But it'll be federally protected!
I mean, I hate to piss on the parade, and designating the Monument is a good move, but the science is NOT promising for the prospects of this National Monument.
EDIT
The preliminary results from NOAA scientists and their academic colleagues indicate measurable pH decreases of approximately 0.025 units and increases in dissolved inorganic carbon of about 15 µmol/kg in surface waters over a large section of the northeastern Pacific. A lowering of pH indicates rising acidity.
"The pH decrease is direct evidence of ocean acidification in the Pacific Ocean," said Feely. "These dramatic changes can be attributed, in most part, to anthropogenic CO2 uptake by the ocean over the past 15 years. This verifies earlier model projections that the oceans are becoming more acidic because of the uptake of carbon dioxide released as a result of fossil fuel burning."
Feely and his colleagues wrote two papers in 2004 published in the journal Science based on 20 years of ocean observations that indicated the oceans were absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide and also the effects that changes in water chemistry would have on marine life such as corals and plankton.
The cruise was part of a decadal series of repeat hydrographic sections jointly funded by the NOAA Office of Global Programs (now the Climate Program Office) and the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences as part of the Climate Variability and Predictability Study CO2 Repeat Hydrography Program. The cruise aboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson ended in Kodiak, Alaska, last week.
"The global oceans are the largest natural long-term reservoir for anthropogenic carbon dioxide, absorbing approximately one-third of the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by human activity each year. Over the next millennium, the global oceans are expected to absorb approximately 90 percent of all CO2 emitted to the atmosphere," said Christopher Sabine, chief scientist for the first leg of the cruise and an oceanographer at NOAA's PMEL.
Victoria Fabry of California State University-San Marcos and Robert Byrne of the University of South Florida measured the rates of dissolution of the calcium exoskeletons of pteropods, free-swimming planktonic mollusks, subjected to the CO2-enriched waters.
Fabry noted that based on the best available science, it appears that as levels of dissolved CO2 in sea water rise, the skeletal growth rates of calcium-secreting organisms will be reduced as a result of the effects of dissolved CO2 on ocean acidity and consequently, on calcification.
EDIT
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2606.htm0.025 doesn't sound like much, but since the Ph scale is exponential (that is, a change of 1 unit means a ten-fold change in either direction), this means that the Pacific Ocean has become about 25% more acidic than it was in the space of about 15 years. Scientists from Woods Hole took diatoms and plankton and other vital species that form the base of the food chain and put them in water at 2100 A.D. levels of projected acidification. Their shells dissolved with the living animals still inside.
The same holds true for corals, which will not be able to metabolize the calcium they need to build their homes.
From the Royal Society:
Within 50 to 100 years, the outer skeletons of some marine organisms may start to dissolve and no longer be capable of forming. This is due to the acidification of seawater, brought about by the absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans. This research was carried out by an international team, made up in particular of researchers from three French laboratories (1), and their findings are published in the 29 September 2005 issue of the journal Nature.
The burning of fossil fuels leads to an average daily per capita production of 11 kg of carbon dioxide, of which 4 kg is absorbed by the oceans. In total, over 25 million tons of CO2 dissolve in seawater every day. This reaction brings about the acidification of seawater, in other words an increase in the concentration of hydrogen ions (H+). The hydrogen ions then combine with the carbonate ions (CO32-) present in the water, thus lowering their concentration. This limits the production of calcium carbonate, which is the main constituent of the limestone which makes up the outer skeletons of marine organisms. Using recent data and 13 numerical models, a team of European, Japanese, Australian and American oceanographers has simulated changes in carbonates on the basis of the future CO2 emission scenarios drawn up by the IPCC (2).
With the standard scenario (3) the prediction is that within about 50 years the coolest ocean surface water, such as in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica, will become corrosive for one type of limestone called aragonite. This means that pteropods are in danger, since the shells of these planktonic molluscs, which swim in the upper layers of the ocean, are made of aragonite. And if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise, it is highly probable that towards the end of the century seawater will become corrosive for aragonite throughout the whole of the Southern Ocean as well as in part of the North Pacific. These calcareous organisms, which are extremely abundant in those areas, would no longer be able to grow their shells. This kind of corrosive environment would have no precedent for perhaps the past several million years.
In addition to these predictions, experiments carried out at sea have shown that the shells of live pteropods do indeed dissolve when seawater reaches the corrosive levels forecast for the year 2100. A fall in the numbers of pteropods could cause a chain reaction since they make up the basic food for organisms from zooplankton to whales, as well as for species which are important commercially, such as North Pacific salmon.
EDIT
http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/377.htm?&debut=32
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