September 19, 2013 — U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell on Thursday sought a commitment from the Obama administration’s nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that she would make ocean acidification a significant priority.
But the exchange briefly turned, albeit obliquely, to an issue at the heart of the debate about the U.S. response to ocean acidification: funding.
In response to a Seattle Times’ series examining the current and projected effects of changing sea chemistry in the Pacific Ocean, Cantwell asked Kathryn Sullivan, acting chief at NOAA, how the agency would respond to acidification’s growing threat to marine resources.
Follow the discussion here at 2:37.
“As you know very well, Senator, ocean acidification is one of the creeping threats of global change and the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” Sullivan said during her confirmation hearing Thursday. “It’s a very difficult problem. It’s going to be a very difficult problem to monitor and provide foresight about to coastal communities.”
Sullivan said the agency had “made some progress” by adding warning systems to alert coastal communities and shellfish growers about incoming corrosive water or harmful algal blooms caused in part by rising carbon-dioxide emissions. Those systems already have helped the Northwest oyster industry — the first business in the world to feel the effects of acidification – avoid pumping sour water into hatcheries when young oysters are at their most vulnerable stages of development.
But “it’s a large-scale, truly global problem, as you know,” Sullivan added, “systemic in affecting the Earth’s systems but it’s also patchy and has very patchy local consequences. We will certainly continue to work forward with you, if I am confirmed, to make sure that we can put in the right sort of observing, forecasting and monitoring systems to help us be as alert and aware and provide as much foresight as possible on this condition.”
The exchange turned slightly more adversarial, however, when Cantwell sought more definitive answers.
Read the full story at The Seattle Times