Sea Acidity Has Reached Critical Levels, Threatening Entire Ecosystem 103
The world's oceans are in worse health than realised, scientists have said today, as they warn that a key measurement shows we are "running out of time" to protect marine ecosystems. From a report: Ocean acidification, often called the "evil twin" of the climate crisis, is caused when carbon dioxide is rapidly absorbed by the ocean, where it reacts with water molecules leading to a fall in the pH level of the seawater. It damages coral reefs and other ocean habitats and, in extreme cases, can dissolve the shells of marine creatures.
Until now, ocean acidification had not been deemed to have crossed its "planetary boundary." The planetary boundaries are the natural limits of key global systems -- such as climate, water and wildlife diversity -- beyond which their ability to maintain a healthy planet is in danger of failing. Six of the nine had been crossed already, scientists said last year. However, a new study by the UK's Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), the Washington-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University's Co-operative Institute for Marine Resources Studies found that ocean acidification's "boundary" was also reached about five years ago.
Until now, ocean acidification had not been deemed to have crossed its "planetary boundary." The planetary boundaries are the natural limits of key global systems -- such as climate, water and wildlife diversity -- beyond which their ability to maintain a healthy planet is in danger of failing. Six of the nine had been crossed already, scientists said last year. However, a new study by the UK's Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), the Washington-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University's Co-operative Institute for Marine Resources Studies found that ocean acidification's "boundary" was also reached about five years ago.
Fire the scientists (Score:5, Insightful)
Just fire the scientists and then we won't have to worry about this. Not like they ever tried to warn us about things like leaded gasoline...
Re: Fire the scientists (Score:2)
Which scientists demanded this based on science? Sources, please.
Re: (Score:2)
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.10... [acs.org]
Re: Fire the scientists (Score:4, Informative)
That says nothing about scientists demanding that MTBE be added to gasoline. States demanded lower emissions and the oil companies picked that additive. Now it’s efficacy and environmental impacts are being scrutinized.
Re: (Score:2)
Also it was pretty well phased out of most US gasoline not long after that report, most states banned in the mid '00's and replaced it with just ethanol (thus the 10% ethanol on most gas these days). Science, who'd have thunk it right?
Re: (Score:2)
Science, and/or the corn lobbyists.
Re: (Score:2)
Except in Canada, where the oil companies used NAFTA regulations to force continued use of it.
Re: (Score:2)
It actually does, even in the brief summary. But you're promoting a fallacy (scientists "demanded" MTBE be added to gasoline) when what actually happened were policy makers demanded MTBE be added to gasoline and various scientists offered it as an option And defended its use even in the face of opposition. Hence my link to an old article and study from the late 90s related to that dispute.
Re:Fire the scientists (Score:4, Insightful)
Just fire the scientists and then we won't have to worry about this. Not like they ever tried to warn us about things like leaded gasoline...
Actually the chemical weapons experts, who had practiced in WWI, did try to warn people about the dangers of leaded gasoline. Exxon cranked up the misinformation campaign and drowned them out, things like pointing out that if it was bad, lead would have been used as a weapon. Businesses have a long history of sacrificing the people for profit.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
isnt it Gore AI by chattok
Re: (Score:1)
You are correct sir!!
I do believe the title of "the Science" has been claimed by one Mr. Faucci....
Re:A new crisis (Score:5, Insightful)
Please stop being stupid and pushing lies. The scientifically sound warnings have been there since about 1980. They got fully ignored and they have turned out to be pretty accurate. Now, more spectacular warnings run the risk of being overstated (by their very nature), but that is not a way to tell they are baseless, like you seem to imply.
Re:A new crisis (Score:5, Insightful)
You get this with government regulation all the time. There's a problem so we pass laws and have bureaucrats to do the law enforcement and the problem goes away because we passed a law and hired bureaucrats to do law enforcement.
When people demand that we undo and remove the government regulations and fire all the bureaucrats because well, there's no problem so it must not be a problem and we don't need the laws and we don't need the bureaucrats.
But Jesus fucking Christ people the problem went away because not only did we do something but we hired people to enforce the law.
