Sylvia Earle Quotes

Ocean acidification is caused by the ocean absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the same carbon dioxide that is the primary cause of global warming, hence the nickname 'the other carbon problem.' As they do so, the oceans become more acidic with terrible consequences.

The worst blows to humanity from carbon pollution may come at us from the oceans.

Worldwide, our oceans are warming, rising, and becoming dangerously acidic as a result of carbon pollution and climate change - endangering much that we hold dear.

In Congress, I am focused on the effects of climate change, including ocean acidification and sea-level rise - both of which are threats to healthy oceans that sustain life on- and off-shore.

Australia is the only island continent on the planet, which means that changes caused by planet-warming pollution - warmer seas, which can drive stronger storms, and more acidic oceans, which wreak havoc on the food chain - are even more deadly here.

Oil is drowning our oceans and drowning our boreal forests.

Swimming has been a very effective medium for telling a story about the state of our planet.

Many people believe the whole catastrophe is the oil we spill, but that gets diluted and eventually disarmed over time. In fact, the oil we don't spill, the oil we collect, refine and use, produces CO2 and other gases that don't get diluted.

CO2 is not a pollutant in any normal definition of the term.

Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted.

As we pump greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide, making the seawater acidic and hostile for shellfish and corals.

The burning of fossil fuels has altered the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so rapidly and so abundantly that now, we are driving not just the warming trend, not just the sea level rise that is a consequence of the warming trend that is melting polar ice and alpine ice, but also [ocean acidification].

The U.S. has historically been the world's largest contributor to climate change.

Chinese emissions are a problem not just for its own people but also for the world. It has now overtaken the U.S. as the biggest carbon emitter; most of the coal that is burned anywhere on Earth is burned in China.

We're running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere... can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.

As a scientist, my attention became totally focused on global warming some 15 years ago by the elegant and powerful measurements of carbon dioxide trapped in ice cores taken as much as 2 miles deep from the great East Antarctica ice sheet.

Centuries-old habitats such as coral gardens are destroyed in an instant by bottom trawls, pulverized by weighted nets into barren plains. And global carbon dioxide emissions from human activity affect the ocean, changing the pH balance of the waters in a phenomenon known as ocean acidification.

We now know that we cannot continue to put ever-increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Actions have consequences. In fact, the consequences of past actions are already in the pipeline. Global temperatures are rising. Glaciers are melting. Sea levels are rising. Extreme weather events are multiplying.

Coal is responsible for as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as other fossil fuels combined and it still has far greater reserves. We must stop using it.

Ocean acidification is often referred to as osteoporosis of the oceans because as acidity rises, shell building creatures such as lobster, oyster, crab, shrimp, and coral are unable to extract the calcium carbonate from the water that they need to build their shells and are thus unable to survive.

The industrialization of China alone would increase by 90 percent the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere and would at least increase the atmospheric CO2 by at least another 100 parts per million.

Humanity has nearly suffocated the globe with carbon dioxide, yet nuclear power plants that produce no such emissions are so mired in objections and obstruction that, despite renewed interest on every continent, it is unlikely another will be built in the United States.

Some studies have shown that natural gas could, in fact, be worse for the climate than coal.

There is a majority of scientists that say that global carbon emissions by humans causes some changes in the climate.

Hawaii feels so passionately about climate. You know, our oceans are warming. As a result, we have more ocean acidification and coral bleaching. You can actually see it.