Ignore @ Your Own Peril

Back in 2010, BRT did a piece titled No Doubt Anymore, a blurb about the wonderful Nautilus and the perils this ancient and beautiful creature faces due to increased CO2 injection into the sea, thus increasing ocean acidification, the main culprit in the 5, going on 6, great dyings of planet earth.

Until recently, you might be forgiven for thinking that the oceans were a trivial component of Earth’s climate system, and that the consequences of change were minimal. After all, only 5% of papers published on climate change involve ocean systems. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which evaluates the peer-reviewed scientific literature, did not devote a regional chapter to the ocean until its most recent major report.

Yet the ocean system could not be more important: it regulates the global temperature and atmosphere, feeds 3 billion people, and largely determines our weather. The ocean also has lots of “inertia” – which means that getting the ocean to change takes a lot of energy, but once it begins to change, slowing it down becomes more or less impossible.

It gets "better".

The news is not good. Failure to act on climate change will see warmer and more stagnant oceans, with declining oxygen levels and productivity in some regions, and the removal or modification of ecosystems in other areas. Fisheries and national economies are in the cross hairs in many regions. Rising seas and intensifying storms, plus a loss of critical coastal features, will make life on the shores of a rapidly changing ocean dangerously different to today.

People and countries are starting to wake up but is it enough, can civilization change its ways in time to avoid environmental collapse or does humanity become The Walking Dead within the next 100 years. Only time will tell.