The Water Acidification Problem

Published Apr 20, 2016, 12:14 PM

What causes water acidification? Why should we be concerned? And how might we fix the problem?

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Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that looks at the future and says, somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly. I'm Jonvin Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. I I was assuming that you were going to do an acid bath song. I had a lot of different thoughts on the subject, and ultimately I decided to go just one step further removed. Are we all of just about the right age to have heard a whole lot about acid rain in school when we were kids. I think we are. Yeah, I definitely am. And that's what we're gonna be talking about water accidification today, and not just acid rain, but water acidification in general. What does that mean? What? First of all, what does the term mean? Second, what does that mean to our planet? And third is there anything we can do about it? Uh? So? Yeah, when I was growing up, acid rain was like one of those buzzwords that I remember hearing frequently. Let me let me tell you what was like growing up in the in the early to mid eighties. So acid rain big concern, probably second only to communism. It sounds like I'm making a joke, but I'm really Yeah, no, I I was there. I remember. Yeah, as a kid, it was weird getting this because I didn't know what communism was as a kid. I just knew it was supposedly awful, but you knew what acid was. It's that big vat of stuff that the bad guy hangs Batman over on a rope before Batman escapes. Pretty much, that's it's very close to what my conception was of the idea of what acid was. Therefore what acid rain must be. And this is this is despite the fact that all of us kind of grew up. I mean, it's certainly like the seventies nineties were a golden age, a very weird, very earnest outreach to children about environmental issues. Outreach is a cute word, because because we kids had so much power over the massive amounts of pollution being poured into our environment. We we we mentioned fern Gully in the last episode, Azing mentioned it recently, one of the in a couple of the last episodes at anyway. Yeah, yeah, for Fern Gully, the last rainforest. There was also Captain Planet, which was pretty amazing. Um. Of course, of course Dr Seuss Lorax and David the Gnome, and like the Final Fantasy series and the work that Miyazaki was doing over in Japan that wouldn't make it over here for another few years, but was still part of the ovoir of the time, Like Nasca of the Valley of Wind. I feel like in this list you're kind of mixing together some things that are like wonderful pieces of art with environmental themes and then just pure propaganda. Well, to be fair, it was all part of the spectrum that was coming out towards us kids. I gotta tell you, it did convince me to shut down my coal gas firing plant and that I was using to really run my he manuh toys. You know what it did convince me to do was not to build coal plants in sim city. It had an effect on that. Really well simulated environment was as well, go planet, Go planet. Indeed so so okay. So all of these media were really good at convincing us that the Earth was in terrible trouble, possibly even our own sim sim Earth. But maybe they weren't as good at explaining what any of these things actually were. It's possible that either they were poorly uh written attempts to explain this like it was getting across the fact that this was These were important issues, but as a kid, I was not absorbing the actual information of what the stuff meant. I was misinterpreting it. In my mind, acid rain, if it were to actually be a thing that happened in my neighborhood, it would that were I had to get caught out in it, I would melt away like the wicked Witch of the West, or like the Nazis at the end of Raiders at the Lost Start. It would be another example and also raised lost art played a very important role in my childhood, so that definitely was one of the images going through my mind. Whenever I heard the phrase acid rain, I figured it literally meant it must be raining. Acid. Um, well, you could argue, yeah, but acid is a is a term that children don't quite understand the right one. Adult start necessarily understand it either broad term as well. Acidic things are many things. Yes, they have a pH lower than seven point oh. Essentially that means that it's acidic. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's it's acidic to the point where it could react with something like your skin. But as a child, that subtlety was lost on me. As an adult, I understand it a little bit better. So here's the thing. Yeah, it wasn't like this rain was going to melt the flesh off of my bones and I was going to be standing there as a skeleton for a second before collapsing into a little pile. But we also shouldn't just sit here and mock the past for being concerned about it, because acid rain is something that's actually worth being concerned about. Absolutely, And so we're gonna spend the first little bit about this in this podcast talking about acid rain, and then we will transition to talk about ocean acidification. The different is two are different, yes, although it's certainly related. Yeah, I mean in the sense that you don't want either to happen. So, so the e p A defines acid rain as quote a broad term referring to a mixture of wet and dry deposition, which means deposited material from the atmosphere containing higher than normal amounts of nitric and sulfuric acids. So this would be acid