February 22, 2017
Oxygen. You and I need it, and so do the fish in our planet’s oceans.
Unfortunately for the fish, there’s a little less oxygen in the oceans every year, according to a new study.
Climate scientists have long suspected that a warming planet would lead to the loss of oxygen in the ocean, because cold water can hold more dissolved gas than warm water. In an analysis published last week in Nature, three researchers from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany found that the ocean has lost about 2 percent of its total oxygen since 1960. However, some parts of the ocean are suffering more than others.
“Losses were especially notable in the northern Pacific Ocean and southern Atlantic,” noted Ryan F. Mandelbaum, a science writer at Gizmodo, on Feb. 15.
Oxygen loss combined with pollution is creating a growing number of oceanic “dead zones” where little or no marine life exists, and scientists believe the effects could be devastating.
“A two percent decrease of ocean oxygen content may not sound like much, but the implications of this for marine ecosystems could be severe in parts of the ocean where oxygen is already low, such as oxygen minimum zones … because critical survival thresholds may be crossed,” wrote Denis Gilbert, an ocean climate researcher at the Maurice Lamontagne Institute of Fisheries and Oceans Canada in a response to the study.
If current models are accurate, these results could be the precursor to even more rapid loss of oxygen.
“Since ocean deoxygenation is intrinsically linked to climate warming, substantial action to mitigate climate change will be required to reverse the trend of oxygen loss,” Matthew Long, an oceanographer at National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Gizmodo.
Of course, any “substantial action” coming out of the Trump regime is likely to make global warming much worse. On Feb. 16, President Donald Trump signed legislation that repealed regulations protecting streams and other waterways from coal pollution that were instituted by President Barack Obama.
As with almost every part of government, Trump has put the worst possible people in charge, starting with Scott Pruitt, the climate change denier confirmed as head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday. Pruitt, a former attorney general from Oklahoma who built his career on suing the EPA neglected to mention climate change even once in his first speech after confirmation. Trump’s advisors have suggested the President wants to eliminate the agency altogether.
And Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, has admitted that climate change is real, but only after he participated in a decades-long climate coverup. as the former CEO of oil-giant ExxonMobil.
With the water protectors of Standing Rock preparing for a brutal eviction today, it’s clear that a tough fight is ahead to protect both the oceans and the land from the increasingly devastating effects of global warming.
No, it’s not online. But you might like this other performance – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcA9UwSH_Kg
Loved your comment about how “you’re not alone” if you hate Trump but don’t want a war with Russia. I hope you can reach a lot of people with your style of humor and passion. I used to live in San Francisco but moved to France. So I couldn’t go to your show in SF. Is there a You Tube of it? I’ve searched without success. Would love to see it. Thanks! And keep fighting, as you say!
More here: This Means Extinction
It’s a bit dated and I’ve published a lot more since then, but it still points to the same horrifying outcome. We’re facing the harsh reality of future intolerable and unsurvivable environmental conditions which will lead to the collapse of civilization. But first, the most likely thing to really happen, is we run out of food since the farms and plants won’t survive.
We’ll probably die of food starvation first (http://survivalacres.com for details), but oxygen declines have been noted all over the world (even in cities now).