Xref: utzoo sci.aquaria:970 sci.bio:4027 sci.environment:8794 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!rice!bbc From: bbc@rice.edu (Benjamin Chase) Newsgroups: sci.aquaria,sci.bio,sci.environment Subject: Re: Coral reefs and global warming Message-ID: Date: 30 Nov 90 16:35:35 GMT References: <719@sierra.stanford.edu> <1990Nov30.141515.26084@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> Sender: news@rice.edu (News) Reply-To: Benjamin Chase Distribution: na Organization: Center for Research on Parallel Computations Lines: 32 In-Reply-To: kwf@ecersg.ncsu.edu's message of 30 Nov 90 14:15:15 GMT rosentha@sierra.Stanford.EDU (Peter A. Rosenthal) writes: >> >> It is well known that healthy coral reefs are quite >>effective at fixing carbon dioxide into calcium carbonate skelatons. >>They are also remarkably productive ecosystems that support enormous >>diversity in an astoundingly nutrient poor environment. I would >>like to start some discussion on the possible importance >>of coral in fixing C02 from the atmosphere. kwf@ecersg.ncsu.edu (Ken Fernald) writes: >You may also want to consider the possibility that global warming >exists only in certain crude computer models that have been >extrapolated far beyond reasonable limits. There is actually little >scientific data which supports global warming, and in fact, global >temperature measurements show that the warming simply isn't happening. Ken, you may want to consider the fact that atmospheric CO2 _has_ increased. As for Peter's question, IMO I don't think reef-building corals can be effectively used to abate atmospheric CO2. I think their ability to fix CO2 will be limited by calcium and other nutrients. Also, reef-building corals are restricted to warm waters. The simplest solution to reducing atmospheric CO2 is of course to stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere. One quarter of all the CO2 generated by humans is generated within the USA. Note that this is far larger than the percentage of humans that live in the USA. -- Ben Chase , Rice University, Houston, Texas Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com