Smithsonian.com

About a third of carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed into the oceans, which heats them up and makes them more acidic. So acidic that ocean water in 2050 will have the pH of industrial waste, reports a Stanford team today.

Luckily, the acidity won’t affect fish because they’ll all be dead by 2050, according to last year’s report in the journal Science.

The pH process–called “ocean acidification”–especially affects small shells and corals in shallow coastal waters (the ones you see in postcards): the Caribbean, South East Asia, Hawaii.

The good news is that the ocean will be really really really clean. Antibacterial clean. It’s a bit like throwing out the baby with the bath water–if it were a baby capable of providing food and water to the world’s population. But man, the postcards will be beautiful in the future. All that windex-blue, burns-to-the-touch water.