I seem to recall some discussion of this issue....

[tirant]

which is dissolved Co2 in the ocean. (hmm, possibly one of our members knows a bit about this

Comments

[hamtrap]

Isn't "Your Partisan Heart" a Patsy Cline classic?

[geomusicon]

Great read. I'm impressed by the fact that it was written in so clear a layman's language. The community is indeed realizing the complexity of the physical nature of the ocean as it relates to carbon budgets. One of the interesting byproducts of increased CO2 in the oceans, is that pH decreases (ie., the oceans become more acidic)as CO2 increases. It has been shown experimentally that even a small decrease in pH would drastically affect marine organisms that secrete calcareous skeletons (shells and skeletons made of calcium carbonate) that dissolve (and are harder to form) at lower pH. In the recent issue of Nature, scientists reported for the first time observed ecological effects of increased CO2 (from local volcanic sources) on marine organisms. Their data show that with what would seem to be small changes in pH, the effect on marine life is drastic

[tirant]

Thanks for all the links!

I thought that UV light was commonly blamed for coral bleaching? (i.e. not global warming through increased CO2 release, but CFCs released in the 1930-1980 period).

In regards to the zooxanthellae, do they live on without the reef structure as individual animals, or were ancient reefs built by a completely non-related set of species?

And tying modern changes in ocean chemistry to deep time occurances sounds like a great source of grant money... particularly if you are accepting said grant money from those who wish to posit that modern CO2 changes are due to natural geochemistry changes, and not human action.