Ocean acidification was included in the 5th IPCC Assessment – particularly in the WGII report. Whilst UNFCCC has not given ocean acidification much attention until relatively recently (and there are other UN bodies with interests), it did get mention in the negotiations at the most recent Conference of Parties (last year in Lima) and has been included in follow-up reports and discussions.
If anyone wants to know more, there’s a talk “Ocean acidification and the IPCC” by Hans-Otto Portner at the Royal Society, London next Thursday 4 June. That’s within a wider meeting on UK and German ocean acidification research. Details at http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/funded/programmes/oceanacidification/news/meeting/. Registration for that meeting has formally closed, but is still possible via me (there’s no registration fee). Phil Williamson Science Coordinator; UK Ocean Acidification research programme ([email protected]) From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Oliver Tickell Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2015 1:43 PM To: John Nissen; Ronal Larson Cc: Greg Rau; Geoengineering; [email protected]; Peter R Carter; Reese Halter; Olaf Schuiling; Stephen Salter; Bru Pearce Subject: Re: [geo] Coral bleaching under unconventional scenarios of climate warming and ocean acidification - NCC On a technical point, is ocean acidification actually an IPCC responsibility? It's a separate issue from climate change (tho with common cause) and may be better dealt with under a separate institution with a better track record of actually achieving results, for example, the International Maritime Organisation and / or UNEP. Oliver Tickell On 28/05/2015 04:16, John Nissen wrote: Hi Ron, The inability of IPCC to get to grips with the ocean acidification problem is grounds for complaint. Aggressive CDR may be the only path to reduce atmospheric CO2 to a reasonably safe level, given the uncertainty of the effects of ocean acidification on the food chain. A huge amount is at stake, since about 15% of the world population rely on fish for the protein in their diet [1]. Further measures specifically for acidification may be added to CDR - I am thinking of olivine rock crushing and ideas put to me by Oliver Tickell and Olaf Schuiling. There is also the possibility of specific local cooling measures for helping corals, e.g. using cloud brightening as suggested by Stephen Salter and others. None of this is mentioned by IPCC, yet disruption to coral life and the marine food chain could be a significant threat to humanity, affecting particularly the under-developed countries and small island states. The Earth System is now well outside the safe limits (safe for humanity) which have been obtained during the past eight thousand years, during which human civilisation has developed and on which modern civilisation now relies. A determined effort is needed to bring the Earth System back to the "old norm", rather than risk than we can adapt successfully to major change in the pipeline: a lethal combination of excessive ocean acidification, excessive global warming, excessive climate change and complete Arctic meltdown (coupled with meltdown of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet). This effort is what IPCC should be demanding from governments, otherwise we are heading for global catastrophe from which civilisation might find it difficult to recover. On the other hand, this is an unprecedented opportunity for international collaboration in the interests of all of us: to take charge of our own future on this planet and restore the 'old normality'. It can be done, but only if the nettle of geoengineering is grasped straight-away. Cheers, John [1] https://www.msc.org/healthy-oceans/the-oceans-today/fish-as-food On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 6:12 PM, Ronal W. Larson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: List: cc Greg et al See below. On May 27, 2015, at 12:28 AM, Greg Rau <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Certainly agree that new and unconventional marine management/mitigation methods are likely going to be needed http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n10/full/nclimate1555.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201210 [RWL1: Greg (overly modest?) was himself the first author of this excellent 2012 plea for more thought needed on means of reducing ocean acidification - the topic of this thread, with an SRM slant, started yesterday by Andrew. Unfortunately behind the usual Nature paywall, fortunately I found hi above Nature contribution, with its strong CDR slant, at: http://www.homepages.ed.ac.uk/shs/Hurricanes/Greg%20Rau%20ocean%20carbon.pdf I recommend it strongly and thank Greg for citing it. That message has strangely fallen on deaf ears at the policy level. The current mantra is either adequately and quickly reduce CO2 levels or hope that ecosystems will be resilient, neither of which seems likely. Check out the new NOVA production "Lethal Seas" on PBS for a sobering look at the ocean acidification problem and the preceding mantra again repeated. Lethal indeed. [RWL2: Only released this past few weeks, it is at: http://www.thirteen.org/programs/nova/#lethal-seas Agreed that NOVA is not talking Greg’s CDR option search, but the video is indeed “sobering” - and highly supportive of Greg’s concerns. A bit more also below. Greg On May 26, 2015, at 9:30 AM, Fred Zimmerman <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:y Ande For skimmers: The conclusions drawn from this body of work, which applied widely used algorithms to estimate coral bleaching8 , are that we must either accept that the loss of a large percentage of the world’s coral reefs is inevitable, or consider technological solutions to buy those reefs time until atmospheric CO2 concentrations can be reduced. An optimum approach to preserve coral reefs would most likely advocate a mitigation intensive scenario such as RCP2.6 (ref. 6) that addresses global-scale ocean acidification concerns17 in combination with detailed monitoring and the option of deploying carefully researched local or global SRM to limit thermal stress if unacceptable thresholds are reached. RWL3: Ref. 17 is pertinent: Ricke, K. L., Orr, J. C., Schneider, K. & Caldeira, K. Risks to coral reefs from ocean carbonate chemistry changes in recent earth system model projections. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 034003 (2013) which is open source at: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034003 with a short informative video at: http://brightcove.vo.llnwd.net/e1/uds/pd/105920850001/105920850001_2524759311001_abstract-video-b712c8cd6e6e50f94d98905e23d0db6e-converted.mp4 Ron ( the “attached” below from Andrew, with quotes by Fred, is a full pdf of an article by Kwiatkowski et al - also mentions CDR.) [https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=ad2Z6aW1tZXJtYW5AZ21haWwuY29t&type=zerocontent&guid=e27003fa-f741-42c4-b702-33a33b00afb1]ᐧ On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:23 PM, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Attached -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. 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For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
