Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Acidifying oceans

We are in trouble, folks, even if the right-wing punditry and the White House want to pretend it's just a little inconvenience or a bugaboo dreamed up by them "eco-terrorists": the pH of the oceans is changing due to too much CO2, and it's killing the coral reefs, which will be disastrous for the food web. Between that and the too-warm water and the melting ice (also taking a toll), we are going to learn just how dependent we are on the rest of the biosphere.

Perhaps it really is time for a Philo Dufresne-type response. Greenpeace has the right idea, I think, but this just isn't enough. You, me, and the Ralph Seekins of the world have got to pay attention. Unfortunately, it's the last type of person I'm worried about.

At least I've been bicycling. I wonder if the Republic could get a small business grant to install solar panels?

3 comments:

John said...

I used to worry that the Sun wasn't emitting enough neutrinos, and therefore not fusing enough hydrogen to keep us warm. That was too scary. Now I worry about fashion.

By the way, they finally found the missing neutrinos. Whew.

:)

Deirdre Helfferich said...

Yeah, but what about all that missing dark matter? I figure that the sun blowing up or the universe collapsing or a meteor hitting us can wait. It's this stuff that we can actually DO something about that's really giving me the heebie-jeebies...

Deirdre Helfferich said...

Gee, thanks for the helpful advice, Jeff. We'll just take our spare $3,000 or whatever the heck it is and go buy a system...

And I did look. There are loans and grants available, but most seem to be from private foundations rather than government entities, and are for new construction rather than retrofitting. And there are very very few of them.