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A large research synthesis, published in one of the world's most influential scientific journals, has detected a decline in the amount of dissolved oxygen in oceans around the world — a long-predicted result of climate change that could have severe consequences for marine organisms if it continues.
The paper, published Wednesday in the journal Nature by oceanographer Sunke Schmidtko and two colleagues from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, found a decline of more than 2 percent in ocean oxygen content worldwide between 1960 and 2010.
The loss of ocean oxygen "has been assumed from models, and there have been lots of regional analysis that have shown local decline, but it has never been shown on the global scale, and never for the deep ocean," said Schmidtko, who conducted the research with Lothar Stramma and Martin Visbeck, also of GEOMAR.
Because oxygen in the global ocean is not evenly distributed, the 2 percent overall decline means there is a much larger decline in some areas of the ocean than others.
Moreover, the ocean already contains so-called oxygen minimum zones, generally found in the middle depths. The great fear is that their expansion upward, into habitats where fish and other organism thrive, will reduce the available habitat for marine organisms.
In shallower waters, meanwhile, the development of ocean "hypoxic" areas, or so-called "dead zones," may also be influenced in part by declining oxygen content overall.
On top of all of that, declining ocean oxygen can also worsen global warming in a feedback loop. In or near low oxygen areas of the oceans, microorganisms tend to produce nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. Thus the new study "implies that production rates and efflux to the atmosphere of nitrous oxide ... will probably have increased."
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday February 17 2017, @05:46PM
I have always been sceptical of carbon trading.
If I get credits for not cutting down a tree, what happens if it dies due to old age or other natural causes? Do I suddenly have to buy carbon offsets before burning the wood?
However, many people insist on letting the "free market" run the economy. If you are going to do that, some kind of price on carbon is needed to discourage businesses from taking advantage of externalities.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday February 17 2017, @07:50PM
If I get credits for not cutting down a tree, what happens if it dies due to old age or other natural causes? Do I suddenly have to buy carbon offsets before burning the wood?
One might suppose that you had spare credits from all the other trees that you kept alive or allowed to live. If people who are landless can afford such credits, surely those who have land and are granted credits for using their land in an environmentally favourable manner should be able to muddle through. Are you saying that such a system cannot be fair, or cannot be workable at all?
You wrote in another thread that you are in Canada where you once experienced such hot weather that you didn't "feel like moving at all."
/article.pl?sid=17/02/16/1830215 [soylentnews.org]
The Canadian prime minister supports increased extraction of the tar sands oil, which releases more carbon per unit of usable energy than other oil deposits do.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13022017/justin-trudeau-canada-trump-climate-change-agreements [insideclimatenews.org]
That could mean more hot weather, and more events like last year's Fort McMurray fire (the fact that the fire occurred near the tar sands was AFAIK concidental).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_McMurray_fire [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday February 17 2017, @08:21PM
The problem with the oil sands is that about 50% of Alberta's economy relies on the resource extraction. Our economy is very cyclical as a result.
The provincial government has recently introduced a carbon tax. Hopefully that will encourage some diversification.
Because I am using a pseudonymous account, I did not want to say where this summer camp was. Suffice it to say, the day-time highs in the summer were higher than I was used to.