Oh my... The invasion of the Octopi!

Swarms of Octopus Are Taking Over the Oceans:

That is interesting. I had not heard Octopuses (octopi) were the "weeds" of the oceans. But it is interesting to find larger animals that can be a litmus test of the ocean environment.

Oceans are not sucking up CO2 at the same rate as they used to. Acidification is moving up quickly. Reefs are under massive threat.

Weeds are mother natures way of getting something growing in bad soil and going in destroyed areas.

Here's the original study in Scientific America:

Octopus and Squid Populations Exploding Worldwide

Fast-breeding cephalopods exploit gaps left by extreme climate change and overfishing 

By Alexander Arkhipkin, The Conversation on May 25, 2016

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Let's Trash it! New Garbage Patch in the South Pacific Is 1.5x Texas. Weather Channel

Newly Discovered Garbage Patch in the South Pacific Is 1.5 Times the Size of Texas, Study Says | The Weather Channel:

Let's TRASH it !

Speaking of trash.

We keep making it.

We box it, we stack it.

We keep spreading it liberally around the world.

We keep taking the planet for granted. !!!

...

Check out the Great Pacific Garbage Patch at Wikipedia.  Note the visualization of ocean flows using ocean buoys (off to the right).
(Title: Garbage Patch Visualization Experiment.webm Author: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio Date: 2 October 2015)

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Cleaning up our garbage patch takes a 21 year old

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/28/3792829/ocean-clean-up-project-unveiled/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=cptop3&utm_term=1&utm_content=22

Cleaning up our (garbage patch) act is going to take some work.  It takes a 21 year old... see the refs to new studies. 700 pieces of plastic in the ocean for every man woman and child on Earth! And the problem is, that there will never be an end to the plastic until we stop producing it and shipping it off to Sea...

Everyone being simply more aware of the problem, that's actually a good start as well.

Another massive meltoff of Antarctic glacier. Really ugly likely outcomes.

The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse. http://wapo.st/19rU1xp
Wow. Another area, like the west of antartcica, could result in massive ice melt from the ocean side up!
Each shelf/sheet could add about 10 feet to ocean rise, maybe 25% more for the northern hemisphere.
Ouch!

Garbage-patch tale as flimsy as a single-use plastic bag - SFGate

Garbage-patch tale as flimsy as a single-use plastic bag - SFGate:

So the GREAT Pacific Garbage Patch is not real... Or maybe not nearly as big as originally expected.

Saunders does a great job of attaching the myth behind the original reports of "the size of Texas" and such.

Great sources of info included.

But now I'm really worried. The amount of plastic floating in the oceans amount to only (right, only) 7,000 to 35,000 Tons. But we know the amount of plastic produced each year, the % that gets recycle, the % that goes into a landfill and the paltry % that gets repurposed. That leaves a LOT of tons of plastic each year that go into the environment. If we estimate the amount that goes out the water systems into the oceans you get a LOT of plastics into the oceans. There's a lot of large pieces but the small stuff is mysteriously missing.

There's bit of a mystery working that is well discussed here at the SFGate with four possible theories by Leslie Baehr. None of them look good. The plastic found represent only about 1% of the plastic pollution in the ocean according to one of the researchers Cózar said. More could be hiding below the surface. 

"Indeed, the quantity of plastic floating in the ocean and its final destination are still unknown," the researchers concluded.

It may take hundreds or thousands of years for plastic to degrade. In the warm ocean with lots of sunlight, maybe only 1 year. See here on degrading and the short artgument as to whether plastics ever really biodegrade (although the degrade to smaller bits of the same).  Here's a nice little biodegadable table by the NH for the National Park Service, talking about 20 years for plastic bags and 450 for plastic bottles to biodegrade.

All that plastic is going somewhere. I was actually happier knowing where it was going... into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Now we don't know, what we don't know. That's worrisome! 

Wikipedia of the Great_Pacific_garbage_patch and the 
National Geographic on the Pacific Garbage Patch.
Marine Debris at NOAA.
Youtube from Oprah's show where she did an EarthDay on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Several years ago (upload is 2011). Before this new study, obviously.
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13 of 14 warmest years on record occurred in 21st century – UN | Environment

13 of 14 warmest years on record occurred in 21st century – UN | Environment | theguardian.com:

Ouch. As you look at the clock, you will see that we are only 14 years into the 21st Century. Yet we have 13 of the hottest 14 years in recorded history.

You do have to take the whole of the earth into account, obviously, not just the USA, where we were ?fortunate? enough to have a exceptionally cold and blizzardy Winter. (Polar Vortex is now in our daily vernacular.)