Another major problem is bureaucrats are basically law enforcement and people don't realize that. So the kind of person who likes law enforcement can easily be made to hate bureaucrats without realizing their hating law enforcement.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, yes. In part. The really bad effects are still a while away. But ordinary people cannot even plan one year ahead. How would they be able to do 50 years? And then the idiots are aggressive and loud about their incapability. Disgusting.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
You guess realize it rsilvergun himself posting this stuff right? He knows his boring broken record posts lifted directly out of some 2-bit state house reps canvasing guide are going to get down moderated, so he post these coke talk versions of his his own stuff, so the mods waste their points down moderating it instead and then insists someone else cares enough about him to write a bot.
I agree the admins should ban him.
Re: Also absolutely everything is currently (Score:3)
The admins will ban his trolls as soon as people stop responding to them. Anything at all that inflates post count is ok with these cryptocucks.
Re: (Score:2)
you know, after the 3rd or 4th year the "just ignore them" kinda rings hollow and feels like a free pass to be a dick
I agree with you. The people go where the leaders lead. But we don't all get a free pass to be a dick. Someone acts like a dick to you, then you act like a dick back, they get modded up, you get modded down... or vice versa. Slashdot has no logic to it.
Re: (Score:3)
It is absolutely freaking hilarious how much effort somebody is putting into this dying little web forum from the '90s.
Re: (Score:2)
It is absolutely freaking hilarious how much effort somebody is putting into this dying little web forum from the '90s.
I don't think that your troll is putting in much effort, on the troll scale. It'd be really, really easy to make a bot that trolled Slashdot with low-grade LLM bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"I agree the admins should ban him."
Your free speech absolutism is super sexy.
Re: (Score:1)
thats because free speech absolutism doesnt exist, nobody actually believes it
everyone has a line to draw on speech. the government does, websites do, your mother does, you do. everyone does.
I suspect that's actually the goal (Score:2)
I don't think they realized that a website that doesn't even have Unicode support isn't going to have automated moderation.
Re: (Score:2)
Funny thing: There are no bans on slashdot. Unless you post something outright criminal, nothing is going to happen.
Re: (Score:2)
When was the last time ethanolfueled posted? IIRC, he was the first to be banned for being a troll of the worst kind. There's been others such as the host guy.
Re: (Score:2)
Edit: https://slashdot.org/~Ethanol-... [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes hosts file guy who's name currently escapes me
Re:A new crisis (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the warning was first sounded the warning was Svante Arrhenius in 1896, when he determined the UV absorption properties of CO2 and came to the pretty fucking obvious conclusion, based on chemistry and thermodynamics, that if you increase CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, you will inevitably, as a basic function of physics, increase energy absorption.
Re: (Score:3)
That's what happened to me last time I brought up Arrhenius and our understanding of basic physics leading to a simple immutable truth: Increase CO2, and planetary energy increases.
If surface air temperatures aren't increasing as quick as CO2- be afraid. That means that energy is going somewhere else. Some things that story energy just stop, and remain stable. Some collapse and let go of everything they stored.
Re: (Score:3)
It's going into the oceans, just so the combination of pH fuckery and increased warming turns the world's oceans into an tepid acidic brine.
Re: (Score:3)
Their capacity is not infinite, however, and the side effects of their pH and temperature changes are frankly fucking worse than an equivalent increase in atmospheric temperature.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. But pretty goof projections and models became available around 1980. And then the traitors to humanity in the oil industry chose to suppress them and ridicule them, completely knowing what they were doing. It does not get much more evil than that.
Re: (Score:2)
They did similar a hundred plus odd years back with lead in gasoline. Perhaps more evil as the effects were known and not some far future thing.
Re:A new crisis (Score:5, Insightful)
So we can add chemistry to the list of things you're deliberately ignorant of.
Fuck, is stupidity and willful ignorance now viewed as a virtue? Or is it just sociopathy?
Re: (Score:2)
It is both, and has been for quite a long time. But it's a symptom, there's a root cause.
Dinosaur troll is boring (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"It damages coral reefs and other ocean habitats and, in extreme cases, can dissolve the shells of marine creatures."
Well they were asking for it, amirite?
Re: (Score:2)
One data point does not a climate model make.
Re: (Score:2)
The hits just keep on coming. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait that didn't come out right.
Seriously I think we should stop teaching economics at the high school level and just do an entire semester on moral panics and how they are used to manipulate people.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
The Republican party spent at least a quarter billion dollars freaking out about trans people in public last year. Not counting the hundreds of millions of dollars in coverage from right-wing media like Fox News and Tim pool who is paid by the Russians to freak people out.
