Real World Event Discussions

Earth's oceans on course for mass extinction

POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Monday, September 26, 2011 06:09
VIEWED: 3627
PAGE 1 of 6

NIKI2

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 7:20 PM

Gawd, what are we DOING to this poor little blue-green marble?

Quote:
Mass extinctions are seldom pretty, but this one would transform Earth's oceans forever, especially coral reefs.

A new report by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) assesses how climate change, overexploitation, pollution, habitat loss and other stressors are affecting the ocean as a whole.

The conclusion? We're on course for a mass extinction that would include coral reefs and the menagerie of species that rely on them, as well as multiple species of fish consumed by people, although it may not be as severe as the "big five" extinctions of Earth's distant past.

"We're seeing a combination of symptoms that have been associated with large, past extinctions," says Alex Rogers, the head of IPSO.

Acidifying waters

Rogers says the biggest problem is the rapid pace of climate change, which is "virtually unprecedented". The closest comparison is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum of 55 million years ago, when 2.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide was released every year for millennia and many deep-sea species were wiped out. Today we release over 25 gigatonnes every year.

Many harmful factors combine to cause additional damage. For instance, the oceans are acidifying as a result of CO2 dissolving in the water, and this makes corals more susceptible to "bleaching".

Rogers recommends nothing less than slashing CO2 emissions, establishing Marine Protected Areas covering up to one-third of the ocean, and restoring marine ecosystems. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20595-earths-oceans-on-course-fo
r-mass-extinction.html
Millions of dead anchovies appear in a marina in Redondo Beach, south of Los Angeles, California in March

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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AURAPTOR

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 7:58 PM

Wouldn't be the first time.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

DREAMTROVE

Wednesday, September 21, 2011 10:49 PM

The burning of fossil fuels is only bothersome in the manner in which we extract them, which is bothersome enough. This is 19th c. technology, and we're implementing it in a 3rd century manner. The 21st century was supposed to be an age of science, and yet it feels like we're being run by barbarians. Not in a left-right or partisan way, just all over. Can we have some brains? Anyone have any brains... BRAINNNSSS!

Sorry, happens. Maybe what we need is plants.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

RIONAEIRE

Thursday, September 22, 2011 2:53 AM

Scary.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

SIGNYM

Thursday, September 22, 2011 3:02 AM

Well, it's a race to the ... er... finish. The only question is, will man-made radionuclide contamination reduce human sperm count before man-made warming finishes off everything else?

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Thursday, September 22, 2011 4:36 AM

Hon,
wasn't it last year that ALL the bees were going to die, so nothing would pollinate the food crops, and we were all gonna die?

And a maybe a few years ago, the African killer bees were going to kill all regular bees, with the same result? ( Maybe a lot longer ago, actually. Wasn't John Belushi doing killer bee schtick before he died?)

And a while back, all the plankton was gonna die out, the very bottom of the ocean food chain, so everything in ALL the seas was done for, so we were all gonna starve.

SO even I am developing a "boy who cried wolf" syndrome about this stuff and these folks. I am starting to discount these guys all the time, because I have to, just to get out of bed.

I didn't read your whole piece, just the headline, but I 'll bet it's loaded with weasel words-- " this might destroy all life "; "events could cause massive destruction"; so on, so forth. I gotta wait for one of these guys to say, " this WILL happen, in a short, verifiable time period, I stake MY OWN PERSONAL reputation on it. "

EDIT- I went back and checked the article- these wasn't a single weasel worded claim in it. I WAS WRONG ! forgive me.. or as Gilda Radner might have put it, " Oh. Never mind."

AURAPTOR

Thursday, September 22, 2011 4:50 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat:
Hon,
wasn't it last year that ALL the bees were going to die, so nothing would pollinate the food crops, and we were all gonna die?

No, silly, they were just were gonna go on strike.

" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "

RIONAEIRE

Thursday, September 22, 2011 5:07 AM

That bee thing still is of concern to me. But I know what you mean, if someone let themself worry about this stuff too much they'd be in a pickle.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

DREAMTROVE

Thursday, September 22, 2011 1:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by RionaEire:
That bee thing still is of concern to me. But I know what you mean, if someone let themself worry about this stuff too much they'd be in a pickle.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

The bee problem came from the initiation of trading bees as a commodity. Each colony has local diseases they are immune to, and when you move them and mix them, they die. It's like what happened with Europeans and Native Americans.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

BYTEMITE

Thursday, September 22, 2011 1:58 PM

Yeah, ocean acidification and coral reef die offs are pretty well understood and demonstrated, though they're not DIRECTLY related. It's more indirect. See, the reason the ocean is acidifying is because it's absorbing a lot of CO2, which after some finangling converts to CO3. Where does that extra oxygen come from? Oh, the water, H2O.

So now you've got a lot of 2H+ floating around, which lowers the pH level.

CO3 is required to form Calcium Carbonate, CaCO3, but as it turns out, that's actually a cool temperature reaction, warm temperatures drive the reaction the other way. Marine animals that rely on some ambient CaCO3 molecules to produce shells, such as mollusks have their shells dissolved from their bodies, and are more easily preyed upon and experience a die off. Also, the organic and inorganic CaCO3 dissolving produces yet more ocean acidification.

HOWEVER, even though coral is one of those marine animals that produce a CaCO3 shell, that die-off is actually more related to a migration of symbiotic algae the coral need to survive, probably also due to temperatures.

Anyway, despite knowing all this, I kind of have the same feeling about "the boy who cried wolf," and sometimes I feel like our efforts to make things better just make things worse. As ever, all I can really recommend is sustainability and self-sufficiency, and hopefully that will fix the problem.

We've been in an extinction event ever since people started slash and burn agriculture and started building cities, so I'm not sure this is anything new but rather a continuation of what's already been going on. Though I'll agree it is regrettable, and maybe we should stop overfishing and slash and burn as well.