Whitman

Walt Whitman is my favorite American poet.

Scientists wanted to see how these developing larvae were being affected by the increased acidity of the ocean water caused by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Whitman Miller — an environmental scientist and ecologist with the Smithsonian research center — says oceans normally absorb about half of the carbon dioxide that's produced by living creatures. But when excess CO₂ is pumped into the atmosphere and dissolves into seawater, that contributes to an acidification, or a lowering of the pH of the oceans. A byproduct of that process — carbonic acid — rapidly converts to carbonate and bicarbonate ions, which Miller says are corrosive to the calcium carbonate shells of oysters and other marine species.