ocean acidification

What’s a few tears to the ocean?

by Gareth May 12, 2009

New Zealand could be amongst the first places in the world to feel the effects of ocean acidification, according to a new “emerging issues” paper released today by the Royal Society of New Zealand. Surrounded by cold oceans which absorb CO2 faster than warm waters, and with a $300 million shellfish industry based on mussels, [...]

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The Long Thaw

by Bryan Walker January 24, 2009

The legacy of our release of fossil fuel CO2 to the atmosphere will be long-lasting. It will affect the Earth’s climate for millenia. We are becoming players in geologic time. That is the conclusion that climatologist David Archer shares with a general audience in his newly published book The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing [...]

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The heater

by Gareth January 19, 2009

While some on the crank fringe fixate over a “global cooling” (that ain’t happening), the imbalance in our planet’s heat budget has inevitable — and inexorable — consequences for our climate. More heat’s coming into the system than can leave, as this excellent new article at NASA’s Earth Observatory spells out. It’s an easy to [...]

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Cry me a river

by Gareth January 8, 2009

I missed out on the field trip to the Waipara Gorge to look at the evidence for tropical temperatures around Eocene New Zealand, laid low by the

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Friday on my mind (once more)

by Gareth June 6, 2008

Before you ask, the picture shows the shell of a coccolithophore, and it’s in trouble. We’ve been adding a lot of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and a good chunk of it has ended up in the oceans. The water is getting more acidic, and some sea creatures are finding it harder to build their [...]

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