World’s nations must drastically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, author says

An aerial view of icebergs float in the Jacobshavn Bay.The UN experts are right that the oceans are unlikely to rise by an order of metres by 2100, as some scientists have feared, it says. Uriel SinaiBy MONIQUE BEAUDIN, The Gazette, Published: Thursday, September 17, 2009 For more than two years, Canadian writer Alanna Mitchell travelled the world’s oceans, meeting scientists whose research was uncovering a crisis in the planet’s large bodies of water. Overfishing, coastal dead zones and rising water temperatures are just some of the problems plaguing the world’s oceans. Mitchell found the most serious challenge the oceans face is climate change. Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air, the result of burning fossil fuels like oil and coal, mean more carbon dioxide is being absorbed into the ocean, making ocean water more acidic. Because calcium dissolves in acidic water, that poses a threat to corals, plankton and other life forms that use calcium to form a shell or skeleton. In a book published this year about the oceans, Mitchell tells the story of Colorado-based marine ecologist Joanie Kleypas, who, when she realized the implications of ocean acidification, ran to the bathroom at the scientific conference she was attending and threw up. “We are changing the chemistry of the global ocean,” Mitchell said in an interview. “Without all those creatures in the ocean living and doing what they’re meant to do, we can’t survive.” …

Oceans face climate-change crisis via  Ocean Acidification