the rise of slime/global warming

I just read an article in the Nov 20th New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert about the effects of global warming on our oceans, notably on corals and micro-organisms. Basically, we are experiencing a rate of change to our ecosystems that is similar to that of the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary period when a six-mile long asteroid hit the earth. "Half of all the coral became exctinct, and it took the other half more than two million years to recover." She also writes about the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which refers to another period that took place 55 million years ago, when most of the prehistoric mammals became extinct and new species emerged as a result of more CO2 in the atmosphere. These changes occured over a period of one to ten thousand years. The changes we are wreaking on our environment have largely occured in the last century. She writes, "Currently, CO2 is being released into the air at least three times and perhaps as much as thirty times as quickly as during the PETM."

What is it going to take? I'm convinced that we need to engender a new race of ecologically conscious youngsters who see conservation and preservation as not just a priority, but the norm for social behavior. And that humans are merely one species that inhabits Planet Earth, and that it is an honor to even be here.

She quotes another scientist who explains that the result of rising levels of CO2 in the oceans will be that most of the organisms in the oceans' food chain will become extinct and we'll be left only with the likes of jellyfish: "... at the end we will have the rise of slime."