Swimming in a Sea of Acid
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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Bottom line is that we live in an un-sustainable society. Unsustainable as in self terminating.
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.
You CAN test it in a laboratory very simply. You take some sea water, at various temperatures and expose it to variation concentration of co2 in the air above it and you can measure it and it fits the equations very well. more co2 in the air, more dissolves, more dissolves, more acidic.
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.
It is UPWELLING!!! Atmospheric CO2 may play a part, but it is a minor one.
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.
So the Upwelling is 10 times what is happening from the increase air CO2. So?
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.
guinganbresil , your comment does not support the idea that CO2 is not the cause of Ocean acidification.
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.
The PH cross-sections of the oceans show that the acidity comes from above and penetrates deeper. You are stating false facts, and a making up a false theory. There is no upwelling, Exxon-boy.
Please define this statement,"...we will double the ocean's natural acidity by the end of the century."
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.
Oceans have a pH level. The term is used interchangeably with acidity. That pH level indicates the concentration of H+ in the water. Lowering the pH, that is, increasing the acidity of the ocean, will increase the concentration of H+ ions. I don't know what the current pH of the ocean is exactly (it is basic, like you said) but knowing that would allow me, or you, to calculate how much the pH would have to increase in order to double that concentration.
'Scuse me, I misspoke. That last sentence should read "Knowing that would allow me, or you, to calculate how much the pH would have to DECREASE in order to double the concentration."
Very well explained, Valk, As usual, he did not really want an answer, but just to make some denier points.
Here's the periodic scientific data from 20k years ago to present.
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.
We are talking about acidification, not level rise.
Acidification is accepted, it's not even contested by any serious scientists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification
It's simple chemistry.
True, but fossil fuel is the same argument used for global warming and rising sea levels. It's part of the same equation. We too expel carbon dioxide with every breath, it's a vital component to ecology.
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.
I admit I need to do more research on the subject, but from what I have read so far, it appears that the largest source of low pH ocean water is upwelling of the thermohaline deep ocean currents. If you look at data of pH vs. depth you will see that the pH goes down significantly with depth, and the highest pH is in the surface waters due to biological activity.
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"
So what is causing the change in the mixing of deep waters?
Corals are in very shallow water and have undergone a great deal of stess and bleaching due to the acidification of the waters. Your analysis has little to do with why the acidity of the oceans is increasing. Well, obviously it is the rising co2 content absorbed from the air.
"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.
Let me walk you through it. First, READ the PAPER (not just the reporting on it.)
http://pondside.uchicago.edu/ecol-evol/faculty/Wootton/PDFs/Wootton_Pfister_Forester%20PNAS%202008.pdf
From this paper, it is clear that upwelling of deep water affects pH:
"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 (less than 3%) compared with other variables. This is, perhaps, because surface temperature and upwelling, two variables strongly linked to the
index, are explicitly included in our model."
I note that upwelling does not contribute to the pH significantly "BECAUSE..." the variables "are explicitly included in our model." --- What the hell! Can they really control the CAUSE of pH change by including the variables in their model. Perhaps more questions are in order.
Let's take a look at the upwelling. They note in the paper where they get the data from and over which time period:
http://www.pfeg.noaa.gov/products/PFEL/modeled/indices/PFELindices.html
Download the data, and plot it over the time frame mentioned in the paper (2000-2008). According to the paper, the upwelling should vary seasonally and from year-to-year, but it is NOT attributed as a cause (perhaps major cause) of the decreasing pH. Let's check the data.
If you do a linear fit (after eliminating the missing data - obviously) you will see the upwelling index has an increasing slope of ~4.5 units per year - a total of ~36 unit increase over eight years. Is this significant? Look at the average daily variation ~17 units. Compare to the paper - the measured pH varies ~0.5 units over the course of the day. How do we know how much is due to upwelling or is it other factors? Check the times! Adjust the upwelling data for GTM (-8) and you will find the peak upwelling occurs at ~7 AM local time. Check the graph in the paper - the lowest pH is at ~7:00!!! It is VERY LIKEY that upwelling is the cause!
