LogicaL Chaos said:

Also, distilling it would work as well. Finding the exact source of the acidic moisture would be even better, to prevent it from happening.

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1) rain is distilled water
2) ocean acidification is caused primarily by an abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 reacts with water yielding carbonic acid.


3) acid rain is caused by air pollution such as sulfur dioxide reacting with O3 and OH, etc. high in the atmosphere

Quote:

The paradigm that “ocean acidification will be a major threat for
marine species and ecosystems” enunciated by Dupont et al., and
implicit in many publications and reports, is a value judgment that
lies beyond available scientific evidence. The extent of the threat
remains to be robustly quantified and will certainly not be equally
severe for all marine species and ecosystems, since some will not
suffer or even benefit from increased ocean CO2 (Iglesias-Rodriguez
et al., 2008; Ries et al., 2009; Hendriks et al., 2010). Evidence that
there are species-specific differences in the response to ocean
acidification is increasing also for vulnerable life stages like larvae
(Kurihara, 2008) and even within one single species studies find
contrasting results, such as in the case of coccolithophores
(Ridgwell et al., 2009).
The current paradigm depicting ocean acidification as a major
threat encroached in the scientific literature without a solid basis
might bias the literature towards supporting views and may lead
authors and readers to fail to clearly separate evidence from judg-
ment. For instance, Dupont et al. concluded that “Gametes and early
development appear to be far more impacted by ocean acidification than
adult stages . compromising species survival in near-future condi-
tions”. However, the effect of acidification to the extent expected on
year 2100 on calcification by juveniles and larvae was not statistically
significant (Fig. 2 in Dupont et al.). Another recent example (Gazeau
et al., 2010) showed that there was no significant effect of a 0.25e0.34
pH unit decrease on hatching and mortality rates of planktonic blue
mussel larvae prior to settlement and that significant effects (24%
lower hatching rates) appeared only when pH was reduced by 0.5
units, with size decreasing significantly by 6% to 12% with declining
pH. Yet, in the discussion version of the manuscript, Gazeau et al.
(2010) conclude that “decreases of hatching rates and shell growth
suggest a negative impact of ocean acidification on the future survival of
bivalve populations potentially leading to significant ecological and
economical losses”. Similarly, Arnold et al. (2009) conclude that
“despite there being no observed effect on survival, carapace length, or
zoeal progression, ocean acidification related (indirect) disruption of
calcification and carapace mass might still adversely affect the
competitive fitness and recruitment success of larval lobsters with
serious consequences for population dynamics and marine ecosystem
function”. While all of these papers do contain important, useful
results worth publishing, reviewers and editors should ensure that
conclusions are supported by the results presented

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killingravensun said:

im of the mind to pay attention to the house that is on fire right now and not one that may burn in the future, the everyday pollution is building up at an alarming rate, even earth orbit is getting trashed and many of those satellites contain one of the worst poisons ever developed by man, hydrazine, so we are getting pretty good at this pollution thing, and there seems to be no slowing down

its good to have balanced perspective, carbon dioxide is a natural part of the environment that is beneficial to life, millions of tons per year of man made poisons are not

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LogicaL Chaos said:

Testing the effect of CO2 vs air would be super easy.

Get two air-tight glass chambers on a sunny day. Fill one with pure CO2 and the other with ambient air, slap some thermometers inside each one, and record the results.

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chibiabos said:

That metaphor doesn't really work that well though.  The atmosphere isn't at all like a glass, in the sense that you're not just filling it with different kinds of gasses and then just having it sit there.  If you spit big plumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at some point in the past then it doesn't just sit there at the mercy of whatever forces cause it to mix with everything else.  The problem with carbon dioxide emissions is that they constantly drive the concentration of carbon dioxide to such a high level and that the equilibrium of the environment of Earth does depend very intimately on the composition of the atmosphere.  Methane is something that people should be worried about too, but that's in very large part on account of the fact that constantly forcing the carbon dioxide content to such a high level has raised the average (i.e. mean) global temperature and that pockets of methane that were trapped by ice are being exposed to the atmosphere in pretty dramatic episodes that release a lot of methane all at once.

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I was trying to go with simplicity but I should've used a graph (and I stand corrected on N20 being a small cup, it would be a pretty large one): 



I still think the glass metaphor holds...glass and light are easy ways to illustrate the concept of flux.  Granted it is more complicated than that, but I did say a little in that post and the one before it that there's a great deal in feedback loops and concentration gradients that can and are affected.  In no way am I saying that CO2 from ages ago stays in the atmosphere.  I was trying to get across that concentrations in the past were, off the top of my head, ~200 ppm?  Now we're double that or even further?  Given the placement that CO2 absorbs on the blackbody spectrum, there's still a ways to go but there is much more a saturation effect than there is with the other gases (methane, N20).  That's where I was trying to go with the cups...

I agree that increases in CO2 is a forcing mechanism, but so are the other greenhouse gases...increases of which could potentially have a greater forcing effect than that of increases in CO2.  Such forcing effects from these gases absorbing that blackbody radiation then drives water vapor into the atmosphere that acts as the largest warming contributor (due to its absorption of blackbody radiation)...but water vapor is purely a feedback response from the increased forcing mechanisms of CO2, methane, and N20.  The warming is still due to the inability of that blackbody radiation to transfer out into space.  If radiation can't escape, it can't escape...much light light through a cup.

akira_akuma said:

a: there will be a cost to human life is we can't power the economic engine that feeds people across the globe [with how large and interconnected everything is].

b: we need production, and we need surplus so that we can, again, power the engine that supplies so many on the periphery of civilization, the rural, and the metropolitan alike, as well.

c: we can remove C02 when and where required, and process it down into either recyclable or harmless compounds; given the appropriate advances in technology.

d: nuclear is our best bet to supply enough energy with the least damage to the environment, but also comes with it's own risks: "green" energy can barely get off the ground with enough production to stabilize [and normalize] it's cost; as such it is not cost-effective; it doesn't account for the operation of the complex system of the approach socium we are incurring through a rampant international capitalism.

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LogicaL Chaos said:

Ive never heard of "blackbody" radiation. Care to explain what that is?

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