California Free Press

With SB54, “California is righting the ship,” leading U.S. out of ocean plastic pollution crisis

Ocean Conservancy scientists estimate that newly passed California law will eliminate 23 million tons of plastics in the next 10 years – equivalent to 26 times the weight of the Golden Gate Bridge.

by Dr. Anja Brandon, Nicholas Mallos, and Jeff Watters are available for interviews.

June 30, 2022 Español Français Deutsch Italiano Português русский বঙ্গীয় 中文 日本語

Green Turtle attempting to eat a discarded plastic bag. © Troy Mayne

Sacramento, CA – Today, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law SB54, or the Plastic Pollution Producer Responsibility Act, which passed the state Assembly with a 67-to-2 vote yesterday evening and the state Senate with a 29-to-0 vote this morning. Ocean Conservancy has been negotiating the language of this bill with fellow environmental advocates for months to make it the single strongest plastics legislation ever seen in the United States. 

“It’s hard to capture how momentous this feels,” said Dr. Anja Brandon, U.S. Plastics Policy Analyst at Ocean Conservancy and a principal contributor to the bill text. “The United States is the number-one generator of plastic waste in the world and a top contributor to the ocean plastics crisis. We can’t solve this problem without U.S. leadership, and by passing this law, California is righting the ship. This is a huge win for our ocean.” 

Scientists estimate that some 11 million metric tons of plastics enter the ocean every year. Data from 35 years of Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup show that the majority of the most common items littering our beaches and waterways are single-use plastic packaging and food ware.

Among other measures, the 76-page bill: 

• Requires a 25% reduction in single-use plastic packaging and foodware by weight and item count by 2032;
• Mandates that nearly half of that reduction result from the direct elimination of plastic packaging or switching to reuse and refill systems rather than simply replacing it with alternative single-use materials (Ocean Conservancy scientists have estimated that this provision alone would directly eliminate 23 million tons of single-use plastic packaging and foodware over the next ten years – equivalent to nearly 26 times the weight of the Golden Gate Bridge);
• Requires that all single-use packaging and foodware, including non-plastic items, be recyclable or compostable within the state of California by 2032 and mandates a 65% recycling rate for plastics by that time; and
• Provides hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to support communities and restore ecosystems most impacted by plastic pollution.

“A few years ago legislation of this magnitude was unimaginable in the U.S.,” said Jeff Watters, Vice President of External Affairs at Ocean Conservancy. “We are here today because of an incredible amount of hard work, perseverance, and ambition from Senator Ben Allen, Assemblymember Luz Rivas, their tireless staff, and the team of experts at CalRecycle. This is what strong, forward-thinking political leadership looks like.”

The bill was signed just hours after petitioners withdrew a parallel plastic pollution ballot measure. Ocean Conservancy had supported both efforts but supported withdrawal of the ballot measure given that SB54 had passed both chambers of the state legislature.

“Our number one priority has always been fewer plastics on shelves and less plastic pollution in our ocean, and both SB54 and the ballot measure were viable pathways,” said Nicholas Mallos, Senior Director of Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas program. “We believe this is the surest outcome for impact, though. Historically, ballot initiatives face an uphill battle for implementation even when passed, meaning it could be years before any of its provisions would go into effect. Not only is SB54 as strong or stronger than the ballot in many ways; but we are looking at guaranteed action on this critical issue immediately.”

About Ocean Conservancy

Ocean Conservancy is working with you to protect the ocean from today’s greatest global challenges. Together, we create evidence-based solutions for a healthy ocean and the wildlife and communities that depend on it. For more information, visit oceanconservancy.org, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Critical measures of global heating reaching tipping point, study finds

from The Guardian

Carbon emissions, ocean acidification, Amazon clearing all hurtling toward new records

Vast areas of the Amazon rainforest are being burned and cleared for grazing cattle — a double blow to global warming, as cattle produce methane and cleared forests release carbon into the atmosphere. Photograph: Florian Kopp/imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock

 

Katharine Gammon

Tue 27 Jul 2021 20.00 EDT

Last modified on Tue 27 Jul 2021 20.22 EDT

 

A new study tracking the planet’s vital signs has found that many of the key indicators of the global climate crisis are getting worse and either approaching, or exceeding, key tipping points as the earth heats up.

