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Coral reefs aren’t just pretty places for scuba divers (although they do bring in billions of tourist dollars). These rich ecosystems also provide habitat for about a million species, including many important commercial fish. Since a billion or more people depend on fish as their main source of protein, human wellbeing is closely tied to coral health.
 

That’s why 2008 has been designated the International Year of the Reef (IYOR 2008), and why marine biologists, reef managers, fishermen and divers are gathering in Fort Lauderdale this week for the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium.

 
On the symposium’s opening day, NOAA scientists released a report on the state of coral reef ecosystems in the U.S.  The entire document is a dense 569 pages, but the summary is straightforward: Coral reefs are in trouble, and climate change is an increasing threat.

Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen! (Original Version)

copyright © 2008 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

For years, Sarah felt safe as she traveled about.  She shielded herself from harm.  She placed her faith in science.  She  listened to the  advice of experts.  She thought she had been careful with chemicals and creams.  This wise woman knew not to trust recommendations without doing a thorough examination of evidence.  After an avid assessment, Sarah avowed, "Sunscreens are good."  Then one day, as she entered her home after being out and about, she saw what she had never imagined.  

update: title changed from Stop GOP Oil Mania:National Monument Designation Could Save Ecosystem

A coral ecosystem exists off the southeast coast that is roughly the size of the land area of South Carolina.  

Economically, that ecosystem:

1. Provides food for Millions of Americans

2. Protects our coasts from Hurricanes and Nor'easters(like a winter Hurricane)

3. Protects our ports like Savannah, Wilmington, Morehead City (supports a Marine base) and the nation's most important Hampton Roads where the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay guarding Norfolk Navy Yards, Portsmouth, Newport News and Baltimore.  (Newport News is where the large Navy ships are built like Air Craft carriers)

4. Provides Millions of jobs to American by providing fisheries, deep water ports (including the US Navy's biggest base), tourism nand forestry (much of the USA's pulp wood is grown in the coastal Southeast).

Why even worry about protecting something so important to the well being of the United States of America.  Surely NO USA CITIZEN would threaten such a valuable National Treasure.

This one is really big.

By mid century, if we have not reduced the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the pH of almost all the ocean's waters will be too acidic to allow coral reefs to survive.

Their findings, detailed in the Dec. 14 issue of the journal Science, show that if current emission trends continue, 98 percent of present-day reef habitats will be too acidic by mid-century for reef growth.

Holy smoke. There's moisture coming down from the skies. It's been so long since we've seen rain, I think we almost forgot what it was! Almost torrential at times. Flash flood warning. Wooo Hoo! Anyway...Environmental News You can Use.

World food stocks dwindling rapidly, UN warns. In an "unforeseen and unprecedented" shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the top food and agriculture official of the United Nations warned Monday. International Herald Tribune.

U.S. corn boom has downside for Gulf. Because of rising demand for ethanol, American farmers are growing more corn than at any time since the Depression. And sea life in the Gulf of Mexico is paying the price. Associated Press via Forbes.

Coral Reefs are the tropical rain forests of the ocean, the most biologically diverse and spectacular biological features on earth. 20% of them are already dead because of warming, acidifying oceans, pollution and directly destructive human activities.

In the geological record, ocean acidification is the most destructive problem of all because it takes nature hundreds of thousands to millions of years to restore balance. The greatest of all extinctions in the oceans was the Permian extinction where 80% of species went extinct. This extinction happened when CO2 levels rose so quickly that the ocean became too acidic to support coral reefs and carbonate shelled organisms dissolved into oblivion.  Coral polyps survived extinction by living as free floating unshelled organisms. We are beginning to recreate the conditions of the  great Permian extinction.

For a period in the middle of the 20th century, global temperatures failed to climb even though there was a steady rise in CO2.  Why? The culprit seems to have Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) from power plants that countered the warming effect by reflecting back sunlight before it could hit the ground.  But before someone suggests saving the planet through increased SO2 emissions, it should be noted that SO2 is also the primary cause of acid rains that devastated forests and lakes until the Clean Air Act moderated that problem.

Funny thing, it turns out that the CO2 that's baking the planet also has another interesting effect.  

... the legal wrangling has focused [on global warming], with lawsuits flying over states' ability to regulate automotive CO2 output and whether the EPA needs to treat it as a pollutant due to the climate impact. But a paper that will appear in Geophysical Research Letters suggests this legal wrangling may be besides the point: the impact of atmospheric CO2 on the oceans should exceed EPA standards within decades, and cuts in emissions need to be made immediately if we're to avoid harming key species.

