New Climate Report: Hot, Sour & Breathless - Oceana USA
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December 5, 2011

New Climate Report: Hot, Sour & Breathless

Matt Huelsenbeck is a marine scientist at Oceana.

Oceana has teamed up with several top scientific institutions in creating a report called “Hot, Sour & Breathless – Ocean Under Stress” which has been released this week at the United Nations climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa.

The collaborative report explains how the oceans are becoming more acidic, warmer, and have less oxygen due to our current fossil fuel emissions. Although it’s hard to visualize the connection between a coal-fired power plant in the Midwest United States and a coral reef in Australia, everyone around the world is bound by widespread changes in the oceans triggered by carbon emissions.

The ocean’s chemistry and its physical properties are changing dramatically fast from the burning of fossil fuels, and when one of the world’s top marine scientists leaves her hard work in the lab to communicate this issue to the international community, pay attention — it’s probably important. I’m talking about Dr. Carol Turley, senior scientist and executive board member of the European Project on Ocean Acidification (EPOCA), who will be at the climate conference in Durban. 

She will be speaking at a side event entitled “Ocean Acidification: The Other Half of the CO2 Problem” which discusses how carbon dioxide emissions are making the oceans more acidic and posing threats to marine life, fisheries and livelihoods around the world. 

Recently Dr. Turley received a prestigious award called the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to science granted by the Queen of England. Oceana, Dr. Turley and other leading marine scientists have been working to raise international awareness about ocean acidification and climate change threats to marine life and ocean resources during the last two climate negotiations, COP-15 and COP-16, and again this year. 

The continued burning of fossil fuels poses serious threats to many creatures we know and love from plankton, corals, crabs and oysters all the way up to whales. Our report explains how there are big unknowns and massive risks with multiple stressors caused by emissions which could combine to completely alter many marine habitats and food webs.

Although the threats are so large, don’t think for a second that this is an existential crisis that is too big to handle, the solutions are available to limit emissions and we can and must stop these problems within our lifetimes. That is the message we are taking to the international community. We must keep fighting for serious actions to save the oceans from climate change and ocean acidification because these threats aren’t going away any time soon, and we don’t want to look back with regrets.