Chapter 7: Dropping Acid

July 14, 2019

   

          In Chapter 7, Kolbert although originally planned to visit Heron Island, visited a research station on a different island called One Tree Island. She meets with Ken Caldeira who specializes in the impact of carbon dioxide on the ph level of the ocean; Kolbert starts talking about the "Great Barrier Reef" and its long history. The first Europeans to see the "Great Barrier Reef" were Captain James Cook and his crew in 1770. Charles Darwin discovered that through his research on the HMS Beagle voyage, he came to discover that coral reefs were submerged under rising sea levels so it grows with the sea level. Coral reefs are part animal, vegetable, and mineral which instead of displacing other species around it, supports them to be a community allowing itself to grow. However, according to page 138, " The paper concluded that if current emissions trends continue, within the next fifty years or so ' all coral reefs will cease to grow and start to dissolve'". This can be connected to the APES Theme: Humans alter natural systems; Technology and population growth have enabled both the rate and scale of their impact on the environment. Now there have been many kinds of research on carbon dioxide's effect on coral reef such can be in the biosphere project in Arizona which failed, showing coral reefs to be negatively impacted. To understand from the past chapters we learned that carbon dioxide emissions directly influence the acidification on the ocean, which carries a high chance of dissolving coral reefs in the near future; but there are other factors that enhance this possibility. In page 141, " The roster of perils includes, but is not limited to: overfishing, which promotes the growth of algae that compete with corals; agriculture runoff, which also encourages algae growth; deforestation, which leads to siltation and reduces water clarity; and dynamite fishing, whose destructive potential would seem to be self-explanatory". [E] The general idea is we as humans are going to obliterate coral reefs before factors such as ocean acidification destroy it.