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At the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity meeting earlier this week, scientists sounded the alarm about the potentially devastating impact of ocean acidification - global warming's 'evil twin' - and the billions, if not trillions of dollars it could cost the world economy every year by the end of this century.
Although ocean acidification has been called global warming's evil twin, they really should be referred to as partners in crime. Both consequences of the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, neither is expected to be beneficial for us or many other species of life on this planet. Carbon dioxide traps more heat in the atmosphere, which adds more energy to our weather patterns and disrupts the climate system, but it also gets absorbed by the oceans. There, it combines with sea water to form carbonic acid, which is slowly changing the acidity level of the ocean from slightly alkaline towards neutral. That may not seem like a big problem, but many forms of life in the ocean depend on that 'slightly alkaline' environment to form their shells and skeletons, and for proper reproduction.
The EPA is fighting a desperate battle to sink a green lawsuit, a lawsuit which is substantially based on the EPA’s own climate narrative.
The Lawsuit, launched by the Center for Biological Diversity, seeks to impose enhanced clean water act protection upon the Pacific Coast. The suit argues that protection is necessary because, according to the EPA’s own climate narrative, ocean acidification is severely damaging the marine ecosystem. wattsupwiththat.com...
According to the CBD;
“The CBD points out that the EPA has acknowledged that ocean acidification has killed billions of oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest but still would not classify the waters as imperilled.”
Do you think that they may be exaggerating other parts of the article as well ? It come across so chicken little and has lost any fear porn value it had a few years ago . a reply to: Sabiduria ETA ..I found this piece and wanted to leave a link .euanmearns.com... from what I read there it would seem we have a long way to go before the oceans become acidic .
Can people stop focusing on the clearly over exaggerated number of $1 trillion
A downward trend is still visible, but it’s very, very small (note that only actual pH measurements, not estimates, are plotted). If it continues at the same rate ocean pH will still be close to 8 in 2100 and the oceans won’t become truly acidic (pH=6.9) until about the year 2800. And even then the level of acidity will be minimal (natural rainwater has a pH of 5.6).
But the trend probably won’t continue at the same rate. The ocean absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere, so the rate of ocean pH decrease will be largely (although not entirely) dependent on future atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
wattsupwiththat.com...
As global warming morphs into climate change and global climate disruption and anthropogenic CO2 emissions give way to stochastic variability, clouds, the Sun, cosmic rays and our oceans as the primary drivers of climate change, environmental extremists are raising a new CO2-driven ecological disaster scenario to hysterical levels: Ocean acidification. Claims have been made that oceanic pH levels have declined from ~8.2 to ~8.1 since the mid-1700’s. This pH decline (acidification) has been attributed to anthropogenic CO2 emissions – This should come as no surprise because the pH estimates are largely derived from atmospheric CO2 concentrations (Orr et al., 2005). It has also been postulated that anthropogenic CO2 emissions will force an additional 0.7 unit decline in oceanic pH by the year 2100 (Caldeira et al., 2003).