Toward a Sustainable 21st Century
Ocean Acidification
There was a great one day conference on Ocean Acidification (OA) at the Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering next the UC Irvine. The speakers were the major researchers on OA, some political leaders on the environment, and ocean environmental groups, almost all from the West Coast. The Pacific Coast can face major OA problems, in addition to the oyster nurseries already having difficulty.
The amount of information presented far exceeds the capability of this blog, and the videos of the talks will be available on the Newkirk Center website, since the Center sponsored and arranged this conference, under the guidance of Prof. John Whiteley of UC Irvine.
I will just add some of the good comments on communicating with the public and public officials.
State Senator Kevin Ranker of Washington said that if you want to influence Congress, start with State legislators since 48% of congressmen come from legislatures.
It was said that communication leads to action. One of the best ways to communicate is through stories with affected people. The audience finds the stories relatable, emotional, with real characters. Journalists and TV presenters often use this method. (Us academics don’t, since we most often just present the facts.)
An important aspect of environmental degradation is that it costs jobs and businesses, and these resonate with politicians.
Another approach to congressmen is to tell them what is going on in our states, and what the people back.
Cylvia Hayes, and environmentalist and the First Lady of Oregon, pointed out that there are 500,000 clean energy jobs on the West coast. She also pointed out the the Gross Domestic Product only counts the economic activity, but does not include our aid or degradation to the environment. People are working on a General Progress Indicator to include this. It was also pointed out that Nature is tied to the Economy, and we should use that aspect in our politics.
Surveys were shown, that indicated that only 7% of Americans know that ocean acidification is a problem.
Pushback on the environment occurs when you start telling people to change how they live their lives.
When considering environmental affects, it is most effective to look at the local context of the effects and for limits on local resources.
For government funding and actions, legislators and administrators should integrate government agencies.
For environmental scientists, it is important to the relevant research on the effects and mitigation and adaptation. To be effective, the research often has to be interdisciplinary.
Scientists also have to monitor any actions in response to environmental corrections.
Solutions must be evaluated with a cost-benefit analysis to be accepted.
Public officials have to be communicated with and educated about science issues in the environment, which can be called closing the science-policy gap.
(I must admit that I had to review my high school chemistry for the definition of pH. I think it was much more effective when speakers translated this into percent or factor increases in the H+ concentration or acidity. What has to be recalled is that the pH scale is a log scale for H+ concentration. Plain water has a pH of 7, meaning a concentration of H+ of 10^(-7). Each lower unit of pH means an increase in H+ by a factor of 10. From Wikipedia, since pre industrial times, pH has declined by 0.11. This is an increase in H+ by 10^(0.11) = 1.29, or a 29% increase. To the public, a decline of pH by 0.11 doesn’t sound like much, but a 29% increase does sound like an important change. The other thing confusing about the scale is that as acidity gets worse, the pH declines. The Wikipedia article also took a sample projection to 2100 of a decline of 0.355, giving a 127% increase in acidity since pre-industrial times. )
As in global warming, it is hard for the public to think that our activities could have caused a global scale change. In fact, the source is the same. 26% of the emitted CO2 goes into the ocean, and this combines with H20, creating carbonic acid, H2CO3. The hydrogen ions disassociate and break apart calcium carbonate CaCO3, which form shells for sealife and coral reefs. Not discussed was the very long term affects that these shells fall to the bottom of the ocean and sequester carbon. Also, as warming proceeds, less CO2 can be absorbed by the ocean (open a warm carbonated drink for dramatic proof of this), so more of it will be sent to the atmosphere, to cause more warming.
An excellent short presentation on Ocean Acidification was given by Gary Oberts to our OLLI class on Climate Change (see from page 8 to 20 on the above link).
(It seems odd to be blogging about the ocean acidification climate related problem, while I am watching the fires in the Los Angeles area on the television. LA only received a little more than 1/3 of the average rainfall since the start of last summer, and today was a very hot Santa Ana wind day, bringing hot air from the desert to the East..)
Here are some links to reports on ocean acidity or to ocean environmental and government organizations that were referred to in the talks.
The Newkirk Center www.newkirkcenter.uci.edu
The Oceanography Society www.tos.org
Washington State Department of Ecology www.ecy.wa.gov
www.ecy.wa.gov/water/marine/oa/overview.html
OMEGAS omegas.science.oregonstate.edu
NOAA Carbon Program “Ocean Acidification Blue Ribbon Panel” for Washington State www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification+Blue+Ribbon+Panel
Center for Ocean Solutions www.centerforoceansolutions.org
California Current Acidification Network C-CAN c-can.msi.ucb.edu
CORAL Triangle Initiative www.coraltriangleinitiative.org
Ocean Conservancy www.oceanconservancy.org
First Lady Cylvia Hayes www.oregon.gov/firstlady/pages/index.aspx
Beyond GDP www.beyond-gdp.eu/
The Ocean Foundation www.oceanfdn.org
California Coastal Commission www.coastal.ca.gov
California Marine Protective Areas www.dfg.ca.gov/marine/mpa/index.asp
National Marine Protective Areas Center www.mpa.gov
California Ocean Science Trust calost.org/
Some of the many things I learned was that ocean acidity varies greatly over the oceans, with the Atlantic, northern and southern oceans having more of it. It also varies with time and with upwelling currents. It can also be affected locally by runoff of fertilizer and other pollution.
The northern Pacific coast is meeting the challenge to the tidewater oyster farms by growing young oysters in Hawaii. It also closes seawater access when northern winds cause upwelling of more acidic water. Production is approaching levels of the past.
