Extinction?

 

Migrating salmon gasping for air in overheated and recently shallowed rivers and streams, unable to complete their journey to reproduce. Coral reefs blanching with overheated death. Scores of mammals and birds facing starvation as plant and animal life upon which they depend wither from the ecological disaster of climate change. Plants and animals seared in a painful death as wildfires explode.

As our focus centers on a raging and resurging pandemic, exacerbated by vaccine polarization and aversion from disinformation, ignorance and misguided political beliefs, as millions more individuals are slammed with the most virulent coronavirus variant to date, the ravages of climate change march on. They portend even great death and destruction, perhaps less immediate but infinitely more devastating. Mankind, whose toxic greenhouse gasses have caused it all, continues to do too little too late. 

Even our bipartisan infrastructure plan has been culled of its most salient climate change provisions, as Republicans simply continue to insist that our economy cannot afford the cost adequately to reverse our carbon-based nightmare. Estimates of near-term climate change costs globally exceed $30 trillion, with a sizeable chunk of that within the United States (much higher costs over a longer term), fall on deafened legislative ears long since shifted to expensive reactive support and so much less on proactive solutions that, while expensive, are vastly less than the cost of the seemingly inevitable damage.

But for mankind, it is a choice. We may be making a horrific global choice in our efforts, but at least there is a possibility for us to do something significant to stop the escalation in decimation. Plants and animals do not have that choice. They must suffer from human hubris, whether based on some truly unjustifiable belief that “God would not let another global natural catastrophe happen” (after the Great Flood) or a simple unwillingness, from greed or poverty, to stop burning and producing carbon-based effluents.

When extinction is the variable, the cost is incredibly high. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a consortium of government agencies and NGOs, took a look at the problem. Here is their prepandemic (2017) observation: Species are already being impacted by anthropogenic climate change, and its rapid onset is limiting the ability of many species to adapt to their environments. Climate change is currently affecting 19% of species listed as threatened on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™, increasing the likelihood of their extinction. The Bramble Cay melomys (Melomys rubicola) is the first mammal reported to have gone extinct as a direct result of climate change. Previously found only on the island of Bramble Cay in Great Barrier Reef, its habitat was destroyed by rising sea levels.

Corals form one of the most biodiverse ecosystems, yet they are among the most rapidly declining species groups due to mass bleaching, disease and die-offs caused by rising ocean temperatures, as well ocean acidification. Meeting the Paris Agreement’s target of less than 2°C rise in global temperatures is essential for the survival of coral reefs.

In addition to increased rates of disease and degraded habitats, climate change is also causing changes in species themselves, which threaten their survival. Rising temperatures have led to ecological changes including the migration of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) to Arctic rivers, while behavioural changes in species include earlier breeding times for North American tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor). Climate change is also causing significant physiological changes. Warmer temperatures during egg incubation are causing imbalanced female to male sex ratios among Endangered green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas), with females accounting for 99% of newly hatched turtles on some nesting beaches. Genetic changes attributed to climate change include hybridisation – interbreeding as species’ habitats change – affecting species such as the common toad (Bufo bufo) and green toad (Bufotes balearicus) in southern Italy…

In addition to their intrinsic value, species play essential roles in ecosystems, which in turn provide vital services to humans. Climate change interacts with threats such as habitat loss and overharvesting to further exacerbate species declines. The decline of species and ecosystems can then accelerate climate change, creating a feedback loop that further exacerbates the situation.  

The signs of species degradation are everywhere. While land-based decimation is more easily visible, there is increasingly a question that addresses the sustainability of the entire planet’s oceans, selfishly from a human perspective, the source of fish protein and massive chlorophyll-carbon dioxide-absorbing/oxygen-producing plant life. One of the most visible reflections of the increasing toxicity of our oceans sit with one of its largest and most vulnerable creatures: the gray whale. Their corpses are washing ashore in growing numbers. Increasing polluting maritime traffic. Proliferating dead zones. Overfishing. But mostly climate change.

Writing for the August 8th Los Angeles Times, Susanne Rust provides a deeper level of understanding: “For thousands of years, the gray whales of the eastern Pacific have undertaken one of the longest annual migrations of any mammal — starting in the cold waters of the Arctic, then down past the densely populated coasts and beaches of California before finally finding refuge in the warm, shallow estuaries of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula. Only to turn around and head back north a few weeks later.

Starting in December 2018, this magnificent migration took a fatal turn… The bodies of California gray whales began washing up along the protected inlets of Baja, where gray whales come every spring to nurse their young and mate. The first to die was a young male, beached along the shore of Isla Arena, in Guerrero Negro Lagoon. Two days later, the decomposing body of a young female was found sloshing in waves along a beach in Ojo de Liebre Lagoon, just a few miles south of the first.

“Then, on Jan. 4, 2019, three more young whales were found dead, all of them severely decomposed, in the same lagoon… ‘We’d never seen anything like that before,’ said Ranulfo Mayoral, 56, son of Pachico Mayoral, one of the earliest proprietors of the region’s whale-watching ecotourism businesses. ‘This is a safe place for whales. It’s not where they die.’

“What Mayoral was witnessing was the start of a leviathan die-off that, for 2½ years, has alarmed legions of whale watchers and perplexed scientists up and down the western coast of North America. Gray whales are known for being hardy and resilient — ‘the jeeps of the ocean,’ as retired U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biologist Wayne Perryman calls them — but something has gone badly wrong.

“Scientists are now scrambling to figure out what is killing these 40-foot-long marine mammals. The ‘what’ is anything but obvious… Some scientists believe there may be too many whales for the population to sustain itself. Others say this explanation of ‘overcapacity’ and ‘natural causes’ overlooks the gantlet of hazards that grays now face — including ecosystem alteration, ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, plastics pollution, disease, ocean acidification and loss of kelp forests.

“Then there is climate change, which is melting ice sheets in the Arctic, altering oceanic currents, warming water temperatures and potentially changing the food supply for whales and other creatures… In 2019, things got weird… Beginning in January, Baja researchers and tour operators noticed gray whales were arriving there about two weeks later than usual. Nearly a quarter seemed atypically skinny — with their blowholes sunken into their backs like deflated, skin-covered bowls, and their vertebrae protruding along their spines… Since 2019 until July 29 this year, 481 whales have stranded along the beaches of North America, including 69 in California.

“[Researchers] watched as [Northern California] kelp forests have progressively disappeared, and they documented the changed timing of the gray whales’ migration. Based on their data, the number of migrating whales had dropped from a high of roughly 1,100 in 2015 to a 2019 low of about 800… They also noticed very few mother-calf pairs — a pattern seen in Baja 20 years ago, the last time there was a significant die-off of gray whales. It was a worrisome indication that something was wrong.” The signs are rising. The evidence dramatic. Are we also killing ourselves?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the laws of physic and biology – Mother Nature – will continue to exert reactive toxicity from humanity’s irresponsibility, notwithstanding that the obvious solutions are politically and economically inconvenient.