Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Friday, June 27, 2008
The oceans are currently uptaking 22 million tons of CO 2 daily which is making a significant and exponential change in the ocean’s chemistry.
In 2004, it was projected that the pH balance of the oceans would be lower in the middle of this century than they had been for more than 20 MILLION years.
There was a spike in methane release last year from the thawing Arctic permafrost too. Scientists are concerned that as the Arctic continues to warm and the permafrost thaws a cycle of carbon release and temperature rise will add to the reverberating feedback cycle…In April Ed Dlugokencky from NOAA’s Earth System Research Lab said, “It’s too soon to tell whether last year’s spike in emissions includes the start of such a trend.”
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That was just 2 short months ago. Now the grim news is that for the first time in human history the ice at the North Pole will disappear entirely if it continues its current rate it will be gone by summer’s end. Science is placing the odds at 50:50. About 70% of the sea ice this spring was new ice formed over last winter. New ice melts faster than the old ice.
Inuit natives, near Baffin Bay, are reporting the sea ice is breaking up much earlier than normal this year. They have also seen wide cracks appearing where the ice normally remains stable.
The rate of Arctic land warming is 3.5 times greater than the average 21st century
warming rates predicted in climate models; more feedback cycles. So much so that
Science News is reporting over the past century the leading edges of conifer forests
have crawled from 20-60 meters of the mountains and have begun to overrun the tundra.
There are now conifers growing where no living tree has grown in the last 1,000 years. The greening of the Arctic is something we don’t want. The albedo, or the extent of which light from the sun can be reflected will be decreased more and more as the ‘green’ of the plant material continues to advance toward the Arctic.
The cycle continues to compound as the tundra thaws and releases methane. Scientists think between 1/3 and 1/2 the CO 2 that has been produced by humans since
the industrial revolution is now in the ocean. Water that is upwelling today is water that was exposed to 1958 CO 2 concentrations. 50 years from now the water being upwelled will be that exposed to the methane and carbon dioxide levels of today…
So, the last thing the Bush Administration wants getting out is a 250 page report by the EPA giving detailed alternative approaches of how to regulate greenhouse gases!
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Did you ever hit that nasty ’send’ button on an email, and wish you could bring it back?
You aren’t alone. It generally happens to me after I’ve had a little too much wine. I’m not suggesting that’s the problem at the White House, but if the cork fits…
The White House demanded that an email the EPA had ’sent’ be ‘recalled’. If, however, the pesky ’send’ button has already been hit, then the White House has its own simple and fairly elegant solution to news it just doesn’t want to see. Just don’t open the email.
That won’t work either.
The EPA apparently had 250 pages of ‘detailed alternative approaches’ to regulate greenhouse gases from fuels, cars and some industry. But, no; the White House doesn’t want anything to do with solving problems. It appears, as is widely speculated, this administration is all about creating problems. Speculated is a generous term in this case. The time for speculation, in regard to the intentions of this administration, has long past.
The Supreme Court had already tried to set the White House straight when it ruled carbon dioxide is an air pollutant, and the Clean Air Act gave the EPA the power to start mandating that new vehicles to reduce their pollutants.
If we do have the technology and the money to regulate greenhouse gases it seems apparent those in power don’t want us to know about them.
Photo Thanks: NOAA
Labels: Acid Ocean, Arctic, Arctic Ice, Baffin, CO2, EPA, Methane, NOAA, North Pole, Ocean, Speak no Evil, Tundra, carbon dioxide, cover-up
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Learn To Take Your Drinks ‘neat’; We’re running out of ice, among other things.
