The sink is full
Share your Thoughts
Posted on May 18, 2007
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Exceedingly bad news from the Southern Ocean. A shift in winds caused by human activity (greenhouse gases and depletion of the ozone layer) is causing the Southern Ocean to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere rather than absorb it. The loss of this natural carbon ’sink’ would be bad news indeed for life on this planet, one of the “feedback loops’ most feared by climate scientists.
The study is being reported in the new edition of Science magazine, and you can read about it in this Wash. Post Reuters story, and in this story from Science Daily.
Lead author Dr Corinne Le Quéré of UEA and BAS said, “This is the first time that we’ve been able to say that climate change itself is responsible for the saturation of the Southern Ocean sink. This is serious. All climate models predict that this kind of ‘feedback’ will continue and intensify during this century. The Earth’s carbon sinks — of which the Southern Ocean accounts for 15% — absorb about half of all human carbon emissions. With the Southern Ocean reaching its saturation point more CO2 will stay in our atmosphere.”
The study also shows that the Southern Ocean 
is acidifying at a faster rate than they thought. Le Quéré said they are seeing levels they had not expected until 2050.
I visited the website of NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and found a summary (Impacts of Anthropogenic CO2 on Ocean Chemistry and Biology) from a workshop looking at the impacts of acidification on corals and other marine life, co-sponsored by the agency back in 2005. Its worth a read. A couple of highlights:
If current trends in carbon dioxide emissions continue, the ocean will acidify to an extent and at rates that have not occurred for tens of millions of years. At present, ocean chemistry is changing at least 100 times more rapidly than it has changed in the 100,000 years preceding our industrial era.
Ocean acidification could be expected to have major negative impacts on corals and other marine organisms that build calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. When carbon dioxide reacts with seawater it forms carbonic acid, which is corrosive to calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. The impact is likely to be disruptions through large components of the marine food web…
Ocean acidification could be expected to have major negative impacts on corals and other marine organisms that build calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. When carbon dioxide reacts with seawater it forms carbonic acid, which is corrosive to calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. The impact is likely to be disruptions through large components of the marine food web.
This is scary stuff. When we measure the impact of the human ecological footprint, it may be hard to appreciate that we have actually filled this crucial carbon sink, the Southern Ocean. Climate skeptics have tried to argue that the Earth can handle it, or handle us really, but clearly it cannot — not this industrial and post-industrial human species.
What scares me this morning as I take in the latest bad news is how many dynamics for rapid warming are already in place, drivers that can no longer be reversed, only kept from getting worse than they already are. Clearly, adaptation, along with swift and drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, will become an urgent item at the top of the agenda of the international community.
We can stay in denial just so long, but hard times are coming for the human species, and our moral fiber, our spiritual values, will be sorely tested. How will we live through this time?
How we answer that question will determine whether or not there is merit in deciding to call this project, Spirituality and Ecological Hope.
Technorati Tags: Southern Ocean carbon sink, ocean acidification, feedback loop, carbon dioxide, human ecological footprint, Dr. Corinne Le Querre
Photo credit: Maria Stenzel/National Geographic/Getty Images
Comments
Leave a Reply
