WATCH: Why Carbon Pollution Is Destroying the Ocean


One of the major themes in today’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the significance of oceans, which absorb 30 percent of the carbon dioxide we emit. This turns the water increasingly acidic, which threatens to dissolve many marine critters’ hard shells. I sat down with Monika Rhein, an oceanographer at Germany’s University of Bremen and a lead author of the IPCC report’s chapter on oceans, to talk about the state of the science on ocean acidification.

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

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