South Korea has launched an internet television channel to inform its young people about North Korea and the potential consequences of reunification.

For many South Koreans, especially those born long after the 1950-53 Korean War, the issue of reunification is the last thing on their minds.

"It's not easy to get kids in high school and college interested in North Korea," says Lee Sung Shin, from the South's Unification Ministry.

"South Korean life is very competitive and young people are busy with school or searching for jobs. They don't have time to think about unification."

But the government wants young people to find the time to consider these issues.

The "unification channel" shows news bulletins, press conferences and some light entertainment

Its new online TV channel, which the media has dubbed the "unification channel", features news reports and press briefings, but also entertainment programming that targets a younger audience.

For example, there is a 20-part sitcom about a South Korean family living near the demilitarised zone (that separates North and South Korea), who adopt a young North Korean refugee. There are also pop quizzes about reunification-related issues.

Some experts on South Korea's relations with the North say they support the government's initiative.

"North Korea is increasingly seen as a distant country, an irrelevant place," says Andrei Lankov from Seoul's Gookmin University. "Pretty much nobody among the younger generation is seriously interested in unification," he says.

The problem with that, says Mr Lankov, is that the political system in the North could collapse quickly, and everyone in the South needs to understand the implications for them.

"Unification will come and not as a result of negotiations between the two governments, but as a result of a revolution in North Korea," he says. "The current generation will have to deal with the consequences of this change."

Other experts agree that the fall-out from any collapse in the North would have a serious impact on all South Koreans and that the responsibility for navigating any resulting reunification may fall to young people.

"I think if I were a South Korean teenager, it would be reasonable to expect that North Korea, as we know it today, will cease to exist in my lifetime" says Professor Steve Tsang, director of the China Policy Institute at Nottingham University in the UK.

Students at the Women's University in Seoul say they are engaged with the issue. Lindsey, 21, says the likely economic impact of reunification matters to her.

She says she doesn't know how the South Korean government could afford to help lift North Korea out of poverty. "Everyone in North Korea, almost everyone, is poor," she says, adding that South Korea has its own poor people to look after.

Andrei Lankov says Lindsey is right to focus on the financial impact. He says recent estimates by several think-tanks put the cost of reunification at around $100bn (£63bn).

Several students mention their government's proposal to create a so-called unification tax that would set aside money to help pay for integrating the two economies.

"The government's unification channel should explain how that money would be used," says 24-year-old Hwa Seung-hyun.

She is not sure she will actually watch the channel. But her classmate, 21-year-old Mirae, says she will take a look.

"I'm interested because I study history and I think reunification is most important in Korea. I think it's the duty of our generation," she says.

Mirae says she will try to persuade her friends to watch the channel - which is just what the South Korean government wants to hear.

'Very unhappy'

For older South Koreans, the picture tends to be a little different.

Many, says Prof Tsang, believe the Koreans are one people and that the division between North and South is both unnatural and temporary.

The current official effort to rally greater interest and discussion on these issues may be driven by other motives too, he says.

"China has been seen recently as throwing its weight about in the region. Among some South Koreans, there are lingering doubts as to whether the Chinese might have ambitions towards North Korea, should North Korea collapse."

Prof Tsang says he is referring in particular to China articulating in recent times a "new historical view" that a large swathe of territory in the North is more Chinese than it is Korean.

"South Koreans are very, very unhappy about that," he says. "You have some South Koreans who feel very strongly that this Chinese articulation might indicate, potentially, some Chinese ambition towards the northern part of the Korean peninsular in the future."

For its part, North Korea's ire is directed at Seoul.

Pyongyang has reacted angrily to South Korea's efforts to get more young people engaged in the issue of reunification. The North's official media has called the new online TV channel "psychological warfare" and declared its launch an "act of aggression".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15537467

www.OJGUZZLINSWAGKIDS.com

Half of City to Evacuate for Bomb Disposal

Unexploded ordnance from World War II frequently turns up in German communities, and sometimes authorities are forced to evacuate small areas to dispose of the dangerous explosives. But a large bomb that recently surfaced in the Rhine River has sparked security measures of historic proportions in the central German city of Koblenz.

Three meters (10 feet) long and weighing 1.8 tons, the aerial bomb was recently spotted after a particularly dry November lowered water levels along the busy river. Now preparations are underway for a massive evacuation set for Sunday.

Some 45,000 residents -- nearly half of the city's total population of 106,000 -- will be forced to leave the area. That includes two hospitals, seven retirement homes and the jail. To aid in the operation, the city has organized some 900 people and 350 vehicles to ferry residents to safety.

