KEEPING GLOBAL CHANGE HONEST

In my reading and travels I frequently come across statements regarding the importance of biological cycles in the ocean to the uptake of CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning and forest cutting. While these are often prefaced with an admission that physical processes are more important, the listener or reader comes away with a feeling that somehow biology has a very important role to play. This supposed importance is being used as a defense for the funding of a wide range of biologically oriented ocean programs. I challenge this defense. Copyright 1991 by the American Geophysical Union.