Overall, the study found some 16 out of 31 tracked planetary vital signs, including greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat content and ice mass, set worrying new records.

“There is growing evidence we are getting close to or have already gone beyond tipping points associated with important parts of the Earth system,” said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University who co-authored the new research, in a statement.

“The updated planetary vital signs we present largely reflect the consequences of unrelenting business as usual,” said Ripple, adding that “a major lesson from Covid-19 is that even colossally decreased transportation and consumption are not nearly enough and that, instead, transformational system changes are required.”

While the pandemic shut down economies and shifted the way people think about work, school and travel, it did little to reduce the overall global carbon emissions. Fossil fuel use dipped slightly in 2020, but the authors of a report published in the journal BioScience say that carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide “have all set new year-to-date records for atmospheric concentrations in both 2020 and 2021”.

In April 2021, carbon dioxide concentration reached 416 parts per million, the highest monthly global average concentration ever recorded. The five hottest years on record have all occurred since 2015, and 2020 was the second hottest year in history.

The study also found that ruminant livestock, a significant source of planet-warming gases, now number more than 4 billion, and their total mass is more than that of all humans and wild animals combined. The rate of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon increased in both 2019 and 2020, reaching a 12-year high of 1.11 million hectares deforested in 2020.

Ocean acidification is near an all-time record, and when combined with warmer ocean temperatures, it threatens the coral reefs that more than half a billion people depend on for food, tourism dollars and storm surge protection.

However, there were a few bright spots in the study, including fossil fuel subsidies reaching a record low and fossil fuel divestment reaching a record high.

In order to change the course of the climate emergency, the authors write that profound alterations need to happen. They say the world needs to develop a global price for carbon that is linked to a socially just fund to finance climate mitigation and adaptation policies in the developing world.

The authors also highlight the need for a phase-out and eventual ban of fossil fuels, and the development of global strategic climate reserves to protect and restore natural carbon sinks and biodiversity. Climate education should also be part of school curricula around the globe, they say.

“Policies to alleviate the climate crisis or any of the other threatened planetary boundary transgressions should not be focused on symptom relief but on addressing their root cause: the overexploitation of the Earth,” the report says. Only by taking on this core issue, the authors write, will people be able to “ensure the long-term sustainability of human civilization and give future generations the opportunity to thrive”.

Off the Top of My Head

It's Almost Thanksgiving: Let's Talk Turkey

by John Lawrence, November 14, 2020

So what are Republicans saying about a Biden administration? That the progressive wing of the Democratic party will push him too far to the left. Well, what exact policies would be "too far to the left"? Defund the police? That's just a radical slogan that means about as much as "Lock her up." In other words it means nothing in terms of either Biden's agenda or progressives in the Democratic party. Reform the police - that would be more like where the Democratic party actually stands. As far as Medicare for All, Biden favors Medicare for All Who Want It. I guess there are those Republicans who so love their employer based health insurance that they are terrified by the possibility that it might be taken away from them and replaced with something better. So Biden's position is go ahead and keep it. He just wants to make it possible that those who do want it will be able to have it or a public option which amounts to the same thing.

So Republican concerns amount to whipping up a bunch of meaningless hysteria just like Trump has always done. It's his stock in trade. So what about the Green New Deal? Who could object to creating jobs to build infrastructure and combat global warming? Oh maybe it's that they fear their taxes will go up? There's actually no reason why anyone's taxes should go up based on the realities as they exist in the 21st century. The government has shown that any amount of money can be found and spent to bail out banks or to add to the debt to give people tax breaks. Trump's tax cuts added a trillion dollars to the debt. Quantitative easing and the money to bail out the big banks amounted to several trillion dollars and yet it has had no adverse effect on inflation or anything else. Modern Monetary Theory has shown that Deficits Don't Matter whether those deficits originate from bailing out the banks or a Green New Deal or Biden's Green Deal which is more or less the same. Expect Republicans to cry bloody murder any time government threatens to formulate a program to combat global warming or to create jobs for poor people or to raise wages for essential workers to $15. an hour.