rain that actually contains nitric acid and sulfuric acid, not again at a concentration or intensity strong enough to do physical harm to your skin, but it could still harm you in the long term. Uh, it's a little different from ocean and centification. Ocean a centification really is the accumulation of hydrogen ions as a result of this absorption of carbon dioxide. We'll get into that in a little bit. So acid rain can actually come from natural sources, right, It's not just man made. If there's a volcanic eruption, that can end up injecting quite a bit of uh nitric acid and sulfuric acid into the atmosphere, which where it can then be absorbed in precipitation and then rained down upon the surrounding countryside, even miles or hundreds of miles away from where the eruption happened. I was curious to see what's what's the worst acid rain we've ever had on Earth? And I found an interesting article on smithsonian dot com from January talking about the acid rain that probably fell during the Great Dying, also known as the Permian tri Triassic extinction event. This is also known as the next Game of Thrones novel. Yes, yes, this was the worst stinction event in every Game of Thrones novel. Fair enough. For some reason, I almost just said in human history, not in human history and the history of the Earth, of life on Earth. Uh, nine out of every ten species are actually more than nine out of every ten species on Earth completely wiped out, which it was. It's so hard for us to even even fathom that today, right, Yeah, the idea that well, I mean, hopefully we'll never have to actually witness nine more than of all life forms being wiped off the planet. But uh, you know, when we think of extinctions, mostly extinctions that we're aware of are tiny on a scale compared to this particular one. Yeah, this thing was horrible. Life on Earth could very well have been completely snuffed out for all we know, and maybe, as far as we know we barely scraped by not we as in humans, but we as in our distant ancestors. Um, So what caused it? Scientists are still debating this, but the usual suspects are called up. There's mass of volcanic eruptions, usually centered around these the Siberian traps, these Siberian eruptions that uh seemed to happen at a particularly bad time to affect the Earth's atmospheric composition. And then there's also hypothesized space impacts and maybe bacterial or microbial blooms that changed the composition of the atmosphere. There are a lot of different hypotheses, but one uh anyway, that the article I mentioned talks about a few lines of research pointing to the theory that this volcanic eruption that's been hypothesized as one of the major causes of the extinction event led to extreme, widespread acid rain. And so according to to several findings, the carbon dioxide emitted by the Siberian volcanism would have lowered the pH of the rain to about four, which is they compare that in the article to the acidity of tomato juice. I mean, it's not acidic enough to burn your skin off, but that's really acidic for rain, yes. Uh. And then at on top of that, the acidifying effects of sulfur dioxide from the volcanic eruptions in the northern hemisphere they say may have been uh seeing pulses of weather events with rain that's as acidic as lemon juice. Lemon juice is nice to squirre it over your fish and chips, It is not nice to square it over your land masses and oceans, right, And Uh, I should point out, of course, the acid rain that we heard about in the eighties and nineties, that was clearly acid rain that was caused by by human activity. That was the sort of stuff we were being warned about, like, stopped this stuff because it's killing our planet, the bad guys on Captain planet. Yeah, yeah, that was the industrial revolution. Um, your coal burning factory, right, boy? Is my face red? Add of fact that the main thing I remember being told as a kid about acid rain was that it would discolor our statues and natch national monuments, which it would, so that is one thing it would do. So yeah, that just seems like a weird thing to emphasize. Yeah, well, to be fair, it's the one thing that stayed with you. It's not necessarily the one thing that was stressed above all others. Yeah, but uh, you know, the the the human made acid rain that comes from emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, both of which are biproducts of fossil fuel combustion. So as we depend upon fossil fuels, as we burn those fossil fuels, we release these sorts of gases into the atmosphere where they can end up becoming acid rain. There can be some chemical UH processes that then converted into nitric acid and sulfuric acid and mixed with the precipitation. UH. Most of the sulfur dioxide emissions and about a quarter of the nitrogen oxide emissions are the results of power plants burning coal to produce electricity. So again, my little coal firing plant was a really bad option. I should have gone solar. He man would have told me that if I paid attention at the last thirty seconds of every episode where the little educational p s a would come into play, But I always turned it off at that point because I wasn't there to learn things. Darn it. What were the what were the power plant options in sim City before sim City two thousand? Was a just coal and nuclear? Was that about it? I think giant hamsters were also. I think it was just nuclear at any rate. So when those emissions are released in the atmosphere, the components react chemically with other stuff like water, oxygen, other airborne chemicals that are already up there, and that creates that mild sulfuric