Ocean growing more acidic. A worse threat than global warming?

[Speck Tater]

http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/science/article/0,1406,KNS_9116_4915044,00.html

Oceans growing more acidic, scientists say
By JULIET EILPERIN, THE WASHINGTON POST
August 14, 2006

The escalating level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making the world’s oceans more acidic, government and independent scientists say.
They warn that, by the end of the century, the trend could devastate coral reefs and creatures that underpin the sea’s food web.

Although scientists and some politicians have just begun to focus on the question of ocean acidification, they describe it as one of the most pressing environmental threats facing the Earth.

More at link

[bloom]

1. It's all related.

All part of the same problem. How people live - and use resources. Industrial farming and fishing. Pollution and more CO2.

Even in modern times, when oil spills, chemical discharges and other industrial accidents heightened awareness of man's capacity to injure sea life, the damage was often regarded as temporary.

But over time, the accumulation of environmental pressures has altered the basic chemistry of the seas.

The causes are varied, but collectively they have made the ocean more hospitable to primitive organisms by putting too much food into the water.

Industrial society is overdosing the oceans with basic nutrients — the nitrogen, carbon, iron and phosphorous compounds that curl out of smokestacks and tailpipes, wash into the sea from fertilized lawns and cropland, seep out of septic tanks and gush from sewer pipes.

Modern industry and agriculture produce more fixed nitrogen — fertilizer, essentially — than all natural processes on land. Millions of tons of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, produced by burning fossil fuels, enter the ocean every day.

These pollutants feed excessive growth of harmful algae and bacteria....

Global warming adds to the stress. A reduced snowpack from higher temperatures is accelerating river discharges and thus plankton blooms. The oceans have warmed slightly — 1 degree on average in the last century. Warmer waters speed microbial growth.

"A Primeval Tide of Toxins" = "the rise of slime"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x62160

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-oceans-series,0,7842752.special

[kestrel91316]

2. Global warming and acidic oceans are both due to us humans

"SHITTING in our own bed". Our waste (CO2) has nowhere to go. The garage doesn't have a closed door - it has no door at all.

Some day we may actually figure this out.

[Ezlivin]

3. I think it has been figured out

But our leadership is loathe to take action for that would threaten their short-term profits.

I believe that future generations (if they exist) will come to hate us with a burning passion. When they look back at us and particularly our American excess they won't feel pity for our self-indulgent actions, but unremitting abhorrence.