By Grace van Deelen. Originally published at The New Lede.
Tens of thousands of dead fish are washing up on the Texas Gulf Coast, unprecedented numbers of seabird carcasses are showing up on beaches, and toxic algal blooms are growing in size and frequency: all signs of the calamitous impacts of warming trends for ocean waters that some scientists say may be irreversible.
July marked Earth’s hottest temperatures ever, and heat waves are currently affecting over 44% of ocean area, making the current marine heat wave the most widespread ever recorded. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expect that number to rise to over 50% by this fall. Usually, about 10% of the world’s oceans experience a heatwave at any given time.
The levels of marine heat waves this year are “unprecedented,” said Dillon Amaya, a scientist who studies climate extremes at the NOAA.
The marine heat wave could lead to a redistribution of ocean species that may then also destabilize additional ecosystems, according to Jenn Caselle, a research biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute.
“These marine communities that are reshuffling right now could stay in those reshuffled states and become our new normal,” said Caselle.
Cascade of Problems
Concern for coral is one example of the cascade of problems that can occur. Bleached corals can spell death for fish and invertebrates that rely on coral ecosystems for food and shelter. Once corals are bleached, they rarely recover.
From 2013-2017, a heat wave wreaked havoc in the Pacific, driving large numbers of sea urchins north to cooler waters where they fed on kelp, ultimately decimating kelp populations in the waters off of Northern California. The current Pacific heat wave has a similar potential to cause a reshuffling of marine life, with wildlife that prefers warmer water replacing that which prefers colder water, said Caselle.
The redistribution of species also effects humans. The kelp decimation during the 2013-2017 Pacific heat wave triggered a decline in abalone populations, cutting off the California abalone fishing industry.
In the Northeast, the redistribution effect has meant that some species are moving outside of areas where fishermen are permitted to catch them, said Vincent Saba, a fisheries scientist with NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. For example, populations of summer flounder, one of the most sought-after commercial fish in the Atlantic, have shifted northward and into deeper, cooler waters, threatening the livelihoods of fishing communities.
Similar issues among commercial species are likely to arise as more widespread marine heat waves happen, said Caselle. “It’s going to take human communities some time to adapt.”
Shifting Baselines
While this year’s heat waves are extreme weather events compared to a few decades ago, they’re not actually abnormal compared to current climate conditions. Ocean temperatures have warmed about 0.12 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since pre-industrial times, meaning that ocean temperatures that seemed extreme decades ago are becoming common today, according to a paper published in the journal Nature in April.
“This is the new normal,” said Saba, one of the authors of the Nature paper.
Conservation actions, such as protecting wide areas of the ocean from fishing, can only do so much to prevent ecosystem disturbance from such heat waves, according to a study published by Caselle this month. The most important way to protect the oceans from heat effects is to halt climate change as quickly as possible, she said.
Most Americans, however, don’t consider climate change or the environment as a top concern, according to recent polling. And scientists agree that the current actions world governments have taken to halt climate change are not sufficient to keep warming under the limits set by the 2016 Paris Agreement.
“We can build all the marine protected areas in the world, and we can try to convince the fisheries managers to be proactive in the face of loss,” said Caselle. “But if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels and emitting, there’ll be a point where there’s only so much we can do,” she said.
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I prefer the term “new normal” or unavoidable rather than irreversible for various reasons. The changes we are seeing are nothing but the beginning and being unprecedented or uncharted territory we don’t know what’s the path ahead. Irreversible gives the idea that we can’t do anything to mitigate It and this is the perfect excuse for our geostrategy focused inepts to avoid addressing the issue. They will almost certainly be unable to do or propose anything but at least let’s not give them easy excuses.
Yesterday there was that eye opener graph in a tweet linked by Conor showing how outstanding is the temperature anomaly in the Atlantic. Thank you Conor (using the name here instead of the surname as sign of confidence on you as a source very much like with Nick and of course Y&L) for these links and articles.
“Once corals are bleached, they rarely recover.”
Err… just no. Great Barrier Reef has highest levels of living coral in 36 years.
https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/is-the-great-barrier-reef-making-a-comeback/
As an aside, I was amazed at how quickly marine ecosystems in Mauritius improved during the covid lockdowns. After about a month of no tourists, no fishermen, an no locals on the beaches, the sea was noticeably cleaner, and large fish had returned to the shoreline. A lot of problems we see in the ocean are a result of boats, fishing and tourism (e.g. suncream is toxic to coral).
Fair enough, but this is the equivalent of saying we’ve saved the garden shed from burning while the house is going down in flames.
Across the board numbers are off the charts in the wrong direction, and to extremes most scientists were not predicting. Trying to paint this as something we can expect to recover from if we just try hard enough is not at all a reflection of reality.
Hello urdsama,
I took issue with the article as falsehoods undermine the important central argument. Sea temperature measurements really are unprecedented but deniers will smell the sloppiness a mile off and reject the thesis of the article.
It’s common to hear that ‘predictions have all been wrong’ so why should we listen to them now…? Famously “Inconvenient Truth” and Florida being underwater. The prediction about irrecoverable coral reefs is wrong, and another bullet for the denier’s armory.
I’m fully signed up to the reality of climate change but I do think this is a scare story and it does my side no favours. Even the title smacks of bias… “Irreversible” is an absolute so what does “may be irreversble” even mean… well it means the same as “may be reversible” so it means nothing.
