Chapter 06: The Sea Around Us

                     

         

This chapter takes place on Castello Aragonese, a tiny research island, where Elizabeth Kolbert talks about the “evil twin” of global warming which is ocean acidification. The cause of this problem is carbon created from fossil fuels, coal, oil, and natural gases which have been recorded to be up to 365 billion metric tons. Ocean acidification is seen as a good predictor for some mass extinctions that are undefined in cause and “may affect such basic processes as metabolism, enzyme activity, and protein function” (p. 120). The production of carbon has increased due to human activity, supporting the theme that technology and population growth have enabled humans to increase the rate and scale of their impact on the environment. The human activity supporting this theme consists of things from as far as the industrial revolution and are slightly being countered with new innovations today. If the innovations (such as smart cars) continue to improve, it could be a way to lower the progression of global warming enough to give us more time to convince people that it’s an important issue [C].