{"id":1954,"date":"2009-12-14T07:58:53","date_gmt":"2009-12-14T07:58:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/2009\/12\/acid-ocean-facts\/"},"modified":"2009-12-14T07:58:53","modified_gmt":"2009-12-14T07:58:53","slug":"acid-ocean-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/2009\/12\/acid-ocean-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Acid Ocean Facts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/posterous.com\/getfile\/files.posterous.com\/nanophilosophy\/ktOlUOYXOqKNxGGig2cK0vC7GBsvavOoWCEBTwifbXE2oK2c8mCuHIrEDwUr\/P2A6D98A1.png\" width=\"466\" height=\"320\"\/> <\/div>\n<p \/>\n<div>1. Up to one half of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released by burning fossil fuels over the past 200 years has been absorbed by the world&#8217;s oceans<\/div>\n<div> 2. Absorbed CO2 in seawater (H2O) forms carbonic acid (H2CO3), lowering the water&#8217;s pH level and making it more acidic<\/div>\n<div> 3. This raises the hydrogen ion concentration in the water, and limits organisms&#8217; access to carbonate ions, which are needed to form hard parts<\/div>\n<p \/>\n<div>Up to 50% of the CO2 released by burning fossil fuels over the past 200 years has been absorbed by the world&#8217;s oceans<\/div>\n<div> This has lowered the pH value of seawater &#8211; the measure of acidity and alkalinity &#8211; by 0.1<\/div>\n<div> The vast majority of liquids lie between pH 0 (very acidic) and pH 14 (very alkaline); 7 is neutral<\/div>\n<div> Seawater is mildly alkaline with a &quot;natural&quot; pH of about 8.2<\/div>\n<div> The IPCC forecasts that ocean pH will fall by &quot;between 0.14 and 0.35 units over the 21st Century, adding to the present fall of 0.1 units since pre-industrial times&quot;<\/div>\n<p \/>\n<div>In September, the UN-backed study into The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb) concluded that the widely-endorsed target of trying to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of CO2 or their equivalent to around 450 parts per million (ppm) would prove lethal to much of the world&#8217;s coral.<\/div>\n<p \/>\n<div>&quot;Unlike global warming, which can manifest itself in nuanced, complex ways, the science of ocean acidification is unambiguous,&quot; said Andrew Dickson, a Scripps professor of marine chemistry.<\/div>\n<p \/>\n<div>&quot;The chemical reactions that take place as increasing amounts of carbon dioxide are introduced to seawater have been established for nearly a century.&quot;<\/div>\n<p \/>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/sio.ucsd.edu\/\">SCRIPPS Institution of Oceanography<\/a><\/div>\n<p \/>\n<div>(<a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/sci\/tech\/8411135.stm\">BBC &#8211; full article<\/a>)<\/div>\n<p style=\"font-size: 10px;\">  <a href=\"http:\/\/posterous.com\">Posted via email<\/a>   from <a href=\"http:\/\/nanophilosophy.org\/acid-ocean-facts\">Preposterous Guru<\/a>  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1. Up to one half of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released by burning fossil fuels over the past 200 years has been absorbed by the world&#8217;s oceans 2. Absorbed CO2 in seawater (H2O) forms carbonic acid (H2CO3), lowering the water&#8217;s pH level and making it more acidic 3. This raises the hydrogen ion concentration in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[780],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funky-original","tag-funky-original"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}