The Ocean & Climate Change (Part 2)

Final episode of the upcoming TALK | Climate Change series. It summarizes the previous episodes (yet to be released), and focusses on the ocean — the hydrosphere.

In Part 2, we take a look at coral reefs as a case study, and see what these mean for the climate and the future.

Part 1 of this episode can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7leCVDPB4vM

Glacial melting, such as what we are seeing in many parts of the globe today, also affects the life in the ocean (biosphere in the hydrosphere). For example, we will consider corals as a case study for this. Corals are animals, and not plants. They're essentially a limestone structure filled with thousands of small animals that live off plankton (small microscopic organisms drifting in water). They are very sensitive to temperature changes...

(A bibliography of the utilized sources, images and videos will be made available soon.)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• ocean
• global
• warming
• climate
• system
• change
• hydrosphere
• coral
• bleaching
• algea
• photosynthesis
• ecotourism

[werecow2003]

One comment I have on this: the half-of-greenland, half-of-west-Antarctica comment, while technically correct, is one of the (legitimate) points of criticism leveled at Gore's movie - the reason being that Gore placed it in the context of the IPCC's 2100 projections, whereas this is unlikely to happen for several hundreds of years. Personally, I would make a point of making that clear, because otherwise you leave yourself open to potential criticism by climate skeptics.

[rudidas89]

@werecow2003 Thanks, I had looked through the criticism of Gore's movie, but didn't see that. Good you mentioned it though :)

[petercarter46]

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[werecow2003]

@rudidas89 Nothing in here that's immediately obvious, but there's one thing I'll comment on for the first vid (give me a few minutes). I am missing one important climate change related issue: ocean acidification.

[rudidas89]

@werecow2003 I see, I see. Any other points that you've seen in this video?

[werecow2003]

(And to clarify, if it seems weird that I'd know that when I haven't seen the movie, I have seen the few minutes in which he discusses this point in a few skeptical videos - as well as a presentation where he does the same thing)

[werecow2003]

@rudidas89 It comes up every so often. I haven't actually seen Gore's movie yet (I've been trying to stay away from most blogs and popular media because the reporting is often extremely biased and unreliable), but this is one of the points most frequently criticized by the climate skeptics I'm in discussion with. And it's one I tend to agree with to some extent; while Gore never actually says something that is untrue, the context and his phrasing are a bit misleading.