New Scientist
Image: USFWS Pacific
Ocean acidification is set to cost us $1 trillion by 2100 as it eats away at our tropical coral reefs.
That’s the warning from a report released today by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, which assesses the economic impacts the problem could have.
The ocean’s pH is now 8.0, down from 8.1 in the mid-18th century. Because the pH scale is logarithmic, this change means that, over the past 250 years, the world’s oceans have seen a 26 per cent increase in acidity – a result of the oceans absorbing about a quarter of our carbon dioxide emissions.
With ocean pH projected to dip to 7.9 by the end of the century, the oceans may soon be 170 per cent more acidic than they were before the industrial revolution – a change that is likely to affect not just our ecosystems, but our economies too. Read more on newscientist.com…
