The Environmental Protection Agency issued a pronouncement in December 2009 to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. 

It claimed it was using the authority provided it from the Clean Air Act and the May 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling inMassachusetts v. EPA that "greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endanger both the public health and the environment for current and future generations."

Humankind's assault on the oceans continues apace. A short time ago, we considered the loss of 40% of the phytoplankton in the oceans since 1950. In my post How We Wrecked The Oceans, marine ecologist Jeremy Jackson explains why he believes the sea will be devoid of fish and other large marine organisms sometime in the 2040s. And now comes the "other" carbon problem—acidification of the oceans.

As we burn fossil fuels, carbon dioxide (CO2) is released into the atmosphere. Everyone knows that part, but what they often don't know is that the oceans act as a enormous carbon "sink" which absorbs as much as 1/3rd of the released carbon dioxide. So the CO2 is no longer acting as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which sounds good, but unfortunately, we have shifted the problem of dealing with the excess gas from the air to the oceans. Through some fairly simple chemistry, the oceans are becoming more acidic as a result. In other words, through a natural process, the ocean becomes a giant waste dump for our fossil fuel emissions.