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Coral Reefs Gone by Mid-century?

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DWill

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Coral Reefs Gone by Mid-century?

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Can anyone find evidence for me that the acidification of the oceans by a surfeit of CO2 is not the disaster it appears to be? I'd appreciate that. Doing the oceans in seems worse to me than we humans having to swelter more. There is plenty of information on this problem all over the 'net.
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geo

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Re: Coral Reefs Gone by Mid-century?

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DWill wrote:Can anyone find evidence for me that the acidification of the oceans by a surfeit of CO2 is not the disaster it appears to be? I'd appreciate that. Doing the oceans in seems worse to me than we humans having to swelter more. There is plenty of information on this problem all over the 'net.
I didn't do any research into the acidification of oceans, but I wonder why focus on just that? There's lots of evidence that we're harming the environment in many different ways. Like global warming, there's probably no simple data that a layperson can readily absorb and comprehend. It would time to study all the particulars, but who has time for that?

I don't know if you saw this article by William Rees I posted here a while back. It doesn't delve into acidification of oceans, but it does address the pending collapse of the world's fisheries along with many, many other environmental issues that we face.

http://www.booktalk.org/living-like-the ... 13962.html

There's this essay by Sandra Postel about the freshwater problem, an area that will surely eventually lead to wars:

http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/kwarner/7-12PostelWater.pdf

I can guarantee reading these two essays will bring you down. But again, why the special interest in the acidification of oceans?
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DWill

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Re: Coral Reefs Gone by Mid-century?

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I haven't had a chance to read the matter you posted, geo. There is probably no logical reason to focus on coral reefs, but logic I think often takes a backseat when it comes to what's happening to the earth--and that's not always a bad thing. Our emotional attachments are significant and in fact are crucial if we are able to preserve something of our natural heritage. The terms of the debate shouldn't be exclusively the inconvenience to our own species. The diversity of the earth has value in itself, regardless of material benefit to us. I think you probably agree with this sentiment, actually.

So coral reefs represent this diversity in the marine realm in a way similar to rain forests representing terrestrial diversity. Only they are more concentrated places, and rarer. Loss of coral reefs will also not be an isolated event, but will come as only perhaps the most poignant and noted loss among the many others occurring in the oceans.
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