I was just reading an article in the Yahoo! Green rss feed titled “Climate change: Acid oceans transform marine life, says study“, and I think I must have missed some of the logic. Typically, at least in my experience with tropical fish and algae, this is what I would expect to happen:
(1) more CO2 in the atmosphere => an increase in CO2 in the ocean waters
(2) more CO2 in the atmosphere => an increase in general temperature of the atmosphere (greenhouse effect) and probably ocean waters as well
(3) within certain limits (well within the changes that have occurred in the world’s oceans), small aquatic growing things tend to thrive on a warmer climate with a richer food (CO2) source
(4) => stronger foraminifera with thicker shells and a larger population.

This doesn’t jive with what the report is saying. I can only think of one reason (and this would mean that the experts got their cause-and-effect wrong, not the basic research), and that is that the most significant part of the oceanic acidification is being caused by the increases in nitrogen and sulphur compounds (and maybe the increase in surface atmospheric ozone as well) in the atmosphere, not the CO2.

What do you think?

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Ciao!

Jimmy Craig