Money spent constructively on infrastructure or other things will never cause inflation. What will cause inflation is money that is pissed away frivolously or unconstructively. Reorienting out priorities can and should be done even if deficit spending is required to do it. When the economy is rebalanced, it eventually will mean that the rich will have to pay their fair share of taxes in order to reduce inequality. That's the main thing that Republicans are afraid of - that eventually the rich will have to pay their fair share of taxes. In the meantime economic history since 2000 has demonstrated the fact that, if trillions of dollars were found to bail out the banks and give tax cuts to the rich, trillions of dollars can be found to repair and rebuild infrastructure and prevent the world from the disaster of global warming. Private enterprise has done nothing but accelerate global warming because private enterprise consists of the fossil fuel industry. Private enterprise profits from pollution that it doesn't have to compensate for. Therefore, it's up to government to balance out what private enterprise seems incapable of doing. That's not to say that private enterprise is unimportant. It does some things very well, some things that government does not do well. It's a matter of finding the correct balance between private enterprise and government enterprise.

Does any fossil fuel worker object to working in the renewable energy industry providing they are guaranteed a job in that industry? I don't think so. There's no one that loves fossil fuels per se or just because they are fossil fuels. They are not like Scrooge who just loves the look and feel of money. Are there people who so much like the look and feel of oil that they can't bear the thought of working in an industry that doesn't pollute the planet? There are new industries coming - a straw with the look and feel of a plastic straw that biodegrades and doesn't stay in the ocean for hundreds of years like the plastic straw does. These straws are being manufactured today. If government can assist in the ramping up of this private enterprise - Newlight Technologies - we will be all better off except for the plastic straw manufacturers which are using mainly robots to produce their straws so there are not that many jobs involved there.

Huntington Beach, California-based Newlight produces an ocean-degradable biopolymer called PHB using air and greenhouse gas. Newlight's methods are supported by more than a decade of research and development as well as an extensive patent portfolio. Newlight's Series F finance round coincides with the commissioning of a new commercial-scale production facility in California called Eagle 3 and the launch of branded products including a line of cutlery and drinking straws for the food-service industry. Newlight's foodware products deliver a unique level of material safety and certified sustainability, resulting in high-performance, ocean-degradable foodware that works for people and the planet. 

Government can provide an assist to private enterprise as long as that enterprise is headed in a new direction which doesn't pollute and which doesn't produce greenhouse gasses. Which is more important - hanging onto the familiar past or striking out in a new direction that saves the planet and makes it better for our grandchildren? Are we pioneers and adventurers like our ancestors or what?

Off the Top of My Head

Antarctic Melting Will Inundate Coastal Cities Even If Limits Set by Paris Accords Are Met

by John Lawrence, September 26, 2020

More than half of Earth’s freshwater resources are held by the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which thus represents by far the largest potential source for global sea-level rise as the Earth experiences global warming. If the goals of the Paris Accords are met and the average Earth temperature rises by not more than 2 degrees C, sea levels will still rise by 8 feet. This melting of the Antarctic ice sheet is also probably irreversible due to conditions at the South Pole. “The more we learn about Antarctica, the direr the predictions become,” said Anders Levermann,  a researcher from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We get enormous sea level rise [from Antarctic melting] even if we keep to the Paris agreement, and catastrophic amounts if we don’t.”

Jonathan Bamber, a professor of glaciology at the University of Bristol said: “This study provides compelling evidence that even moderate climate warming has incredibly serious consequences for humanity, and those consequences grow exponentially as the temperature rises. The committed sea level rise from Antarctica even at 2C represents an existential threat to entire nation states. We’re looking at removing nations from a map of the world because they no longer exist.”

Part of Antarctica's ice sheet is also unstable due to the fact that it is grounded on a bed that lies below sea level. This allows warmer ocean currents to get in under it. According to the Guardian:

The warming of the Southern Ocean is resulting in glaciers sliding into the sea increasingly rapidly, with ice now being lost five times faster than in the 1990s. The West Antarctic ice sheet was stable in 1992 but up to a quarter of its expanse is now thinning. More than 100 metres of ice thickness has been lost in the worst-hit places.

A complete loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet would drive global sea levels up by about five metres, drowning coastal cities around the world. The current losses are doubling every decade, the scientists said, and sea level rise are now running at the extreme end of projections made just a few years ago.

