How does rising atmospheric CO2 affect marine organisms?

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Volume 4 Number 3:  17 January 2001

Temperature Record of the Week
This issue's Temperature Record of the Week is from Cheyenne, Wyoming. Visit our U.S. Climate Data section to plot and view these data for yourself.

Current Editorial
To Bleach or Not to Bleach, That Is Only Half the Question of Coral Reef Response to Global Warming: Rapidly accumulating evidence suggests that earth's coral reefs possess a host of strategies for both resisting and recovering from the adverse consequences of thermal stresses believed to cause coral bleaching.

Subject Index Summaries
Disease As a Cause of Coral Bleaching: The stresses of disease and the dynamics of host-pathogen interactions that appear to be bringing corals into contact with diseases to which they are not normally exposed may help to explain recent coral bleaching events.

Growth Response to CO2 with Other Variables (Disease): Two experiments suggest that the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content should enable earth's vegetation to better fight the deleterious consequences of various plant diseases.

Current Journal Reviews
A Tropical Cyclone History for the North Indian Ocean: Contrary to climate alarmist claims that global warming causes more and stronger storms, real-world tropical cyclone data from the North Indian Ocean tell a very different story.

A Hot Time in the Medieval Southwestern Baltic Sea: Yet another study presents incontrovertible evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was significantly warmer than it is today, contrary to the claims of climate alarmists that would have us believe that today's temperatures are the highest of the past millennium.

It's a Complex World: Part 3: The Professor speaks some words of wisdom.  Is anyone out there listening?

Increases in Summer Precipitation Would Enable Oak Woodlands to Spread into Semi-Desert Grasslands in the Southwestern United States and Adjacent Mexico: Experimental manipulation of natural rainfall regimes on plots of natural grassland in southeastern Arizona reveals that oak seedling emergence and establishment (like that of many other woody plants) is significantly enhanced by increases in summer rainfall, such as occurred during the Medieval Warm Period, as is occurring in several places now, and as could well occur in even more places in the future.

Oxidative Stress and Ageing: A recent review of the scientific literature raises some interesting questions about the effect the historical rise in the air's CO2 content may have had on the dramatic increase in human life span that has occurred over the course of the Industrial Revolution.