The Oceans Are Acidifying at the Fastest Rate in 300 Million Years. How Worried Should We Be?

Biologists at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany tallied up much of the field research that’s been done to date and compared it against the fossil record, in an attempt to get a broad overview of the effects of acidification on corals, molluscs, echinoderms, crustaceans and fishes.  The results, published this week in Nature Climate Change, aren’t exactly encouraging:  “Our analysis demonstrates that all considered groups are impacted negatively, albeit differentially, even by moderate ocean acidification.”

The Oceans Are Acidifying at the Fastest Rate in 300 Million Years. How Worried Should We Be?