The Democrat party platform was strong unions and low interest rates and lots of education but you wouldn't know that since you onl
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps if these things were, you know, actually visible while they were in power.
They were perfectly visible, just not to you because of your choice of "news" media.
Fox News did not define the Democrats.
They obviously defined them for you.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Trump went from "climate change is a hoax" to "it's real, but caused by illegals farting".
No biggie (Score:2)
What's the worst that can happen if life in the oceans dies out? /s
Re: (Score:2)
What's the worst that can happen if life in the oceans dies out? /s
All the illegal whaling would stop. Isn't that a benefit?
Re: (Score:2)
Such a surprise (Score:3)
This is just another stage on the way to things getting really, really bad. Entirely predictable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Who cares about air, water, and food as long as we have our mobile distraction screens fed with junk from billions poured into AI and hypothetical colony missions to the moon and Mars?
I was a hair's breadth from death over a year ago, thus any time since then is just standing in the queue for the final moment. Might as well join the ignorant masses and just have fun watching the fires surrounding us burn. It's a pretty light show.
Re: (Score:2)
Found the psychopath.
It's not the first time (Score:1)
Re:It's not the first time (Score:5, Informative)
Rock weathering exposes new minerals that neutralizes the acid. This takes hundreds of thousands of years. In the meantime, there will be mass extinctions.
Re: (Score:2)
Why don’t you write a paper with citations explaining this? You’d be a republican hero.
Re: (Score:2)
the only natural predators of jellyfish
The only [oceana.org] predators? Not even high on the list of mentions.
Info about it happening (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
We will do something about it as a species when the consequences actually land in our laps. Or, when they hit us in the teeth like a brick, is probably a better analogy. It's gonna be painful.
You missed the best part! When it get painful, the one's that did nothing will cry out, "Why didn't someone warn us this would happen?" and "We need help!"
The perpetual victimhood of humanity is a constant embarrassment.
Since Before In-diaper Pants-down Studies (Score:2)
A take (Score:5, Interesting)
So, glad this place is for geeks and nerds 'cause I'm about to double down. Not only am I a programmer/tech leader (ret.) but I've also been a reefkeeper for even longer - and I started out on trash-80 mod I and PDPs. In laymans terms I have aquariums and I keep corals, fish, inverts, etc.
Now, I neither push the climate panic or climate denier line. I, personally, think it's something to pay attention to - I don't think (hope?) any of us would argue that chemistry actually exists. However, I do think the climate scientists made a HUGE strategic error yelling that the sky is falling from every rooftop they have access to and now Mr & Mrs J. Doe are bored and numb.
I've said for the past 20 years or so that modeling the climate on the level and timeframes they've been claiming is absolutely impossible from a resource and compute standpoint - see all the revised predictions. For the same time, though, I've been saying I *AM* concerned about the interaction of CO2 with the planets oceans - and that's something I do know something about.
Ocean chemistry is pretty well known, fascinating, and pretty accessible, frankly (after all, I get it). I have seen, first hand, in my own home(s), on multiple occasions the effect that a surplus of CO2 on ocean life. Most modern houses are far too well sealed to allow for gas exchange with the atmosphere at large. So with people, kids, dogs, cats, etc consuming the oxygen and filling the place up with CO2 you have to be careful caring for reefs in a house. There are many times I've had to bake baking soda (sodium bi-carbonate) into sodium carbonate to deal with some emergency or another (add to water to capture carbon and it precipitates out). Or, and I don't remember what the material is, off the top, but there's a material that you can run air through on the way to a protein skimmer or other piece of equipment that injects air into the water to remove CO2 (think it's the same stuff that CO2 scrubbers use).
Anyway, the effects that I have personally seen are that corals do struggle to build skeletal material, and can, in fact, lose material as can other inverts (think snails, shellfish, etc). The ideal for marine water is a little north of 8 (8.1-8.2 if I remember correctly - I'm not running a reef right now). And, of course, if the PH is low enough, long enough, mortality goes up across the board.
Anyway, not screaming that the sky is falling, but this is a VERY easy piece of science to check up on yourself - can even run a cheap experiment at home (my daughter did for an elementary science fair project). My only point is that it IS something to pay attention to, definitely. And it's relatively easy to understand, and even see it yourself in action.
