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On top of everything else, rate matters. An example of a climate effect that nobody mentioned is ocean acidification. It turned out that if you add CO2 to wat

by btilly 6y ago

On top of everything else, rate matters. An example of a climate effect that nobody mentioned is ocean acidification. It turned out that if you add CO2 to water, you get carbonic acid. This melts calcium carbonate at the bottom of the sea. The buffering makes the pH of the oceans relatively constant no matter what CO2 levels happen to be. Unfortunately that buffering takes place on the order of thousands of years. Which is fine when CO2 slowly increases in level. But when it rises suddenly, as it is doing right now, the oceans turn into a mild acid. Mild, that is, except for corals and shellfish whose shells dissolve. And anything that depends on them. Which, given how ecosystems connect, is pretty much everything in the ocean. Already, 3/4 of coral reefs in the world have experienced bleaching event. Similarly mass die-offs of shellfish have been widely reported in fisheries. Future projections are..bleak. All of this from a level of change that would have been fine if it was spread over 10,000 years rather than 100.

floatrock 6y ago
To expand on the coral example: before fish get large enough to catch and eat, they start off as little hatchlings. Coral reefs are fish nurseries that offer protected environments before setting off for the deep blue seas, where the fishing boats find them. Something like 40% of humans worldwide rely on fish as their primary source of protein. What happens when there's no habitat to support that food source? Mass disruptions and migrations. So yes, the earth was warmer before, but that warming happened over geologic timeframes that allowed ecosystems to adapt and change. 100 years is long on human timescales, but it's an instantaneous disruption on geologic timescales. And despite the convenience of your neighborhood supermarket, we are not that detached from our ecosystems. The empty shelves at the start of covid should have been a wakeup call that our supply systems are still interconnected.

by btilly 6y ago

floatrock 6y ago

To expand on the coral example: before fish get large enough to catch and eat, they start off as little hatchlings. Coral reefs are fish nurseries that offer protected environments before setting off for the deep blue seas, where the fishing boats find them. Something like 40% of humans worldwide rely on fish as their primary source of protein. What happens when there's no habitat to support that food source? Mass disruptions and migrations. So yes, the earth was warmer before, but that warming happened over geologic timeframes that allowed ecosystems to adapt and change. 100 years is long on human timescales, but it's an instantaneous disruption on geologic timescales. And despite the convenience of your neighborhood supermarket, we are not that detached from our ecosystems. The empty shelves at the start of covid should have been a wakeup call that our supply systems are still interconnected.