Update on U.S. and international ocean acidification activities

Sarah Cooley’s presentation on “Update on U.S. and international ocean acidification activities ” given at the OCB workshop held at Scripps in July 2010 is available in pdf and video format.

Climate scientists debunk prominent contrarian Christopher Monckton’s congressional testimony

A group of five scientists solicited responses from more than twenty world-class climate scientists to the May 6th testimony by Christopher Monckton to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. These climate scientists “…have thoroughly refuted all of Mr. Monckton’s major assertions, clearly demonstrating a number of obvious and elementary errors,” the report says. “We encourage the U.S. Congress to give careful consideration to the implications this document has for the care that should be exercised in choosing expert witnesses to inform the legislative process.”

Acid ocean eating away at New England shellfish

It’s been called climate change’s ‘evil twin.’ As carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, it dissolves in the ocean, creating carbonic acid that is disrupting the pH balance of the ocean. Voila, ocean acidificatoin. It’s estimated that the ocean is now 30% more acidic than it was 150 years ago. That could spell trouble for animals like corals and clams that build skeletons and shells out of calcium carbonate, because acidic conditions limit the amount of calcium carbonate in the water. It’s a problem that the National Academy of Science says has received too little attention.

Scott Doney – an ocean acidification researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution – has said that New England is the most vulnerable region in the country when it comes to the impacts of ocean acidification. At a conference in early 2009, he said that ocean acidification could start affecting shellfish within 20 years.