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To: cogitator
Put some pteropods in a tank, lower the pH, see what happens. This should be an easy experiment to do.

It's been done (read the paragraph starting "As a complement to...")

As a complement to model projections, one of the study coauthors, Victoria Fabry from the Department of Biological Sciences at California State University San Marcos, set up two-day shipboard experiments and demonstrated how shells of live pteropods begin to dissolve when the corrosive conditions that are projected to occur by 2100 are met. “Those results,” Fabry says, “suggest that for subpolar and polar pteropods to survive, they will need either to adapt to the expected changes in seawater chemistry or move to warmer, lower-latitude surface waters,”
"Begin to dissolve" isn't a very scientific statement. The experiment also isn't a very good indicator of whether the little buggers can adapt.
36 posted on 10/20/2005 1:34:23 PM PDT by Moonman62 (Federal creed: If it moves tax it. If it keeps moving regulate it. If it stops moving subsidize it)
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To: Moonman62
The experiment also isn't a very good indicator of whether the little buggers can adapt.

That might take time. Individual organisms won't adapt; the change will be to populations and will be evolutionary.

38 posted on 10/20/2005 2:04:59 PM PDT by cogitator
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