it can instantly cause severe burns on your skin it can even dissolve things like limestone and concrete this is battery acid what if we decided to fill 80% of our world with it specifically what if we decided to turn our oceans into acid what would this acid mean for ocean wildlife what might swimming in this be like and how would it affect our cities this is what if and here's what would happen if the oceans turned to acid to put what we're about to do in perspective our oceans have a pH of around 8 pH
levels are a measure of how acidic or basic a solution is battery acid has a pH of 0 right at the bottom of the scale meaning it is incredibly acidic and scientists are expecting something like this to happen with 100% of the Arctic Ocean becoming corrosive ly acidic by the year 2100 but what if we speed this up and make it affect all of our oceans first we should figure out why something like this is happening well due to climate change the ocean is absorbing more carbon dioxide than ever and when that happens it dissolves
and reacts with the water creating carbonic acid over time this can cause our oceans to become incredibly acidic harming fish coral reefs and even the ocean floor itself if something like this were to happen overnight it's safe to say that all the fish you like to eat would be killed and would be quickly dissolved by the acid there are nearly 230,000 different species in the ocean and that's just what we've found scientists estimate that there are over 2 million more species we have yet to discover so tons of fish would be dead but what about
more robust fish like sharks well although they have a much thicker skin they would dive relatively quickly as well so would mammals like dolphins and whales now what about crustaceans like lobsters and crabs well they definitely have a better chance of surviving due to their hard shells protecting them but that would only happen if the oceans gradually got more acidic with it happening instantly every species in the ocean would go extinct and even if a species could miraculously survive losing all the others would destroy the food chain so they would go extinct as well now
what if something like this happened over the course of 100 years would all the creatures in the ocean be able to adapt well no something like this happened 55 million years ago and even though it took place over thousands of years it caused a mass extinction event so regardless of how long it takes for the oceans to turn to acid it would kill any living creature within it so now with all the fish dead what's left in our oceans well the coral reefs might be able to hold out a bit longer but they won't last
forever once they start to dissolve we'll also begin to see these oceans of acid affect what we have on land our oceans already dissolve and erode our coastlines but slowly but once our oceans turn to acid the process would occur much faster over time the oceans would start to take over our land gradually dissolving coasts and then making its way to our houses and eventually our cities and since this was all caused by global warming which increases the chance of hurricanes imagine these acid waters flooding our streets if that were to happen our homes buildings
and roads would all start to dissolve and fall apart and it would inevitably make contact with your skin causing it to burn yeah swimming in this acid would be out of the question and as this happens more and more millions of people would become injured will die and the oceans would start to take over the earth anyone who managed to survive maybe up on a mountain top would eventually be left with nothing so turning our oceans into acid would be a horrific idea if we do want to mess around with acid maybe we should take
some stomach acid and fill a swimming pool with it and how about we try jumping into it just to see what happens yeah we'll leave that story to another what-if [Music]
