Following up on the news of the Great Barrier Reef’s impending demise, it’s time to point towards a most distressing piece from the New Yorker from back in November from Elizabeth Kolbert.

The Darkening Sea explores the effect of carbon emmissions on our oceans, namely ocean acidification and thus dramatic changes in the biogeochemistry of the marine environment.

To quote…

Because of the slow pace of deep-ocean circulation and the long life of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it is impossible to reverse the acidification that has already taken place. Nor is it possible to prevent still more from occurring. Even if there were some way to halt the emission of CO2 tomorrow, the oceans would continue to take up carbon until they reached a new equilibrium with the air. As Britain’s Royal Society noted in a recent report, it will take “tens of thousands of years for ocean chemistry to return to a condition similar to that occurring at pre-industrial times.” Humans have, in this way, set in motion change on a geologic scale. The question that remains is how marine life will respond. Though oceanographers are just beginning to address the question, their discoveries, at this early stage, are disturbing.