Chapter 7:

Kolbert decides to visit One Tree Island, located in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. The island itself has pieces of coral rubble and marbles rather than sand. Some believe that the island was a result of a huge storm 4 thousand years ago. In this island is a remote research facility that's run by the University of Sydney. The first European to see this island was Captain James Cook in 1770, as he was sailing his ship, the Endeavour, he crashed into a reef and managed to land on the island. As they were repairing the ship, he admired the coral reefs and wondered how they were formed and what exactly they were. Some years past and Darwin visits some other coral reefs to theorize how they came to be. He wrote in his diary that coral reefs are “ amongst the wonderful objects of the world” (pg 128). He concluded that coral reefs are actually large atolls that are under water because of rising sea levels. Scientists now know that coral reefs are actually “ part animal, part vegetable, and part mineral, at once teeming with life and, at the same time, mostly dead” (pg 130). Kolbert meets a man named Ken Calderia, who coined the term “ ocean acidification”, and is mostly researching how the ocean’s pH levels are impacted by carbon dioxide. The first time scientists have found evidence that carbon dioxide hurts coral reefs was during a Biosphere project during the 1950s in Arizona. The project failed because those who tried to live there got sick due to the high levels of carbon dioxide in the air. Currently, scientists say, due to the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the ocean, coral reefs will disappear. This is a direct result from human activity. Things like over fishing, agricultural runoff, deforestation, and dynamite fishing all add more carbon to the water, leading to ocean acidification. We need to learn how to handle our usage of energy. The fossil fuels we use is directly hurting our planet, " a molecule of CO2 generated by burning fossil fuels will, over the course of its lifetime in the atmosphere, trap a hundred thousand times more heat than was released in producing it" ( pg 133). We need better ways in surviving without hurting our environment, for example, we can use solar panels to generate better energy for the planet. The biodiversity of our world is falling rapidly and if we humans stop doing these things or at least slow down then maybe we can help protect our Earth.