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Politics : Politics of Energy
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To: Hawkmoon who wrote (6882)4/4/2009 7:34:55 AM
From: RetiredNow  Read Replies (1) of 86356
 
Phytoplankton normally help with the drawdown of CO2, as you've mentioned before. This is an important function, because if there is too much CO2 then the oceans start to acidify, which is exactly what we're seeing. Acidic oceans kill off marine life, which ultimately threatens human life as our food sources disappear.

As CO2 levels increase and the earth warms, it has another insidious effect. It warms surface level water and disrupts ocean layer mixing, which is critical to pulling key nutrients up to surface level, which stimulates phytoplankton growth. If levels of phytoplankton are plummeting due indirectly to rising CO2 levels, then we have two problems. CO2 drawdown doesn't occur as rapidly in nutrient-poor oceans (which occur due to lack of cool and warm water mixing) as we'd like and marine life continues to be adversely impacted by lower levels of phytoplankton and continued ocean acidification.

So yet another reason to be concerned about rising CO2 levels. Turns out excess CO2 is causing all sorts of nasty things to happen.
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