Report: The World Will Run out of Breathable Air Unless Carbon Is Cut

[WhiteTara]

http://news.yahoo.com/report-world-run-breathable-air-unless-carbon-cut-210604512.html

As representatives from 195 nations gather in Paris to hammer out a global agreement to slash greenhouse gas emissions, a new study finds that the failure to do so could leave the world gasping for breath.

Marine plants such as phytoplankton are estimated to produce more than half the Earth’s atmospheric oxygen, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For the study, Sergei Petrovskii, an applied mathematics professor at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, calculated how unrestrained global warming could affect phytoplankton and thus the ocean’s ability to generate breathable air. He ran computer models that looked at what would happen to phytoplankton’s ability to photosynthesize at different temperatures.

If the world’s oceans warmed by 6 degrees Celsius—a realistic possibility if global emissions continue unabated—the tiny plants would halt oxygen production, according to the study, which was published Tuesday in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology.

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