How does rising atmospheric CO2 affect marine organisms?

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Volume 5 Number 44:  30 October 2002

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

Current Editorial
Has the Historical Rise in the Air's CO2 Content Negatively Impacted Human Health?: For those of you who regularly read CO2 Science Magazine, the answer should come as no surprise.  It has not.  In fact, just the opposite is more likely to be true.

Subject Index Summaries
Biodiversity (Among Genotypes): Atmospheric CO2 enrichment is often thought to be a selective factor among genotypes of a given plant species on the assumption that it elicits a range of growth responses among them.  A mounting body of evidence, however, suggests this concept may be the exception rather than the rule.

Health Effects of Temperature (Cardiovascular) - Summary: Will global warming be bad for our cardiovascular health?

Carbon Sequestration Commentary
CO2 to the Rescue ... Again!: Atmospheric CO2 enrichment helps plants cope with any number of environmental threats to their existence.  Now comes a study that shows how it does the same for soil microbes, and how the carbon sequestration consequences of this phenomenon may likewise benefit a host of other life forms.

Current Journal Reviews
Arctic Sea Ice Trends: The 1979-1999 trend in Northern Hemispheric sea-ice extent is decidedly downward, as would be expected for a globally warming world.  Nevertheless, finer-scale observations suggest we should not be too quick to accept the latter phenomenon as the cause of the former.

More Controversy Over Earth's "Adaptive Infrared Iris": A clashing of the minds is a far cry from a meeting of the minds; and until the latter occurs with respect to certain important meteorological phenomena having significant implications for earth's future climate, it seems premature to vociferously lobby for drastic actions to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Floods and Droughts: How Bad Can They Get?: The story coming out of southern Manitoba in Canada suggests they could be a heck of a lot worse than they have been throughout the entire period of European settlement.  All it takes is a cooler climate.

The Responses of Three C3 Grasses to Elevated CO2 While Competing for Light: Light is the primary driving force of photosynthesis, and competition for this essential resource among different plant species can be fierce.  Hence, the authors of this paper set out to see if competition for light influences plant responses to elevated CO2, focusing on three particular C3 grasses.

Soil Carbon Contents of Brazilian Grasslands: Land-use changes are often controversial, especially when they involve the replacement of native forests with other species.  In this study, the authors monitored changing soil carbon stocks of Brachiaria pastures following removal of indigenous forest, obtaining results that likely make such choices even more difficult.