I'm not a native english speaker, but these sound wrong:
> "This report will be followed by a detailed reported include the observed data from 13 sailing vessels and over 500 data points across the Atlantic Ocean."
> "We are biologists and perhaps we think differently to other professions."
You mean than ?
> "marine plankton form the root[...]"
forms ?
> The legend of figure ?? (yea not numbered) says "Particles in 100ml of seawater from the middle of the Atlantic".
It's not ideal to reproduce the experiment, because not everyone knows where the middle is !
Their findings sounds alarming, especially this :
>"peer reviewed literature shows we have lost more than 50% of all life in the oceans, but from own plankton sampling activity and other observations, we consider that losses closer to 90%[...]"
I think people on the field usualy have better insight than academics but i cannot trust such a poorly written article.
The primary greenhouse gas is not CO2, its water vapour (>50% of all the atmospheric greenhouse gases)
Marine plants keep water vapor from getting out of hand.
Pollution that makes its way to the ocean, like toxic waste, oil and oil-based chemicals doesn't get "diluted" - it stays on the surface and emulsifies and can even be concentrated into microplastics.
The marine life then consumes these toxins, leading to their demise and death.
The decline of marine life leads to greater water vapor (greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere.
Ugh, smells like crank. Someone discovered a climatology 101 fact and then made a big fuss about it. Just ... read an introductory textbook on climate science please. It's basically all speculation disguised as a "case study". The authors should show some numbers if they are really serious about their claim, for example, how much increase in marine evaporation can be expected from an idealized sterile ocean.
> Marine plants like diatoms produce omega 3 oil which acts like a cap on the surface of the water to slow down evaporation
There are no numbers about this, no reference, nothing. And this claim is quite extraordinary. This absolutely needs to be quantified in order to go further. How does omega 3 oil, rejected by sea life on a limited portion of the sea, a product that can be oxidized easily, be a significant barrier to evaporation.
Maybe this is true, I don't know. But this is definitely counter intuitive and any counter intuitive claim should be supported by something, not just hand waived like that.
"pH will drop to pH7.95 by 2045, and most marine life in our oceans dissolve."
As someone who considers themselves an environmentalist, I find this sort of language to have a net-negative impact on our collective cause. The paper fails to provide comprehensive evidence for the idea that a pH change of 0.08 will result in all carbonate-based marine life dissolving.
When 2045 comes, and the coral still exists, our populace will be further trained to ignore the warnings of climate scientists.
As a counterpoint to the idea that "alarmism" is counterproductive:
There are many of us who believe, by looking at the trends of arctic methane release, that runaway warming is now inescapable. (As a sidenote, arctic methane was for a long time were not even considered in IPCC reports, and many deposits are still not being considered today).
20 years ago there was a vocal minority that was saying "we must have drastic change NOW. If we de not act now we will be doomed." The IPCC and many departments thought that such drastic, alarmist language, would be counterproductive.
And nothing really changed and we are now, perhaps, doomed. Perhaps those alarmists were right.
It is of course impossible to prove the counterfactual of "what would have happened if we had been more alarmists 20 years ago?". But what we do know is that the tempered course of action we did take was almost certainly not enough.
* It goes without saying, but 20 years ago was 2002. Post google, post ipod. Basically the current age, not like, the 1970s or something, even though it may feel that way.
The linked PDF is not so much a "paper" as it is a mid-tier web article, IMO.
Another claim seems plausible, but is kind of hilariously hand-waved:
> 90% of our oxygen comes from the oceans and more than 90% of our carbon dioxide ends up in the oceans. This figure [which figure?] is usually reported as 50%, but 90% is more
accurate.
It won't exist in the ocean. This language is accurate, based on what we know, and appropriately conclusive.
I opened the article hoping it highlighted the most immediate problem (ocean acidification) and I was not disappointed. The plastic, yeah it's bad, but it's not going to kill off most sea life.
it might be that:
if you count the mass of marine life, most of it is from the tiny animals.
Just like there is more insects than humans. Therefore, most of the marine life is dead if you kill most of the plankton. And because it's the "root of the food chain", most of everything dies
It isn't remotely true. Corals have persisted through the geological past when atmospheric CO2 was many times today's level. It could be true that _some_ coral species would go extinct, but corals as a class are likely to persist.
> Corals have persisted through the geological past when atmospheric CO2 was many times today's level.
