OohPooPahDoo
Gold Member
Big deal. If every carbon bearing rock on the planet were burned it would lower the pH of the oceans from 8.1 to 8.0. And looky here, even wiki has to admit that acidification in the local areas probably won't be a problem because...wait for it....
"In shallower waters, it's undeniable that increased CO2 levels result in a decreased oceanic pH, which has a profound negative effect on corals.[21] Experiments suggest it is also very harmful to calcifying plankton.[22] However, the strong acids used to simulate the natural increase in acidity which would result from elevated CO2 concentrations may have given misleading results, and the most recent evidence is that coccolithophores (E. huxleyi at least) become more, not less, calcified and abundant in acidic waters.[23] Interestingly, no change in the distribution of calcareous nanoplankton such as the coccolithophores can be attributed to acidification during the PETM.[23] Acidification did lead to an abundance of heavily calcified algae[24] and weakly calcified forams.[25]"
So in one sentence they claim that acidified water will certainly kill everything, then in the next sentence they say..."well when we try and simulate the water we find that the little bastards actually become tougher (DAMN THEM!) and we find no evidence of acidified water actually killing anything (DAMN IT ALL TO HECK!)
Which isn't surprising when one considers that the corals that will supposedly die out with the massive acidification actually evolved when the CO2 levels were 20X higher then now.
More of those pesky facts you can't seem to figure out how to deal with.
Poor little silly people.
Paleocene
Wikipedia. OK. Sure.
By contrast, here we show, using the ophiuroid brittlestar Amphiura filiformis as a model calcifying organism, that some organisms can increase the rates of many of their biological processes (in this case, metabolism and the ability to calcify to compensate for increased seawater acidity). However, this upregulation of metabolism and calcification, potentially ameliorating some of the effects of increased acidity comes at a substantial cost (muscle wastage) and is therefore unlikely to be sustainable in the long term.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/275/1644/1767.short
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