(sorry for the text wall, it's been years since I've posted anything, so : b)
A take (Score:3)
Though anecdotal, thank you for this. I'll go further to say that my own anecdotal observations, both in captivity and in the wild, are similar to your own. I'd say that the ideal PH range is 8.05 - 8.15 and we're definitely pushing the lower end of that range right now.
https://www.epa.gov/climate-in... [epa.gov]
But, I'll add another observation the cause of which I cannot explain with certainty. While I see bleaching, die offs, and failures to grow on many reefs attributed to temperature and acidity, I also see some
Re: (Score:1)
You're welcome, and I should have pointed out that it was anecdotal, so thank you.
hehe, don't get me started! Fascinating observation and question. Something I've thought about many times.
Let me start off with a couple points (all my questionable knowledge - research further if interested):
1. Corals, well, *MOST* corals (especially in the shallower ranges) are symbiotic creatures. They host a type of algae called zooxanthellae. The zooxanthellae use respiration (nutrients) and light to create simple su
Not the scientists' fault (Score:2)
The problem isn't with the science or the scientists, it's the fossil fuel industry doing everything it can to discredit science & distract people.
Re: (Score:1)
Please, just don't. I have zero beef with you or your point of view. I won't even argue with YOUR POINT. However, please show me the same respect and not use my post as a forum for your unrelated points - I said absolutely nothing about the fossil fuel industry - and yes I have thoughts, but didn't need them to make my point.
What I said is to be taken at face value. The strategy the anthropomorphic climate change proponents employed was a losing strategy, sadly. Full-stop.
The fossil fuel industry may h
Re: (Score:3)
I do think the climate scientists made a HUGE strategic error yelling that the sky is falling from every rooftop they have access to and now Mr & Mrs J. Doe are bored and numb.
They didn't yell that the sky is falling. You're believing the lies of the denialists.
What they actually did was warn people, clearly and precisely, what was happening, what was going to happen if we didn't take action, and what we could do to prevent it. They backed it all up with lots of evidence. People either ignored them or tried to discredit them. Conditions started to get worse, and the future bad things they warned about started actually happening. They warned people again: this is happening, i
Re: (Score:2)
I do think the climate scientists made a HUGE strategic error yelling that the sky is falling from every rooftop [...] I've said for the past 20 years or so that modeling the climate on the level and timeframes they've been claiming is absolutely impossible from a resource and compute standpoint - see all the revised predictions.
There are a variety of models, some of have turned out to be quite accurate, and the error climate scientists made was not leaning heavily enough into the predictions because we are exceeding the scenarios they promoted as most likely in order to avoid being called alarmist — which did not work at all. They coddled us for fear of what actually happened happening, and it did not do any good of any kind. Now we still have to deal with denialists who want things to be different and think pretending that
Re: (Score:2)
Roasting baking soda in the home would seem to be pointless since the released CO2 would end up in your home. Using an alkali such as potassium hydroxide as your additive would avoid that issue or the need to use the oven.
CO2 rich air bubbled through lime water produces calcium carbonate.
Whales dying in Mexico (Score:4, Informative)
I live in Mexico on a boat. There are lots of reports of grey and humpback whales dying this season, lots. They're starving.
I like to joke that climate change isn't real, especially when you go to the store and see all the food wrapped in plastic, the wars, the people with private jets and 2 mega-yachts (one for them, one for their toys), but I'll tell ya, we're going to see seafood become a luxury in my life time, and my life is at least half over.
Re: (Score:3)
>> we're at a high, but not an unusual one
Utter bullshit. "The last time the planet had such high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was likely more than 30 million years ago", so 430 ppm is definitely unusual. Also note that previous high concentrations were reached over thousands of years and were due to episodes of volcanic eruptions. The current jump has mostly happened in just 150 years.
>> we were verging on CO2 starvation for plants
Also bullshit.
Re: (Score:1)
https://x.com/JunkScience/stat... [x.com]
NOAA data shows May 2025 is 0.72ÂF cooler than May 1896 in the US.
129y of global warming and...no impact? Really?
If we are "running out of time" (Score:2)
then we are out of time. Still, we should try.
Another reason to support nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
What does nuclear power cost versus global warming? Do you have an answer for that?
What does nuclear power cost versus intermittent renewable energy sources? I'll see claims that renewable energy is lower cost than nuclear but they are all based on the assumption there will be cheap fossil fuel backup should a cold dunkelflaute roll in.
You can claim "nobody wants nukes" all you like but I can read the news and see that is not true. Had nuclear power not been stalled out for the last 50 years we would not