acid and nitric acid, and so you me I mentioned wet and dry deposition. Acid rain is wet deposition. It means that you're actually depositing this acid through rain. Other types include fog and snow. Yeah, acid fog, which I'm pretty an the Surewood just that should be the sequel to the John Carpenter movie, you know, the exactly then everyone just tripping out as the fog is coming in and be that kind. So then uh, sulfuric and nitric Nitric acid mixed with wet weather fall to the ground during rainstorms, and this acid rain can damage plants and animals and change the acidity levels and bodies of water like streams, lakes, and ponds. The actual effects of acid rain depend on lots of different factors, so you can't give like a blanket statement that says here's how it's going to affect this region. There are a lot of things that will determine that, such as what is the acidity level, how bad, how concentrated is the acid in the rain itself? What is the buffering capacity of the soil to handle acidic water. Some soils can absorb it and hold onto it uh more effectively than others. Some it's going to run off right into whatever water bodies. Water are nearby, Um, things like marshes and stuff. You have a lot of very delicate types of animals and plants that can be very dramatically affected by changes in acidity levels. Uh, it's you know, things like you know, we often think of frogs as an early indicator species. That's one of the ones that we would be looking at in areas around where acid rain is happening, because they tend to be pretty sensitive to those kind of changes. Uh. Then you also have to take into account like there might be some species of plants and animals in certain areas that are a little more hardy. They can they can handle bigger changes in acidity levels without it dramatically affecting their health. In those cases, you might not even be aware that acid rain is a factor because you're not seeing the the consequences, at least not right away. So, uh, it's not a one size fits all kind of thing by any stretch of the imagination. And as Joe is pointing out earlier, the message he took home from all of this acid rain talk when he was a kid, it can cause damage demand made structures, including ones that are irreplaceable. No, Yeah, like those statues, you know, like ancient statues or monuments, that kind of thing where you know, I think this specific example I remember was something about the the what's it called Mount Rushmore? I was going to say, was it Mount Rushmore? Because I feel like that was a big thing that was impressed upon me as a child. It's still a big thing. These heads are enormous. I'm sorry, can you can you actually climb out their nose holes? That? I can't? Pretty sure you cannot. I can't. I have you know, I have never been to Mount Rushmore. It's when it's still on my list. But uh, and I guess I need to get there before the acid rain hits, because, appoint to you guys, those heads are living on borrowed time. According to my memory of my childhood, it may very well be that they're completely safe. I'm just considering it infallible at this point. So also, the acid rain can cause direct harm to our health. I mean, we're joking about this largely because it's a defense mechanism at some point. You know, you've gotta you've got to be able to lighten up things. But it really can cause harm to us. Now, the acidity, as we said, isn't enough to harm you directly through your skin, So you're not gonna be walking out there and rain starts to fall on you. You see like little plumes of smoke where it's hitting your skin and you can feel it bubbling. That's not happening. No, No, even drinking it isn't really going to do you any harm. Yeah, it turns out you got acid in your stomach and it's pretty strong, um, way stronger than the acidity levels in the an acid rain. So I mean, if you already drink Coca cola, that's fairly acidic, right, Yeah. I mean there's a lot of lemon juice, like you said before, very acidic, and we can ingest that without problems. I mean most of us. Some of us get a sensitivity to it, and after a little while your mouth might start to hurt, but that's that's kind of the extent of it. But breathing in those acids, when they're in the atmosphere, that is a problem, and that can lead to long term health complications, everything from asthma to bronchitis to even heart disorders. So it's serious stuff. Obviously, the biggest solution to this problem is to find other methods of generating power and other and all the other fossil fuel uses that we have. Getting off fossil fuels and using something else. That's the big solution to acid rain. It's you've got to look at what is causing the acid rain. Can you affect what that is? Because otherwise all you're doing is treating symptoms, right, and that's that's a losing game in the long run. So, uh, well, I'm all for treating some symptoms if it could you help us not get asthma. