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Acid seas 'attacking shellfish, corals'

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DazzaMc
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« on: June 01, 2009, 11:45:28 am »

CLIMATE change is turning the oceans more acid in a trend that could endanger everything from clams to coral and be irreversible for thousands of years.


Seventy academies from around the world urged governments meeting in Bonn for climate talks from June 1-12 to take more account of risks to the oceans in a new UN treaty for fighting global warming due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

The academies said rising amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted mainly by human use of fossil fuels, were being absorbed by the oceans and making it harder for creatures to build protective body parts.

The shift disrupts ocean chemistry and attacks the "building blocks needed by many marine organisms, such as corals and shellfish, to produce their skeletons, shells and other hard structures", they said.

On some projections, levels of acidification in 80 per cent of Arctic seas would be corrosive to clams that are vital to the food web by 2060, it said.

And "coral reefs may be dissolving globally" if atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide were to rise to 550 parts per million (ppm) from a current 387 ppm.

Corals are home to many species of fish.

"These changes in ocean chemistry are irreversible for many thousands of years and the biological consequences could last much longer," they said.

Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, the British science academy, said there may be an "underwater catastrophe".

"The effects will be seen worldwide, threatening food security, reducing coastal protection and damaging the local economies that may be least able to tolerate it," he said.

The academies said that if current rates of carbon emissions continue until 2050, computer models indicate "the oceans will be more acidic than they have been for tens of millions of years".

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25567364-23109,00.html
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Sir Blodsnogger
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« Reply #1 on: September 30, 2009, 02:42:19 am »

Since this topic has been without comments for more than 120 days it is probably blatantly wrong.
Here is a titbit for our scientists to ponder.
Does sulphur rise during volcanic activity?
Does sulphuric acid have sulphur as one of its ingredients?
Does sulphuric answer the question. 'What culprit causes the conditions mentioned'?


Go figure now.
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robman
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« Reply #2 on: October 02, 2009, 06:00:20 pm »

The real question is, how acidic have the oceans in general been in the 14,000 years since the end of the last ice age?
It's possible that a fairly intense study of a chosen region may give a small snapshot of acidity which can be a localised anomaly caused by a number of things, volcanism springs to mind.
Something else that springs to mind is: the current climatic conditions have existed in the past, there's no denying that. So how did these fragile ecosystems they keep waving in our faces as poster boys of the NeoEco Nazi movement survive then?
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Lovelee
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« Reply #3 on: October 02, 2009, 07:50:37 pm »

My understanding of wave action is that it produces ozone above and within the ocean and that this is supposed to cleanse the sea  Roll Eyes
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DazzaMc
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« Reply #4 on: October 02, 2009, 07:52:21 pm »

You keep talking time periods which have little or no impact on the current human way of life - yet you refer to them as if they do......
That would have to be the one big fault in your argument.


Other than that - I fully agree!
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robman
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« Reply #5 on: October 03, 2009, 09:07:54 pm »

I have always felt that the last 14,000 years were the period of mans technilogical advancement. Coming out of the ice age with freshly honed skills developed to survive the climatic hardships into a more benevolent time, man must have been poised to leap forward.
Not to take anything away from the neolithic period, of course.
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