Documentation > Greenhouse effect > Risks > Will we turn the
ocean into an acid lake ? As everybody knows (or should know !),
man is now putting significant amounts of CO2 into the
atmosphere, though our emissions are taking place into a natural
carbon cycle much more complex, which includes exchanges between
the atmosphere and the ocean. The CO2 exchanges between the
atmosphere and the surface ocean (roughly 90 billion tonnes of
carbon each way per year on the above graph) do not owe much to
the existence of a marine life : if we suppressed all fish and
all whales, it would definitely generate some inconvenients, but
not a slowdown of the CO2 exchanges between the atmosphere and
the surface ocean ! These exchanges are essentially a
consequence of the existence of large scale marine currents,
that cool down water masses in some places (like the water of
the Gulf Stream that shifts towards the North Pole), and heats
up the surface ocean in some other places (for example the water
of the Labrador Current that s