Ocean Acidification: The Slow Climate Risk No One Sees | Myron Roth

The ocean absorbs roughly a quarter of the CO₂ we emit. That buffering comes with a cost: chemical changes that are quietly reshaping marine ecosystems and the industries that depend on them. A drop from $2.3B to $1.6B in a single year is a clear signal that something bigger is changing in BC’s seafood sector.

In this episode, Lourdes welcomes back Myron Roth for his third conversation on Before the Tipping Point. With two decades spent tracking slow-moving climate threats, Myron focuses on the risks that rarely trend until they become irreversible and expensive.

Together, they explore:

• Ocean acidification as the blueprint for “invisible” risk. It builds up slowly, then can cause big issues once it reaches a certain point.
• The OASIS project’s decade-long journey from long-shot idea to real-world adaptation, including a selective breeding program that now produces ~80% of BC’s oyster seed locally, a major shift from heavy reliance on imports in 2007.
• The emerging role of AI in climate modeling, including an unglamorous but critical issue: better prediction often means higher energy use, and the tradeoffs are rarely discussed transparently.

This episode creates a clear differentiation between a catastrophic hazard (fire, flood) and a slow-onset risk (acidification, ecosystem drift) and why that distinction changes how we plan, invest, and respond.