Damn. Now I'm pissed. This is the third try at posting this. Forgot I was off-line, lost the msg. Repeated, a crash. Maybe this time. If not, you get no answer. But you won't know it, cuz all you will see is nothing.
"The oceans were starved of CO2 until we came along. Plants on land were grabbing nearly all of it, leaving a famine for the fish." Citations, please.
Currently,CO2 and carbonate are in balance.As the CO2 increases, the bluffer gets used up, and the oceans will become more acidotic, decreasing their ability to absorb CO2.
In '04, a study on Mrs. Ippi's River w showed what appeared to be good news. Thanks to land degradation, the river was carrying extra carbonate. As you point out. So maybe some good comes from our fuck-ups. But then somebody else did the number crunching, and it turns out the extra load is enuf to buffer 36 hours out of every year's US emissions. If all the rivers in the world reached the same condition, they would buffer 10 days of world CO2 production. See Cox and Sabine,
theweathermakers.com
What are some of the consequences? As the oceans become acidotic, the carbonate gets used. At some point, the concentration falls below what is needed by shell formers. At that point, it begins to leach out of the shells, and we will get nekkid oysters and lobster.
May not happen for a few hundred years. First place to look for nekkid critters is in the sub Arctic North Pacific,where the carbonate saturation is the lowest. Feely, et al., Science, 305 (2004), 362. |