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, in the in the short term, in the acute sense, absolutely, But if you want to to solve things for the longer term, you've got to You've got to address the fossil fuel problem. Now. The other issue that we're going to talk about today, the different but I guess related issue in that it also deals with pollution and acidity, is ocean acidification. Yeah, and by acidity in this sense, we're not saying that the oceans themselves are turning acidic, correct, but they are, well, you could say they're becoming more acidic even though they are not acidic, right, they they themselves aren't on the acid end of the pH scale. No, the ocean is so basic. It's it's pretty basic. I mean, it's big, it's wet, covers most of the planet. How more much more basic can you get? But now again to explain the PhD, so we say seven is neutral. Scale goes from zero to fourteen. Anything above a seven is a base, below a seven is an acid, and the ocean is what it's like seven points something yet's it's it's above seven. It's in on the basics slightly slightly basic scale. It's between seven and eight, and it's closer to seven than eight. But when we talk about ocean a centification, we talk about that number going down slightly. So it's still on the basic end of the spectrum, but it's lower than what it would naturally be otherwise. So according to woods Whole, ocean a graphic institution. I'll just call it woods Hole because when I say ocean a graphic it sounds like I'm having some sort of episode. I'm having issues with talking today. Don't know what the big deal is, Joe. I just for some reason today that word is just tripping me up. But at any rate, it's a multi uh. They say that studying ocean and centification involves a multi disciplinary field of research, and it includes quote counter intuitive end quote aspects such as carbonate chemistry carbonate as in C A R B O in A T E carbonate And uh, it's a little they say counterintuitive because once you start looking into this, it sounds like the opposite thing is happening what you would expect. And because of that, it makes it particularly difficult to educate people and also to get across to the media the subtleties of what ocean and centification is all about. And uh, and I fully appreciate that. So we're gonna try our best to be as accurate as we possibly can, but keep in mind this is complicated stuff. Yeah, it's one of those things where like the issue is that Earth's oceans are are big, like really big kind of thing. Um, there's more ocean than truck. There's more ocean than truck. And uh, and like trucks, oceans have a lot of moving parts. Like like literally every molecule of water that makes up all of the oceans is probably moving right now. I don't want to freak you guys out, don't think about it too hard. Uh, And every single one of those molecules is interconnected and there's like a lot of fish and stuff. So you're connected. Now, you don't mean in a deepac choper a kind of sense. You mean in like a fluid dynamics and if a dynamic sense more so, yes, right, if you were to push against some of those molecules, they would push against other molecules that would push against other molecules, and so on and so forth, and a butterfly with flap its wings, and then you would get acid rain outside of my house. That's the way I understand it. At any rate. I hate this fossil fuel burning butterflies. They are the worst. They're so loud to I gotta tell you. Okay, but what what actually is ocean acidification? We sort of explained it, but it's it's the oceans pH becoming lower, not necessarily being an acid, but becoming more relatively acidic, right compared to what it was before exactly, And it's primarily caused by carbon dioxide dissolving into seawater. So now now you may have actually heard, I bet you've heard people who are trying to say, oh, you know, global warming, climate change, it's no big deal because the oceans will absorb the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It's not partially it's partially true, and that the oceans will as long as the carbon dioxide concentrate, the atmosphere goes up, and it goes up higher than what the ratio between water and atmosphere typically is than the water compensates by absorbing some of that CEO too. Now, it's not true that that means climate change is no big deal. It also is not true that that that means that, hey, we're okay, because if the carbon dioxide goes into the ocean, who cares, right, because it turns out yeah, yeah. And so what's going on with this, with this equilibrium thing here, is that when there's less carbon dioxide in the surface of the ocean than there is in the lower atmosphere, that the physical system that is that air and water is out of equilibrium. So so the water is going to try to absorb some of the carbon dioxide to even things out. And it doesn't happen instantaneously. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it takes about a year for the system to reach equilibrium. Every time there's an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which has been happening more or less constantly as far as we can track it back, for decades and decades. On a molecular level, what's going on here is that the carbon dioxide in the water react form carbonic acid, which is a type of molecule that can lose protons, which acidifies the water, decreasing the pH as. We've been talking about protons being hydrogen ions, right, because you get a hydrogen, you lose the electron. You've got a proton that's a hydrogen ion. And that's that's essentially what we talked about. Whenever you're talking about to sit, uh, you know, something becoming more acidic, you're really talking about accumulation of hydrogen ions on a very simple chemical level. I almost said basic, but that would have been so misleading. Uh So, Yeah, the ocean absorbs about a quarter of all the carbon dioxide we released into the atmosphere. Well, in some senses, like if it didn't do that, then the rate of climate change we are observing would go even faster. However, the tradeoff is we have this increase in uh, the acidification of the oceans, and as it turns out, that is pretty bad. So one thing we can say is that while climate change and ocean a centification are not the same thing, they