Tuesday, July 15, 2008

C'est la vie

A while ago the prolific Anonymous asked me:

What do you think about the de-alkalinisation of the oceans. Anything ruinously doom and gloom possible there? Is adaptation of water species quick enough by your reckoning?

I have recently been thinking about this a lot, due to work I am doing on calcium carbonate formation in desalination plants, and will offer a substantial critique of this particular bugbear soon.

But in the meantime, I came across this nifty figure in Science the other day and thought I would share it with you. If someone had asked me, 'how will marine organisms respond to changes in total carbonic acid species concentration?', I like to think I would have been prescient enough to draw a figure like this one. Find a niche and fill it: such is the way of living things!

1 comment:

Marco Parigi said...

I am ready and waiting. Perhaps rather than adaptation of marine species - filling of high CO2 niche by species that already exist. Perhaps big changes in marine ecology, but fairly constant absorption of CO2, and only gradual, manageable changes in PH.