Monday, February 22, 2010

Today In Depressing Environmental News

The oceans are facing an increasing likelihood in massive extinctions:

Researchers from the University of Bristol, who looked at how levels of acid in the ocean have changed over years, found that the current acidification is more severe than any time in the last 65 million years ago.

According to the report as ocean acidification accelerated it caused mass extinctions at the bottom of the food chain that could threaten whole ecosystems in the future.

The study, published in Nature Geoscience, looked at sediments from around 55 million years ago, when temperature rose by up to 6 degrees Celsius and acidification was occurring at a similar rate as today.

For those of you non-creationists wondering what happened 65 million years ago, that would be the end of the Cretaceous period. So basically the oceans now are the worst they've been since the dinosaurs were wiped out, only this time, it is human pollution instead of a devastating meteor that is the culprit.

We'll wipe ourselves out yet.