5.10.09

The oceans will turn to blood, etc.

This was supposed to be a Facebook status update, but it's too juicy to cut down to so few words.

The Daily Telegraph reports that the carbon dioxide being released by the dire melting of the Arctic icecap (dire lest ye be a government or a crazy person) is turning into carbonic acid in the cold waters up there, which will triple the acidity of the 10% of the ocean within 10 years, and a whole bunch more by 2050. Unlike global temperature fluxes, acidity like this hasn't been seen in the ocean in at least 20 million years, and all the yummy shellfish are rather ill-adapted for the storm. Their shells will melt, and the food chain will have a bad day of sorts.

A few things crossed my mind while reading the article. I think the one least likely to be all over the this-is-what-we-oughta-do blogosphere over the next few days is this:

As the oceans are turning acidic, the shellfish are literally melting away. The way I see it, the demographic with the biggest dilemma to solve isn't a government or an island society with a heavy fish diet--I rather think those people would've started working harder by now if they really intended to change anything--but rather the chunk of conservative Christians who deny global warming is happening. Because ten years down the road the oceans will start to turn to blood. Now, it won't be the familiar red blood of fish or whales, but it'll be blood all the same. And it will've come to pass because of all the carbon dioxide the icecaps absorbed, absorbed by people polluting, etc etc.

And, oh my. If I'm not mistaken, the oceans turn to blood just before the antichrist takes his throne. If only we kick up our emission output a notch, we can have an end-of-days-esque ocean before Obama's out of office. Then he can introduce legislation to void whatever amendment it was that limited one's presidency to two consecutive terms. If a sizable swath of America is going to be convinced of the existence of global warming, I bet that'd be a deal maker.

But then again, I do suppose in their crew the end of the world is something to look forward to.

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