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:

 

 

Comments

[65DegN]

03:58 PM on 10/27/2009

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.

[research]

12:52 AM on 10/20/2009

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.

[guinganbresil]

11:00 PM on 10/20/2009

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.

[research]

11:34 PM on 10/20/2009

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.

[65DegN]

03:09 PM on 10/25/2009

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.

[wowjimi]

11:22 AM on 10/19/2009

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.

[valkyrie607]

11:43 AM on 10/19/2009

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.

[valkyrie607]

12:41 PM on 10/19/2009

'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."

[realpolitic]

06:20 AM on 10/20/2009

Very well explained, Valk, As usual, he did not really want an answer, but just to make some denier points.

[Amplifryer]

06:17 PM on 10/18/2009

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.

[research]

08:02 PM on 10/18/2009

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.

[Amplifryer]

09:11 PM on 10/18/2009

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.

[guinganbresil]

08:25 PM on 10/18/2009

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"

[Elizabeth44]

09:37 PM on 10/18/2009

So what is causing the change in the mixing of deep waters?

[realpolitic]

04:49 AM on 10/19/2009

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.

[Marlyn]

03:16 PM on 10/18/2009

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.

[valkyrie607]

03:48 PM on 10/18/2009

Scientists still don't understand the entirely of the workings of the oceanic food web, so clearly we should continue messing around with it.

[fumes]

09:19 PM on 10/18/2009

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?

[valkyrie607]

11:40 AM on 10/19/2009

The acid, Fumes. Not the CO2. They're being affected by the acidity, which is being affected by the CO2.

*headdesk*

[nwhank]

11:51 AM on 10/18/2009

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

[realpolitic]

01:14 PM on 10/18/2009

Thanks for the informatio­n!

[guinganbresil]

11:04 PM on 10/18/2009

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 (

[Amplifryer]

10:59 AM on 10/18/2009

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?

[valkyrie607]

01:06 PM on 10/18/2009

Why don't you ask the fracking scientists­, and not the comments board on a news aggregatin­g website? Unless your question is actually rhetorical­.

[Liberal2]

02:59 PM on 10/18/2009

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.

[Amplifryer]

05:51 PM on 10/18/2009

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.

[realpolitic]

04:59 AM on 10/19/2009

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

[Amplifryer]

08:31 AM on 10/19/2009

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.

[Philclock]

10:41 AM on 10/18/2009

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.

[Amplifryer]

10:32 AM on 10/18/2009

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.

[Marlyn]

03:19 PM on 10/18/2009

"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"­.

[Amplifryer]

05:40 PM on 10/18/2009

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.

[realpolitic]

09:21 AM on 10/18/2009

Sigourney, marry me? My second proposal to you!

[johnsopinion]

07:59 AM on 10/18/2009

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.

[Luke3]

05:41 AM on 10/18/2009

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.

[realpolitic]

10:26 AM on 10/18/2009

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.

[Edward Current]

04:16 PM on 10/18/2009

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.

[texfly]

02:29 PM on 10/18/2009

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?>

[fumes]

05:29 AM on 10/18/2009

say bogstomper­..

be careful where you step..

the oceans are all acid now and rising!

[realpolitic]

09:20 AM on 10/18/2009

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.

[guinganbresil]

11:25 PM on 10/18/2009

The more I look into it the more it looks like upwelling - not atmospheri­c CO2...

[fumes]

05:22 AM on 10/18/2009

it's the alarmists versus the deniers again..

say..

anyone got hyperbole?

litmus paper?

common sense?

sense of any kind?

[realpolitic]

09:17 AM on 10/18/2009

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.

[research]

04:13 AM on 10/18/2009

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.