More Discoveries Expected

Authorities are building a temporary dam of some 350 sandbags around the bomb, currently covered by about 40 centimeters (16 inches) of water. A crane commissioned to build the dam was put in place on Tuesday, fire department spokesman Manfred Morschhäuser told the German news agency DAPD. The area will then be pumped free of water so the bomb can be defused.

In the meantime, the fire department has established a telephone hotline. "Several hundred callers are getting in touch each day with their questions and problems," Morschhäuser said.

Each household included in the evacuation will be notified via flier, he said. "And on Sunday we'll go ringing from house to house," he added. Emergency workers need a 1.8-kilometer (1.1-mile) radius buffer zone to ensure safety.

Further bomb discoveries along the riverbed are expected to continue due to the low water levels, authorities said.

-- kla, with wires

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,800947,00.html

Http://www.Frontlinemobility.com

Australia ranked the least corrupt country in the G20

AUSTRALIA is the least corrupt country in the Group of 20 industrialised nations but New Zealand is top of the global list overall, in a year marked by anti-government protests in Europe and the Middle East.

Transparency International, a global organisation leading the fight against corruption, says its annual league tables show New Zealand in first position as the least corrupt country in the world.

Denmark and Finland tied at second place, coming in before Sweden at number four and Singapore at number five.

Australia remains in joint eighth position with Switzerland.

In 2010, Australia's trans-Tasman neighbour was ranked joint first with Denmark and Singapore, which now stand at second and fifth respectively.

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index scores 183 countries and territories from zero (highly corrupt) to 10 (very clean) based on data from 17 surveys that look at factors such as enforcement of anti-corruption laws, access to information and conflicts of interest.

Two thirds of ranked countries scored less than five.

New Zealand, which is not part of the G20, scored 9.5 compared to 9.3 last year, while Australia achieved 8.8, up from 8.7.

At the other end of the scale, joint last were North Korea and Somalia, both scoring just one point.

Transparency International warned the protests seen around the world in 2011, mainly fuelled by corruption and economic instability, show citizens feel their leaders and public institutions were neither transparent nor accountable enough.

"This year we have seen corruption on protesters' banners, be they rich or poor," the organisation's chair Huguette Labelle said while releasing the report in Berlin today.

"Whether in a Europe hit by debt crisis or an Arab world starting a new political era, leaders must heed the demands for better government."

Australia's number-one trading partner China was ranked 75th in the world with a score of 3.6, while its number-two trading destination Japan was 14th with a score of 8.0.

The largest economy in the world, the United States, was 24th with a score of 7.1.

20 least corrupt countries:

1. New Zealand

2. Denmark

2. Finland

4. Sweden

5. Singapore

6. Norway

7. Netherlands

8. Australia

8. Switzerland

10. Canada

11. Luxembourg

12. Hong Kong

13. Iceland

14. Germany and Japan

16. Austria,

16. Barbados

16. United Kingdom

19. Belgium 

19. Ireland

20 most corrupt countries

1. Somalia

1.North Korea

3. Burma

3. Afghanistan

5. Sudan 

5. Turkmenistan

5. Uzbekistan

8. Haiti

8. Iraq

10. Burundi

10. Equatorial Guinea

10. Venezuela

13. Chad,

13. Libya

13. Angola

13. Democratic Republic of Congo

17. Cambodia

17. Guinea

17. Kyrgyzstan

17. Yemen

http://www.news.com.au/business/australia-least-corrupt-country-in-g20/story-e6frfm1i-1226211210544?from=igoogle+gadget+compact+news_rss

www.Frontlinemobility.com

One evening early this year, a red Ferrari pulled up at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Beijing, and the son of one of China's top leaders stepped out, dressed in a tuxedo.


Bo Guagua, 23, was expected. He had a dinner appointment with a daughter of the then-ambassador, Jon Huntsman.


The car, though, was a surprise. The driver's father, Bo Xilai, was in the midst of a controversial campaign to revive the spirit of Mao Zedong through mass renditions of old revolutionary anthems, known as "red singing." He had ordered students and officials to work stints on farms to reconnect with the countryside. His son, meanwhile, was driving a car worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and as red as the Chinese flag, in a country where the average household income last year was about $3,300.


The episode, related by several people familiar with it, is symptomatic of a challenge facing the Chinese Communist Party as it tries to maintain its legitimacy in an increasingly diverse, well-informed and demanding society. The offspring of party leaders, often called "princelings," are becoming more conspicuous, through both their expanding business interests and their evident appetite for luxury, at a time when public anger is rising over reports of official corruption and abuse of power.


