On Tuesday night, Jane Lubchenco, marine ecologist and current NOAA Director, gave the 11th Annual Roger Revelle Lecture, sponsored by the National Resource Council Ocean Studies Board to honor namesake Roger Revelle, who discovered that the oceans will not absorb limitless carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning.It seems that these days we are increasingly realizing the limits of the ocean, as we approach them from many different angles - the limits of fish harvest, the limits of nutrient transformations and oxygen availability, and the limits of stability of ocean pH, salinity, and temperature. Dr. Lubchenco spoke of these challenges. Local and global solutions, she said, must be pursued simultaneously. Controlling local degradation from nutrient pollution and over-fishing, for example, will help to avoid unpredictable and potentially difficult interactions between local and global stressors and maintain overall system resilience. She ended her lecture hopefully, discussing new approaches to data collection, data synthesis, and environmental regulation that will help us address problems before we reach tipping points and advising us to:
"Seas the Day!"which is a quote that, if I were a Twitterer, I'd call downright tweetable.
