In response to the Wednesday, Sept. 20 letter: Ocean acidification is caused by volcanoes, not our C02 emissions, Mr. Woodworth states that marine life such as shellfish, coral, etc. actually thrived when our atmospheric C02 was ten times higher than today.

What he fails to mention is that those species often had hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years to adapt to slowly changing conditions. Some of these organisms survived the great mass extinction events of the past, but required tens of millions of years to rebound.

Our current rate of change of atmospheric C02 is 100 times faster than anything in the geologic record.

Research by scientists who study C02 emission rates place the volcanic contribution at 65 to 319 million tons per year compared to world emissions from fossil fuel use at 29 billion tons annually. 

Research has proven that increased levels of atmospheric C02 are directly related to ocean acidification, with the chemistry not in question.

The author's conclusion, that human emissions are not responsible for ocean acidificaton, is simply not supported by current research.

- Evan Jones



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