The 'evil twin' of climate change

The 'evil twin' of climate change

"So what were you guys in the arctic filming?" asked the check-in lady at the hotel.

"We were following scientists doing research on climate change," I replied.

"Oh. How boring," she said, her momentary interest at our northern adventure having peaked and evaporated on the mere mention of the environment.

My cameramen, Manu Leus and I had just returned to Toronto from a couple of weeks of living with researchers from the Catlin Arctic Survey on a base plopped on floating sea ice, not far from the North Pole. 

We thought the project sounded interesting enough to us, but the hotel employee's reaction seemed very much a barometer of how people in general are feeling about the topic of the environment. 

She wasn't the first. We watched the eyes of many others we had met along the way glaze over when we began to explain the story we were filming.

"How interesting," was the common reply.

After the hype of Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, followed by the Nobel Prize win, it appears people simply want a break from the issue of global warming and all the guilt associated with the issue.

Forget the fact that the Catlin team is looking at an almost entirely ignored area of climate change – how the oceans of the world are becoming more acidic due to growing amounts of CO2 in the air; we just couldn't get people interest.

Corrosive oceans

I was feeling a little down at the thought of putting together the television story on the subject, but then I thought of our time spent with the three scientists; they were all young, bright and outright enthusiastic about the topic they were researching.  

Not to mention, patient enough to walk us "TV types" through the basics of their work, as they battled sub-zero temperatures to get one test machine running, and then working on the winch of another, to get test samples from more than 200 metres below the ice.

The sexiest way to put it is that "ocean acidification" is the "evil twin" of climate change. While much research has gone on in regards to carbon dioxide's (a major element of greenhouse gases) impact on the atmosphere, much less has been done looking at how it affects the oceans. 

What scientists do know is that the oceans absorb half of the world's carbon dioxide, which is great for the air, but ultimately turns the waters acidic.

How corrosive the oceans have become is the question; along with how badly marine life is affected.

Each of the three scientists is tackling the questions from different angles.

Micro-organisms and the food chain

Bangor University's Laura Edwards, who normally studies melting glaciers, is working on how carbon dioxide is being transferred into the oceans. Using tent poles as support girders, she has rigged up plastic domes on the floating ice, equipping them with sensors inside.

"It's just a matter of trying to understand the system and how much carbon dioxide is moving through the ice and in which direction," says Edwards.

University of Exeter's Ceri Lewis has chipped a hole through a metre of ice and spends her days trolling for the life beneath.

Using a net that looks more like pantyhose for a very long-legged giant, she fishes for micro-organisms. 

"These are the small zoo-plankton … that support the whole functioning and productivity of the whole marine ecosystem," she says.

Lab studies suggest that acid levels in the oceans have already reached the point where they are starting to eat away at the shells of zoo-plankton; one of the most vulnerable being the Sea Butterfly – a crucial and favoured food of fish.

"It's very important to understand what processes affect these because that will have knock-on affects thru the rest of the food chain."

Plymouth Marine Laboratory's Helen Findlay is projecting into the future. She is taking many of the captured microorganisms and putting them into test bottles containing ocean water treated with different amounts of acid.

"We're going to try and mimic the Ph conditions for 100 to 300 years time and see how these animals respond by measuring things like their respiration rate, their swimming rate, [and] their feeding rate."

Sustainable life?

Much like concerns about global warming, the Catlin Arctic Survey is trying to answer whether the oceans will one day become so corrosive it will make it difficult to sustain life.

That is the worst-case scenario; what scientists believe is more likely, is that some species may die off, while others will adapt.

Whatever the outcome, it is clear is that the oceans are being altered and that it will have an impact on those who rely on them, human beings for one.
 
"You must be glad to be somewhere warmer," says the hotel clerk, as she passes us our room keys. She then moves to the next customer, our earlier conversation dropped or purposely forgotten.

As we head for the elevator, I can't help but wonder if humankind has enough of an attention span to care about our changing world to make a difference.