Sylvia Earle Quotes About Atmosphere

Quotes about: Atmosphere

• Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.

  Sylvia Earle

  Yield, Oxygen, Sea

• We are blessed with a place that is open to the universe and, despite this, supports this very thin envelope of air we call atmosphere, which holds just the right amount of oxygen for us to breathe.

  Sylvia Earle

  Blessed, Air, Oxygen

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• Ocean acidification - the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is turning the oceans increasingly acid - is a slow but accelerating impact with consequences that will greatly overshadow all the oil spills put together. The warming trend that is CO2-related will overshadow all the oil spills that have ever occurred put together.

  Sylvia Earle

  Ocean, Oil, Impact

• What we put into the atmosphere in terms of burning fuel is unprecedented.

  Sylvia Earle

  Atmosphere, Burning, Fuel

  Source: www.spiegel.de

• The Arctic is a place that historically, during all preceding human history, has largely been an icy realm with an impact on ocean currents. That, in turn, influences the temperature of the planet. The Arctic is now vulnerable because of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, with a rate of melting that is stunning.

  Sylvia Earle

  Ocean, Impact, Atmosphere

• If Darwin could see what we now see, what we now know about the ocean, about the atmosphere, about the nature of life, as we now understand it, about the importance of microbes - I think he would just beam with joy that many of the thoughts and the glimpses of the majesty of life on Earth that he had during his life, now magnified many times over.

  Sylvia Earle

  Ocean, Thinking, Joy

  "Big Thinkers on Evolution". "NOVA" Interview, www.pbs.org. October 6, 2009.

• We have an atmosphere that is roughly 21% oxygen. The rest of it is largely nitrogen. There's just enough carbon dioxide (CO2) to drive photosynthesis. That has been, throughout the history of our species, pretty stable. Until recently.

  Sylvia Earle

  Oxygen, Atmosphere, Nitrogen

• The burning of fossil fuels has altered the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so rapidly and so abundantly that now, we are driving not just the warming trend, not just the sea level rise that is a consequence of the warming trend that is melting polar ice and alpine ice, but also [ocean acidification].

  Sylvia Earle

  Ocean, Ice, Sea

  "Her Majesty Of The Deep Blue Sea: An Interview With Dr. Sylvia Earle, Part One". Interview with Dan Linehan, www.mission-blue.org. January 23, 2013.

• We woke up some years ago about the consequences of ozone depletion, the hole in the atmosphere. You can't see it. You can't taste it. You can't smell it. But now we do regard that as a key issue. It's a scientific finding.

  Sylvia Earle

  Years, Smell, Issues

  "Her Majesty Of The Deep Blue Sea: An Interview With Dr. Sylvia Earle, Part One". Interview with Dan Linehan, www.mission-blue.org. January 23, 2013.

• Throughout all of human history we've enjoyed certain benign circumstances: an envelope of atmosphere, an envelope of temperature. A kind of resilience that if you cut down trees, then they'll grow back. You take fish, they recover. You put stuff into the atmosphere that you know is not good for us, but we can still breathe. We haven't awakened, generally, to the sense of urgency that does exist.

  Sylvia Earle

  Cutting, Tree, Over You

  "Her Majesty Of The Deep Blue Sea: An Interview With Dr. Sylvia Earle, Part One". Interview with Dan Linehan, www.mission-blue.org. January 23, 2013.

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