Some Scientists Think Oceans Could Absorb Gases

[Angie]

NEW YORK - In the continuing debate over global warming and how to fight it, some scientists and entrepreneurs advocate using the oceans as a sponge to absorb carbon dioxide from the air. Others are saying not so fast. They argue that widespread ocean dumping of carbon dioxide could unbalance the aquatic environment.
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Carbon dioxide is one of the "greenhouse gases" that trap heat. Most scientists believe that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels is a large factor in the warming temperatures of the last century and that capping those emissions is essential for limiting future warming. Much of the extra carbon dioxide already dissolves into the oceans, where it has no effect on temperatures. Two schemes seek to augment that natural process.
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One is to catch carbon dioxide from the smokestacks of power plants before it enters the atmosphere, squeeze it into liquid form and then pump it into the deep oceans.
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The other is to fertilize oceans to produce blooms of algae that pull carbon dioxide out of the air. Proponents believe that as the bloom dies off, much of the algae will sink to the ocean floor, and the carbon dioxide - transformed into plant material - would be safely subtracted from the warming equation. A private company called GreenSea Venture hopes to make a business of this.
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But some scientists argue that engineering nature to avoid environmental damage inevitably causes other, perhaps greater damage. Writing in the Oct. 12 issue of Science, Brad Seibel of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California, and Patrick Walsh of the University of Miami caution that carbon dioxide could harm deep-sea creatures.
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Enshrouded in perpetual cold and dark, creatures like the anglerfish live in slow motion, their metabolisms consuming energy at as little as one-thousandth the rate of those closer to the surface. The slow metabolism makes them particularly sensitive to chemical changes in their environment, the authors say.
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When carbon dioxide dissolves, it turns into carbonic acid, making the water more acidic. But biologists have observed that a change of 0.3 in the pH level in the blood of some deep sea creatures can halve the amount of oxygen. "It may not kill them," Mr. Seibel said, "but they may not be able to swim as actively as they could before. It would be like they were out of breath."
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Damage to deep-ocean ecosystems could eventually alter the mix of nutrients and chemicals that well up from the depths. "It's still not known what the links between the deep ocean and the shallow ocean are," Mr. Seibel said. "If you damage one, you hurt the other potentially." A small-scale experiment to pump about 40 tons of liquid carbon dioxide into the waters off Hawaii has run into stiff opposition from some environmentalists and has not received final approval.
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Carbon dioxide does kill, as researchers demonstrated in even smaller-scale experiments this year in Monterey Bay. From a small submarine, scientists from the Monterey Bay Research Institute squirted about five gallons of liquid carbon dioxide into each of several small plastic pools at the bottom, 12,000 feet down (3,700 meters). They then put cages containing five sea urchins and five sea cucumbers each about a foot and a half from the carbon dioxide pools, wanting to see how they fared compared with others in cages farther away.
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When they returned three weeks later, everything in the cages next to the pools was dead. The researchers found that creatures like small crustaceans living in the nearby sediment were also injured or killed. Modifying the experiment, the researchers then placed sea urchins and sea cucumbers six and 15 feet away from the carbon dioxide. Those animals survived without visible injury; tissue samples are being examined for cellular damage.
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"It seems CO2 injection will have detrimental effects," said James Barry, an associate scientist at the institute involved in the experiment. "That's almost certain. The degree of damage is the question."
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These cautionary notes contrast with the views of Peter Brewer, a senior scientist at the research institute, who supervised the bay bottom experiments and has advocated exploring the idea of injecting carbon dioxide in the ocean. Still, he said the data deserved a full airing. "Just as putting in a sewage outfall or drilling an oil well, there's an environmental question to be asked," Mr. Brewer said, "and people should do it in an objective way."

Global warming is a politically motivated hoax based on research of highly dubious merit, the same is true of the ozone depletion scare. They are delusions intended to halt the planet's industrial development to the great detriment of its population, that's YOU! Consider this, water vapor is the most significant "greenhouse" gas therefore we must refrigerate the tropical oceans! Hysterical crackpottery of the rankest kind and comparable to the above-cited article in every way. Ignorance has killed more people than "global warming" ever will, don't be a victim!