by Joe Eaton – Bay Nature
Charles Fourier, a 19th-century French philosopher, was a visionary’s visionary. If society adopted his version of utopian socialism, humanity, he promised, would be transformed — and so would the natural world. In the coming era of Perfect Harmony, six moons would circle the planet. The North Pole would become warmer than the Mediterranean. Even better, all the oceans would turn to lemonade.
Perfect harmony remains elusive. But the poles are indeed warming up, and the chemistry of the seas is changing, although the lemonade threshold is a ways off. The process is called ocean acidification (OA for short), a term coined by scientists around 1999. What’s driving it is the ability of the oceans to soak up carbon dioxide like a giant sponge. The seas have absorbed about a third of the CO2 produced by all human activities, from the first brush fires set by hunter-gatherers on through modern exhaust-pipe and smokestack emissions. That’s been important in mitigating the greenhouse effect responsible for global warming. But there’s a cost.
