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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Coral reefs are not just pretty and cool—beyond tourism dollars and once-in-a-lifetime diving experiences, they provide real utility to human society. They provide homes to about a quarter of the world’s fish, which many people rely on as a food source. They can act as a barrier to rising sea levels, and they can protect coastlines from eroding.

But thanks to all the carbon we’ve pumped into the air, coral reefs are disappearing. Fast. Part of that is heat stress, but CO₂ can also influence coral's ability to form reefs in the first place. A new experiment gives us our first look at how much this affects a complete reef ecosystem.

[...] CO₂ enrichment lowered the coral reef’s net community calcification by 34 percent compared to background. Previous laboratory experiments had estimated the calcification sensitivity of corals to be between 15 and 28 percent. The researchers who conducted this study suggest that their new results might show a larger impact because of the presence of crustose coralline algae in the ecosystem, which can alter the balance of carbonate ions. Alternatively, the calcification rate may increase in sensitivity as the concentration of carbonate ions in the water decreases, and this experiment has revealed a snowball effect that we could eventually see in the wild.

Original Submission