NAIROBI, Kenya - The world's oceans are becoming more acidic, which poses a
threat to sea life and Earth's fragile food chain, a climate expert said
Thursday.
In this file photo, Residents of the
Kenyan coastal island of Lamu compete in a sailboat race on Thursday June
6, 2002. Experts say global warming could destroy ancient ruins and
age-old settlements along the sea, such as the coastal island of Lamu in
Kenya. [AP]
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Oceans have already absorbed a
third of the world's emissions of carbon dioxide, one of the heat-trapping gases
blamed for global warming, leading to acidification that prevents vital sea life
from forming properly.
"The oceans are rapidly changing," said professor Stefan Rahmstorf on the
sidelines of a UN conference on climate change that has drawn delegates from
more than 100 countries to Kenya. "Ocean acidification is a major threat to
marine organisms."
Fish stocks and the world's coral reefs could also be hit while acidification
risks "fundamentally altering" the food chain, he said.
In a study titled "The Future Oceans - Warming Up, Rising High, Turning
Sour," Rahmstorf and eight other scientists warned that the world is witnessing,
on a global scale, problems similar to the acid rain phenomenon of the 1970s and
1980s.
Rahmstorf, the head of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Research into Climatic
Effects, says more research is urgently needed to assess the impact of ocean
acidification.
David Santillo, a senior scientist at Greenpeace's Research Laboratories in
Exeter, Britain, said it had come as a shock to scientists that the oceans are
turning acidic because of carbon dioxide emissions.
"The knock on effect for humans is that some of these marine resources that
we rely on may not be available in the future," the marine biologist, who was
not involved in Rahmstorf's study, told The Associated Press by telephone.
Rahmstorf also reiterated warnings of rising sea levels caused by global
warming, saying that in 70 years, temperature increases will lead more frequent
storms with 200 million people threatened by floods.
Scientists blame the past century's one-degree rise in average
global temperatures at least in part for the accumulation of carbon dioxide,
methane and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere - byproducts of power
plants, automobiles and other fossil fuel burners.
The 1997 Kyoto accord requires 35 industrialized
countries to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 5 per cent below 1990 levels by
2012. The Kyoto countries meeting in Nairobi are continuing talks on what kind
of emissions targets and timetables should follow 2012.