Is Our Luck Running Out? Part Two.
Oceans failing to protect us from our own heat pollution
The oceans are no longer absorbing as much heat from the atmosphere.
This is a huge deal.
Last time, I discussed how land areas—forests, wetlands, and other ecosystems—are no longer absorbing as much of our carbon pollution as they once did. The result is that more CO2 is ending up in the atmosphere. (See Nature is being less helpful with our carbon pollution.)
The decline in Nature’s CO2-reduction service means our world will get hotter faster.
Sadly, it gets worse.
Need-to-Know: Oceans have kept us from roasting
Besides sucking up a lot of our CO2 pollution, Nature provides another extremely vital service: heat reduction. The oceans absorb more than 90% of the excess heat produced by our CO2 pollution.
Without this, our carbon emissions would have made the world unlivable long ago.
Consider: Instead of the 1.75C rise in temperatures we see today, it would be 15 to 17 degrees C hotter globally than today without the oceans burying 90% of our heat pollution into their dark, cold depths.
Scientists consider anything above 3 degrees C a catastrophic level of warming and 4.0 degrees C civilization ending.
Need-to-Know: Our oceans have kept crocodiles out of the Arctic (so far)
The last time the Earth was anything close to 15 to 17 degrees hotter was 56 million years ago when crocodiles roamed a very tropical Arctic. There was no ice anywhere, and sea levels were 60 meters higher.
Take a moment to think how lucky we’ve been that the oceans have absorbed 90% of heat from our carbon pollution. We should thank the oceans every day for the invaluable services they provide instead of treating them like a trash can.
Sadly, we appear to have angered the ocean gods and triggered a fundamental change.
The amount of heat transferred from the ocean’s surface waters into its depths has rapidly declined over the past two decades, according to a new study in Nature Climate Change.
This oceanic heat-transfer mechanism regulates the global temperature, so yes, this is a very big deal.
The weakening of the ocean’s heat-transfer mechanism is keeping more heat in the upper 200 meters. This explains why sea surface temperatures have reached record highs, why marine heat waves have been more intense and last longer, and why coral reefs are dying.
This also explains why global warming is accelerating.
Researchers were shocked by the scale of the change. The decline in the ocean’s ability to mitigate global warming will likely accelerate the rise of global temperatures, they concluded.
In other words, this is why things are getting hotter faster and will continue to get hotter faster.
Need-to-Know: Evidence that global warming is accelerating
According to another new study, the rate of warming has increased 50% since 2010, with an astonishing surge of 0.4 degrees C in the last two years. Consider how much energy is needed to heat up the entire surface of the planet 0.4 degrees C in just two years.
The rate of warming had been 0.18 degrees C per decade over the last 50 years. So, more than two decades of heating in just the past two years is an astonishing acceleration.
I don’t like being the bearer of bad news like this, nor do the scientists doing the research. However, I think we have a right to know what’s happening and what we will have to live with in the coming years.
It may be easy to ignore this stuff right now. But you should know these fundamental changes to our life support system are relentless and will never listen to our pleas for mercy or negotiation.
Remember, we’re not powerless in this. We’re the cause of this threat to our civilization. We can choose to save ourselves and fellow creatures.
Need-to-Know: Optimism comes from knowing things could be better
My What Do We Do Now? The challenging case for optimism post from a few weeks ago feels even more relevant today. I wrote:
Optimism in our present moment isn’t about wishful thinking. It’s about possibility and about knowing things could be better.
In knowing things can be better, a realistic optimist doesn’t wait on the sidelines for things to improve but takes steps to make things better.
So, at this moment when everything seems to be going wrong, what can we do?
Be aware of what’s happening, but don’t get caught up in the chaos and angst.
Make sure you are going in a positive direction and keeping to your values in the stuff you do and the decisions you make.
Connect with people, not to complain, but to enjoy each other’s company and find simple ways to work together to better your community.
Spread simple truths. For example, the cost of clean energy is low, and it keeps falling, making it easier and easier to install more of it.
Until next time. Be well.
Stephen
Thanks Stephen, the information is shocking. Keep providing information it is much appreciated. I am happy to become a paid subscriber.
Donald Trump and other like-minded conservatives remain quite willing to pollute and warm the planet most liberally. And it must be convenient for the very-profitable mega polluters.
To date there clearly has been pathetically insufficient political courage/will to properly act upon the scientific cause-and-effect of them. Human-caused global warming and its resultant increasing number and intensity of climate-change-induced extreme weather events rightfully continue to stir up alarm. Perhaps even for many of those people who still claim to distrust climate science.
Yet, increasingly problematic is the very large and growing populace who are too overworked, worried and even angry about food and housing unaffordability for themselves or their family — all while on insufficient income — to criticize the fossil fuel industry, etcetera, for environmental damage their policies cause/allow, particularly when not immediately observable.
There’s a continuance of polluting the natural environment with a business as usual attitude. Societally, we still discharge out of elevated exhaust pipes, smokestacks and, quite consequentially, from sky-high jet engines like it’s all absorbed into the natural environment without repercussion. Out of sight, out of mind.
… Obstacles to environmental progress were quite formidable pre-pandemic. But Covid-19 not only stalled most projects being undertaken, it added greatly to the already busy landfills and burning centers with disposed masks and other non-degradable biohazard-protective single-use materials.