One of the most interesting forms of denial has embraced humanity’s reaction to the disasters that roil from unequivocal and direct climate change causation. Fossil fuel producers lambast scientific studies – despite a virtual uniform agreement among the relevant scientific community that global warming is the planet’s most dire existential challenge, far eclipsing the unparalleled devastation from our pandemic. Some fossil fuel states even charge homeowners who have the audacity to install solar panels on their roofs. It is, to them, a problem for future generations.
We use words like “sustained mega-drought” instead of irreversible “desertification.” Wildfires are a production of such “droughts.” We speak of the explosion of mega-storms and storm surges as “normal cyclical natural phenomena,” even as they intensify with the rising global temperature averages. A one-way rise, hardly a cycle. As cold and warm fronts collide with increasing intensity, we ignore the trend of more frequent, more widespread, intense tornados. We ignore island nations that are disappearing from rising seas and laugh at the inconvenience of street flooding in the Miami area.
In short, we continually look at the symptoms, respond to those symptoms, spend billions rising to trillions of dollars to restore and repair those specific disasters, as if that pattern of sidestepping dealing with the underlying cause is “enough.” Some religious orders claim that God promised not to punish the Earth again (after the “great flood”). Others claim the dire warnings are simply exaggerations from left-wing extremists attempting to oust and replace those energy sources that “built America.” Poor countries cry out that the costs should be born by the rich nations who built their wealth on raping their natural resources and powered industrialization based on fossil fuels.
But all this seems to be a chronic, kick-the-can-down-the-road human resistance to do what must be done now to save most of us, including the wildlife (plants and animals) that have no vote in mankind’s profligate ways. Scientists, not as concerned about convincing than they are about warning, continue to use the “end of the century” metric of horribles. Instead of dealing with the here and now, perhaps the clearly visible immediate future, these metrics simply aid and abet that kick-the-can-down-the-road mentality. Further, the pattern of treating the individual disasters resulting from climate change while fighting “budget and affordability” battles that prevent true deeper solutions, seems to be akin to treating chronic bleeding disorder in humans – hemophilia – by using increasingly bigger bandages.
If all of these disasters are something we can readily see, what is happening in areas of Earth that are not so apparent? What is happening under those vast waves of saltwater we call “oceans” and “seas”? For oceanographers, scientists whose chose field is to look beneath, it is no mystery. What we are experiencing on land is apparently so much worse in that watery mantle that covers most of the planet. What is happening is mass extinction of undersea life. Plants that process carbon dioxide and feed other sea life. Animals that complete the oceanic ecosystem. Even as food for an exploding human population.
The last time Earth faced such catastrophic annihilation, the planet turned morbidly dark after being struck by a massive asteroid… and the era of dinosaurs ended most unpleasantly for the largest animals that roamed the planet, along with a litany of other species unable to adapt. Millions of years ago. Well, it’s happening again, but we have replaced the asteroid with the choking accumulation of greenhouse gases.
Last month, Princeton University earth scientists Justin Penn and Curtis Deutsch published their study in Science, tracking ocean losses and damage, using statistics and computer models to analyze the acceleration of extinction. Those rising and immediate effects, if they continue unchecked, would create a mega-pattern of extinction which would slowly purge one-third of all existing species over the next three centuries. I know: too far in the future. But there are signs everywhere in the here and now. “Dead zones” are exploding. You just have to look at the great coral reefs all over the planet to see what we are facing now. What has happened as average global temperatures have risen 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the pre-industrial era. Sarah Kaplan, writing for the April 28th Washington Post, summarizes that published report:
“Warming waters are cooking creatures in their own habitats. Many species are slowly suffocating as oxygen leaches out of the seas. Even populations that have managed to withstand the ravages of overfishing, pollution and habitat loss are struggling to survive amid accelerating climate change… The oceans have absorbed a third of the carbon and 90 percent of the excess heat created by humans, but their vast expanse and forbidding depths mean scientists are just beginning to understand what creatures face there…
“These rising ocean temperatures are shifting the boundaries of marine creatures’ comfort zones. Many are fleeing northward in search of cooler waters, causing ‘extirpation’ — or local disappearance — of once-common species… Polar creatures that can survive only in the most frigid conditions may soon find themselves with nowhere to go. Species that can’t easily move in search of new habitats, such as fish that depend on specific coastal wetlands or geologic formations on the sea floor, will be more likely die out.
“Using climate models that predict the behavior of species based on simulated organism types, Deutsch and Penn found that the number of extirpations, or local disappearances of particular species, increases about 10 percent with every 1 degree Celsius of warming… The danger of warming is compounded by the fact that hotter waters start to lose dissolved oxygen — even though higher temperatures speed up the metabolisms of many marine organisms, so that they need more oxygen to live… The ocean contains just one-60th as much oxygen as the atmosphere; even less in warmer areas where water molecules are less able to keep the precious oxygen from bubbling back into the air. As global temperatures increase, that reservoir declines even further.
“The heating of the sea surface also causes the ocean to stratify into distinct layers, making it harder for warmer, oxygenated waters above to mix with the cooler depths. Scientists have documented expanding ‘shadow zones’ where oxygen levels are so low that most life can’t survive.
“Deoxygenation poses one of the greatest climate threats to marine life, said Deutsch, one of the study’s co-authors. Most species can expend a bit of extra energy to cope with higher temperatures or adjust to rising acidity. Even some corals have found ways to keep their calcium carbonate skeletons from eroding in more acidic waters.” However, many species cannot adapt; they just die off. The massive changes in our oceans are hardly a “canary in the coal mine”; they represent the entire coal mine if the warning signs are not taken seriously right now.
I’m Peter Dekom, but if humanity wises up and deals effectively to contain climate change, those Princeton scholars tell us that we could eliminate 70% of those mass oceanic extinctions.
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