Posted on 12/14/2007 8:41:13 AM PST by cogitator
In a buffered system, the constituents of the system respond to changes in pH induced by addition of acid or base by altering their concentration to establish new equilibrium concentrations which result in only a small change in pH.
(Off the top of my head.)
Increased pH makes calcification more difficult for calcareous organisms.
Now, can you explain how a very weak acid will react in a buffered solution?
With my own personal coral reef, I must measure the quality of the water on a daily basis. For example, as the water evaporates, the salinity will increase. The pH of the saltwater is one thing that I never worry about.
In my living room, I have a two aquariums.
One is 90 gallons, and the other is 55 gallons. In the basement, I have another 300 gallons of saltwater that is constantly being circulated to the aquariums in my living room.
Maintaining a healthy fish population, while keeping my corals alive, has always been a challenge.
But have I ever worried about a change in pH, because of the CO2 from my breathing? You have got to be joking!
The pH of my saltwater aquariums is the one thing that does not change.
In this book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, S. Fred Singer notes that the corals have a technique to survive climate change. They 'bleach'. That is, they eject their current algae buddies, and then accept a different algae species more suited to the changed temperature. The bleached state is short lived.
Considering how the corals survived the warm of the dinosaur periods and the various Ice Ages, they must be tougher than they appear to these scientists.
My guess is that any given coral colony might not survive a change in temp or sea level, but their offspring will simply colonize other more suitable spots. Since the sea level has risen 400 feet since the ice age, none of the current coral sites can be over 10,000 years old anyway, since coral doesn't grow too far below the surface.
When hurricane Wilma sat over Cozumel for almost a week, everything was destroyed. My wife and I went diving there the following month.
All the the coral was covered with sand. Nothing was the same, and we feared that this coral reef had been destroyed.
Instead, everything was healthy, and if anything, this hurricane improved the conditions of life on the coral reef. The coral was nice and healthy, and we observed more "baby" fish than we had ever seen before.
Nature is absolutely amazing, if you simply stop and watch how it actually operates.
Cousteau took to complaining about the quality of the favorite SCUBA diving areas before he retired. Water murky, sea life dead and gone. Long before Global Warming.
I suggest immediate eradication of marine vertebrates and invertebrates.
The important change is to the pH of the surface ocean waters (down to about 200 meters or so); this is a lot less volume than that of the entire ocean.
You could peruse this:
Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs and Other Marine Calcifiers
If you're talking about natural changes, the time rate of change is a very important factor. Organisms can and do adapt, up to a point; it is more difficult for organisms to adapt to rapid change than slow change.
Rapid climate change is more difficult to adapt to than slow climate change. The current climate trends are quite rapid.
The amount of sand that was moved is beyond my ability to explain, but caves that I used to swim through were totally buried.
Other caves are now open for the first time in thousands of years, and the newly exposed fossils were a special interest for me.
After one dive of exploring this total destruction, where even the cruise ship piers were laying on the bottom, we were all astounded at how much surface stuff from the island we could find.
One idiot from Colorado got all upset because I threw my cigarette butt into the ocean! After giving the boat captain a cigarette, we seriously debated if this idiot should be evicted from the boat and forced to swim to shore.
Did this idiot pay attention to what this hurricane had done, and how the biology was responding? And this idiot was worried about a cigarette butt?
vaudine
What do you think is incorrect about what was stated?
Overview of CO2-induced changes in seawater chemistry (PDF)
Review the diagram on page 2 and see if you think it's right.
All these corals died off in the global warming of the 1930’s.
There aren’t any left.
A small shift in pH, which is induced by carbonic acid from CO2 added to the surface ocean waters, shifts the equilibrium in this buffered system toward bicarbonate and away from carbonate ion. That means the saturation state with respect to calcium carbonate goes down -- and that's why corals and other calcifying organisms are facing a serious problem as ocean acidification takes place.
The CO2 from your breathing, Hunble, won't change the pH of your aquarium. But if you increased the ambient CO2 concentration in your house by 50-60 ppm and waited a few days, you might notice a change.
An ion has one extra neutron in it's atom. So CO3^2 is rather rare and unusual.
Did you pay attention to the actual article? They were not talking about normal CO2, but a very rare and unusual ion.
I know. The main problem was increased algae growth due to higher nutrient levels in many coastal areas.
Be assured dear FReeper friend, that I will continue to research this article and report to you exactly what is wrong with it.
Actually, this is the type of crap that I love to study, and I want to thank you for showing it to me.
Yes, South Dakota.
Naw; not the pretty stuff. :(
Just the common, grey stuff.
We had to drill through about 700’ (as well as other strata)or so of it, to get down to the aquifer.
Some has fossil poyps; some has a few fossil shells/shell casts; but most is just undifferentiated bottom-ooze type limestone. All of it is a PIA, when trying to drive posts, dig, rototill, plow, or bulldoze. LOL
This whole area was a shallow sea more than once.
4-5 miles NE of us is Wind Cave N.P.
Just over 4 miles ESE, some of the limestone disolved, and the surface caved in, forming a sinkhole about 15-20,000 years ago. That filled with warm water from the hot springs, making a good winter watering hole, but it also trapped more than 100 mammoths over the centuries, both wooly & Columbian. They’ve also found a short nosed bear, camels, and several predators & scavengers, as well as other critters. http://www.mammothsite.com/
I have no idea what O3 is!
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