both have they both share one common cause. Keeping in mind there are a lot of different causes that are at play, but carbon diox Yeah. Both, but carbon dioxide is like a big player in both, and so the emissions of carbon dioxide have an impact on climate change as well as ocean a cidification. Now, one thing we should probably point out is even though we are tracking a trend where the oceans are becoming more acidic, it will probably never dip below the neutral pH and become an acid. No, it will not do that because other other chemical components that are in the ocean will end up neutralizing acids. It will never get to the point where it goes below seven on the pH scale. It's never going to actually become an acid. The acidification is really talking about the trend of that pH getting lower. But essentially every research that I read, every single paper I read, said it is for all intents and purposes, impossible for the oceans to become acidic, right to to actually turn onto the ascid level of that pH scale. Come on, it's impossible. With that kind of attitude, I mean, yeah, I mean maybe if we're really determined and we really mess things up, we can make it happen. But I really don't think we want to find out. No, no, And and those small changes, though are are are perhaps surprisingly impactful, and we'll get into that a little bit later on. But but yeah, So so there we were talking about some of the some of the other factors that go into this carbon transfer, this carbon dioxide transfer, right, And as it turns out, it's it's not even as simple as more carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere therefore more common doxide gets or by the oceans, and it's never as simple as that. We often will try and talk in those terms to kind of boil down a concept so it's easily digestible. But this is part of the reason why woods Hole was saying, guys, this is complicated. Don't oversimplify the issue, because then you're really misleading the public. So the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere drives acidification overall. So generally speaking, as those carbon dioxide levels increase in the atmosphere, the acidification process increases, But other factors mitigate how much carbon dioxide the ocean can actually absorb. So one of those factors is the ocean water temperature. Uh, if ocean water warms, however, it might warm, let's say through climate change. That's a big one, right. Then the warming effect actually reduces the speed at which the ocean will absorb carbon dioxide, and therefore the rate of acidification will decrease. But it doesn't stop, It just slows down a little. Well, that's great. Let's say let's continue global warming while decreasing carbon emissions, and eventually it'll I'll just work itself. You know, I didn't work up a whole bunch of notes on why climate change is bad. I didn't anticipate needing them. But yeah, no, this is obviously you don't. You don't want the planet to warm up because of all the implications of climate change where you know, and of course we're when we say global warming, we're oversimplifying. Really when when you're talking climate change, some regions are going to experience overall cooling blah blah blah. The point is that's we don't want that, and we don't want ocean a cerentification, right um. And also if you think that that, hey, wait, wait, wait, what about the ice caps, right, Like what about icebergs and and and glaciers and sheets of ice if those belt those are fresh water, right, if those melt and then doesn't that dilute the ocean? Won't that dilute the acid or the acidification and thus slow down or maybe maybe even reverse acidification. And the answer to that is nope, or at least not in the long term. That does seem kind of intuitive, but yeah, why why not? Because once the water does start to dilute that concentration of carbon dioxide in the oceans, you still have the imbalance in the atmosphere, which means all you've really done is is increased the ocean's capacity for absorbing C O two in that particular region, and that's what it'll do. So if you think about it, it's kind of like, um, oh, what would be a good analogy I'm trying to think of, Like if you had like a paper towel and you soaked up a little water and you had just a little little corner of your paper towel and it was still dry. So you're thinking, all right, well, uh, if I pour a little bit more are on there, it's going to absorb everything that's just that's as much as it can go. Everything's cool. But then you pick up the paper towel and you wring it out and you put it back down. Now it has the capacity to soak up even more water. It's that's sort of what's happening with the ocean. It gets diluted. It's like ringing out that paper towel. Uh, really, you've just you've just except instead of getting rid of the carbon dioxide, you really just diluted it. Now you have the capacity to take on even more. And once that happens, once you've reached that level of equilibrium between the atmosphere and the ocean again, you're right back to where you started from, with the added benefit of not having those pesky giant sheets of ice anymore. So that's a bad thing because the polar bears will have no place to live well, polar bears that that Speaking of fauna, one of the things that we should be thinking about is what effect does ocean acidification have, Because one of the most obvious things to be concerned about is, well, if the oceans chemical nature is changing slightly, how does this affect the creatures that dwell in the ocean? And and as it turns out, just like the other elements that