If it goes badly, reversing it makes it even worse.
And going badly is guaranteed, because CO2 would continue on up, and the ocean ecosystem would collapse. There are quite dramatic fossil records of such events.
But civilization would collapse first, so there is that.
Not really as it will stop increase of carbon dioxide. Ocean carbon dioxide also comes from the atmosphere a system where carbon dioxide is just recycled through the atmosphere and oceans system will mean we won't be adding more carbon in the system. That is the current problem the world is producing more and more carbon each year first we need to stop the growth at least reversing it can come once we stop increasing it.
CO2 dissolving does help with climate change, but causes ocean acidification instead. If it gets bad enough, the lower pH will interfere with a lot of marine life with calcified structures like shells and coral. The full impact of that on the ocean's food chain is difficult to estimate, but it won't be good.
> ... and major die-offs of some marine organisms followed due to strong acidification of the oceans.
This is the part that I'm worried about. Regardless of what happens to global temperature or climate, the damage we've done to the oceans is insane. As Alex Cannara explained[1],
In 150 years we have brought the chemistry of oceans to
a point not seen in 300 million years.
He is referring to the large shift in ocean pH caused by our release of over 30x the amount of carbon than the ocean can sequester. This is particularly bad problem because the process that sequesters atmospheric CO2 is based on marine life shells/skeletons being sinking and ending up as limestone.
We have already disrupted that process, with some areas (such as the north Atlantic) are already seeing species starting to fail from the acidity. At some point in the next few decades, the pH will be sufficiently acidic that CaCO2 becomes soluble and any species with a shell goes extinct. Never mind the massive food change disruption, this stops the main CO2 sequestration process.
I don't think we can stop this; it's already too late. While there are ideas about how this could be fixed, we aren't going to accomplish any of them. So maybe we should start getting ready for another event like the Permian–Triassic (P-Tr) extinction.
No it would increase ocean oxygen levels. CO2 in the atmosphere would become O2 in the ocean and carbon in the phytoplankton. Until the plankton decay, of course.
> Given that, and the ability of the oceans to sink HUGE amounts of CO2 over thousand-year timescales
Are you not concerned about the impacts of ocean acidification as a result? My understanding is that the ramifications of that are potentially scary as well.
most of the plans to sequester carbon in the ocean make me worry about how that would impact the broader ecosystem. As I understand it, it would change the chemistry of the ocean, which might trade one disaster for another. Not to mention ideally sequestration would last for millennia.
The short-term scenario is not good, but from the little I know about aquatic biology/chemistry, it might not be as catastrophical as the article pictures it.
Increased CO2 levels should just cause algae/cyanobacteria blooms, which will balance CO2/O2 levels back again and foster primary consumers (solving over-fishing as a bonus). Also, H2CO3 gets buffered by all the Ca/Mg content in the ocean, so I don't think it's even possible for the pH to just drop forever (as in the graph someone posted in one of the comments here).
That has happened before, immediately before massive global extinction events. It would be a mistake not to avoid that.
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