Conclusion

This will be my last post in this blog, so I just thought I would take a moment to reflect on how it has progressed and the main topics discussed.

I hope I have touched upon most of the main aspects of how environmental change will impact our oceans and their ecosystems. Generally, there are a wide range of responses which vary by region and species (Doney et al. 2012). Changes in population distribution, species interactions, community structures, biodiversity and extinctions are already occurring in our marine ecosystems, and are set to continue due to the extent of anthropogenic climate change.

The impacts of environmental change in our oceans varies dramatically on regional and local levels. In order for life to stay as we know it, policy and practice must be altered to make this feasible ((Charles 2012). We have looked specifically at how the Pacific region will be affected by environmental change and how it may adapt to ensure the affects on its culture and economy are affected. 

We have also looked at how the economic impact of oceanic environmental change, specifically ocean acidification, and seen that on a global level there are huge difficulties in doing so. Part of the reason for this is because in general, there are huge uncertainties in how the ocean and marine ecosystems will respond to ongoing climate change.

In the last few blogs, issues surrounding how impacts of ocean acidification is modelled have been looked at, and I think that this has helped to show why it is so difficult to know what is actually going to happen. Historical data sets are patchy, there is an almost infinite number of variables that can be included in models and how things are calculated can have huge effects on the end result. 

I hope that this blog has therefore brought you up to speed on a wide variety of the most recent literature on how our oceans will be effected by global warming. Hopefully it has made you more aware of some of the general difficulties associated with all research in climate change and informed you of some specific marine issues within the anthropogenic climate change debate. Finally, I would just like to thank you for reading, and I hope you have enjoyed the journey around one of the most important issues that our planet is currently facing.