State-controlled media portray China's leaders as living by the austere Communist values they publicly espouse. But as scions of the political aristocracy carve out lucrative roles in business and embrace the trappings of wealth, their increasingly high profile is raising uncomfortable questions for a party that justifies its monopoly on power by pointing to its origins as a movement of workers and peasants.


Their visibility has particular resonance as the country approaches a once-a-decade leadership change next year, when several older princelings are expected to take the Communist Party's top positions. That prospect has led some in Chinese business and political circles to wonder whether the party will be dominated for the next decade by a group of elite families who already control large chunks of the world's second-biggest economy and wield considerable influence in the military.


"There's no ambiguity—the trend has become so clear," said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese elite politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Princelings were never popular, but now they've become so politically powerful, there's some serious concern about the legitimacy of the 'Red Nobility.' The Chinese public is particularly resentful about the princelings' control of both political power and economic wealth."


The current leadership includes some princelings, but they are counterbalanced by a rival nonhereditary group that includes President Hu Jintao, also the party chief, and Premier Wen Jiabao. Mr. Hu's successor, however, is expected to be Xi Jinping, the current vice president, who is the son of a revolutionary hero and would be the first princeling to take the country's top jobs. Many experts on Chinese politics believe that he has forged an informal alliance with several other princelings who are candidates for promotion.


Among them is the senior Mr. Bo, who is also the son of a revolutionary leader. He often speaks of his close ties to the Xi family, according to two people who regularly meet him. Mr. Xi's daughter is currently an undergraduate at Harvard, where Mr. Bo's son is a graduate student at the Kennedy School of Government.


Already in the 25-member Politburo, Bo Xilai is a front-runner for promotion to its top decision-making body, the Standing Committee. He didn't respond to a request for comment through his office, and his son didn't respond to requests via email and friends.


The antics of some officials' children have become a hot topic on the Internet in China, especially among users of Twitter-like micro-blogs, which are harder for Web censors to monitor and block because they move so fast. In September, Internet users revealed that the 15-year-old son of a general was one of two young men who crashed a BMW into another car in Beijing and then beat up its occupants, warning onlookers not to call police.


An uproar ensued, and the general's son has now been sent to a police correctional facility for a year, state media report.


Top Chinese leaders aren't supposed to have either inherited wealth or business careers to supplement their modest salaries, thought to be around 140,000 yuan ($22,000) a year for a minister. Their relatives are allowed to conduct business as long as they don't profit from their political connections. In practice, the origins of the families' riches are often impossible to trace.


Last year, Chinese learned via the Internet that the son of a former vice president of the country—and the grandson of a former Red Army commander—had purchased a $32.4 million harbor-front mansion in Australia. He applied for a permit to tear down the century-old mansion and to build a new villa, featuring two swimming pools connected by a waterfall.


Many princelings engage in legitimate business, but there is a widespread perception in China that they have an unfair advantage in an economic system that, despite the country's embrace of capitalism, is still dominated by the state and allows no meaningful public scrutiny of decision making.


The state owns all urban land and strategic industries, as well as banks, which dole out loans overwhelmingly to state-run companies. The big spoils thus go to political insiders who can leverage personal connections and family prestige to secure resources, and then mobilize the same networks to protect them.


The People's Daily, the party mouthpiece, acknowledged the issue last year, with a poll showing that 91% of respondents believed all rich families in China had political backgrounds. A former Chinese auditor general, Li Jinhua, wrote in an online forum that the wealth of officials' family members "is what the public is most dissatisfied about."


One princeling disputes the notion that she and her peers benefit from their "red" backgrounds. "Being from a famous government family doesn't get me cheaper rent or special bank financing or any government contracts," Ye Mingzi, a 32-year-old fashion designer and granddaughter of a Red Army founder, said in an email. "In reality," she said, "the children of major government families get very high scrutiny. Most are very careful to avoid even the appearance of improper favoritism."


For the first few decades after Mao's 1949 revolution, the children of Communist chieftains were largely out of sight, growing up in walled compounds and attending elite schools such as the Beijing No. 4 Boys' High School, where the elder Mr. Bo and several other current leaders studied.


In the 1980s and '90s, many princelings went abroad for postgraduate studies, then often joined Chinese state companies, government bodies or foreign investment banks. But they mostly maintained a very low profile.


Now, families of China's leaders send their offspring overseas ever younger, often to top private schools in the U.S., Britain and Switzerland, to make sure they can later enter the best Western universities. Princelings in their 20s, 30s and 40s increasingly take prominent positions in commerce, especially in private equity, which allows them to maximize their profits and also brings them into regular contact with the Chinese and international business elite.