CO2 mixes with water to form carbonic acid.  This is a relatively mild acid that exists in every bottle of soda you've ever had.  However, while you might find the fizz refreshing, most sea life doesn't appear compatible with life in a 2-zillion liter container of Sprite.

Even if you're a global warming skeptic, you can't deny that the CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been steadily rising over the last century.  That's a value that's easily, accurately, and repeatably measured.  In the last decade, the pace of the increase has kicked it up several notches, and best estimates have us reaching 550ppm within the next forty years.  

The consequences of that 500ppm level is where the new paper comes in. ... The net result is that even reaching 500ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause the ocean to exceed the acceptable pH change in EPA's Water Quality Criteria.

Even if the temperature held steady (which it won't), even if sea level didn't rise (which it will), even if climate wasn't changing around the planet (which it is), this change in ocean chemistry alone will be enough to disrupt key species in the ocean that hold up the ecosystem of the planet.

In the meantime, the US is opting out of the only global discussion to curb CO2 emissions.  That's global leadership of a kind only lemmings could admire.

So what should you do about this?

If the paper's arguments reach the broader public, they also may shift the debate over carbon emissions in general. Many people have a hard time grasping century-scale temperature change and melting ice caps; water pollution and crashing fisheries are things that many people and governments have more immediate experience with.

So get the word out there before Long John Silver's introduces popcorn shrimp with actual pop.  Please.

(Thanks to ars technica for their coverage on this issue.)

Hello all.

 I am going to rant a bit here. Everytime I would drive through an empty desert I would wish that SOMEONE would put up a solar farm. Well looks like SOMEONE finally got the same idea myself and many other have had. USE THE SOUTHWEST FOR SOLAR ENERGY!! We could power the country off the sun from the deserts in the southwest. Oh and they have discovered a new coral reef. There is more news on my blog.

I've been away for a few months but this morning I saw a heartbreaking report while watching CurrentTV that deserves further attention.

In Feb. of 2004 National Geographic Magazine did a story on the Phoenix Islands Coral Reef system which stated

"Incredible—I've never seen anything like it!" said David, a specialist in coral reefs who has spent more than a thousand hours underwater studying ocean life. I also was deeply moved. As vice president for global marine programs at the New England Aquarium, I've made it my goal to find Earth's last pockets of primal ocean, those underwater havens that have remained unspoiled as long as the ocean can remember. Here in this lagoon we had discovered such a place.

Nine months later an expedition from the Planetary Coral Reef Foundation found a horrifyingly decimated environment in this once pristine area. The lagoon's reef was dead!

More details below!

This diary will be a dramatization of the IPCC's forthcoming report, as well as a short discussion of Mark Lynas' (2004) ethnography of global warming titled HIGH TIDE.  No, I'm not a scientist; but I do try my best to put two and two together on the global warming issue, and I would heartily invite climate scientists reading this diary to contribute to the comments section.

Are the oceans dying?  That's a pretty strong word.  I like to think of it as, "Becoming less habitable for organisms useful and beneficial to the planet and humanity."

 In another day of tragic reports of unchecked environmental devastation due to global warming, Rick Lyman, writes in the New York Times that Rising Ocean Temperatures Threaten Florida's Coral Reef.  We now hear that 97% of the two domanant species of Caribbean Coral have been destroyed in certain regions, apparently related to rising ocean tempetures.  

KEY LARGO, Fla., May 21 -- If global warming summons images of polar bears clinging to shrinking ice floes, this is its face in the Florida Keys: a sun-dappled stretch of shallows along the turquoise reef line, where scientists painstakingly attach russet polyps of regenerated coral to damaged reefs.  "When I first came here snorkeling, in 1985, it was amazing, the forest of coral was so thick," said Bill Goodwin, a resource manager for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. "Just look now," he said, gesturing to the few small brown patches amid an elephant's boneyard of skeletal remains at the foot of the Carysfort light tower in the roiling Atlantic waters seven miles off Key Largo.

Maybe it's because I was born in the Caribbean, maybe it's because our world is dying, maybe it's because my little boys may never get to see the coral reefs, maybe it's because this is a sign of things to come...I don't know why I want cry when I read this...maybe it's because it hurts my soul.

"WASHINGTON - A one-two punch of bleaching from record hot water followed by disease has killed ancient and delicate coral in the biggest loss of reefs scientists have ever seen in Caribbean waters."

See the story here

http://news.yahoo.com/...

I apologize in advance if this was diaried already.