re: #517 LudwigVanQuixote

This may or not have anything to do with what you’re talking about, but ocean acidification is “yet another carbon challenge”:
hereticalideas.com

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the oceans have absorbed approximately 30-40% of all man-made carbon dioxide emissions. And that absorption is beginning to show.

The basic problem here is one of chemistry. When carbon dioxide dissolves in water, one of the byproducts is carbonic acid (H2CO3). Now, there are many buffer systems in place in the oceans to prevent too great a change in pH. However, over the past 200 years, the increase in carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and, consequently, the oceans, have been so great as to overwhelm the ocean’s natural ability to keep the pH in balance, which is why it has dropped 0.1 so quickly.