We're heading toward something similar to the Miocene, both in CO2, temperature, and ph. You might want to look into the "Middle Miocene disruption", which refers to a wave of extinctions of terrestrial and aquatic life forms that occurred following the Miocene Climatic Optimum. There's a big oceanic fossil gap in the Miocene, because of this peak-temperature which seemed to tilt ecosystems too far. We do know the hard-coral scleractinians (same as modern corals^1) didn't appear because of this change, but likely because they were one of the few types that can survive it. Unfortunately, if the trend continues, the hardiest of the ancient species all die^2. 7.2 doesn't sound like 7.95? The ocean isn't uniformly affected^3 and will likely kick off another "disruption" of the existing ecosystems causing a collapse. ie You don't need to set fire to all the trees for the forest to burn down.
> When 2045 comes, and the coral still exists, our populace will be further trained to ignore the warnings of climate scientists.
When 2045 comes there will be no more "climate scientists" warning the general public because decades of "climate"-related scare mongering combined with "green" marketing (i.e. greenwashing) will have made the public insensitive to whatever they have to say, be it based in reality or in ideology. Instead of "climate" there will be some new looming disaster caused by human activity - nanotechnology, genetic engineering, nitrogen release due to farming (look at what is happening in the Netherlands [1] for a preview of what is to come) - which will also be co-opted by ideologues and marketeers for their nefarious purposes upon which the cycle will repeat. A very incomplete litany of apocalyptic predictions helps to shed a light on this phenomenon:
- food shortage due to overpopulation
- nuclear winter
- Paul Ehrlich's famine predictions
- the Silent Spring which would have killed off all birds
- a new glaciation triggered by particulate matter in the atmosphere
- the ozone layer scare
- acid rain which would kill all life in lakes and bleach trees
- another glaciation, now confirmed by satellite data and climate records showing no end to the 30-year cooling trend for the northern hemisphere
- the current "climate crisis" with its many individual scares like:
* the arctic would be ice free by 2014 (Gore) or 2016 (US Navy)
* ...which would cause a methane catastrophe due to the release of gas hydrates (which turned out to be caused by isostatic rebound, i.e. the ground rising after the ice pack retreated at the end of the last glaciation some 8000 years ago)
* north-western Europe would become "Siberian" by 2024 (did not happen)
* snowfall would be a thing of the past (record snowfall in the last few years)
* sea level rise would drown island nations (did and does not happen)
* Greenland would melt (it is actually doing the opposite)
In all these cases there was and is a core of truth which formed the base of these apocalyptic scenarios but in all cases that core of truth was stretched beyond reason for ideological and marketing purposes. Overpopulation could lead to food shortages but the industrial revolution made for a massive increase in productivity which actually increased the food supply per capita. Pesticides were harmful for birds but the "Silent Spring" scenario was severely overblown for ideological purposes. Particulate matter in the atmosphere leads to an increase in cloud cover which increases the planet's albedo while decreasing the amount of water vapour (a potent green house gas) but the glaciation scenario was severely overblown. The ozone hole scare never materialised even though the "hole" in the ozone layer persists. Acid rain turned out to be far less of a problem than predicted (something which became clear when I studied this phenomenon myself during my years at a leading agricultural university where I studied forestry). The "climate crisis" which we supposedly now are going through also quite stubbornly fails to differ substantially from earlier warmer periods like that in the 1930's (the Dust Bowl years) with the arctic refusing to melt, snow falling abundantly, islands not drowning as promised, north-western Europe not succumbing to a Siberian climate etc.
The real cure for these problems lies in the rigorous application of the scientific method without the troubling addition of ideology, without emotionally driven goal-hunting in the data, without commercially driven hiding of findings, without the religious dogmatism of The Science™. As to how to implement such a scheme... I don't know... anyone?
The trouble with the climate change lobby (aside from the paid /lobbyists/ and entrenched profit motives) is that you can only cry wolf so many times and make so many wildly hyperbolic and/or hypocritical claims before well-intentioned people start to question the whole narrative.
Don't get me wrong - I'd prefer not to find out what sort of negative impact climate change may have. I just think the current messaging isn't doing them any favors.
So this is not meant as a criticism of climate change or an opposition or anything like that but honestly a lot of the climate change doomsayers seem very similar to me like religious apocalyptics in a lot of ways.
There is a huge impending end of the world catastrophe coming soon because so many people are living their lives wrong, the only way to stop or change that is to make massive personal changes in your life and do everything within your influence to convince everyone you know to change their lives or else the end is nigh!
I mean really that messaging is pretty much the same between fundamentalists of both the religious and climate variety. It often seems as well they are less interested in figuring out actual realistic solutions to these problems than feeling smugly superior because they are "one of the chosen".
