Posted on 12/14/2007 8:41:13 AM PST by cogitator
Try this on for size:
Massive climate change rocked ecosystems, animals 55 million years ago
"James Zachos, professor of Earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, led an international team of scientists that analyzed marine sediments deposited during a period of extreme global warming known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), in which temperatures rose by as much as 10 degrees in a relatively short period of time. Sediment cores drilled from the ocean floor revealed an abrupt change in ocean chemistry at the start of the PETM 55 million years ago, followed by a recovery that took at least 80,000 years."
...
"This absorption of carbon dioxide by the world's oceans will have a significant impact on marine organisms if past events are any indication of the future. When carbon dioxide dissolves in water it makes the water more acidic by stripping out carbonate ions, which are essential for marine organisms to build calcium carbonate shells and exoskeletons. During the PETM, ocean acidification likely caused a mass extinction of phytoplankton -- microorganisms key to the prehistoric food chain."
What the article doesn't state -- but which you can confirm by reading the link below -- is that the PETM was caused by a massive and rapid increase in atmospheric methane, which oxidized to CO2. Enjoy.
Totally outside of anything that can happen on the Earth,
Not really; depends on how much dry ice you add. I did the experiment in aquatic chemistry as an undergrad where you create the simple seawater carbonate buffer system (leaving out some of the minor stuff, like boric ion), and then just breathe into the flask. The increase in CO2 simply from your exhalations is sufficient to alter the pH of the system. But for that you have to wait 3-4 days. Dry ice will do it faster, because it will put a lot more carbonic acid into the system.
You'll need a decent pH meter.
Um. No.
Adding CO2 increases acidity, not pH. And if you increase carbon (through CO2)...you get...more carbonate (that ol'mass balance thingy).
My intial point is that the oceans have always been saturated at various levels and temps that are well within the CO2 concentrations that have existed in the past. Corals have been there all during that time.
The diagram on page 2 of that pdf is overly simplistic and misleading. It ignores the rest of the local system which includes the decrease in bicarb and increase in carbonate with increased CO2 partial pressure. IOWs the local system will not have CO32- decreasing to keep a constant alkalinity. The alkalinity will go up, and the pH change will stay the same, or change much less.
The trick they pulled is doing it in glass, instead of a reef with local and global mineral deposits and dead coral, which they later discuss in the text. Also note that as the corals themselves grow, HCO3- -> CO32- + H+, which increases the local dissolution rate.
Nevertheless, the rest of the paper and the summary shows there is nothing to the claim, "the corals are facing a serious problem".
That is a very interesting experiment. This is Friday, so it is too late for my wife to bring home some dry ice from the hospital. However, on Monday, I should be able to do this experiment.
Question: How will the pH of saltwater alter in a 100% CO2 atmosphere?
My guess is that the pH will not change, but you got me rather curious. This is an experiment that I will perform.
Beam me up Scotty. I think I will go to Vulcan. At least there they are "logical". I think...
Would you like me to video this experiment, so that you can insure that I did it correctly?
I hope all the G-W douches, beginning with Al Gore, chain themselves in protest to the nearest coral reef.
Hey, that is what the dinosaurs must have done. They were so big and were breathing SO much CO2 into the air that they decided to commit mass suicide to save the planet! I mean some of those things were very big and just imagine how much CO2 each one of them spewed into the air! That has to explain it.
Don't know. If so, that means it's been high & dry at least four times during the roughly 100k year ice cycles. It's also mean the in the last half a million years the very existence of the reef is the exception, not the rule.
In the last million years our current climate in it's entirety is the exception. 100,000 years of cold, 10 - 14 thousand of warm, if I recall correctly.
This WEATHER CONTROL scheme that the green libs are selling is an attempt to control that which they do not understand for gain of money or power, and as such are nothing more than traveling rainmakers of the past scamming small towns and communities of their savings then moving on to the next sucker.
Sounds like a great new lucrative cottage industry. You know, I AM a marine biologist.
Not necessary. But don't forget to seal the flask.
You might find this interesting supporting material:
Discovering the Effects of CO2 Levels on Marine Life and Global Climate
And have fun!
Of course I will seal the flask. This experiment is to test the pH change of saltwater in a 100% CO2 atmosphere.
I just read a study that gave empirical evidence showing that 1000ppm CO2 actually helped the coral grow faster and larger. I’ll get back to this thread later. Is this another unverifiable computer model?
This paper is pretty weak. They did a literature survey and made this hypothesis with no supporting research or evidence.
They are calling for more funding and research to test their hypothesis.
Mammoth site sounds cool too! I hope to make a cross country trip some day through the northern plains, Just to see how much open space there still is.
Stay Warm up there.
Regards
Bonehead
Coral has survived billions of years of volcanoes, asteroid impacts, super continent breakups, solar insolation variations, oceanic plate subduction, etc.
That makes no sense. CO2 dissolves in water according to it's pressure. The other gasses don't matter in the first approximation.
The equation that determines the concentration of a gas in water is:
pGAS = kGAS * NGAS / NH2O
Where N is the number of moles/volume. A mole is the weight of substance/it's molecular weight. So...
pCO2 = kCO2 * NCO2 / NH2O
Each gas dissolves according to it's pressure. If dry ice is used, the pressure is 760 mm Hg(torr), or 14.7 PSI. The normal pressure for CO2 at 380ppmv is 0.29 torr, or 0.0056 PSI. Note hte total pressure of the atmosphere, 14.7 PSI, is a sum of the pressures for each gas in the atmosphere. So 20% oxygen means the oxygen pressure, pO2 is 0.2*14.7=2.9PSI
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