If you are interested in the science go here to look at the 11 or 12 major indicators (based on several data sources each) that would indicate global warming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

If you want a composite graphic that shows the robustness of the evidence, go here. There are several data sources overlaid in each graphic. Note that the stratosphere is decreasing (cooler), that is consistent with a depletion of the ozone layer.

The recent UN report talks about the trends in costs associated with climate effects, like typhoons. A draft report talks about $1.45T costs associated with climate change over the next decade. (See here http://www.livescience.com/43891-global-warming-economic-damage.html.)

The costs are expected to reach $70 to $100B per year for adaptation by 2050. (See here: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/03/31/will-the-uns-new-report-shift-the-global-warming-debate)

NASA has lots of interesting graphics, including time-series that will show the world temperature changes over the last couple hundred years. (Or just recently if you want since 1970).(The science visualization study at NASA is awesome, no mater what your interests: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/Gallery/index.html or if you want to draw your own graphs based on the underlying data, go here: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global/globe/land_ocean/3/2/1880-2014).

As we come up on Earth Day (EarthDay.org or EarthDay in Wikipedia) the impacts of business as usual (BAS) really revolves around whether you think something should be done to be much more sustainable NOW!, in decades or in centuries to come.

The degree of urgency really depends on how much you believe in global warming, and how fast you think that warming may take place.

Look at the graphs and make your own call on this.

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Rising levels of acids in seas may endanger marine life, says study | Environment | The Guardian

Rising levels of acids in seas may endanger marine life, says study | Environment | The Guardian

Ouch!

This has been a growing concern. The rapid increases in the CO2 levels -- blasting past 400ppm as we speak -- that has several scary consequences.

First, there's the greenhouse gas (GHG) thing and the rising temperatures of the air and land.

Second, the excess CO2, at least some of it, is absorbed into the oceans. This increases the acidity of the oceans. Higher acid levels could wipe out shell fish, coral reefs and other things/animals that are critical for the health of the oceans (and of the planet).

Here's what the article and the scientists said:

Hans Poertner, professor of marine biology at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, and co-author of a new study of the phenomenon, told the Guardian: "The current rate of change is likely to be more than 10 times faster than it has been in any of the evolutionary crises in the earth's history."
Seawater is naturally slightly alkaline, but as oceans absorb CO2 from the air, their pH level falls gradually. Under the rapid escalation of greenhouse gas emissions, ocean acidification is gathering pace and many forms of marine life – especially species that build calcium-based shells – are under threat.

Ouch!

The Keeling Curve | How Much CO2 Can The Oceans Take Up?

The Keeling Curve | How Much CO2 Can The Oceans Take Up?: "Recent estimates have calculated that 26 percent of all the carbon released as CO2 from fossil fuel burning, cement manufacture, and land-use changes over the decade 2002–2011 was absorbed by the oceans. (About 28 percent went to plants and roughly 46 percent to the atmosphere.) During this time, the average annual total release of was 9.3 billion tons of carbon per year, thus on average 2.5 billion tons went into the ocean annually."

So... of the 9.3 billion in CO2 emissions, the oceans have been absorbing about 26%. But, as in all things that reach saturation, this cannot be expected to continue.

We do know that CO2 will go into the air, since the atmosphere gets first go at fossil fuel emissions. So the Greenhouse gasses might start to rise much, much faster.

This certainly looks like a no-win.

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Rising ocean acidity tips delicate balance | TBO.com

Rising ocean acidity tips delicate balance | TBO.com:

There are lots of reasons to be concerned about rising ocean acidity. If it kills one year's generation of oysters, that is disquieting. If it starts to kill of the next year, and the next year, that is a disaster.

The kill off of the ocean reefs, pretty much world-wide, is in part because of ocean acidifciation. An estimate of 10% of ocean reefs are dead with some 60% at risk. That should rise to 90% and essentially 100% at risk by 2030 and 2050, respectively. Most of that impact is human caused, and a big part of that is fossil fuel related.

The greenhouse gases raise the air temperatures (again, the big debate is about how much and how fast). The oceans raise in temperature at a much delayed rate, especially deep ocean. So it may be years or decades before ocean temperature rises are felt from the time of increase in air temperatures.

But the other impact is directly from CO2 emissions. Land and water masses absorb the CO2 from the atmosphere. Maybe 30 to 40% go into water, mainly oceans. This ocean sink of carbon dioxide make the water more acidic. This in turn causes lots of problems for shell fish, coral reefs, etc...

Double whammy for the oceans.

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