Discuss the actual predictions from mainstream climate science rather than the unlikely doomsday scenarios, like a hothouse Earth. And include the adaptability of humans and the potential of technological solutions. Weigh that against realistic scenarios in a cost/benefit analysis. Proclaiming society is doomed and humanity is going extinct is not only unlikely, it’s chicken little and ends up turning well meaning people off.
I identify as an environmental apocalyptic. It started when I was a teenager and I realized how destructive we are. It seemed clear to me even then that we were headed for disaster if we didn't learn to live in harmony with Nature.
From that POV let me address the similarities and differences to religious apocalyptics as I see them:
> There is a huge impending end of the world catastrophe coming soon...
That's what it seems like to me, but not because I was raised in a religion that teaches that, but rather because I can see with my own eyes that we are doing things like: washing away topsoil, causing "dead zones" in the ocean with agricultural runoff, poisoning the air in a few different ways (ozone, CFCs, lead, smog, etc.), over-fishing the oceans while filling them with plastic debris, and so on.
It's not the absolute end of the world, life will go on, and probably humans will survive too, but it seems clear to me that our complex global civilization is undermining the ecological foundations we rely on to the point where there is serious risk of a global collapse.
> ...because so many people are living their lives wrong,
Yes, but again, not "sin", just foolishness. And even that foolishness is understandable: until very recently it was fine to pollute because our impact was small compared to the whole of the planet. That's changed.
> the only way to stop or change that is to make massive personal changes in your life
This is a point of divergence from the religious folks. It seems to me as a non-religious person that much of religion is about controlling other people. I don't want to control other people, except to limit (what I see as) the harm they do to the environment.
We don't actually have to change our lifestyles that much to live in ecological harmony, but we do have to avoid waste and pollution. But really that's just common sense, eh? I don't have a dogma, I don't mind if you don't like camping, but I don't want the forest torn down to make shopping malls and parking lots. I don't want to breath poison. We can have nice things without destroying the environment.
> do everything within your influence to convince everyone you know to change their lives or else the end is nigh!
Here the resemblance or analog between religious and environmental apocalyptics is probably the greatest. If you believe (as I do) that there is a great risk and that we need to change some of the things we do to avert it, then yes, you want people to get on board and to spread the word.
> It often seems as well they are less interested in figuring out actual realistic solutions to these problems than feeling smugly superior because they are "one of the chosen".
This is where the difference is greatest I think. I've met a few "holier than thou" folks who are smug about it, but most environmentalists I've met personally are nice people who like Nature and don't want to mess it up. And we're totally interested in figuring out actual realistic solutions to these problems! That's like, the main thing, yeah?
The idea of being "one of the chosen" makes no sense to an environmental apocalyptic: there are no chosen, we're all going to be fucked if the shit hits the fan.
So there it is: environmental apocalypticism resembles religious apocalypticism but differs in that it's largely based on real-life events rather than a received metaphysical worldview. Religions are self-perpetuating, in contrast the goal of the environmental apocalyptic is actually to solve the crisis and, as a side-effect, obviate the apocalypticism itself. Ideally environmental apocalypticism is self-extinguishing.
There has been no crying wolf. If anything the dangers are being consistently undersold.
Just because someone says 'it will be x bad if you don't do this list of things' then you do three of them and ignore the rest and it's not quite as bad doesn't make them a liar.
... In your opinion. Perhaps we could agree on the term "moving of goalposts" instead. A skeptic might ask how the dangers are being undersold and how you know those dangers are legitimate as opposed to inflated claims made by those who earn money through making them.
Again, I'm not saying I don't have my concerns - or that I'm not doing more than most to minimize my impact. I just think the doomsayers aren't necessarily entirely correct, without blindspots or without bias. To think otherwise seems naive.
But even the "full" article seems weird.
I'm not a native english speaker, but these sound wrong:
> "This report will be followed by a detailed reported include the observed data from 13 sailing vessels and over 500 data points across the Atlantic Ocean."
> "We are biologists and perhaps we think differently to other professions."
You mean than ?
> "marine plankton form the root[...]"
forms ?
> The legend of figure ?? (yea not numbered) says "Particles in 100ml of seawater from the middle of the Atlantic".
It's not ideal to reproduce the experiment, because not everyone knows where the middle is !
Their findings sounds alarming, especially this :
>"peer reviewed literature shows we have lost more than 50% of all life in the oceans, but from own plankton sampling activity and other observations, we consider that losses closer to 90%[...]"
I think people on the field usualy have better insight than academics but i cannot trust such a poorly written article.