Friday, April 13, 2012

Oysters on the Thin Shell

Climate change is not the only worrisome potential consequence of releasing large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.  As the atmospheric concentration of CO2 increases, the amount that dissolves into the world's oceans also increases making ocean water more acidic.  It is an introductory chemistry lesson on a giant scale.  You can read a nice synopsis of the process here.  This acidification can have a range of disquieting, but not very well understood impacts.  This story in today's Oregonian describes one of them: declines in shellfish populations.

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