
The Pacific Ocean is so acidic that it's dissolving Dungeness crabs' shells - onetimemanytime
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/27/us/pacific-ocean-acidification-crabs-dissolving-shells-scn-trnd/index.html
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jfengel
My big question was "how much", and TFA was really thin on that.

The actual article:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720301200?via%3Dihub)

And the answer, from the abstract: we estimate an 8.3% increase in external
carapace dissolution over the last two decades

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frogperson
I recently finished reading a book called The Sixth Extinction. It has an
entire chapter devoted to ocean acidification, it's causes and repercussions.
The whole thing was terrifying and weirdly calming at the same time. On one
hand it feels too late to do anything meaningful to even effect the
anthropocene. On the other hand, if the course is unchangeable, them maybe the
only thing left to do is to sit back and watch the train wreck happen.

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istorical
Ocean acidification should be much more worrying to us than sea level rise or
even drought and food price increases. Cities can be moved but large swathes
of phytoplankton going exctinct is much more concerning considering they
provide 50 to 85 percent of oxyten. We can live in a world without wild
animals or fish in the ocean but we can't live in a world without a
functioning carbon cycle.

Would love to see a survey on what percentage of political leaders are
educated on sea level rise or carbon emissions vs threat of ocean
acidification. Seems like a failure of our media or our educational
institutions that this isn't more widely known.

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rdtwo
It won’t take a huge shift to really knock the ocean out of balance. Anyone
who has ever had a saltwater tank knows how sensitive the balance is to minor
swings and how fast the entire system can crash

