One of the most disturbing pieces of news I read today, but tucked away on page 18A of The Denver Post, was entitled: 'Earth Could Become Unsafe for Humanity in Coming Decades'. My first reaction was along the lines of 'Ho-hum, so what's new? This is just more what we already know on global warming.' But in fact it was more, much more.
The article actually concerned the findings reported in a paper published in the journal Science by 18 researchers attempting to gauge the "breaking points" created by humans via their impacts on the natural world. These "breaking points" represent serious breaches with our environment and hence potential failures for human adaptation - which likely mean human extinction.
The authors focused on nine planetary boundaries first identified in a 2009 paper. These boundaries set theoretical limits on the degree of changes we can impart to the environment without incurring great costs. They include: ozone depletion, freshwater use, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol pollution and the introduction of exotic chemicals and modified organisms.
The current paper contends we have already crossed four planetary boundaries, including the extinction rate of animals, plants, deforestation, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorus (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean.
Coincident with this report, two other pieces of environmental news today took center stage: the disclosure that 2014 was the hottest year on record - since records have been kept, with the Earth warming by 1.24F- and the news that the oceans are exhibiting signs of extinction.
Let's take the last first. We are now closer than ever before to completely destroying the oceans, according to warning sounded in a major new study published Thursday in the journal Science.
The study combines everything from fossil records to
current fish counts to arrive at an encyclopedia, of sorts, of the all the great
and terrible ways human activity impacts the underwater world: the destruction
of coral reefs by ocean acidification, of fragile ecosystems by fish farms, and
of seabeds by mining operations number among the major changes they count. And
continuing acidification — a consequence of our pouring carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere — along with warming waters, they warn, threaten to accelerate the
loss.
The authors compare what’s coming to what happened on land
during the 1800s, when our consumption of resources led to the accelerated
extinction of land-based animals. There are many parallels to be drawn: the
effect of shrimp farms on mangroves are similar to how farming took over
forests; seafloor mining is like an underwater gold rush. ”All signs indicate
that we may be initiating a marine industrial revolution,” McCauley told
Discovery News. “We are setting ourselves up in the oceans to replay
the process of wildlife Armageddon that we engineered on
land.”
Of course, if the phytoplankton of the oceans are rendered extinct we will be in a truly parlous predicament given how they form the baseline of the ocean food pyramid. Hence, once they go all ocean life is likely to follow except perhaps jellyfish. Can humans subsist on diets of fried jellyfish instead of tuna or dolphins (fish not mammals)? Somehow I doubt it.
So consider that one planetary boundary well crossed including well into the "uncertainty zone" referenced in the current Science paper which denotes "a zone where we might take action before it's too late".
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