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...