Fox boss ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science

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A group of lunatics?
*snerk*
Yes. Yes. We agree on this.

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, not quite up for reading 25 or whatever pages of discussion.

Ocean acidification, in my opinion is in a worrying threat as far as climate science goes.

In a nutshell, the earth cannot absorb as much c02 as it used to be able to, thanks to all the man made emissions and the fact we are chopping down the trees which used to do such a great job at processing this c02. Now with all the extra c02 in the oceans, a chemical called carbonate is disappearing and organisms such as plankton and coral reefs rely on carbonate to form their shell like structures. Without either of those able to live, the rest of the marine eco system will collapse, because plankton is the base food of most marine life, and corals play a significant part as well.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evfgbVjb688[/youtube]

@wedge, there is also another threat which is to do with heat trapping gases which are underneath the ice caps being released. These gases, if they start to be released from the melting ice caps, would create a self perpetuating problem if it started. Any ideas on the name of that issue? I was trying to find it the other day, but melting ice caps, trapped, underneath and melting turned up too many results in google to find it

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This is the one of the best videos on global warming I've ever come across:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOjfxEejS2Y

Some interesting stuff on this ocean acidification:

How do we know what ocean pH was in the past even though the pH scale was not introduced until 1909?

When ice sheets build up into glaciers, air bubbles become trapped in the freezing ice. Scientists have analyzed the CO2 concentration of air in these bubbles and have developed a record of the atmospheric CO2 concentration in the recent past. Because large parts of the surface ocean CO2 concentration remains roughly in equilibrium with the atmospheric CO2 concentration, the ocean CO2 content can be calculated from these air bubbles, and ocean pH can also be calculated. In fact, the ice core record shows that the atmospheric CO2 concentration has never been higher than about 280 ppm during the last 800,000 years, creating conditions leading to an average preindustrial surface ocean pH of ca. 8.2

How do we know what ocean pH was tens of millions of years ago?

To estimate physical or chemical parameters such as temperature or pH for periods before instruments were available, scientists use so-called proxy parameters or “proxies,” which are measurable parameters that can be related to desired but unobservable parameters. For instance, marine calcifying organisms incorporate many other elements into their hard shells and skeletons besides the calcium, carbon, and oxygen in calcium carbonate. When the hard parts of these organisms that are preserved in sediment are analyzed, the additional elements provide information about environmental conditions during the animal's lifetime. Historical ocean pH values and changes can be studied using the concentration of the element boron and the ratio of its stable isotopes (δ 10B and δ 11B) in marine carbonates. Additional geochemical evidence and modeling provide strong evidence that the average surface ocean pH has not been much lower than about 8.2 for millions of years.

In a paper published April 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers led by a Stanford geologist said that as carbon dioxide gas dissolved in the oceans, it raised the acidity of seawater.The research team said it was a deadly combination - carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and higher acidity in the oceans - that eventually wiped out 90 percent of marine species and about three-quarters of land species, in a cataclysmic event 250 million years ago known as the "end-Permian extinction." Back then, the ocean teemed with corals, algae, clams and snails. Soon after, however, there was an abrupt change to a thick layer of bacteria and limestone, a "slime-world," dominated by bacteria.:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/ ... 7.full.pdf
http://www.futurity.org/earth-environme ... r-present/

@ PatrickNeville: You're probably thinking about the methane hydrates. They also occurr in the deep ocean, and yes we're going to be in seriously sad shape if they melt.

Incidentally, IIrc the formation of methane hydrates was part of what halted one of the first efforts to cap the Deep Water well that blew in the Gulf of Mexico.

Also, at all 3 of the previous posts: Kon answers the question he poses as well as just putting up the question.