Younger princelings are often seen among the models, actors and sports stars who gather at a strip of nightclubs by the Workers' Stadium in Beijing to show off Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Maseratis. Others have been spotted talking business over cigars and vintage Chinese liquor in exclusive venues such as the Maotai Club, in a historic house near the Forbidden City.


On a recent afternoon at a new polo club on Beijing's outskirts, opened by a grandson of a former vice premier, Argentine players on imported ponies put on an exhibition match for prospective members.


"We're bringing polo to the public. Well, not exactly the public," said one staff member. "That man over there is the son of an army general. That one's grandfather was mayor of Beijing."


Princelings also are becoming increasingly visible abroad. Ms. Ye, the fashion designer, was featured in a recent edition of Vogue magazine alongside Wan Baobao, a jewelry designer who is the granddaughter of a former vice premier.


But it is Bo Guagua who stands out among the younger princelings. No other child of a serving Politburo member has ever had such a high profile, both at home and abroad.


His family's status dates back to Bo Yibo, who helped lead Mao's forces to victory, only to be purged in the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Bo Yibo was eventually rehabilitated, and his son, Bo Xilai, was a rising star in the party by 1987, when Bo Guagua was born.


The boy grew up in a rarefied environment—closeted in guarded compounds, ferried around in chauffeur-driven cars, schooled partly by tutors and partly at the prestigious Jingshan school in Beijing, according to friends.


In 2000, his father, by then mayor of the northeastern city of Dalian, sent his 12-year-old son to a British prep school called Papplewick, which according to its website currently charges £22,425 (about $35,000) a year.


About a year later, the boy became the first person from mainland China to attend Harrow, one of Britain's most exclusive private schools, which according to its website currently charges £30,930 annually.


In 2006, by which time his father was China's commerce minister, Mr. Bo went to Oxford University to study philosophy, politics and economics. The current cost of that is about £26,000 a year. His current studies at Harvard's Kennedy School cost about $70,000 a year.


A question raised by this prestigious overseas education, worth a total of almost $600,000 at today's prices, is how it was paid for. Friends said that they didn't know, though one suggested that Mr. Bo's mother paid with the earnings of her legal career. Her law firm declined to comment.


Bo Guagua has been quoted in the Chinese media as saying that he won full scholarships from age 16 onward. Harrow, Oxford and the Kennedy School said that they couldn't comment on an individual student.


The cost of education is a particularly hot topic among members of China's middle class, many of whom are unhappy with the quality of schooling in China. But only the relatively rich can send their children abroad to study.


For others, it is Bo Guagua's freewheeling lifestyle that is controversial. Photos of him at Oxford social events—in one case bare-chested, other times in a tuxedo or fancy dress—have been widely circulated online.


In 2008, Mr. Bo helped to organize something called the Silk Road Ball, which included a performance by martial-arts monks from China's Shaolin temple, according to friends. He also invited Jackie Chan, the Chinese kung fu movie star, to lecture at Oxford, singing with him on stage at one point.


The following year, Mr. Bo was honored in London by a group called the British Chinese Youth Federation as one of "Ten Outstanding Young Chinese Persons." He was also an adviser to Oxford Emerging Markets, a firm set up by Oxford undergraduates to explore "investment and career prospects in emerging markets," according to its website.


This year, photos circulated online of Mr. Bo on a holiday in Tibet with another princeling, Chen Xiaodan, a young woman whose father heads the China Development Bank and whose grandfather was a renowned revolutionary. The result was a flurry of gossip, as well as criticism on the Internet of the two for evidently traveling with a police escort. Ms. Chen didn't respond to requests for comment via email and Facebook.


Asked about his son's apparent romance at a news conference during this year's parliament meeting, Bo Xilai replied, enigmatically, "I think the business of the third generation—aren't we talking about democracy now?"


Friends say that the younger Mr. Bo recently considered, but finally decided against, leaving Harvard to work on an Internet start-up called guagua.com. The domain is registered to an address in Beijing. Staff members there declined to reveal anything about the business. "It's a secret," said a young man who answered the door.


It is unclear what Mr. Bo will do after graduating and whether he will be able to maintain such a high profile if his father is promoted, according to friends. He said during a speech at Peking University in 2009 that he wanted to "serve the people" in culture and education, according to a Chinese newspaper, Southern Weekend.


He ruled out a political career but showed some of his father's charisma and contradictions in answering students' questions, according to the newspaper. Asked about the pictures of him partying at Oxford, he quoted Chairman Mao as saying "you should have a serious side and a lively side," and went on to discuss what it meant to be one of China's new nobility.


