A lot of ocean news these days-- it didn't used to be so, but whether it's sea level rise-- Plastic pollution. Acidification , plastic pollution. Decline in fish.A decline in fishing, or fisheries and fish.
But on the other hand, it's creating connections again. Acidification of the oceans.
into the oceans and atmosphere from these sort of unthinkable volcanic events. Ocean acidification and ocean anoxia, so when carbon dioxide reacts with seawater, it gets more acidic. And also, there's less carbonate available for ocean critters to build their shells and skeletons, and it makes it harder for them to stick around.
In the book he is talking about we're losing the Great Barrier Reef now and all other reefs on the planet because of acidification . That's exactly what goes on before a mass extinction event. That's what we're going through right now.
that the polar bear lives, what's going on in those regions and does it really matter then if the U.S. has all this great protection and 90 percent of the terrain not protected? ocean acidification because the oceans absorb a lot of that carbon dioxide from the air and that causes the water to acidify and as the water becomes more acid that destroys
So if we destroy this, we destroy full ecosystems in the oceans. So these acidification of the ocean is probably the biggest threat we have today, and it's obviously linked to climate change. Now, I often like to do this little game, because in the media, we often hear, again, bullshit about that.
He was the producer of "Chasing Ice." I mean, the ocean has so many different problems, right? We have ocean acidification , plastic islands, agricultural runoff, overfishing. How did you essentially come to this particular issue?
That gets extremely warm. There's ocean acidification and anoxia in the oceans. Almost everything on the planet goes extinct.
of problems that we're dealing with today. There was incredible ocean acidification . There were anoxic, dead places in the ocean where there was so little oxygen that animals just couldn't survive there.
a devastating impact on the food chain. So, if you just throw up sulfur particles in the stratosphere and reduce the heat of the planet, you're still allowing high levels of CO2, which cause acidification of the oceans. So, that is a potentially devastating side effect. Shifting precipitation patterns around, a lot of some modeling has shown that putting particles in the stratosphere will have an impact on the rainfall in the Amazon and in
And so that was my favorite piece at the time. It isn't just ocean acidification .
That's no big surprise. It reduces carbon concentrations and ocean acidification . That may be surprising.
Someone will call me up and they say, Jeremy, I went to that toilet paper aisle yesterday and I thought about you. You really experience what ocean acidification is.
Someone will call me up and they say, Jeremy, I went to that toilet paper aisle yesterday and I thought about you. One was teaching the lawmakers about ocean acidification .
Someone will call me up and they say, Jeremy, I went to that toilet paper aisle yesterday and I thought about you. But for those who knew about acidification , we were teaching them about VR.
The burning of fossil fuels producing excess carbon dioxide, raising temperatures-- that's where the bleaching comes from. That's also where the ocean acidification comes from, from the excess CO2. But then you have a lot of local effects-- of nutrient enrichment, of runoff from all the stuff coming down the Mississippi
And also, there's less carbonate available for ocean critters to build their shells and skeletons, and it makes it harder for them to stick around. And so we see extreme ocean acidification in some of these mass extinctions. There's geochemical proxies to figure this out.
Building. Does anybody in this room know Bill de Blasio-- the mayor of New York? I didn't know about acidification .
Building. Does anybody in this room know Bill de Blasio-- the mayor of New York? At the current rate of acidification -- this is the burning of fossil fuels-- about a third to half of all the carbon dioxide released
When, in fact, there's many, many other grapes that do do well, here, and could do well. But is just a very weak acidification .
disappear because the fundamental habitats have changed we're gonna see in the neighborhood of three-quarters of the world's fisheries be affected by acidification and other factors which is going to affect the sole source of protein for 40% of the world's population are we ready for this we're gonna see a lot of health issues
many million years. Q So I can imagine how we can adapt to rising sea levels and missing ice. I'm more concerned about ocean acidification . I wonder if you have any insider words to add about how dramatically the ecology of the oceans will shift as the pH drops? Dr. Henry Pollack: Well, there's quite a well-established, observational data about the slow decline
emissions, ocean acidification , soil degradation, biodiversity loss.
Someone will call me up and they say, Jeremy, I went to that toilet paper aisle yesterday and I thought about you. So most smart adults have not heard of ocean acidification .
