The BBC has an article on a new report from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean that says we are about to witness a marine extinction event unprecedented in human history. Here’s a blunt assessment:
Carbon dioxide levels are now so high, it says, that ways of pulling the gas out of the atmosphere need to be researched urgently – but not using techniques, such as iron fertilisation, that lead to more CO2 entering the oceans.
“We have to bring down CO2 emissions to zero within about 20 years,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg told BBC News.
“If we don’t do that, we’re going to see steady acidification of the seas, heat events that are wiping out things like kelp forests and coral reefs, and we’ll see a very different ocean.”
Another of the report’s authors, Dan Laffoley, marine chair of the World Commission on Protected Areas and an adviser to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), admitted the challenges were vast.
“But unlike previous generations, we know what now needs to happen,” he said.
“The time to protect the blue heart of our planet is now.”
What does Sarah Palin think about this? What does the American Petroleum Institute think? What does the Republican Party think? What do Democrats from oil and coal-producing states think?
I’ll tell you what I think. We’re fucked.
And we’re fucked because we don’t listen to and respect our scientists. Our scientists handed us these computers and smart phones and we used them to play video games and pretend we’re experts about shit we’re not qualified to have an independent opinion about. We need American leadership on the climate crisis, but the people are perfectly happy with a Congress filled with assholes who are bought and paid for by the energy corporations.