The other carbon dioxide problem

The home to 80% of the Earth’s organisms is currently under attack from global warming’s ‘evil twin’: ocean acidification.The gases in the atmosphere and dissolved in the ocean are in equilibrium, meaning that as the carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere increase, those in the ocean do too. Approximately 27% of the carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels and deforestation since the industrial revolution has been taken up by seawater. Initially this was thought to be a good thing, as removing some of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere limits its ability to warm up the planet. But about 15 years ago scientists realised that this excess carbon dioxode is changing the carbonate chemistry of the ocean