"Things like driving a sports car, I know British aristocrats are not that arrogant," he said. "Real aristocrats absolutely don't do that, but are relatively low-key."


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904491704576572552793150470.html

http://www.FrontlineMobility.com

South Korea’s Silenced Speak

South Korea’s patriarchal society has often pressured victims of sexual crimes to keep quiet. But a blockbuster movie revealing the abuse of children could help change this.

For almost 13 years, In-hae says she spent much of her time cowering in fear, on constant alert for the next round of sexual abuse, in a place she should have been at her safest: her home.

Suffering at the hands of a close relative from the age of 7, it took the guts of a 19 year-old, enrolled in college and introduced to a world of until then unknown freedoms, to flee the scene of her torment and finally report the matter to the authorities.

But for In-hae, now living in a center for victims of sexual violence, even finding the courage to file a complaint was a journey fraught with emotional turmoil.

In patriarchal South Korea, sexual crime, say campaigners, is often hushed up, while the cases that do result in a conviction often end in lenient sentences. But it’s an issue the country has been forced to confront in recent weeks. A blockbuster movie called “Dogani” (The Crucible), or Silenced, has thrust the topic of sexual crime onto the national agenda, highlighting the vulnerability of the disabled and minors in South Korean society.

The film tells the real-life story of the years of sexual abuse suffered by children with hearing problems at the hands of teachers at a school in Gwangju, in the southwest of the country. Though the case saw two convictions, viewers have been aghast at what they’ve seen in the film, which depicts the sexual assaults, attempts at a cover-up, and the fight for justice by the victims.

In turn, it has lit the touch paper of national outrage, leading to calls for tougher sex crime laws and harsher punishments. Many citizens claimed to see in the film an accurate, catch-all image of the country as a whole: a place where the law supports the strong over the weak. Some point to the way in which members of the chaebol families – those that control South Korean conglomerates like Samsung, LG and Lotte – appear to act as if they are above the law as a classic example of life here.

One case involving a trucking company boss, who beat up a unionist before an audience of executives before throwing a check for cash in the victim's face, drew headlines after the perpetrator received only a suspended sentence. He’s related to one of the country’s wealthiest men.

In In-hae’s view, this was merely another example of a society that “supports the victimizer” and “blames the victim.”

http://the-diplomat.com/2011/11/22/south-koreas-silenced-speak/

http://www.FrontlineMobility.com

Pakistan bans 'obscene' text messages

Pakistan's mobile operators are scrambling to block text messages containing any of more than 1,600 "obscene" terms banned by the country's telecoms authority ahead of tomorrow's deadline.

The list, including words from "quickie" to "fairy" to "Jesus Christ", was distributed on November 14 with operators given seven days to comply, but has met with widespread derision and a threat of legal action.

"There are more than 1,600 words in the list including indecent language, expletives, swear words, slang etc, which have to be filtered," an official at a telecoms firm said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

"The filtering is not good for the system and may degrade the quality of network services - plus it would be a great inconvenience to our subscribers if their SMS was not delivered due to the wrong choice of words."

Other words and phrases on the list of 1,695 terms, issued in English and Urdu, include "athlete's foot", "idiot" and "damn", as well as "deeper", "four twenty", "go to hell", "harder" and "looser".

PTA officials were unavailable to comment on the ban, which did not appear to have been implemented on Sunday as messages containing the words were still transmitted.

The letter accompanying the list says networks must also submit monthly reports on implementation.

Campaign group Bytes for All said it would challenge the order in court, saying it violated rights to free speech and privacy.

"We are now witnessing a new ruthless wave of moral policing in the digital communication sphere of Pakistan imposed by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority," country coordinator Shahzad Ahmed said.

"By developing extremely detailed lists of allegedly 'offensive' words and forcing telecom operators to filter them out to make our society moral and clean, PTA has not only made a mockery of itself but also of the entire country and its government."

The move in the Muslim-majority country sparked derision from local Twitter users.

"Maybe all Pakistanis should keep sending expletive-filled text msgs every 10 minutes and wait for the networks to collapse," tweeted user Shoaib Taimur.

"Seriously, why aren't we protesting this ban? Jokes apart, they've banned words that have no vulgar implications whatsoever," tweeted Sara Muzzamil.

Several Twitter users also questioned the inclusion of the term "ass puppy" on the list, saying they had never heard of it.

It is the first time the country has sought to censor text messages but the PTA has previously blocked websites deemed pornographic or offensive to Islam.

Pakistan blocked Facebook for nearly two weeks in May last year in a storm of controversy about a competition to draw the Prophet Mohammed and has restricted access to hundreds of websites because of blasphemy.

