Study: Oceans acidifying fastest in 300M years

Waves break over coral reef near the coast of the Seychelles main island Mahe. / Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

(CBS) Because of industrial emissions, the earth's oceans are acidifying faster now than at any point in the past 300 million years, says a study by researchers at Columbia University.

According to a blog post from The Earth Institute at Columbia University Thursday, the acidity of the oceans has increased 30% in the past 100 years due to carbon emissions by human beings.

According to the post:

While the amount of carbon in the air and oceans has fluctuated naturally over time...oceans may be acidifying faster today from industrial emissions than they did during four major extinctions in the last 300 million years when carbon levels spiked naturally.

A press release put out by The Earth Institute at Columbia University describes the pH drop as possibly "unprecedented" and says the change threatens various oceanic species. Oceans soak up excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere like a "sponge," according to the blog post, and changes in ocean acidity can affect corals, mollusks and plankton.

"(I)f industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace," Barbel Honisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the study's lead author, says,  "we may lose organisms we care about."

"What we're doing today," according to Honisch, "really stands out."

The international team of researchers looked at hundreds of paleoceanographic studies and determined that there was only "only one period in the last 300 million years when the oceans changed even remotely as fast as today," the release says. During that period 56 million years ago, "As many as half of all species of benthic foraminifers, a group of single-celled organisms that live at the ocean bottom, went extinct.

Researchers believe that organisms higher on the food chain may also have gone extinct in that period.

The study "raises the possibility that we are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change," co-author Andy Ridgwell of Bristol University said, according to AFP.

The study appears in the journal Science.

[joedamico34]

unparalleled in at least the last 300 million years

Who took the pH 300 million years ago to compare it with today?

[TomMariner]

I believe it. There is only one thing that responsible citizens and scientists can do -- Demand that the Democrats leave climate alone and fire Al Gore. He and the Democrats have crassly used this topic as a gross campaign issue and therefore the Republicans would let Our President stay in the Oval Office rather than let anything climate go through. And the Democrats have no idea of the science other than the fact that it sounds good in a campaign speech, and to prove that the Republicans want to drill, strip mine, smoke the entire globe.

If we don't grow up and take politics out of this, yes we will do (or have done) permanent damage. But it has made ex-VP Gore famous again, and not for getting fat and growing a beard.

[stanley0301]

What they aren't mentioning is that, as a total fraction of the Earth's annual carbon dioxide producton, that produced by humans amounts to less than 3%--every single living leaf is converted to carbon dioxide and water when it falls to the ground--no different than had it been burned. Also all the living alge in the ocean has the same fate--and volcanos are also huge emitters. Human produced carbon dioxde is puny in comparison to the sum total of all the leaves that fall in the fall. This said, how can the human contribution possably exceed that same "Less than 3%" that the total of human produced carbon dioxied accounts for.

[SteadyyFreddyy]

Utter and complete Hog Wash.

Notice that they are making an absurd comparison between geologic data measured in millions of years, to a tiny little century's worth of data. There is NO DATA of historic carbon measurements from millions of years ago that can be calibrated within 100 year windows. Science has no clue as to what natural fluctuations may have occurred back then on short time scales.

But that doesn't keep them from coming to an alarming conclusion. Let me guess about their proposed solution -- we should all pay global taxes to the climate police, right?

[Lanche25]

More gloom and doom from the left. Your green agenda is failing and your scare tactics do not work anymore.

[RTurnbullmipplesjd]

Most noteworthy is that you reflexively conflate serious scientific
information which strikes you as problematic as "from the left," rather than replying with any relevant argument whatsoever.
Please try harder.