Greenhouse gas 'threatens marine life'

[T_i_B]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=607579

Gigantic changes to the oceans, leading to the extinction of marine life from cod to coral reefs, are likely because of the main greenhouse gas causing global warming, British scientists warned yesterday.

Researchers have found a new and potentially devastating danger from the huge volumes of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by industry and transport, already threatening the planet with climate change.

Now, they warn, it is also rapidly turning the world's oceans acid as it is dissolved in seawater, and putting an enormous array of marine life at risk. Ocean acidification may wipe out much of the microscopic plankton at the base of the marine food web, and have a knock-on fatal effect up through shellfish to major human food species such as cod. It is already having a serious impact on organisms such as coral, and putting a question mark against the future of coral reefs.

The findings about acid seas, which are recent, are causing alarm in the international scientific community because they represent a huge threat to the world until now unknown.

[pnutchuck]

1. I have first hand knowledge of this

I worked as a diver in Indonesia and Thailand that have some of the most pristine reefs in the world. However, some of the reefs, closer to land are deteriorating rapidly thanks to the warmer water temperatures. Coral reefs need a certain temperature and the waters have been warming gradually over the last 20 yrs. It's really sad to see that bleached coral, because there's nothing you can do to save it or the animals that live on it.

[Spinzonner]

2. Look at the upside

with looming ecological disaster, it won't make any difference what is done to Social Security.

In the short run we'll mostly be dead.