The warming ocean is causing melting from below while warming air is reducing ice sheets from above. The weight of the ice sheet is the only thing preventing it from slipping off the bedrock on which it sits. As this weight gets lighter and lighter, a huge amount of fresh water glacier will slip off its bedrock and into the ocean where it will melt and cause the rise in sea levels. As most human civilization is located fairly close to coast lines, coastal cities will have to relocate further inland. Cities such as Tokyo, Mumbai, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, New York, New Orleans and Miami are most at risk in the immediate future.

Off the Top of My Head

Defund the Police ... Defund the Military

by John Lawrence, June 11, 2020

Police have been given jobs social workers should be doing. They've criminalized everything from homelessness to mental illness to drug addiction. That's what defunding the police is all about. They should hire more social workers and less police. The police are asked to do a lot more than what police work should be all about. So has the military. Every problem overseas, many of which could be solved by teachers, social workers and doctors has been looked at as a problem for the military to solve. Many of these problems derive from the fact that people are in dire poverty. They need help building schools, houses, sanitation systems. Instead we send the military in to bomb them just as we send the police in at home to take them to jail by any means necessary.

We glorify police work with all kinds of TV shows just as we glorify the military. No one ever glorifies the Peace Corps though, and, if they were sent in more often, there would be more positive results. Instead of helping people, the first thought of American leaders is to send in the police or the military. The Washington Post reported:

To fix policing, we must first recognize how much we have come to over-rely on law enforcement. We turn to the police in situations where years of experience and common sense tell us that their involvement is unnecessary, and can make things worse. We ask police to take accident reports, respond to people who have overdosed and arrest, rather than cite, people who might have intentionally or not passed a counterfeit $20 bill. We call police to roust homeless people from corners and doorsteps, resolve verbal squabbles between family members and strangers alike, and arrest children for behavior that once would have been handled as a school disciplinary issue.

Police themselves often complain about having to “do too much,” including handling social problems for which they are ill-equipped. Some have been vocal about the need to decriminalize social problems and take police out of the equation. It is clear that we must reimagine the role they play in public safety.

Everything that could be said about the police could be said about the military. Instead of helping people overseas to escape from the poverty they experience, we police them instead. What a novel idea to spend less on the military and more on the Peace Corps. Let's reimagine the role they play in public safety. Policing has been the primary vehicle for using violence to perpetuate the unjustified white control over the bodies and lives of black people that has been with us since slavery. The military has been the primary vehicle to perpetuate American control over black and brown bodies in other parts of the world.

The Peace Corps budget is $410.5 million. The military budget is $934 billion. The military budget covers the DoD, overseas contingency operations, the VA, Homeland Security, the State Department, and many others that involve national security. By contrast in 2003, the military budget was less than half that - $437.4 billion. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. If the Soviet Union collapsed because of overspending on the Cold War, the US is in danger of collapse from overspending on its military when it is not even engaged in a major war. Overspending on the military is just a jobs program that Congress will not curtail. Trump for all his bluster about wanting our NATO allies to spend more on defense, nevertheless, authorized a $34 billion increase in military spending for 2020. Meanwhile, China, the world's second largest spender on its military is spending $178.2 billion in 2020 while Russia spends a mere $70 billion.

The U.S. spends some $100 billion annually on policing — most of it coming from local budgets — and an additional $80 billion on incarceration, according to a detailed 2017 report by the Center for Popular Democracy. In cities across the country, policing alone can take up anything between a third and 60 percent of the entire annual budget. Many major cities spend as much as 40 percent of their municipal budgets on policing, leaving a dwindling pool of resources for poverty prevention, infrastructure and everything else. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated this dynamic: Cities facing steep revenue declines are trying to decide which services to cut to remain solvent, and mayors are often hesitant to cut law and order spending. Welfare spending has been on a long, uneven decline, while law and order spending ballooned almost unabated until about 2010, when it amounted to nearly 2.5 percent of national income. Since then, law and order spending has fallen to a hair under 2 percent, while welfare spending stands at about 0.8 percent of national income less than half what we spend on police.

