Oceans Expected To Become More Acidic Than They've Been In 14 Million Years.

Since we began burning fossil fuels and pumping carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere during the industrial revolution, the world's oceans have been acting like a massive sponge by absorbing up to half of this CO2. After taking up human-emitted CO2 for over 200 years, the oceans have become approximately 30% more acidic. And if current emissions rates persist, our oceans are on track to become more acidic than they have been in 14 million years.

The eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea in Split, Croatia.

The rising acidity of the oceans is especially threatening for sea life with structures made from calcium carbonate, such as shells. As ocean pH drops, carbonate becomes less readily available and causes these hard components to dissolve. Yet, it is in the fossilized calcium carbonate shells of tiny critters, called foraminifera, that Dr. Sindia Sosdian and colleagues were able to measure the acidity of prehistoric oceans.

Read the story by Priya Shukla from Forbes - “Oceans Expected To Become More Acidic Than They've Been In 14 Million Years.”

Costa Rica's Electricity Has Run Entirely on Renewables For 300 Days in 2017

Costa Rica has done it again. In January, the Central American country announced it had powered its electricity for a stunning 250 days in 2016 without burning fossil fuels. Now its 2017 effort has already eclipsed that feat – and it's still only November.

So far this year, Costa Rica has clocked up 300 days where 100 percent of its electricity generation came from renewable energy sources – no small accomplishment for a nation comprised of some 5 million people.

According to figures provided by Costa Rica's National Centre for Energy Control, 99.62 percent of the country's electricity production is now generated from five renewable sources.

Leading the charge is hydropower, which provides 78.26 percent of Costa Rican electricity, followed by wind (10.29 percent), geothermal energy (10.23 percent), biomass and solar (0.84 percent), and hydrocarbons (0.38 percent).

Read the Science Alert story - “Costa Rica's Electricity Has Run Entirely on Renewables For 300 Days in 2017.”

Keeping climate change optimism alive is challenging

-       Robert McLean

Canada's wildfires (bushfires) make it difficult
to remain optimistic that
our response to climate change will be adequate.

Keeping one’s optimism alive can be challenging when humanity’s collective response to the dilemma of climate change is inadequate and embedded in the false hope that some as yet unknown and untested technology will rescue us.

The signs of climate change abound and yet despite some pockets of resourceful and innovative thinking, we (that’s humanity) continue burning fossil fuels, remain strong in our allegiance to an economic system (capitalism) whose success erodes the Earth’s capital and are without the bold and resourceful thinking escape from this crisis demands.

Look for example at what is happening in Canada – “Canada’s huge wildfires may release carbon locked in permafrost” – where forest fires driven by conditions unquestionably worsened by climate change have brought chaos to the lives of thousands.

Minor by comparison, but another example of difficulties brought on by climate change is this retail twist happening in Melbourne, and no doubt everywhere else – “Shopping centres wary of unseasonably warm winter weather”.

The latter is actually of little consequence compared to Canadian events, but surely it is sufficient to make at least these retailers realise that the consistency of season they once enjoyed is slipping away.

It is critical we understand and address the optimism/pessimism dichotomy dilemma for whichever has precedence then determines how this predicament will evolve.

There are, however, various realms of optimism and what prevails is that which has brought on the conditions that have led to climate change and the broader degradation of the Earth and what is needed, right now, is an optimism that humanity can find its way out of this difficulty.

The seriousness of climate change is both misunderstood and underestimated and beyond a handful of people, relatively speaking, few have any grasp of how extreme our response needs to be.

Conditioned by centuries of a life of plenty brought on by the bounty of energy resulting from fossil fuels, humanity generally sees every solution through growth and “more”, while the thinking people see it in a planned degrowth, that is a more restrained way of living where the emphasis is on human wellbeing and thriving, rather than profit and growth.

However, until we can fracture and dislodge that hold neoliberalism has on the human dynamic, we have little hope of changing our way of thinking or doing things.

I’m optimistic we will change, but pessimistic about how that change will come about – it seems that humanity will only change its ways when we have no other option, but sadly that will only arrive at a cost in both lives and property.

In all that, we need to avoid pessimism for that mostly simply freezes people into inaction and breeds an “Oh well, it’s all gone to hell, let’s just live for now”.

Climate change is happening, in human life terms, dreadfully slow, but in a geological sense, it’s coming upon us at lightning speed and that is a terminal-like problem for humanity.

All that said, let’s be optimistic for there is no other way.

Electric car racing - so goes NASCAR, so goes the world: Bill Nye

“To address climate change in the medium and long term, we have to stop, completely stop, burning fossil fuels. The obvious, straightforward, We’re-already-just-about-there answer is to convert our entire ground-transportation fleet – trains, trucks, buses and cars – to electric motors with batteries to store energy the way that gasoline tanks store energy in our fuel-burning vehicles. In the short term, NASCAR could help get us there. We could convert all of our racecars to electricity – right now – and show the public exactly what electrons can do.”

Read the Aeon story by Bill Nye - “If NASCAR embraced electric cars it could change the world.”

Pew Research finds climate atitudes increasingly contentious

P

ublic attitudes about climate change have become increasingly contentious over the past several years.

The new Pew Research survey included two separate measures to gauge public attitudes about climate change.

When asked to pick among three choices, 50 per cent say that climate change is occurring mostly because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels, 23 per cent say that climate change is mostly because of natural patterns in the earth’s environment, and another 25 pew cent say there is no solid evidence the earth is getting warmer.

Read the report Pew Research report - “Attitudes and Beliefs on Science and Technology Topics”.