Well the upwelling index might be well correlated with the pH change, but how can it possibly be a larger effect than atmospheric CO2?
Let's check the pH vs. depth. How 'acidic' is that deep water that is upwelling? It can't be that bad...
http://aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_20/issue_4/0654.pdf
Wow! The measured pH drops from 8.4 at the surface to 7.6 at a depth of 800 meters. It then goes back up to ~7.75 when you go deeper. We are talking about a pH difference of 0.8!!! When this water wells up it WILL affect the pH of the surface waters.
Everything I mentioned is from scientific data sources or peer reviewed papers - not movies, not just opinions of internet bloggers... It took me less than an hour to find all this out.
Check it out yourself!
"[W]e certainly see substantial warming in the ocean and atmosphere over the last several decades on the order of a degree Fahrenheit, and I have no doubt a portion of that, at least, is due to greenhouse warming."
-- Chris Landsea, in an interview on PBS.
Landsea doesn't deny global warming. His beef with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that he does not believe the warmer oceanic waters are sufficient to be a determining factor in increased hurricane intensity.
I don't deny global warming either, that would be ridiculous, it's been going on for thousands of years. Some period back sea levels were increasing .5 inch a year average, today .11, so perhaps you could say it's slowing down. Temperatures are definitely decreasing less rapidly than it has depending on what period you compare. Scientists have also said the reflective nature from the "white" of ice caps is a natural phenomena for creating a cooler atmosphere, they also state as these "white" surfaces decrease it becomes its own mechanism for rising global temperatures. So it's a fact that some of that is impetus for rising temperatures, sea levels and ice melt. Conversely, it's through the same mechanism that temperatures got increasingly cooler during the peak of the ice age as the white increased in a self perpetuating cycle.
BTW, Landsea's beef is the political agenda that anyone with a lick of common sense can see for themselves. One sad part of science is that so much of its funding, thus, job security, comes from government and its various agenda's. I have no doubt we would be having a much more vigorous debate to the validity of the fossil fuel argument if this weren't the case.
If the plankton die, all of life will die because they are the base of the food chain. They were the first plants to produce oxygen for Earth's atmosphere, ultimately allowing land animals to evolve.
Scientists still don't understand the entirely of the workings of the oceanic food web, so clearly we should continue messing around with it.
you contradicted yourself there marlyn:
why would the first plants have trouble with CO2 now..
if they flourished at higher concentrations of CO2 in the beginning?
The acid, Fumes. Not the CO2. They're being affected by the acidity, which is being affected by the CO2.
*headdesk*
I'm glad that this issue is starting to get more attention from the media. Some scientists consider ocean acidification to be one of the most significant environmental concerns we'll face in this century, one that needs to be addressed immediately. A few more articles about this issue:
-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
Thanks for the information!
On the rapid drop in pH, it looks to me that the upwelling has increased in that region over the time period studied. It could easily explain the drop in pH. I am not sure why the researchers show such a small effect - if you compare the change in upwelling index to changes in pH due to daily variation and longer term trends it looks like it is very likely due to increased upwelling.
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 (
(Sorry it chopped off)
(
(HP apparently is rejecting my less than sign... one last try...)
(less than three percent) compared with other variables (Table 1). This is, perhaps, because surface temperature and upwelling, two variables strongly linked to the index, are explicitly included in our model."
Check out the data yourself:
http://www.pfeg.noaa.gov/products/PFEL/modeled/indices/upwelling/NA/upwell_menu_NA.html
Another question I have for the scientists. Ocean levels have risen 100 feet in the last 50,000 years, more than 99% of the sea rise occurred prior to the last couple hundred years. When considering global warming has been going on for this period are we to assume that if fossil fuels were never adopted that this global continuum in sea level rise would have stopped in its tracks 100 years ago?
