Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: locogringo who wrote (825233)

12/23/2014 8:40:09 PM

From: Wharf Rat

Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1576893

"pH measurements dating back to at least 100 years earlier "
OK

Ocean pH Since 1850 and Projected to 2100
Based on "Ocean acidification due to atmospheric carbon dioxode, Altered Oceans: A Chemical Imbalance". See also "Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide" (http://www.us-ocb.org/publications/Royal_Soc_OA.pdf)

"What they suggest is that global acidification is a figment of Feely’s and Sabine’s imagination"
Do they suggest pteropod shell damage is another imaginary fig?

Scientists have documented that souring seas caused by CO2 emissions are dissolving pteropods, a key marine food source. The research raises questions about what other sea life might be affected.

Story by Craig Welch

Photographs by Steve Ringman

It didn’t take long for researchers examining the tiny sea snails to see something amiss.

The surface of some of their thin outer shells looked as if they had been etched by a solvent. Others were deeply pitted and pocked.

These translucent sea butterflies known as pteropods, which provide food for salmon, herring and other fish, hadn’t been burned in some horrific lab accident.

They were being eaten away by the Pacific Ocean.

For the first time, scientists have documented that souring seas caused by carbon-dioxide emissions are dissolving pteropods in the wild right now along the U.S. West Coast. That is damaging a potentially important link in the marine food web far sooner than expected.

“What we found was just amazing to us,” said Richard Feely, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, who helped collect the live samples. “We did the most thorough analysis that’s ever been done and found extensive impacts on marine life in the field from ocean acidification.”

This is the broadest and most detailed indication ever that acidification is already damaging native creatures in the wild. It raises many new questions about whether other sea life, too, might already be harmed — directly by acidifying seas, or by subtle shifts in parts of the food chain.

“These changes are happening years earlier than we had projected,” said Nina Bednarsek, a research fellow with NOAA who inspected the pteropods to identify shell scarring. “It is really a first indication of what is going on in our ecosystem.”

apps.seattletimes.com