we've talked about, in this case, it is incredibly complicated. It is not so simple as to say all species, you know, ocean dwelling species are equally affected through the process of acidification. Right. Well, for one thing, um, I've read that you might be able to look at ocean acidification and say, well, it looks like this might have a beneficial effect to photosynthesizing animals that live in the oceans. Though that's not necessarily so good for the rest of the planet, right right, right, because since it's an ecosystem, not a eco, there's no eye and ecosystem. Um, No, there is, but there isn't emy not in order. No, you make a good point. Yeah, yeah, So you know it's overall if if the play ants, the photosynthesizing stuff that lives in the ocean, um has a chance to overgrow, that it's going to set off the balance of a lot of other things that are either competing for the resources or or in other in some other way need to hang out at a certain level. Yeah, exactly. I don't know if it would lead to this, this thing in particular, but one comparison point I have is the idea of algal blooms in the ocean leading to oceanic dead zones, or if you have, you basically you create regions of the ocean that are too friendly to explosive algae populations, and then they make that water uninhabitable. Yeah. Yeah, there's some species that, like you were saying, Lauren, are competing for the exact same resources, and if the chemistry of the ocean ends up favoring one over the other, the danger is to the other, right, that the other could suffer, perhaps even die out, and in some cases that could be absolutely catastrophic. The the one of the example is that that goes right into what you're both talking about. Is coral the actual organisms of coral, Yeah, or any actually, I think it's any mineral forming or cast calcium based mineral forming organisms organisms in the ocean, right, all the all the ones that have calcium based shells, those are also affected by ocean of cientification. Have you did you, guys see the pictures of like the the sea snails. Yeah, I think you're referring to the tarot taropods, right, I remember specifically seeing a sequence of pictures of this snail, and it showed what the what happens to the shell over the course of time in one of these environments. Yes, Uh, so they simulate this this water environment with the decreased pH that is that was matched up to what it was predicted to be within a hundred years in the oceans. If trends continue and the shell does not do well, no, you start to see it like it becomes translucent and then transparent and look at this as this gonna make me really upset. It made me really upset. I got very upset when I saw it because I wasn't expecting that when I was doing my research. Well, I mean it was just very to see just to see like the actual uh sequence that that this represents and thinking, all right, well now this is no longer uh this kind of just vague idea that I have in my head. Now I'm seeing actual results of what happens. Uh. That is incredibly impactful. And you said, especially if you are one of those people who really likes marine biology or you have an interest in things like the ocean. I mean, I I I love going to the ocean. I love snorkeling, I love exploring and to think of those environments being put in danger. I mean, obviously I have a greater appreciation for what that means to on a larger scale ecosystem wide and and planet wide ultimately, but also on just a personal scale of my own experience of interacting in these environments. It's a pretty powerful thing. But I guess we should look at beyond the specifics of which organisms would be affected in what ways, because really that's one of those things that we don't entirely know, you right, we we we were just species by species speculating here based on what seems like will probably happen. Um, we could look at a kind of general approach to what's going to happen to species overall, Like what are their strategies for coping with this? Yeah, there are three general responses, right there is acclamation, adaptation, and extinction. I think we know extinction ex is not a great strategy. It kind of kind of stinks if that's the one you choose. Well, it's not, it's not. It's not usually the first choice. I don't think acclamation essentially an adaptation are are are similar but not exactly the same. But both of them require, uh, the the organisms to be able to to survive and potentially thrive in the changing environment. So animals that have long lifespans are the least able to adapt to new conditions, which makes sense right. The longer the lifespan, uh, then you've got these very long generational periods between generations. That means that you have fewer opportunities for new generations to uh to to succeed in a changing environment. So if you get fewer mutants to work with, pretty yeah, pretty much. Yeah. If the environment is changing faster than the mutations can occur, then it's a losing battle for that particular species in the In general, uh So, the ones that that tend to have shorter lifespans tend to be better able to adapt to conditions. That's not a rule across the board. Some organisms can get left behind even if they have short lifespans. Coral was that example I gave earlier. They coral has pretty short lifespan. But if you have another species there that is competing for the exact same sort of stuff that your species is competing for, and they're better at adapting to that environment than your species is, you still can come out behind, and you can still lose out and still face extinction uh in the long