Ken Caldeira, a chemical oceanographer at Stanford University, recently briefed lawmakers along with marine ecologist Joan Kleypas, and said oceans are more acidic than they have has been for "many millions of years. What we're doing in the next decade will affect our oceans for millions of years," Caldeira said. "CO2levels are going up extremely rapidly, and it's overwhelming our marine systems."

The pH level of oceans, measured in "units," is a calculation of the balance of a liquid's acidity and its alkalinity. The lower a liquid's pH number, the higher its acidity; the higher the number, the more alkaline it is. The ph level for the world's oceans was stable between 1000 and 1800, but has dropped one-tenth of a unit since the Industrial Revolution, according to Christopher Langdon, a University of Miami marine biology professor.

Scientists expect ocean pH levels to drop by another 0.3 units by 2100, which could seriously damage marine creatures that need calcium carbonate to build their shells and skeletons. Once absorbed in seawater, carbon dioxide forms carbonic acid and lowers ocean pH, making it harder for corals, plankton and tiny marine snails (called pteropods) to form their body parts.

Caldeira has mapped out where corals exist today and the pH levels of the water in which they thrive; by the end of the century, no seawater will be as alkaline as where they live now. If carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current levels, he said, "It's say goodbye' to coral reefs."

Although the fate of plankton and marine snails may not seem as compelling as vibrantly colored coral reefs, they are critical to sustaining marine species such as salmon, redfish, mackerel and baleen whales.

"These are groups everyone depends on, and if their numbers go down there are going to be reverberations throughout the food chain," said John Guinotte, a marine biologist at the Marine Conservation Biology Institute. "When I see marine snails' shells dissolving while they're alive, that's spooky to me."

Atlantispa owner Michael Grady, an Independent Scholar of The Institute for Cultural and Healing Traditions of Moline, IL, stated that that it is no coincidence that the oceans are in an over-acidic state.

"When one looks at how our own bodies are over acidic and often diseased as a result, it should come as no surprise that the oceans are also becoming diseased. I am astonished, however, that this oceanic news goes almost unnoticed in the media compared to the daily dose of global warming news. First, because science has confirmed the measured growth rate of acid concentration in the oceans. It is not speculation. Second, we won't have to wait hundreds or thousands of years to experience the full extent of this particular eco-damage. In less than one hundred years, the oceans may become nearly depleted of life due to the lack of a sustainable food chain. Fish may be stronger than plankton to exist in higher ocean pH levels, but without these micro-organisms to sustain them, they simply die of starvation", Grady said.

Grady concluded by saying that it would be difficult to trust policymakers to endorse ways to reduce the acidic effects on the environment if the bodies of the same policymakers are just as polluted and acidic.

"What comes around goes around. One doesn't have to be drunk or high to be intoxicated, so the question is, do we really need intoxicated lawmakers making decisions that effect the lives of billions of people? No, what we need is to be holistically aware that we must be detoxed and maintain a healthy pH in our own bodies before we can genuinely care for the environment to be clean and with a more sustainable pH. There are no coincidences in Nature, only facts and science."