Friday morning's first sessions included a series of talks on
what was termed "the other carbon problem"—ocean acidification.
When dissolved in water, carbon dioxide can combine with a
single water molecule to form carbonic acid, a process that
ultimately lowers the pH of the water. On a global scale, adding
more CO2 to the atmosphere will trigger this process to occur on
a massive scale. So far, the oceanic pH has dropped by .1 units,
but it's expected to drop another .3 points in the next century
unless emissions are curbed. Speakers in the session included
Peter Brewer and James Barry of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Ulf
Riebesell of the Leibniz Instititue of Marine Sciences in Kiel,
Germany, and Andrew Knoll of Harvard. The issues they discussed
are complex and interrelated, so I'm going to rearrange some of
their points to give this description a more logical flow. The
panel presented two reasons we should care about oceanic pH. The
first is a matter of basic physiology, covered by Barry. Most
respiration p