Fictional Movie Connection to Ocean Acidification.

I watched the movie "The Day After Tomorrow." Although the root of this movie's problem wasn't really pollution, I still believe it connects to ocean acidification in some way, or at least pollution in general.

In this movie, the whole world suddenly shifted and tsunamis were hitting and then everything just froze. It was pure chaos. The whole world went out of whack. People were stranded, freezing, dying. The movie doesn't really mention the cause of why there was this major shift but it leaves room for interpretation.

Hypothetically speaking, this could happen to us in the future because of all the pollution we cause. It is unknown, but certainly possible that we could cause the Earth to react in such ways with all the harm we cause towards it. The Earth has to cope somehow and this may be it, and this may be our future, if we don't stop doing what we are doing. The Earth may freeze over and eliminate much of the human race to restore balance. But who knows. I'd rather not find out, I'd rather we stop ruining the world and start improving it. We are parasites to the Earth and it's just not right.

It's time to act now.

The time is now, to act, to do, to help. The ocean is taking a beating from the human race, we are the cause. Only we can help and try to reverse the damage that has been done. We need to act now before the problem gets unmanageable. If we wait until it is too late, we will have taken the ocean's resilience, which is by far one of the most important and special things about the ocean. The ocean can naturally adapt and recover itself when it is rich with life. But our carbon emission levels keep increasing at faster rates never experienced by the ocean before and it could potentially drive it to the next great extinction. Resilience is hope for the ocean, the thing that makes it recover from tragedies like this, but if we don't give the oceans time to adapt to these changes, it will be too late and potentially irreversible. There is still hope for the future, however, we just need to reduce our carbon emissions.

Do the right thing, buy energy efficient appliances, ride your bike, walk, plant trees, make the world a good, safe place to live in. It is our responsibility to keep the Earth healthy for the next generations to come. Think of the future, think of your children and their children's children.

The beginning.

Humans. We eat, breathe, sleep, and live on this earth, but is it really worth it? We live in a very advanced, technology dependent world, especially living in the United States. We are the second most polluting country in the world. But little do people know, is that it's affecting our environment in negative ways, and I am not referring to global warming. I'm referring to "the other CO2 problem", also known as ocean acidification.

We emit carbon dioxide into the air every day. We exhale it, we output it with our cars and other forms of transportation, and we output it with our burning of fossil fuels. Little do people know that all those billions of tons of carbon dioxide we emit every year, are absorbed into the ocean like a sponge. This has slowed down global warming, but the oceans are taking a major blow. The consequences of the oceans taking some of the burden off of global warming, is the oceans chemistry is changing.

All of the carbon dioxide being absorbed into the oceans is causing the oceans to acidify and become less alkaline. If this continues, it is going to be a major problem for the oceanic ecosystems. The small animals will not be able to make their protective shells and their shells will begin to dissolve. In fact, they already have. Also the coral reefs are becoming endangered as well, which will cause a major problem because 25% of sea creatures live or have lived on a coral reef during their lifetime. And when all the little animals aren't able to survive the oceans, neither will the larger ones. It's all a chain reaction in the food chain.

Some scientists say that by the end of the century, this could become a huge problem. Also there have been theories that in acidifying the ocean, we are almost de-evolutionizing it. Pushing the ocean back to conditions present millions of years ago where only jellyfish and certain bacterias could survive. There are still many other effects on the ocean that are unknown and yet to be discovered since it is such a newly discovered topic. The research and programs are just at the beginning...