The US domestic Peace Corps called AmeriCorps has a budget of $560 million. So the US spends a paltry $1 billion on its foreign and domestic Peace Corps while spending $180 billion on police and almost a trillion on its military. Without this spending the economy would surely collapse. Military and police jobs are jobs of last resort for non college educated youth. However, this could be turned around. This money could be spent on other pursuits like housing the homeless (Habitat for Humanity), social workers, teachers, sanitation systems in foreign countries lacking them, building green infrastructure (Green New Deal), eradicating poverty, education (giving "The Talk" as part of public school curriculum), sustainable agriculture, clean water, cleaning the oceans, cleaning the rivers and more.

While the US spends a huge amount of its budgets on police and military work, China is spending its budget building infrastructure all over the world with its Belt and Road initiative (BRI). Whatever you want to say about it, it represents peaceful development of countries outside of China while the US does nothing of the sort, preferring instead to police the world with its 800 military bases in more than 70 countries. So while the US presence outside the US is mainly military in nature, China's presence outside China is basically peaceful development. This development will also lead to economic advantages for China through increased trade.

China’s overall ambition for the BRI is staggering. To date, more than sixty countries—accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population—have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so. Analysts estimate the largest so far to be the $68 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a collection of projects connecting China to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea. In total, China has already spent an estimated $200 billion on such efforts. Morgan Stanley has predicted China’s overall expenses over the life of the BRI could reach $1.2–1.3 trillion by 2027, though estimates on total investments vary.

The US has sought to demonize China's BRI and to create a second Cold War to justify its military expenditures. Throw Russia into the mix as well. The US wants to line up its group of allies in a potential contest versus China and its allies. However, many US purported allies are jumping ship as they read the tea leaves and realize that the US sees its role in the world and at home as mainly police work. Poverty alleviation is something the US doesn't do. This needs to change if we are ever to combat our common enemy, the coronavirus and climate change, and forget about creating a Second Cold War which will only drain US resources while China goes ahead building infrastructure and increasing trade.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Back to the Future

by John Lawrence, February 3, 2020

In order to save the planet from global warming, we may have to go back to how life was in preindustrial times circa 1860. Before the era of the automobile, the airplane, industrialized food and electricity. The first oil well was discovered in 1859. After that it's been downhill all the way insofar as planet earth is concerned. Smokestack industries have been spewing greenhouse gasses into the fragile atmosphere. Cars, airplanes, coal burning steam locomotives, coal fired electricity generating plants - all the appurtenances of modern life  including labor saving appliances have been contributing to the destruction of earth's atmosphere with the consequence of global warming. Plastic produced from petrochemicals is polluting the ocean. Viewed form the perspective of the long term viability of earth as a place of habitability for human beings and other species, oil and coal have been more of a curse than a blessing. Modern life, industrialized life has been a tragedy for Mother Earth, and will have contributed to its destruction as a place for humans to live in less than 200 years  from the discovery of oil unless drastic action is taken.

To the extent that renewable energy can be brought online, we may not have to give up all the appurtenances. However, most Americans will not voluntarily give up their way of life. It's ingrained in the American way that we should have more energy consuming goddies and gadgets than our parents had. That's the meaning of progress. We can't regress, can we? Besides, Americans are taught to maximize their own personal success, profit and benefit. For example, Wall Street is only interested in short term profits, not the long term livability of the human habitat we call earth. We have been ingrained that we should be free to pursue our own advantage. To think that now Americans will be asked to sacrifice to save the planet for future generations is almost unthinkable.

Instead of a future utopia on planet earth, the stage has been set for dystopia. Instead of saving the planet for all people and for future generations, the American playbook, unless there are drastic changes, will be to save the planet for rich Americans and to hell with the rest of the world. If people have to die, the US will see to it that rich Americans are safe, well fed and well protected from the ravages of climate change. People elsewhere on the planet will not be so protected or kept safe. In fact if history is any example, they will continue to be exploited for the benefit of rich Americans so that they can maintain the lifestyle they feel they are entitled to.

As sea levels rise, American corporations will just continue operation in the midwest, well away from the sea coasts. As New York City becomes a waterlogged ghost town, Wall Street will just relocate to Chicago or Des Moines, no problem. Headquarter locations are fungible. While the rest of the nation is fed industrialized food, the rich will eat organic food grown on small farms the way it was in the preindustrial age. As some vacation spots in the world become uninhabitable, others will open up perhaps farther north. Siberia may become the next playground for the rich. Desalination plants will provide pure water for a limited number of people as the rivers which have historically provided drinking water dry up for lack of snow pack or glaciers.