There's geochemical proxies to figure this out. And you see that animals that are especially prone to ocean acidification suffer the worst. And today, we're starting to see the first glimmers of this.
conversation about the particular cause-- whether it's ocean acidification -- I said it-- or shark conservation.
And so that was my favorite piece at the time. What's causing that? Ocean acidification caused by carbon dioxide caused by us.
Someone will call me up and they say, Jeremy, I went to that toilet paper aisle yesterday and I thought about you. And what you're looking here is a picture of what's called ocean acidification .
weren't aware of this issue and it was only going to get worse and worse and worse. And we looked at whether or not we should be telling the story of ocean acidification , which is the other part of the equation when it comes to global warming.
Building. Does anybody in this room know Bill de Blasio-- the mayor of New York? That was horrific, because trying to reverse acidification is really tough, because we're changing the chemistry
A lot of people trying to figure out what the effects of ocean acidification are going to be.
fixer and there's some sign with lab work that they may not add to acidification of the oceans. Lots more science needed there.
These are a couple of papers that came out showing that there are problems with ocean acidification affecting the early development of squid.
Someone will call me up and they say, Jeremy, I went to that toilet paper aisle yesterday and I thought about you. you're seeing here in the picture, experience ocean acidification .
The same goes for coral reefs, which are thought to collapse by mid-century because of ocean acidification . And in the Pacific Northwest, oyster growers are having trouble already growing oysters because of ocean acidification . So we're starting to see the first glimmers of a disaster that has been played out many times in Earth's history.
picture in the context of climate change, and ocean acidification , and even just in conflicts in general.
Do the corals have any genetic variation that enables them to respond to different levels of acidification and continue to grow?
Well, another very big effect of carbon dioxide emissions is the phenomenon known as ocean acidification .
That may be surprising. Indeed, it's common to see in the kind of press literature that solar geoengineering will make ocean acidification worse. That might be true for this moral hazard reason we'll get to it when we talk about solar geoengineering in something closer to the real world.
so the temperature response is a bit less, then in that world with the same human emissions of CO2, there's actually a little less CO2 in the atmosphere at the end of the century because there's less of these carbon cycle feedbacks, and so, therefore, a little less ocean acidification as well. It's not a big effect, but it's not a zero effect.
But there's nothing magic about halving it. Right, and I think you point out like in your book, like ocean acidification and that kind of stuff is completely not solved by this.
But also, we know there are ecosystems that, because of climate, are collapsing, like ocean acidification that's ruining our coral reefs.
Someone will call me up and they say, Jeremy, I went to that toilet paper aisle yesterday and I thought about you. There's also motivation to learn, which is-- this is a screenshot from the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, where we premiered the Stanford Ocean Acidification
And I'll just sort of tease how that would've killed things. These eruptions also injected incredible amounts of carbon dioxide into the air and caused extreme global warming, ocean acidification , and marine anoxia. So that should sound kind of scary, and it is, and I'll get back to that.
And by the end of the century, these things won't be able to stick around based on business as usual projections of carbon emissions. The same goes for coral reefs, which are thought to collapse by mid-century because of ocean acidification . And in the Pacific Northwest, oyster growers are having trouble already growing oysters because of ocean acidification .
So for example, in corals, of you want to know what's going to happen to corals because of ocean acidification , we have to look at the calcification
Volcanoes could come back at any point, really big mega volcanoes. So basically, what can happen is, as you probably know, if you get acidification in the oceans, oftentimes that can lead to all algal blooms.
But in terms of other human impacts, interestingly enough, you very rarely hear people being ocean acidification deniers.
OK, so what you're looking at-- all the different colors represent keywords that relate to their causes-- ocean, acidification , sustainable seafood, sharks,
the big, the big issue, which is when you start messing with something like the climate system, what might go wrong? And one of the really important things to say is that reducing sunlight is not the same as cutting CO2. The CO2 is, causes many other problems and among them, most seriously, acidification of the oceans, which is a very big deal and is having a devastating impact on the food chain. So, if you just throw up sulfur particles in the stratosphere and reduce the heat of the planet, you're still allowing high levels of CO2,