CO2 Threatens the Oceans
Ocean acidification is global warming’s “equally evil twin,” says Jane Lubchenco, marine biologist and head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Ocean Acidification, National Geographic, April 2011.According to a Feature Story in Al-Jazeera: CO2 Dangerously Acidifying World’s Oceans, November 28, 2012:
Oceans are sucking up increased carbon emissions, raising fears acidification could lead to marine life extinctions… scientists say greenhouse gases are causing rapid changes that may irreversibly alter the composition of the Earth’s oceans.Not only is CO2 the source behind the big meltdown of glaciers and ice sheets, and scorching farmland and altering the climate in a haphazard manner, the menace of CO2 is also a threat to life in the oceans. Paradoxically, the genesis; i.e., the oceans, from which humankind originated, may be polluted as a result of dependency upon fossil fuels for transportation and lifestyle as human activity poisons the source of its own origin.
If the current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, computer models show that the ocean will continue to undergo acidification, to an extent and at rates that have not occurred for tens of millions of years… nearly all marine life forms that build calcium carbonate shells and skeletons studied by scientists thus far have shown deterioration due to increasing carbon dioxide levels in seawater. (Carbon Dioxide and Our Ocean Legacy, April 2006, Dr. Richard Feely and Dr. Christopher Sabine, Oceanographers, Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
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