In short instead of the hardships being shared mutually among all people on the planet, they will be visited on the lower classes the way they have always been. The ruling powers, whether it be the American Empire or some other empire, will see to that. The ideals of freedom and liberty will be in name only and mainly exercised by the upper classes while the rest of the people will be propagandized to think that they are free. As the Romans pacified their population with bread and circuses, modern dystopian society will make poor people work overtime for bread while providing circuses galore by means of mass media. The salinity of drinking water in some parts of the world as well as the acidification of the ocean which killed all the crustaceans will be of no concern to rich Americans who will have their seafood tailor made for them on elaborate farms.

In short, if we continue on our present path, most Americans will value the continuation of their present lifestyles more than the habitability of the planet for future generations. Not maximizing current levels of consumption will be seen as socialistic. Capitalism demands that the emphasis be on short term profits for ourselves not long term viability of the planet for others. If necessary, war can guarantee that only the strongest in military terms will survive.

The Oceans Are Getting More Acidic...Here's What You Need To Know

by John Hawthorne

From MoBox Marine

July 11, 2017

Right now, the world is teetering on an abyss of sorts. Scientists, in general, are starting to believe that we’re in the middle of an extinction level event; the sort of catastrophe that wiped the dinosaurs off the planet.

What is this traumatic event? What sort of catastrophe are we headed toward at mach-level speeds?

Humanity as a whole is swallowing up its natural resources, destroying them and tarnishing them at a rate too fast for them to replenish.

 

 

And the resource that’s taking the biggest and baddest beating?

Our oceans.

John F. Kennedy said:

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came.

The waters that cover our globe, that support so much life, are being slowly but surely destroyed.

You’re probably familiar with many of the ways we’re hurting the oceans. We dump plastic into them. Giant companies spill millions of gallons of oil, destroying species and ruining ecosystems. We pour chemicals down the drain which are eventually funneled into the oceans. We don’t purchase seafood in a sustainable manner.

But there’s more.

Today, we are going to discuss a lesser known evil - one that we are just as guilty of producing - that’s insidiously, deliberately and continuously wearing down our ocean’s capacity to maintain life.

We’re talking about ocean acidification.

 

Ocean Acidification Could Cause Many Species To Go Extinct

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

As the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere continues to increase, a certain portion of that gets absorbed by the oceans. This year alone some two and a half billion tons of CO₂ will be absorbed by the oceans. That represents seven pounds pumped into the seas by every American. Oceans cover seventy percent of the earth's surface, and everywhere the oceans and the atmosphere come into contact there is an exchange of gases. When this exchange is in balance, there is no problem. But when the atmosphere's gaseous composition has been changed, which it has since the industrial revolution, the exchange becomes lopsided. More CO₂ goes into the ocean than comes out.

Since the start of the industrial revolution, humans have burned through enough fossil fuels to add 365 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere. Deforestation has added another 180 billion tons. Each year we add another nine billion tons or so, and that amount has been increasing 6 percent annually. Today the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air is 400 parts per million (PPM). This is higher than it has been at any time in the last 800,000 years.

If current trends continue, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be 500 ppm by 2050, double the levels in preindustrial days. So in a sense all the progress that civilization has made due to the expenditure of large quantities of energy since 1850 or so has now essentially doomed civilization unless radical changes are made in how this energy is obtained and utilized.

When carbon concentrations reach 500 ppm, there will be a global temperature rise of between three and a half and seven degrees Fahrenheidt. This will trigger world altering events such as the loss of all glaciers, melting of the Arctic ice cap and a sea level rise that will inundate all coastal cities and low lying islands. Already some low lying islands have disappeared. The President of Kiribati is in talks with Fiji's military government to buy up to 5,000 acres of land in order to relocate the 102,697 people that live in his country.  President Tong said that this is their last resort: "Our people will have to move as the tides have reached our homes and villages."

pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution. Solutions with a pH less than 7 are said to be acidic and solutions with a pH greater than 7 are basic or alkaline. Pure water has a pH very close to 7. Thanks to all the extra CO₂, the pH of the oceans' waters has already dropped from an average of 8.2 to an average of 8.1. A drop of .1 means that the oceans are now 30 percent more acidic than they were in 1800.

