Global Warming, CO2, and Coral

[Greatcloud]

The only problem with the disappearing coral theory is that it is false. Corals date back 450 million years, and most of todays species date back at least 200 million years. Just in the last two million years,coral reefs have been through at least seventeen glacial periods, interspersed with their warm interglacial periods. These glacial-interglacial shifts imposed repeated dramatic temperature changes along with sea level changes of as much as four hundred feet.
-Fred Singer

After going through all that I think they will survive. Also coral start as microscopic organisms in the ocean which later become coral,after building up. I think they will survive. This is a temporary situation,coral are unlike other extinctions. Coral are much harder to make extinct; they survive like the cockroach.

":^)

 

[Vene]

So now you deny the directly observed. Bravo.

 

[thaumaturgy]

The only problem with the disappearing coral theory is that it is false. Corals date back 450 million years, and most of todays species date back at least 200 million years. Just in the last two million years,coral reefs have been through at least seventeen glacial periods, interspersed with their warm interglacial periods. These glacial-interglacial shifts imposed repeated dramatic temperature changes along with sea level changes of as much as four hundred feet.
-Fred Singer

After going through all that I think they will survive. Also coral start as microscopic organisms in the ocean which later become coral,after building up. I think they will survive. This is a temporary situation,coral are unlike other extinctions. Coral are much harder to make extinct; they survive like the cockroach.

":^)

That's nice. However, just saying coral are "hardy" doesn't mean that the carbonate balance isn't currently causing a net loss of coral reefs. Maybe you need to hit the OP before making this type of comment.

Here's the LINK that Vene originally posted.

Here's a NOAA link to a simplified description of the "balance".

And, of course, there's about 160 posts in this thread alone that painfully explain the carbon cycle in the oceans here.

Now I know that sometimes science is hard and kinda boring to read through, and we've seen supposed scientists like Juvenissun show us that sometimes details are scary to folks, but remember what is being talked about here:

Carbon dioxide dissolved in the ocean affects the availability of carbonate ion which in turn affects the ability of the coral animals to build the skeletons (the reefs):

Calcifying organisms of both neritic and pelagic environments are sensitive to changes in saturation

state; calcification rates of several major groups of marine calcifiers decrease as the carbonate ion concentration decreases (​

Figure 1–4; Table 1.1). There is also evidence that dissolution rates of carbonates will increase in response to CO2 forcing. Even small changes in CO2 concentrations in surface waters may have large negative impacts on marine calcifiers and ​

​

​

natural biogeochemical cycles of the ocean (Gattuso et al. , 1998; Wolf-Gladrow et al., 1999; Langdon et al., 2000; Riebesell et al., 2000; Marubini et al., 2001; Zondervan et al., 2001; Reynaud et al., 2003). For example, decreased carbonate ion concentration significantly reduces the ability of corals to produce their calcium carbonate skeletons. This affects individual corals and the ability of the reef to maintain a positive balance between reef building and reef erosion(Kleypas et al., 2001).​

(Emphasis added)

Your argument is akin to someone saying "Keith Richards has survived a very hard life, and if you started to erode his bones away with sulfuric acid it is not a problem for Keith, he's survived a lot of bad stuff over the years."

If, indeed, you think the loss of coral structure (called "erosion", or a net loss of coral as a function of the carbonate chemistry) as a function of carbonate chemistry is "false", then show us the numbers and the relevant reactions to provide support for that contention.

Thanks!​

 

[Naraoia]

Haven't been to this thread for a while, so sorries if I repeat someone, but...

The only problem with the disappearing coral theory is that it is false. Corals date back 450 million years, and most of todays species date back at least 200 million years. Just in the last two million years,coral reefs have been through at least seventeen glacial periods, interspersed with their warm interglacial periods. These glacial-interglacial shifts imposed repeated dramatic temperature changes along with sea level changes of as much as four hundred feet.
-Fred Singer

After going through all that I think they will survive.

The trouble with that reasoning is dead simple. Even if corals as a group survive that doesn't mean the current diversity of corals and the ecology of coral reefs isn't threatened.

You bring up the long history of corals. Well, I haven't done much palaeontology (a few lectures and about two practicals in an intro geology course, plus a number of not exactly technical books), but to my best knowledge corals did nearly die out in the Permian extinction event. Dunno about the other hardships but I distinctly remember reading that it took millions of years for the first Triassic coral reefs to appear, and the new reefs were built by completely different types of coral from earlier reefs. You can't just shrug off a serious ecological problem saying "corals" have survived worse.

Furthermore, how many of the climate changes during, say, the Ice Ages, was accompanied by rapid ocean acidification comparable to what's happening now?