I was researching the average carbon usage for and came across a fantastic article from National Geographic, titled, The Case of the Missing Carbon.(http://environment.nationalgeographic.c … ing-carbon) This article explains that the average American contributes to the usage of more than 5.5 tons of carbon each year. Humanity as a whole is responsible for putting 8.8 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. Most of this comes from burning fossil fuels and deforestation but less than half of the total stays in our atmosphere and warms our Earth more and more. This amazing article brings light to our ever present question, what is happening to the carbon in our atmosphere?

The ocean absorbs a lot of the carbon dioxide released. And although this is good for our overall climate, it is very harmful for the ecosystems within the ocean. The dissolved carbon makes the ocean more acidic.