The country briefly banned YouTube in February 2008 during a similar outcry against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-21/pakistan-text-message-ban/3683154

http://www.Frontlinemobility.com

World's oceans in peril

"From a climate change/fisheries/pollution/habitat destruction point of view, our nightmare is here, it's the world we live in." 

This bleak statement about the current status of the world's oceans comes from Dr Wallace J Nichols, a Research Associate at the California Academy of Sciences. Al Jazeera asked Dr Nichols, along with several other ocean experts, how they see the effects climate change, pollution and seafood harvesting are having on the oceans.

Their prognosis is not good.

Dr Nancy Knowlton is a marine biologist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. Her research has focused on the impact of climate change on coral reefs around the world, specifically how increasing warming and acidification from carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have affected oceans.

While she is unable to say if oceans have crossed a tipping point, Dr Knowlton offered this discouraging assessment, "We know it's bad and we know it's getting worse, and if we care about having coral reefs, there's no question we have to do something about CO2 emissions or we won't have coral reefs, as we do now, sometime between 2050-2100."

Since at least one quarter of all species of life in the oceans are associated with coral reefs, losing them could prove catastrophic. 

"Coral reefs are like giant apartment complexes for all these species, and there is intimacy," Dr Knowlton explained. "If that starts breaking down, these organisms, which include millions of species around the world, lose their homes. Even if they aren't eating coral, they depend on it." 

CO2 is the main greenhouse gas resulting from human activities in terms of its warming potential and longevity in the atmosphere, and scientists continually monitor its concentration. 

In March 1958, when high-precision monitoring began, atmospheric CO2 was 315.71 parts per million (ppm). Today, atmospheric CO2 is approaching 390 ppm. 

350 ppm is the level many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments say is the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere.

"You see evidence of the impact of climate change on the oceans everywhere now," Dr Nichols said. "The collapsing fisheries, the changes in the Arctic and the hardship communities that live there are having to face, the frequency and intensity of storms, everything we imagined 30 to 40 years ago when the environmental movement was born, we're dealing with those now … the toxins in our bodies, food web, and in the marine mammals, it's all there." 

Bleak scenario

The Zoological Society of London reported in July 2009 that "360 is now known to be the level at which coral reefs cease to be viable in the long run." 

In September 2009 Nature magazine stated that atmospheric CO2 levels above 350 ppm "threaten the ecological life-support systems" of the planet and "challenge the viability of contemporary human societies." 

In their October 2009 issue, the journal Science offered new evidence of what the earth was like 20 million years ago, which was the last time we had carbon levels this high. At that time, sea levels rose over 30 metres and temperatures were as much as 18 degrees C higher than they are today. 

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, carbon emissions have already risen "far above even the bleak scenarios."

Oceans absorb 26 per cent (2.3bn metric tonnes) of the carbon human activities released into the atmosphere annually, according to a 2010 study published by Nature Geocience and The Global Carbon Project.

Unfortunately, global carbon emissions, rather than slowing down in order to stem climate change, are continuing to increase. 

At a 2008 academic conference Exeter University scientist Kevin Anderson showed slides and graphs "representing the fumes that belch from chimneys, exhausts and jet engines, that should have bent in a rapid curve towards the ground, were heading for the ceiling instead". 

He concluded it was "improbable" that we would be able to stop short of 650 ppm, even if rich countries adopted "draconian emissions reductions within a decade". 

That number, should it come to pass, would mean that global average temperatures would increase five times as much as previous models predicted.

According to the National Climate Data Centre in the US, 2010 was the warmest year on record. September 2011 was the 8th warmest September on record since 1880.  At 15.53°C, August's global temperature is 0.53 C higher than the 20th Century average for that month.
  
Even if CO2 emissions were completely stopped immediately, ongoing impacts from climate change would take centuries to stop.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a study in 2009 showing that a new understanding of ocean physics proved that "changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than a thousand years after carbon dioxide emissions are completely stopped". 

Increasing acidification

Many factors concern Knowlton and Nichols, but one in particular, the increasing acidification of the oceans, has been gaining more attention as of late.

Historically, oceans have been chemically constant, but less than 10 years ago oceanographers were shocked when researchers noticed the seas were acidifying - 30 per cent more acidic - as they absorbed more of the carbon dioxide humans have emitted into the atmosphere, a process that Britain's Royal Society has described as "essentially irreversible." 

The oceans are already more acidic than they have been at any time in the last 800,000 years. At current rates, by 2050 it will be more corrosive than they have been in the past 20 million years.


Acidification occurs when CO2 combines with seawater to form carbonic acid.

