21 March 2012 (SEI) – A global, integrated approach is urgently needed to protect the oceans from converging threats. A new study coordinated by SEI shows climate change alone could reduce the economic value of key ocean services by up to 2 trillion USD a year by 2100, and urges world leaders to make the […]
By Scott K. Johnson1 March 2012 Some like to point to cycles when dismissing climate change, brushing off warming as simply being the thing that happens right before cooling. In this view, concern about climate change is akin to the naïve worry that half of schools are performing below average. This is why we need […]
SINGAPORE, 24 February 2012 (ENS) – The World Bank today announced the Global Partnership for Oceans, gathering governments, scientists, advocacy organizations, the private sector, and international public institutions to confront the increasingly urgent issues of over-fishing, marine degradation, and habitat loss. “Oceans are the lifeblood of our world,” said World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick, […]
Media Contacts: Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734, cdybas@nsf.gov Greg Hand, University of Cincinnati, (513) 556-1822, handgl@ucmail.uc.edu 3 February 2012 The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth’s marine life–and it killed in stages–according to a newly published report. It shows that mass extinctions need not be sudden […]
2 Feb 2012 (BAS) – One of the most comprehensive studies of animals in the Southern Ocean reveals a region that is under threat from the effects of environmental change. Reporting in January 2012 in a special volume of the journal Deep Sea Research II, an international team of researchers led by British Antarctic Survey […]
By Hannah Hoag11 December 2011 Ocean acidification — caused by climate change — looks likely to damage crucial fish stocks. Two studies published today in Nature Climate Change reveal that high carbon dioxide concentrations can cause death1 and organ damage in very young fish. The work challenges the belief that fish, unlike organisms with shells […]
By Laine Welch, For the Alaska Journal of Commerce21 December 2011 West Coast shellfish growers have learned to work around upwellings of corrosive waters and save the lives of their bivalve stocks. Increased levels of carbon dioxide, or CO2, in the atmosphere are changing the chemistry of the oceans, making it more acidic. The CO2 […]
Tamino poses the question: What’s the chance that if we continue with business-as-usual, man-made global warming will lead to disastrous climate change? It isn’t zero. It isn’t one. What is epsilon? Although one could quibble with the assumption that it isn’t 1 – why wouldn’t it be? – here’s what Des wrote in comments: Assumptions […]
Global phytoplankton decline over the past century. Observed phytoplankton declines have occurred in eight out of ten ocean regions. The global rate of decline is estimated to be ~1% of the global median per year. ABSTRACT: In the oceans, ubiquitous microscopic phototrophs (phytoplankton) account for approximately half the production of organic matter on Earth. Analyses […]
By Morgan Kelly17 November 2011 A cosmic one-two punch of colossal volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes likely caused the mass-extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period that is famous for killing the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, according to two Princeton University reports that reject the prevailing theory that the extinction was caused […]
