Mother Fukushima
theinertia.com
theinertia.com
I mean, however ridiculous the "whatever is happening, it must be radiation" crowd might be, the serious, ongoing disaster in Fukushima makes their opposites, technological panglossians, seem at least as dangerous.
The increasing acidity of the ocean due to the formation of carbonic acid (resulting from increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere) is a far more plausible explanation for most of the phenomena mentioned in this article. For example, the increased levels of marine life off of the coast of California might be explained by acidification in the area. The coastal waters of California are slightly less acidic than those further out from shore [1]. If pH were reduced equally both on the coast and off the cost, the effect might be to force marine life towards the coast where pH is higher.
What's really funny is that paranoia over nuclear power, which the Fukushima incident has certainly boosted, may cause nuclear power to be used less in the near future. Alternative energy sources such as solar and wind are great, but can only form a relatively small portion of a stable power-grid because we simply don't have the technology to build electrical capacitance on the levels needed to smooth out fluctuations in supply of these power sources. On-demand power sources, such as nuclear or fossil fuels, are still very important. If nuclear power is used less out of fear, fossil fuels will pick up the slack. That means more atmospheric CO2 and more ocean acidification. The end result is that this kind of article will probably do more to harm marine life than Fukushima ever did!
> that 400 tons of radioactive wastewater... an additional 300 metric tons of highly contaminated radioactive wastewater
Wikipedia:
> The volume of the Pacific Ocean, representing about 50.1 percent of the world's oceanic water, has been estimated at some 714 million cubic kilometers.
Are we done here?
Here's a good analysis: http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/fallout/feasibilitystudy/t...
Check out Table 3.3, which is deposition of radioactive fallout in the continental United States (not worldwide). You'll see that nearly 2,000 times as many Becquerels of radiation from nuclear fallout comes from isotopes other than Cs-137. That's because many of those isotopes are short-lived and so generate much higher doses of radiation.
You'll note that over 4,000 petabecquerels of radioactive nuclides were deposited on the continental US alone through nuclear testing. And that does not include the Pacific nuclear testing, such as Ivy and Castle, where most of the largest tests took place. Nor does it include the impact of Soviet, Chinese, or French tests (which included several multi-megaton tests including significant fission yields which would have produced enormous quantities of fallout).
Remember that folks who were 40 miles away from just one nuclear test, Castle Bravo, suffered from acute radiation poisoning. We haven't seen anything like that happen with Fukushima, because the radionuclide output is significantly different. The fact is that the majority of radionuclides from the Fukushima disaster come from old nuclear fuel, fuel that still contains Cs-137 but where the very much more hazardous short-lived isotopes have already decayed away.
This is in contrast to the situation with Chernobyl where the reactor itself experienced runaway nuclear fission activity before being disassembled by a steam explosion and catching fire, dispersing enormous quantities of extremely nasty isotopes into the air.
This isn't to downplay the seriousness of the Fukushima disaster but compared to what's been dumped into the Earth's biosphere already it's not terribly frightening. We're not all going to start glowing in the dark or growing extra arms and legs from Fukushima.
EDIT: preemptively, I'm not anti-nuclear, though I am rather skeptical of the way we're currently doing it.
I guess we were just as bad with our activities there, but at least we're ashamed of it now.
The thing that bothers me most about this article and the original article is that no causality is established and no other possible causes considered. The studies on bluefin tuna for example showed higher levels of radiation, but not dramatically higher levels and still at levels considered safe for consumption. The other primary sources I read suggested the same. Articles like this should definitely ask questions as to what else could cause so many problems, so widespread. For example, I would expect increased quantities of dissolved CO2 to be a much more likely culprit for these symptoms. Laboratory experiments with three tanks of fish, one control, one irradiated and one exposed to greater amounts of atmospheric CO2 and CO would do more to suggest the true cause that the speculation presented here.
I really wish I could find that article as evidence, because it was one that the average educated HNer would tear apart quickly, especially on closer inspection of actual data from primary sources.
It's the fact people can't immediately see this as crazy and vote it to the front page that really scares me.