Ocean CO2 Horrors

Would you like to see some grim figures?
Head over to this Time article about the oceans:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091119/wl_time/08599194039100

The gist of it is that the oceans last year absorbed about 2.3 billion tons of carbon (about one quarter of all man made carbon.) This puts the total in the oceans at about 150 billion tons. They note that from 2000, the amount of carbon deposited has increased 29% and the oceans have absorbed 10% less.

Quick math time. This means we deposited 1.5% of the total last year. Also, counting back with the 29% figure we learn that in 2000, the oceans held approximately 132 billion tons of CO2.

This is from historical data, but let's project that a bit, for the next 10 years assuming a continued 29% growth: the oceans will hold a very rough 177 tons of carbon by 2019, except if we loose another 10% absorption. We might well have that 17 tons extra in the atmosphere.

Back to the Time article. According to it, the 150 billion tons of carbon, were it released back to the atmosphere would raise the co2 concentration to 460 parts per million. But according to my calculation, we will be releasing more than 11% of that (17 tons) even if the oceans continue to function like before. This does not account for the reduction of absorption rate as concentration increases.

My numbers are not very scientific at all, but they are scary. That 460 ppm is over the upper safe limit and we seem to really try to get there. The current estimates maintain that the growth of emissions will continue, as China will catch up to and pass USA (which will still continue of course.)

The article continues to explain how this will affect the ocean, I just put together the numbers for the atmosphere.

The Time article is grim reading, but I hope the little math exercise shows just how bad the situation is. If you have more solid numbers or better math, please feel free to comment.