run. And that's sort of the case that people are talking about with coral um like that, you know it won't be able to outcompete those types of algae. And more more than that, ecosystems are incredibly complex, right, and we cannot anticipate what will happen to an ecosystem. Even if you were to remove just one type of species from that ecosystem, it's very difficult to predict how that would play out across the entire ecosystem. Yeah. In in in general, biologists have identified a bunch of keystone species that are the most important to keeping the whole thing running. But but but every every cog is important. Yeah. Uh. For one thing, every time you lose a species, you have a decrease in biodiversity. We've talked about biodiversity in previous episodes of forward thinking in general. When you see biodiversity decrease, that is a bad thing. Uh. Species like coral again very important to to uh, to certain ecosystems. Right, you have the coral reefs. If those were to no longer be a thing, if they were the organisms were not there to build coral reefs, and those were to break down over time, those entire ecosystems would completely transform, and we would likely see many species suffer as a result. Some might benefit because they might be praying on all the ones that no longer have a home. But that doesn't last very long. That lasts for essentially a generation or two, and then after that you've got the problem of Hey, that plentiful food source that we were so happy about just a couple of generations go is gone. Now what happens? So it becomes this crazy dumb into effect. And that's why I said, something that even is potentially fairly localized can become a global issue due to this complex interlocking nature of ecosystems. Um and that means we could see massive shortages in lots of different ocean resources. Uh so it could. It could have an actual financial impact as well as a food source impact to us as humans. We could see a decrease in fisheries and lots of other important elements to our economy and to where we get our food. I mean, I'm not eating shrimp anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't think anyone else should be able to get it. They should be able to get it. Um and it would also have a big impact on the carbon cycle. So coral creates calcified minerals and they kind of lock carbon away. When when coral ends up breaking off and crumbling and landing onto the ocean floor, it's a sin really locked in carbon into the actual material there. And and so if coral is gone, then that one that that way of locking away carbon is also gone. So now you have one fewer way to lock up carbon, and potentially that could create you know, it could exacerbate a problem. Right, you get even more carbon being released into the environment. That's what started this issue in the first place. That's a bad thing. So how bad are we talking about? Well, according to the research I was reading, it looks like the pH of the ocean surface has decreased by zero point one pH unit since pre industrial times, which doesn't sound like a whole lot. So what's the big deal, right, Well, wait a minute, isn't the pH scale logarithmic, Well, there's that, it's a part of it. Is also that the point one pH unit indicates that hydrogen ion levels those protons we were talking about, have increased by twenty six percent, and projections predict that the pH will continue to drop somewhere between point three and point four pH units by the end of the century, which would mean a one one increase in hydrogen ion concentration. That that is a dramatic enough change where the the the safety of many different species is called into question. We honestly do not know how many of those species would be able to adapt to such a dramatic change in ocean chemistry, or which ones would not be able to adapt, in which ones are the most at risk for us to lose UM. So it's again complicated. Yeah, and unfortunately the ocean is a lot harder to study than the atmosphere. The data that we've been collecting so far has not added up to to a smooth trend like decade over decade. That's indirect correlation with climate change, and researchers aren't entirely sure what's driving this variability. So without knowing what's really going on, UM, it's harder to to either help alleviate the problem or or to even to even figure out where it's going to go. And then, adding to this complicated nature of the issue, you know, marine ecosystems are are part of what affects how the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide, so as a cidification changes these ecosystems, the problem could get better or worse. Uh, No, one knows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, this is one of those things where first of all, the ocean and centification research is a relatively young science, really very detailed work has been going on for about a decade. Yeah. And in fact, the reason why we know information about like, how can we say since the pre industrialized era, After all, you just said the research is only be going on a decade. We can say that because of ice, we can look at ice and we can see what the water acidification was in uh sheets of ice that were around in the pre industrial era, and then compare it to what we see today. Yeah. Uh and and those efforts um, I mean there are absolutely organizations that are working to study the issue and and figure out how to best apply any potential forthcoming solutions, which we'll get to in a second. Uh. For for example, here in the United States, the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory helps conduct hydrographic