If business continues as usual, the surface ocean pH will drop to 8.0 by 2050 and to 7.8 by century's end. At that point the oceans will be 150% more acidic than they were at the start of the industrial revolution. Marine biologists like Jason Hall-Spencer have warned about the catastrophic consequences to marine life if the oceans' pH reaches 7.8. According to him this represents a tipping point at which the ocean's ecosystems start to crash.

The ones most at risk are the calcifiers. The term calcifier refers to an organism that builds a shell or external skeleton or, in the case of a plant, an internal scaffolding out of the mineral calcium carbonate. Some examples of calcifiers are starfish, sea urchins, clams, oysters and barnicles. Some species of coral and seaweed are calcifiers. Ocean acidification increases the difficulty for organisms to perform the calcification process in the process of their development. At higher levels of acidification, already existing organisms start to dissolve.

Ocean acidification is dangerous because it will change the makeup of microbial communities. It will interfere with photosynthesis because it will change the amount of light passing through the water. It will also alter the way sound propagates and make the seas noisier. It will promote the growth of toxic algae. There will be a reduction in biodiversity. Microscopic organisms will use up more nutrients leaving less for larger organisms. The equilibrium of the oceans established over many eons becomes unhinged, and many organisms will go extinct.

Eventually, the oceans will reach their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. At that point the build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide will accelerate. So far roughly one third of the carbon dioxide that humans have spewed into the air has been absorbed by the oceans - approximately 150 metric tons. Most importantly, it's the rate at which this process has taken place. This amount has gone into the oceans in just 150 years - a minute measure compared to the eons at which most geophysical changes take place. The current acidification is on a path to reach levels higher than any seen in the last 65 million years, and the rate of increase is about ten times the rate that preceded the Paleocene–Eocene mass extinction. The current and projected acidification has been described as an almost unprecedented geological event.

The oceans' rising acidfication dissolves shellfish in the Pacific northwest that many Indian tribes depend upon:

It’s a big challenge to tribes in the Pacific Northwest, said Billy Frank Jr. (Suquamish) back in 2010, addressing the 20 tribes that make up the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

Its impacts are felt by Native and non-Native communities in Washington State that rely on oysters and shellfish. Disastrous production failures in oyster beds caused by low pH-seawater blindsided the oyster industry in 2010, prompting a comprehensive 2012 investigation by Washington State. Earlier this month Governor Jay Inslee took the issue to the media in order to jump-start climate change action in his state, The New York Times reported on August 3 [2014].

The Quinault Indian Nation on Washington’s coast is part of one of the most productive natural areas in the world and is especially involved in the ocean acidification issue. The rivers in Quinault support runs of salmon that have in turn supported generations of Quinault people. The villages of Taholah and Queets are located at the mouth of two of those great rivers. The Pacific Ocean they flow into is the source of halibut, crab, razor clams and many other species that are part of the Quinault heritage.

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) off the coast of Australia is in trouble. The largest coral reef system in the world is not growing like it used to. The growth of colonies has slowed by approximately 13% since 1990. Although protected as a marine park for decades, more than half of the coral is dead. Without concerted action, just five to 10 percent of the coral will remain by 2020, according to a 2012 scientific survey.

According to Scientific American:

The most likely reason is climate change caused by increasing carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere...

The burning of fossil fuels over the past century or so has driven atmospheric CO₂ levels from 280 parts per million (ppm) to [400] ppm—and growing. More than 25 percent of this extra CO₂ is absorbed by the world's oceans and reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid. A rising carbonic acid level means a more acidic ocean.

In 1981 UNESCO declared the GBR a World Heritage Area, calling it “an irreplaceable source of life and inspiration”. It was home to 10 percent of all fish on the planet. But now Australia is proposing to dump 5 million tons of toxic dredging sludge in the region as they go about building a port for the export of coal. Given the perilous health of the reef, which is also facing enormous threats from rising water temperatures and ocean acidity due to CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels, scientists are calling for a complete ban on dumping in the GBR or anywhere near it.