Sarah Cooley, a marine geochemist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, wrote this about acidification:

"As CO2 levels driven by fossil fuel use have increased in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, so has the amount of CO2 absorbed by the world's oceans, leading to changes in the chemical make-up of seawater. Known as ocean acidification, this decrease in pH creates a corrosive environment for some marine organisms such as corals, marine plankton, and shellfish that build carbonate shells or skeletons."


Already ocean pH has slipped from 8.2 to 8.1, and the consensus estimate is that the pH will drop to 7.8 by the end of this century.

Acidification has been the research focus of biological oceanographer Dr Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez with the National Oceanography Centre at Britain's University of Southampton. She has researched how phytoplankton, which are the major contributors to sinking carbon in the oceans, are able to absorb carbon now and into the future when human impact on the atmosphere is changing the chemistry of the oceans and how this will affect the oceans ability to sink carbon in the future.

"The oceans are becoming more alkaline now and this will affect marine life and marine animals and plants," Iglesias-Rodriguez told Al Jazeera. "The chalk producing calcifying organisms are introducing chalk into these increasingly acidic conditions, and it is dissolving."

These chalk produced by these organisms traps and stores carbon, so when increasing acidification decreases the amount of calcium carbonate, it decreases the ocean's ability to store carbon.

"Calcification affects fisheries because many fish's diet is based on these organisms, so this has food security impacts as well," added Iglesias-Rodriguez. "The changes we are seeing now are happening faster than they have for 55 million years. The worry is that these organisms may not be able to keep up with these changes."

In this kind of environment, shellfish cannot produce thick enough shells. By 2009, the Pacific oyster industry was reporting 80 per cent mortality for oyster larvae due to the corrosive nature of the water.

"Acidification has the potential to change food security around the world, so I think it's incumbent upon the entire world to recognise this and deal with it," Cooley told Al Jazeera.

Cooley said that less developed countries that are more dependent on seafood will have less to eat as acidification progresses, and they will be forced to migrate somewhere where there is a better food supply. 

Further complicating the situation, rising sea levels, also caused by climate change, will affect migration patterns from island nations as well. 

In addition to food security issues, increasing acidification will also cause coral reefs to be degraded, which will affect tourism, coastal protection, and heritage values of coastal regions.

Prof Matthias Wolff is a fisheries biologist and marine ecosystem ecologist working for Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Ecology, as well as a research professor and professor at university of Bremen, Germany.

"Plankton, organisms that produce much of the carbon in the sea and coral, are dying off," he told Al Jazeera. "So people believe that CO2 level may double from the pre-human times to more than 400-500 ppm by the end of the century, which would be a unique situation in history. This would have a tremendous effect on these organisms that would affect the whole ecosystem."

Cooley points out that while some species will benefit from increasing acidification, others like corals and molluscs will suffer, along with others that are pH sensitive that cannot control their intercellular biology as well. 

"We think there will be shifts in ecosystems, and the current array of species present in an ecosystem is going to shift and there will likely be a new dominant species," she said. "Past studies have shown us that any real decrease in species in an ecosystem can be a bad thing. On land, we see that monoculture fields are really susceptible to a virus or bug. So if acidification decreases diversity, it creates a less stable system in the future. We're anticipating, if things go as they are going now, we really could be seeing some profound shifts in what we know and what we currently benefit from." 


In addition to climate change and acidification, there are many other problems that concern scientists as well.


"Marine pollution, this is a big issue," Dr Iglesias-Rodriguez said, "There is this idea that oceans have unlimited inertia, but the effect of nano-particles of plastic getting into marine animals and the food chain and these are affecting fish fertility rates, and this effects food security, and on coastal populations. Pollution is having a huge impact on the oceans, and is urgent and needs to be dealt with."

 Dr Nichols describes the crisis of the oceans as a three-fold problem.

"We're putting too much in, in all forms of pollution, we're taking too much out by fishing, overfishing, and bi-catch, and we're destroying the edge of the ocean - these places where there is the most biodiversity like reefs, mangroves, sea grass, etc."

Nichols said he finds plastic on literally every beach he visits across the globe, and added, "Probably every sea turtle on the planet interacts with plastic at some point in its life."

Nichols believes that, rather than the polar bear, sea turtles should be the "poster species" for climate change.

"The sex of sea turtles is temperature dependent, so as temperature warms more females are produced, cooling produces more males, and obviously you need the right mix to maintain population ratios," he explained. "We're seeing some eggs literally cooking on beaches now because the temperature has moved out of the tolerable range."

Prof Wolff explained another issue complicating the situation.

