The Acid Sea

This is an article I read in the National Geographic Magazine about Carbon Dioxide, and strangely enough, it is about the sea and not the oh so famous Global Warming. Anyway, it all begins at Castello Aragonese. The sea around island, thanks to some "quirks of geology" as the magazine puts it shows us what the sea would probably look like in the 2050s and beyond, and its not pretty. Almost every single living organism was absent, snails, corals, sea urchins, barnacles, all gone. All that remained were sea grass, jellyfish and algae. And I almost forgot, Carbon Dioxide bubbles that steamed up from the sea floor. The cause of all this, is Carbon Dioxide. Carbon Dioxide dissolves in the sea to form carbonic acid, after all, we drink it all the time in carbonated beverages like coke. However, if enough of it forms, it is enough to make sea water corrosive. Furthermore, when you get it to an extremely high level, almost nothing besides jellyfish, sea grass and algae can stand it. Over the past 2 centuries, the oceans have absorbed 30% of the Carbon Dioxide released by us. This may be a good thing for us as every ton of Carbon Dioxide the sea absorbs, is every ton of Carbon Dioxide that is not contributing to Global Warming but as for the aquatic life on Earth, it is quite a different story. However, this does not mean that we get off Scot-free, after all, this would affect the availability of certain nutrients provided by aquatic food like iron and nitrogen. All in all, this is a new problem that not many are aware of yet and needs to be taken more seriously. After all, Global Warming is not the only big problem we should be worried about.

This is a picture of what the ocean floor looks like now

This is a picture of what the ocean floor is expected to look like in 2100