Last time, I wrote about the importance of accurate measurement.  We can’t measure some aspects of climate change because we don’t have the technology to do it.  Sometimes, applying technology we already have in a different way gives us new insight. Take glaciers, for instance. Some of the most graphic examples of global warming are found in pictures of receding glaciers. Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is one of the most dramatic. Compare these photos from 1993 and 2000 to these from... [Read more]

Like it or not, ocean acidification will reverberate through our economy and food supply, in the form of lost habitat, and drastic changes in kinds and densities of certain species. Plankton, which are the the backbone of the marine food chain, have been severely affected.  As the bellweather species of the ocean ecosystem, the fate of plankton - there are thousands upon thousands of varieties - determines the fate of all sea-dwelling life. I stopped eating sushi a few years ago when I began learning... [Read more]

For finfish, direct impacts of ocean acidification may be limited. On the other hand, there are many unknowns: for balance and orientation finfish use calcareous structures in the inner ear (otoliths). How will otolith formation be affected or how will ocean acidification impair, directly or indirectly, the fertilisation success or developmental stages, particularly for indirect developers and broadcast spawners? For instance, salmon yearlings prey mainly on pteropods, which may be among the first... [Read more]

A few facts:* • The ocean has absorbed fully half of the fossil carbon released to the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. • Measurements carried out by scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and NOAA demonstrated that the upper few hundred meters of the South Atlantic have higher carbon concentrations now than in 1993. • Ken Caldeira, an oceanographer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington has done studies suggesting that within a few centuries, ocean... [Read more]

Until recently, ocean acidification was the quiet step-child lurking in the corner of the climate crisis. Earlier this month, the Expert Panel on Ocean Acidification, organized by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, and the UN Foundation, met at UN Headquarters, to bring to light some of the affects of ocean acidification on marine life and ecosystems. But now that it’s out of the shadows, scientists see the situation as more... [Read more]