"The oceans warm up, and this affects spatial distribution of fish," he explained, "Those needing colder waters need to migrate and change the distribution, other fish can extend their distribution greatly when the water warms, so now they can reach polar regions where they weren't before. So there is a great change in distributional patterns of the resources of the fisheries to be expected in the future."

Wolff points to Greenland fisheries as an example of how an area warms up, there are longer periods for fish production, while in other areas like Brazil and Indonesia, productive areas are shrinking and there will be a great decrease in fishing potential.

"This is already happening," said Wolff.

Dr Knowlton is concerned about how increasing ocean temperatures are causing the bleaching of coral reefs.

"Bleaching causes a lot of problems for corals, because if it's severe and prolonged the algae starves to death because the amount of nutrition coral needs is not there," she said. "The 1998 El Nino bleached 80 per cent of the corals in the Indian Ocean and 20 per cent of them died."

She is concerned by the fact that high temperature events like the 1998 El Nino are becoming increasingly common, and added, "We've been having bleaching for close to 30 years now."

Like others, Knowlton sees poor water quality from pollution, overfishing and other problems that are causing ocean conditions to become increasingly unfavourable for corals.

She believes if there is not a major shift to correct the pollution problem, the next 10 years are going to be bleak.

"Increasing numbers of dead zones and collapsing fisheries," Knowlton says is what we can expect, "Then ultimately the collapse of these deep ecosystems that are dependent on things like coral reefs."

What to do?

Despite these grave concerns, Knowlton feels there is something that can be done.

"Even though the long term prognosis with business as usual is pretty grim, we know there are smaller areas where reefs are protected and those are very healthy, and we can reduce local stresses and that builds resilience in ecosystems."

Prof Wolff pointed out that, while more than 75 per cent of fish stocks are overfished or already depleted, there are a number around the globe that are regenerating.

"In 2009 we saw that more than 50 per cent of overfished areas are being rebuilt because they responded to the situation of heavy over-exploitation, so I'm a little more optimistic than many other scientists. By reducing fishing, we can allow the stocks to rebuild."

But he believes that in order for this to happen, we need to create more protected areas in the oceans.

According to Wolff, roughly 10 per cent of our lands are protected, but far less than 1 per cent of oceans are protected.

"We need to aim for 10 to 20 per cent of oceans being protected, because that is what is needed to maintain ecosystem functioning and to rebuild the stocks," he said.

Wolff has been working in the Galapagos Islands on conservation, and cites them as an example of what can happen with protected areas, since there has been no fishery there since 1998.

"If you go diving there you see an abundance of large fish and sharks, which I've never seen anywhere else, you see 200 to 300 sharks in one dive," he said. "To me, this is a promising example of the way we need to go. We need more money for this than for subsidies for fisheries, which is ridiculous. Right now, they are getting as much money as we'd need to manage protected areas of 15 per cent of the oceans."

Nichols believes it is no longer about trying to avert disaster, but more along the lines of mitigating the problems that are already upon us.

"I think we're in it right now," he said, "So it's not about, here's how much time we have. The clock in many ways has already run out. We're still growing our use of fossil fuels, we're not even in a mode of trimming them down, same with our use of plastic and the plastic pollution generated from it. There's more conversation about this than ever, but it's not translating into societal change or evolution."

Nichols makes his point by way of example of ocean types.

"If ocean 1.0 is the pristine natural ocean, 2.0 is the ocean we have now under the petroleum product regime of 100 years of use, and 3.0 is the future ocean," he said. "It can either be a dead ocean, or we can come up with some very innovative solutions that right now people aren't even talking about."

He said we can come up with new ways of getting food from the oceans that don't involve long line fishing and bottom trawling, as well as eliminating packaging and taking a zero-waste approach to consumer goods, both of which he says are possible, "if we can muster the political and personal motivation."

"We could have a healthy ocean in 50 years if we make some bold moves, it wouldn't be 1.0 or 2.0, but it would be a cleaner from a more responsible set of actions for how we get energy from the oceans and how we use them as a source of food."

If that is not done, then we most likely will face a future predicted in a 2008 report co-authored by NASA's James Hansen, a leading climate scientist, titled, Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?

"Humanity today, collectively, must face the uncomfortable fact that industrial civilisation itself has become the principal driver of global climate," reads the report, "If we stay our present course, using fossil fuels to feed a growing appetite for energy-intensive lifestyles, we will soon leave the climate of the Holocene, the world of prior human history. The eventual response to doubling pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 likely would be a nearly ice-free planet, preceded by a period of chaotic change with continually changing shorelines."

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/11/2011111653856937268.html

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