Log in Free trial  Acid Oceans: International Scientists Are Now
in Little Doubt about the Cause of a Threat Confronting Up to
One-Third of All Marine Life: The 27 Billion Tonnes of Carbon
Dioxide Released Each Year by Human Activity Are Gradually
Dissolving into the Ocean's Upper Layers, Turning Them More
Acidic  Article excerpt   How serious acidifying seas will be
for all life on Earth, researchers cannot yet say. But they have
already measured observable changes in the ocean's pH, and have
also demonstrated that even tiny shifts can kill corals and
various common marine plankton and algae that are a foundation
of the ocean's food web.  'The oceans are absorbing carbon
dioxide (C[O.sub.2]) from the atmosphere and this is causing
chemical changes by making them more acidic (that is, decreasing
the pH of the oceans), explains a paper by Britain's most
eminent scientific body, the Royal Society. (1) 'In the past 200
years the oceans have absorbed approximately half of the
C[O.sub.2] produced by fossil fuel bu