Why don't you ask the fracking scientists, and not the comments board on a news aggregating website? Unless your question is actually rhetorical.
Duh, the troll is just being rethuglican...BTW, I believe sea level has increased 300 feet, not 100, after the ice caps melted.
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.
Of course the question is rhetorical. I had to brush up on my history a bit and confused a recent event with the glacial record.
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.
Amplifryer asks: "are we to assume that if fossil fuels were never adopted that this global continuum in sea level rise would have stopped in its tracks 100 years ago"? Yes, because it did. Sea levels have been stabilized for the last 2,000 to 3,000 years, until approximately last century!
"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
You're making an incorrect assumption. What does stabilization mean? It doesn't mean zero increase of sea levels. Science says sea levels have increased in the last few hundred to a couple thousand years at about .08 inches a year, in other words at a relatively stable rate. Since 1992 it's increased .11 inches. As early as 6 thousand years to 15 thousand years ago it was increasing at about .5 inches a year. And science will tell you that the .03 inch difference between now and 1992 doesn't mean that this miniscule variance hasn't come and gone within the last few hundred years. Our extreme accuracy in measurement didn't come about until the 20th century. C'mon.
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.
First the ozone layer, then global warming, then CO2, now acidic oceans...the aliens have clearly landed, our scientists are hapless, Ms. Weaver needs another movie or two to get rid of them.
One solution to eliminating a vast amount of carbon dioxide would be to eliminate all animal life on the planet since that's what we breath out, including humans. But once that solution is in hand how are we going to get rid of all the underwater volcano's that pump out millions of tons of acid? It's mind boggling.
"One solution to eliminating a vast amount of carbon dioxide would be to eliminate all animal life on the planet"
That's not what I would call a "solution".
Of course eliminating all animals isn't a solution to eliminating carbon dioxide. It's an illustration of the absurdness of the dialogue. Scientists have little understanding of the amount of deep vulcanism happening in deep oceans other than that they pump out millions of tons of chemical compounds and acidics a year.
Sigourney, marry me? My second proposal to you!
I empathize with your quest, and have for many years.
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.
The earth has gone through much more tumultuous events than this and yet life has still prevailed. The earth knows what it is doing everyone. Its been around for billions of years. It is very arrogant to think that we can possibly understand how the earth functions. This is why I question the screamers of global warming. It's important to note that the earth has always been changing. It has never stayed stagnant. I wish the fear mongering would stop.
Yes, I am sure that the people in Pompeii felt very comfortable and safe before Mount Vesuvius erupted and encased them forever in sulfur. I bet they only wish they had scientists there to tell them the probability of a likely explosion. Of course, you would have condemned the scientists and not the volcano. Anti-intellecuals like you, while wriiting on the internet, think somehow that scientists can not understand how the earth works when, in fact, they know in detail.
It is not anti-intellectual to read something written by a blogger and question it. It IS anti-intellectual to read it and automatically assume it's the absolute truth.
Life will survive, the question is will civilization as we know it survive. What you should be asking is: If there is mass migration due to sea-level ruse or prolonged drought in various regions of the earth, what should be the response of the civilized world?
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?>
say bogstomper..
be careful where you step..
the oceans are all acid now and rising!
Yes, the acidity of the oceans is rising which scares deniers because they do not know how to rebut the argument. However, it does not mean you foot will come off when you step into the ocean. It is of concern to coral populations and shell forming creatures. It has implications for fish populations whose breeding grounds are coral reefs.
The more I look into it the more it looks like upwelling - not atmospheric CO2...
it's the alarmists versus the deniers again..
say..
anyone got hyperbole?
litmus paper?
common sense?
sense of any kind?
Yes, accept there is no denier's school of thought among scientists only among poorly informed public opinion? Otherwise, Fumes can direct us to the research appaers which tell us warming is no fault of man.
Why don't all you geniuses, that don't believe that ANYTHING bad can come from increased CO2
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.
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