cruises science cruises. There's no tick drinks involved probably on these cruises. No. They they send ships out that are equipped to take measurements about how different parts of the oceans vary and how different marine environments in them contribute to to this carbon cycle. Uh. They also employ a fleet of volunteer observation ships and all, so another fleet of moored buoys that that can monitor carbon dioxide levels and temperatures and salinity and all that kind of stuff. So so, so we're working towards it. But but some of those solutions are Are there solutions to this problem? Well, I mean, one, one big one would be to cut carbon dioxide emissions as much as we possibly can, because again, if if the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are lower than you start to you decrease that pressure where carbon dioxide ends up being absorbed into the surface of the ocean. Well, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that we live in some strange alternate universe where people don't want to do that. Are there other options that could potentially be available to us. There's some band aids where we could we could alleviate the symptoms, but again it would be like treating the symptoms but not the disease, so you would still have the overall problem. Geoengineering. Uh, people have talked about potentially using geoengineering tactics in order to lock up carbon to to take carbon dioxide either out of emissions and lock it up in some way, or to actually find ways of pulling it from the atmosphere itself and locking it up. Uh, that's important. It would definitely help the acute problem. But as long as we're continuing to produce carbon dioxide, it's not a long term solution. It's really again, it's it's too reactionary. It's kind of like when we talk about health care and we talk about treating an acute disease and not doing preventitive care where you don't get sick in the first place. It's very similar to that. Um. There's also there have been some people said, well, what if we were to add some sort of carbon neutralizer or even hydrogen neutralizer into the oceans, like essentially, uh, you know, the the equivalent of ant acids, just dump bunch of that in the ocean to soak that stuff up. Well, the biggest problem there is that you have to add an equivalent amount of the neutralizer as the carbon dioxide that's actually going into the ocean in the first place. And that's like a that's that's not a little bit. No, that's not that's that's literally m thousands, hundreds of thousands of tons of material and one that could have a really serious effect on ocean ecosystems too. But to to generate those neutralizers, to get that stuff would involve mining, it would involved manufacturing processes, so it would involve a lot of stuff that guess what, am, it's a lot of carbon. So you're making the problem worse while trying to treat the symptom. Uh. Not a great solution either, um, but here's here's hoping that at least the awareness of the problem, the fact that we have this this growing discipline of science that's really looking into it, and we have multiple avenues where people are paying more attention to carbon emissions uh, and and trying to find ways of reducing that, both in developed nations and industrializing nations just particularly difficult because remember the United States, the United Kingdom, a lot of other developed nations, we went through that industrial era and we weren't worried about carbon emissions, and it's and now we're very much concerned about it. But all the other countries that are undergoing that same sort of process. Now if you think about it from their perspective, you're thinking, well, you're placing an unfair burden on us because you didn't play by those rules and you enjoy the benefits of industrialization. Our country is trying to get there, but you're putting the brakes on us. So we've got a lot of complicated issues social, political, economic, environmental all coming to play in the same space. The hope is that we're able to science our way out of it, both um an energy uh standpoint, how do we deal with the stuff that's already out there, and how do we do it in a way that's that's environmentally, economically, politically, culturally responsible. I don't have the answer to that. It's a big question. Uh. And I'm just a dude who sits to the computer and does my TYPEE type TYPEE and research stuff. It's I'm I'm glad that we see so much attention going toward it, and I am encouraged by the work of various scientists to try and create alternatives to carbon admitting methods of energy generation or electricity generations relations and not energy generation, but to generate electricity. UM. But it's a fascinating subject one that I thought was important for us to really take a look at I personally support the work of scientists who want to create energy out of nothing. Do you yeah, I can point you in the direction of several blogs are so for those of you who are interested in real science, or you have questions about how something is going to be in the future. You've got or you've got comments on this. Perhaps you're someone who works in this field and you have your own insight into it. We would love to hear from you. Please email us. Our address is fw thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. At Twitter we are f W Thinking. If you put f W Thinking in the little search bar on Facebook, our profile should pop right up. You can leave us a message there and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go Places,

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