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California oceans rising in acidity at alarming rate, study finds

latimes.com

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Re: California oceans rising in acidity at alarming rate, study finds

#31

Post by lopmotr »

omegaworks wrote: post #20
Thorentis wrote: post #2

I wonder if instead of desalination plants, there exists "de-acidification" plants that can in turn use the acid for electricity generation or something like that? Whenever I see these articles, unfortunately my first thought is "we're too far gone, we can't turn around now" in terms of climate change. But! I think that instead of trying to reverse the situation (for instance, by convincing the largest carbon emitter…

>Our best hope it to adapt to the new norm rather than fight a losing battle. The next stage in climate denialism is climate nihilism: thinking that it's too late now to do anything to directly confront the problem so why bother. All it does is protect and entrench existing extractive interests. We can accomplish amazing things (landing on the moon, overthrowing the nazis and winning WW2) when we align our society an…

What migration?

"up to 630 M people live on land below projected annual flood levels for 2100, and up to 340 M for mid-century, versus roughly 250 M at present"

250 million people already live in those annually flooded regions, so that's only another 400 million by the year 2100. You think political systems can't cope? China has 300 million migrant workers, most of whom re-migrate every year!! They're coping already. We just need a lot of trains.

Re: California oceans rising in acidity at alarming rate, study finds

#32

Post by trophycase »

RickJWagner wrote: post #28

It's worth noting that the oceans are actually alkaline, not acidic. But it makes for less alarming headlines to say "Oceans becoming less alkaline", doesn't it? I really, really wish things were presented dispassionately and accurately. Things like this smack of propaganda.

becoming less alkaline = acidifying

one just takes fewer words

Re: California oceans rising in acidity at alarming rate, study finds

#33

Post by orange3xchicken »

lopmotr wrote: post #30
bamboozled wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the right attitude really. What else is there ? It’s the same way I see politicians doing nothing helpful, people are just going to have to work around them to get the situation under control or at least make use of it.

No. Before investing money in solving a problem, you have to at least have some estimate of how severe the problem is, typically measured in dollars. We don't have that. Instead, we have people shouting "the end is neigh", which isn't actually a reason to take any action. I think the right approach is to do nothing about it until we have predictions. Then compare the cost of coping with the problem to the costs of pr…

"Nobody does anything until it’s too late. We put the stoplight at the intersection after the kid is killed." (Michael Crichton, Prey)

The issues associated with an acidified ocean are well known. The issues associated with an excess of carbon in the atmosphere are well known. The cost of coping with most of these issues has been compared to the cost of working to prevent or reduce their effect with respect to lives, quality of life, and dollars.

I don't claim to be a climatologist, an economist, or a policy expert, but I can read a wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming_on_h... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

Re: California oceans rising in acidity at alarming rate, study finds

#34

Post by mirimir »

Seriously, WTF is a study from a US agency doing behind a paywall? That ought to be illegal! So here.[0]

0) Osborne et al. (2019) Decadal variability in twentieth-century ocean acidification in the California Current Ecosystem. https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0499-z

Re: California oceans rising in acidity at alarming rate, study finds

#35

Post by lopmotr »

orange3xchicken wrote: post #33
lopmotr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Before investing money in solving a problem, you have to at least have some estimate of how severe the problem is, typically measured in dollars. We don't have that. Instead, we have people shouting "the end is neigh", which isn't actually a reason to take any action. I think the right approach is to do nothing about it until we have predictions. Then compare the cost of coping with the problem to the costs of pr…

"Nobody does anything until it’s too late. We put the stoplight at the intersection after the kid is killed." (Michael Crichton, Prey) The issues associated with an acidified ocean are well known. The issues associated with an excess of carbon in the atmosphere are well known. The cost of coping with most of these issues has been compared to the cost of working to prevent or reduce their effect with respect to lives,…

I had a look at all your references but didn't find any cost estimates or clear predictions of serious harm. One problem it mentioned was that already depleted shellfish stocks might not recover if we stop overfishing them. We're already doing more harm to those particular fish from fishing than ocean acidification is expected to, so that suggests something about the cost being comparable to the cost of fishing less.

To use your analogy, put a stop light in the middle of the road, just in case a kid happens to run out at that point.

Re: California oceans rising in acidity at alarming rate, study finds

#37

Post by bsaul »

Problem with climate related news is that it has such a bad record on wrong prediction that i’m having a hard time believing anything that’s written in regular newspaper. it’s just working too well at freaking people out, even the most scientific minds.

For example, I can’t remember the first time i read about ‘ arctic ice completely disappearing in the next ten years‘, or the polar bear going extinct..

Re: California oceans rising in acidity at alarming rate, study finds

#38

Post by wolfd »

bsaul wrote: post #37

Problem with climate related news is that it has such a bad record on wrong prediction that i’m having a hard time believing anything that’s written in regular newspaper. it’s just working too well at freaking people out, even the most scientific minds. For example, I can’t remember the first time i read about ‘ arctic ice completely disappearing in the next ten years‘, or the polar bear going extinct..

While some headlines may be overly aggressive, many (anecdotally) of the very serious consequences of climate change are predicted to happen on the order of 50/100 years from now.

There are a couple reasons this sucks: - some people seem to not care about that far in the future - people seem to be pretty bad at detecting change in their environment over longer time scales

A memorable example of the second one: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/b...

Re: California oceans rising in acidity at alarming rate, study finds

#40

Post by AstralStorm »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #12
Thorentis wrote: post #2

I wonder if instead of desalination plants, there exists "de-acidification" plants that can in turn use the acid for electricity generation or something like that? Whenever I see these articles, unfortunately my first thought is "we're too far gone, we can't turn around now" in terms of climate change. But! I think that instead of trying to reverse the situation (for instance, by convincing the largest carbon emitter…

Trouble is, rising acidity at alarming rates is still only a 0.21 decline in pH over a 100 year period. Whilst that might be more than enough to upset no end of shelled animals and other issues. A de-acidifcation plant faces the same issue as carbon capture and storage away from the huge emitters -- you're going to have to process a colossal volume to capture enough of the pollutant you're removing. While we're at it…

It is not enough still. But processing such huge volumes with current technology is out of reach.

Might be easier to devise a biotech solution, but messing with ecosystems is quite risky nonetheless. An example would be putting carbon fixing bacteria or algae in the water, additionally replacing the plankton that died due to change in pH. We have similar technology for cleaning up oil spills and some chemicals, so why not dilute carbonic acid as well.

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