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Acid Bay Future Reserve

Dump excess CO2 into a bay to get it ready
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The oceans are getting acidified by too much CO2. This inhibits calcification (structure of most organisms) in the food chain.

Biology is highly adaptive, and just takes time (millions of generations).

By dumping excess CO2 (from a nearby power plant) into a bay (chosen by unfortunate lottery?) we can "look into the inevitable future". But in this case, nature does all of the heavy work. We just dump the CO2 & watch.

Unlike the few closed tank experiments, this lets us study a whole local ecosystem, and how it reacts, not just in one step, but over the course of many adjusted steps. (Death, jellyfish, turtles, who knows before it's stable?)

While we study the effects, evolution kicks in and we might be creating the right genes for future survival. We're giving them more time to adapt.

It's the equivalent of, "If winter's coming, let's freeze one town to see how they adapt before we all have to." Except in this case, nature does all the work. We just dump the CO2 & watch.

sophocles, Apr 18 2014

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       Yeah, but the reason they do closed tank experiments is because one bay isn't really just one bay, is it? It's the sea that bay opens into, and the ocean upon which lies that sea, and the continent across that ocean, and the globe across which that continent reclines...   

       ...not to mention the delta which flows into that bay, and the river from which it is formed, and the watershed that runs into that river, and the rain that falls upon that watershed, and the air stream which brings that rain, and the globe around which it flows...
Alterother, Apr 18 2014
  

       [Alterother] Yes: "Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe."   

       But, a study on a whole bay (even with some I/O) is much more of an interconnected system than just one tank in a lab. And, the rest of the universe will be impacted sooner or later, so we should study the localized effects.
sophocles, Apr 18 2014
  

       I would first build a massive building around the bay and add as many species of ocean life as possible in an attempt to better replicate how the earth will respond. [+]
Voice, Apr 18 2014
  

       Perhaps you need to do this to Stavangerfjord. Create a great recycled plastic barrier between the waters some way into the fjord and the North Sea, and otherwisely condition the waters thusly divided.
skoomphemph, Apr 18 2014
  

       It will always get stuck on the question of where to do it. Show me a body of water whose ecology isn't in some way uniquely valuable to the global environment andor environmental science and I'll show you a marine scientist who hasn't found it yet. If you look hard enough--and somebody always does--there's something special and unique about everywhere.
Alterother, Apr 19 2014
  

       Oops. I forgot some fjords have coral reefs at abyssal depths (well very deep, anyway).   

       OK, so unite all the discarded plastic bags of the world into one giant aquarium bag at one of the mid-ocean gyre centres, then? Do we generate enough waste to make something like that?
skoomphemph, Apr 19 2014
  

       Not yet, but we will.
Alterother, Apr 19 2014
  


 

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