Group items tagged

Global warming…the Earth is steadily getting warmer. The why is it getting warmer question will solicit so many theories that it would drive one mad to sort through them all. Global warming itself is sort of a misnomer; it is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The cause for all the debate is whether or not the atmospheric increase of CO2 gas over the last two-hundred years has affected the Earth's climate. Recently scientists have discovered another reason to be concerned about the increasing level of atmospheric CO2. It is startling that the media and science has hardly touched upon ocean acidification. It would not be surprising if you have never heard this term. A LexisNexis search of the news wire services found in the past week there were 348 articles that mentioned global warming. Three articles contained ocean acidification. In the last 2 years, a LexisNexis search of all sources found a mere 216 articles that mentioned ocean acidification. That is a worldwide search of newspapers, magazines and wire services. The New York Times did not mention it a single time, but they ran so many Global Warming articles that there were too many matches for the page to display.

"Friday, December 14th, 2007 Coral in Crisis Bleached corals on coral reef on southern Great Barrier Reef in January 2002. Coral bleaching primarily affects reef building corals when conditions get too warm. Image © Science The world's coral reefs are in great danger, threatened by climate change and rising carbon dioxide levels. In an article published in the journal Science, researchers provide provide three different scenarios for the fate of reef-building corals worldwide as they face higher concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and the related ocean acidification that slows coral calcification, the process needed for a reef to grow. Increasing CO2 levels have the potential to greatly shift the chemistry of ocean waters, threatening the existence of most coral species. "

Endangered Species Bulletin The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offers the quarterly Endangered Species Bulletin, with information on rulemakings, recovery plans and activities, conservation partnerships, research developments, and a variety of other issues. The Summer 2009 issue was focused entirely oceans and includes articles on corals, sea turtles, the Hawaiian Monk Seal, and more.

"Recognising ocean acidification in deep time: An evaluation of the evidence for acidification across the Triassic-Jurassic boundary Sarah E. GreeneCorresponding author contact information, 1, E-mail the corresponding author, Rowan C. Martindale1, E-mail the corresponding author, Kathleen A. Ritterbush E-mail the corresponding author, David J. Bottjer E-mail the corresponding author, Frank A. Corsetti E-mail the corresponding author, William M. Berelson E-mail the corresponding author Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA 90089 Received 22 July 2011. Accepted 17 March 2012. Available online 5 April 2012. While demonstrating ocean acidification in the modern is relatively straightforward (measure increase in atmospheric CO2 and corresponding ocean chemistry change), identifying palaeo-ocean acidification is problematic. The crux of this problem is that the rock record is a constructive archive while ocean acidification is essentially a destructive (and/or inhibitory) phenomenon. This is exacerbated in deep time without the benefit of a deep ocean record. Here, we discuss the feasibility of, and potential criteria for, identifying an acidification event in deep time. Furthermore, we investigate the evidence for ocean acidification during the Triassic-Jurassic (T-J) boundary interval, an excellent test case because 1) it occurs in deep time, beyond the reach of deep sea drilling coverage; 2) a potential trigger for acidification is known; and 3) it is associated with one of the 'Big Five' mass extinctions which disproportionately affected modern-style invertebrates. Three main criteria suggest that acidification may have occurred across the T-J transition. 1) The eruption of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) and the associated massive and rapid release of CO2 coincident with the end-Triassic mass extinction provide a suitable trigger for an acidification event (