lot more than dissolving gaseous CO2.
You even posted a reference indicating that the pH was dropping "10 times faster than expected" - because they EXPECTED it to be from atmospheric CO2 - and it is not!
I wonder at what point error and omission transition to deception.
I want off fossil fuels as much as you, but for different reasons - atmospheric CO2 isn't one of them, and ocean 'acidity' is definitely not... I worry about REAL problems. Not made up ones.
Without the upwelling it would be acidifying anyway.
Your argument is reasonable, I really wish you would add it to the Wikipedea article on acidification and get a dialog going there.
The mixture of atmospheric carbon and water forms carbonic acid.
As carbonic acid accumulates the specific gravity rises above that of sea water (heavier) and stratifies, falling to the bottom of the Oceans.
Consequently any carbonic acid formed from atmospheric CO2 coming in contact with the water surface or formed from acid rain will end up at Ocean depths.
It makes no sense to me. First, seawater is not naturally acidic, and second, what is two times that?
I know she is concerned as we all are about respecting Nature, but the article reads like it is written by a high school student whose argument is more sentimental than factual.
Since the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago, sea level has risen by over 360 feet as a result of melting of major ice sheets. A rapid rise took place between 15,000 and 6,000 years ago at an average rate of .4 inches per year which accounted for 295 feet of the rise to now.
Within this period since 1900 the level has risen at .08 inches; since 1992 at about .11 inches per year. It's based on extremely sketchy data to indict mankind with a phenomena that has been naturally increasing sea levels.
Chris Landsea left the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2005 because of the political agenda. http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_policy_general/000318chris_landsea_leaves.html Further, many scientists, especially climatologists, receive their funding through governments. What are the odds of any scientists getting said funding if they fight this agenda? One must have a healthy bit of skepticism in evaluating historical data. The fact is that ocean levels are rising and would still be without the industrial revolution, this based on empirical data, and there's a LEGITIMATE QUESTION if mankind is incrementally increasing this that is happening anyway. Or as some scientists summarize are we seeing cyclical fluctuations.
Acidification is accepted, it's not even contested by any serious scientists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification
It's simple chemistry.
Where's the quantitative data on deep ocean vulcanism and the volumes of acids and chemicals they pump into the oceans? What's the cyclical nature of vulcanism in deep oceans? What periods have indicated vulcanism in deep ocean rifts being most active? I've researched this. There's not enough data, we know less about the deep ocean than we do about the moon in many respects. We do know deep ocean currents bring ancient waters to the surface, but what's the evolution of the chemistry? We have no clue how much chemicals are truly pumped into the oceans by vulcanism or what the cycles are if any. I simply get tired of the same ole tired broken propaganda of all social environmental ills and causes being fossil fuel when the science is so lacking, both in measuring cyclical nature of all things on a geologic scale, and in conjunction with minimal knowledge on so many of most things.
The low pH regions (off the coast of California as mentioned in "Acid Test") is due to upwelling of deep ocean currents that have not seen the surface in 800-1000 years.
The measured increases in pH might be due to changes in mixing of deep waters with lower pH - It would explain how some of the changes could suprise researchers looking at atmospheric CO2.
Before you release the hounds - I did not say that atmospheric CO2 is not a factor, nor did I conclude that more mixing of deep water is not anthropogenic, nor did I say that lowering pH is not a problem.
I am saying that there is more to the issue than is described in "Acid Test" and hardly "simple chemistry"
"A study published on November 24, 2008 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) indicates that the ocean's pH levels fluctuate more widely than expected. However, the study goes on to confirm that, despite these fluctuations, there is still clear evidence that pH levels are dropping in response to increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)."
http://oceanography.suite101.com/article.cfm/ocean_ph_dropping_10_times_faster_than_predicted
I think when given a choice between what actual scientists say and unnamed bloggers, we should defer to the real scientists.
why would the first plants have trouble with CO2 now..
if they flourished at higher concentrations of CO2 in the beginning?
*headdesk*
-Monaco Declaration: http://oceanography.suite101.com/article.cfm/monaco_declaration_warns_of_ocean_acidification
-Rapid drop in pH: http://oceanography.suite101.com/article.cfm/ocean_ph_dropping_10_times_faster_than_predicted
-Scientific concerns: http://environmentalism.suite101.com/article.cfm/ocean_acidification
They explain it as follows (I don't buy it...):
"In general, the effect of upwelling appears to predominate at the seasonal scale, but varies strongly among years. Although the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index was negatively associated with pH and exhibited a large oscillation over the study period, it contributed relatively little to the explanatory ability of the model (
The issue that global warming creates is the speed at which the effects of warming are being felt. Plotting the increase in global temperatures maps well with the increases in greenhouse gases released by man.
To Liberals query the actual sea level increase since the Last Glacial Maximum, about 20,000 years ago, has been about 460 feet. It's increased about 100 feet since the Manoans were extinguished from volcanic acitivity, their civilization is theorized to be the basis for Atlantis of which about 100 feet below the surface of the ocean exists a potential site for Atlantis.
The above is theory, but the relevant point is that within the last few thousand years the oceans have risen that much.
"Global sea level rose by about 120 meters during the several millennia that followed the end of the last ice age (approximately 21,000 years ago), and stabilized between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago. Sea level indicators suggest that global sea level did not change significantly from then until the late 19th century when the instrumental record of sea level change shows evidence for an onset of sea level rise. Estimates for the 20th century show that global average sea level rose at a rate of about 1.7 millimeters per year. Satellite altimetry observations, available since the early 1990s, provide more accurate sea level data with nearly global coverage and indicate that since 1993 sea level has been rising at a rate of about 3 millimeters per year."
http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_level.html
So the fact is that sea level rise has been constant since Last Glacial Maximum with significant variances measured within millenniums. Sea levels would be rising without the industrial revolution. This is what science says.
That's not what I would call a "solution".
However,
"What could be more important now than telling our policy makers
to move quickly and boldly to adopt strong, clean energy legislation?"
Perhaps getting rid of policy makers that have a tendency to continue
"living" in the 1960-70's. Many of them still don't know what the Internet
is all about and don't care. They hire someone to "work it" for them.
Yes, that gives someone a job but it doesn't expand their personal
knowledge of the world they CURRENTLY LIVE IN. Life isn't all cocktail
parties, limousines and deal making.
Thanks for your efforts. I give to you any blessings that are mine to give.
It is only in the recent history of the world, in many cases the last 200-500 years or so, that ownership of land has evovled. Now that land is owned, especially in our advanced societies, what, if anything, is owed to anyone who is displaced by a large natural event?>
be careful where you step..
the oceans are all acid now and rising!
say..
anyone got hyperbole?
litmus paper?
common sense?
sense of any kind?
add a controversy section to the wikipedia entry, since it looks like a settled matter right now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification
http://royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13314
life is very sensitive to PH level, and very few organism can take more that a point or two in the wrong direction.
I've noticed the pattern of the defense of unfettered CO2 release: It's was higher a long time ago, It's only a small percentage (.3%) change, then the claim that it wont hurt.