The additional threat posed by coal ports and other industrial developments along the coast is so serious that UNESCO warned Australia it would change the reef’s prestigious World Heritage Site designation to a “World Heritage Site in Danger”.

The UNESCO decision is expected mid-2015, which is also when the dredging is scheduled to begin.

We are running geologic history backwards at warp speed. In the magazine Oceanography, Kump and Ridgwell have observed: "It is the rate of CO₂ release that makes the current great experiment so geologically unusual, and quite possible unprecedented in earth history. [If this rate continues, it] is likely to leave a legacy of the [current era] as one of the most notable, if not cataclysmic events in the history of our planet."

Urgent Warning from Scientists: Health of Oceans Spiraling Downwards

by Alex Kirby from Nation of Change   October 6, 2013

Marine scientists say the state of the world’s oceans is deteriorating more rapidly than anyone had realized, and is worse than that described in last month’s UN climate report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

They say the rate, speed and impacts of ocean change are greater, faster and more imminent than previously thought—and they expect summertime Arctic sea ice cover to have disappeared in about 25 years.

Their review, produced by the International Program on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, agrees with the IPCC that the oceans are absorbing much of the warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

But it says the impact of this warming, when combined with other stresses, is far graver than previous estimates. The stresses include decreasing oxygen levels caused by climate change and nitrogen run-off, other forms of chemical pollution, and serious overfishing.

“The health of the ocean is spiraling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought,” said Professor Alex Rogers of the University of Oxford, IPSO’s scientific director. “We are seeing greater change, happening faster and the effects are more imminent than previously anticipated.”

“What these latest reports make absolutely clear is that deferring action will increase costs in the future and lead to even greater, perhaps irreversible, losses,” said IUCN’s Professor Dan Laffoley.

The review says there is growing evidence that the oceans are losing oxygen. Predictions for ocean oxygen content suggest a decline of between one and seven percent by 2100.

The loss is occurring in two ways: through the broad trend of decreasing oxygen levels in tropical oceans and areas of the North Pacific over the last 50 years, and because of the “dramatic” increase in coastal hypoxia (low oxygen) associated with eutrophication, when excessive nutrient levels cause blooms of algae and plankton.

The first is caused by global warming, the second by increased nutrient runoff from agriculture and sewage.

The authors are also concerned about the growing acidity of the oceans, which means “extremely serious consequences for ocean life, and in turn for food and coastal protection.” The Global Ocean Commission reported recently that acidification would make up to half of the Arctic Ocean uninhabitable for shelled animals by 2050.

“At high latitudes pH levels are decreasing faster than anywhere else because water temperatures are lower, and the water is becoming more acidic,” Professor Rogers told the Climate News Network. “Last year, for the first time, mollusks called sea butterflies were caught with corroded shells.”

When atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations reach 450-500 parts per million (ppm) coral reefs will be eroded faster than they can grow, and some species will become extinct. Projections are for concentrations to reach that level by 2030-2050: in May they passed 400 ppm for the first time since measurements began in 1958.

With the ocean bearing the brunt of warming in the climate system, the review says, the impacts of continued warming until 2050 include reduced seasonal ice zones and increasing stratification of ocean layers, leading to oxygen depletion.

It also expects increased releases from the Arctic seabed of methane, a greenhouse gas at least 23 percent more potent than CO2 (the releases were not not considered by the IPCC); and more low oxygen problems.

Another stress identified is overfishing. Contrary to claims, the review says, and despite some improvements, fisheries management is still failing to halt the decline of key species and damage to ecosystems. In 2012 the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said 70 percent of world fish populations were unsustainably exploited.

The scientists say world governments must urgently reduce global CO2 emissions to limit temperature rise to under two degrees Celsius—something which would mean limiting all greenhouse gas emissions to 450 ppm.

They say current targets for carbon emission reductions are not enough to ensure coral reef survival and to counter other biological effects of acidification, especially as there is a time lag of several decades between atmospheric CO2 emissions and the detection of dissolved oceanic CO2.

Potential knock-on effects of climate change, such as methane release from melting permafrost, and coral dieback, mean the consequences for human and ocean life could be even worse than presently calculated. The scientists also urge better fisheries management and an effective global infrastructure for high seas governance.