Friday, April 29, 2022

It's tough to think about, though I won't be here to see it

 

A very sobering, troubling, and disturbing report about the oceans and their future fate came out a few days ago.

Ocean animals face a mass extinction from climate change, study finds

"If humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, according to a study released Thursday, roughly a third of all marine animals could vanish within 300 years.

The findings, published in the journal Science, reveal a potential mass extinction looming beneath the waves. 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."

As some have noted, there's an escape route, as it were.  Because it says "If humanity's greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase ..."

Which means that if somehow that trajectory can be diverted (and I think it can be, and the main solution is spelled N-U-C-L-E-A-R    E-N-E-R-G-Y), then this dire consequence might be at least diminished. 

Here's another part of the article:
"Though the danger to animals — and the humans who depend on them — is undeniably dire, Pinsky, the Rutgers biologist, urged against giving in to despair.

In an analysis for Science that accompanied Penn and Deutsch’s report, he and Rutgers ecologist Alexa Fredston compared marine animals to canaries in a coal mine, alerting humanity to invisible forces — such as dangerous carbon dioxide accumulation and ocean oxygen loss — that also threaten our ability to survive. If people can take action to preserve ocean wildlife, we will wind up saving ourselves."
So what can we do?

What we need to do is everything we can, starting now.  

Which means putting solar panels over parking lots -- everywhere. And then building the nuclear power generating plant equivalent of the Model-T Ford, as many as possible, as quickly as possible.  And while we're doing that, get nuclear fusion working.

Then we -- and the oceans -- might have a chance.



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