And to make matters a bit worse, I got this from the Flower Garden Banks NMS this morning. While it's fairly technical (the original report), it does underscore the fact that the problem is probably far more complicated than anyone can surmise. We're just beginning to fathom the ramifications of the current environmental shift on the ocean environment.
"While temperature has an impact on carbonate ion availability, the
far greater impact is from ocean acidification. At the same time as
CO2 is rising in the atmosphere, it is also being absorbed into the
oceans. In fact, just less than half of the anthropogenic carbon has
gone into ocean waters. As pCO2 (the partial pressure of CO2 in
water) rises, the pH drops and carbonate ion availability drops. We
have already seen a pH drop of around 0.1 pH units and perhaps as
much as a 10-15% drop in calcification since the start of the
industrial revolution.
If anything, the warming will increase the availability of carbonate
ions for coralline algal growth. However, rising CO2 has a much
larger effect.
Two general reports on the topic are the British Royal Society report:
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/document.asp?id=3249
and the US report on the Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Coral
Reefs and Other Marine Calcifiers
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/report.shtml
"