The truth is no-one knows the reasons for the crazy sea temperatures we are seeing or what their effects are going to be or whether those effects are reversible. In the worst case it is a sign of runaway heating, but at this point I think that is unlikely as it would mean our CC models are completely wrong!!!
Unfortunately, the number of times that the word “unprecedented” is being used to create scare stories is becoming unprecedented.
Good to know we have such brave voices who never get moved by any scare story. Judging by the polls linked you are probably republican.
And you are probably democrat so are indistinguishable from Phil R. At the end of the day you are both uniparty.
I’m approving this comment for the purpose of letting you know how you got yourself banned. You made what you regard as a derogatory remark as an attempt to smear both Phil R and Ignacio, as opposed to making an argument on the merits. That’s ad hominem and a violation our our written site Policies.
And on top of that Ignacio is not an American.
Hi Phil,
You are right that “unprecedented” is overused (as is “crisis”). In this case however, ocean temperatures really are unprecendented. I otherwise agree with your sentiment about the article: I think some authors feel it is their duty to scare people into action, or at least scare people into clicking!
China is aiming for net zero in 40 years time so CO2 air concentrations won’t be falling any time soon. James Lovelock in his final book (before his death) said that we are too late to meet the IPCC targets, that 5 degree warming is now baked in, and we should be focusing our resources on adapting to the new climate rather than fighting it.
With all the best intentions of governments, democratic populations are going to revolt against net zero policies that are making them poorer – UK is on the cusp of such a revolt today, so it may be impossible to attain net zero policies at all.
With mention of James “Gaia Theory” Lovelock, it’s worth considering Peter Ward’s rival “Medea Theory”, that instead of a synergy between life and the non-living environment there is an eventual, if not inevitable, destruction and death of the latter as geologic history shows. A sort of recycling of life forms that were too successful or not adaptable to changes caused by the chemistry of the earth. Lots on this topic on the web.
Thank you for the reference to Medea, something I had not come across before. Even though wikipedia says Medea contests Gaia, they don’t seem to be inconsistent (to me).
Lovelock is clear that the self-regulating aspects of our planet have limits, after which there are quickly manifesting step changes in the environment. For example, the oceans are currently mopping up CO2 from the atmosphere, thereby resisting increasing CO2 concentrations. However, as the Oceans warm, the ability of water to hold to CO2 is reduced, which has the opposite effect. Even as a brilliant and dedicated scientist Lovelock notes how difficult it is to understand (and therefore model) complex non-linear interactions like this. His 5 degree warming estimate is the next ‘steady state’ of the Earth’s system.
Medea theory talks about mass-extinctions. Even in the worst projections, humans aren’t going away. At a minimum they will be able to exist in Siberia/Greenland/UK/New Zealand etc. and with technology many other places. The problem is one of human suffering as the human world is ‘right-sized’ and redistributed.
I honestly wonder if the “humans aren’t going away” aspect is correct.
At some point we have to acknowledge the models aren’t doing a very good job of predicting how bad things will get, and therefore may be wrong gaging future outcomes. Human survival being one of them.
Say there’s an event, nuclear or climate or asteroid, that essentially kills all higher life as we know it. In a million years, all evidence of current society will have faded away, new coal and oil will probably have formed, and radioactive isotopes gone to nowt.
So, as a ponder, how many complete civilisations have come and gone on Earth, reset every 1M years of so? With no evidence remaining of any of them…
Good to know we have such brave voices who never get moved by any scare story. Judging by the polls linked you are probably republican.
Should we say the quite bit out aloud? We have been warned about climate change for about half a century or more but as a civilization, kept on kicking the can down the road so as to leave the next generation to deal with all the consequences. And so we have all these big international meetings where people say that we have to hold the line at X degrees of temperature or else but it just never seems to happen. Looks like we are now really starting to experience the ‘or else’ and things like those ferocious fires around the world, the devastating temperatures hitting the northern hemisphere and this marine heat wave that will affect more than just fishing grounds. I don’t think that we are in a new normal. Normal means that things have settled down. What we have been experiencing is not ‘settling down’ but the beginnings of climate chaos that will land one sucker punch on us after another for decades into the future. It’s going to be a wild ride so better buckle up.
Well said, Rev.
This is indeed not any kind of new normal. It’s going to be chaos and destruction down the line for the next several decades, no matter what we do.
That’s not to say there is nothing we can do. We should be funding and encouraging any project that will actually help reduce emissions, with the emphasis on “actually”. We’re still going to have chaos and destruction, but perhaps we can mitigate some of the worst effects.
The new abnormal. Climate d’chaos decay as far as the eye can see.
If you are really concerned about climate change, and want to act on it, the single most impactful action you can take as an individual is to go vegan (though this decision should primarily be for the inherent rights of the 80 billion sentient beings bred into existence, tortured, exploited and murdered on land every year and 3 trillion in the sea, a lot of them destroyed through bycatch – and fishing nets are the biggest cause of plastic pollution). There is enough research on the impact of the animal abuse industry on climate change, a bigger contributor of net emissions than all of transportation put together, including planes and ships (the Amazon is being cleared for cattle ranches and to grow soy to feed the animals), but there is almost no media coverage, and this was also suppressed at the last COP. Anyone who truly cares about mitigating the climate disaster needs to go vegan and also to support precision fermentation and cultivated meat technologies. That’s not even to mention the land use, water use, pollution, human health risks, and other issues of the animal abuse industry. There is no reason not to go vegan.
“The worldwide phase out of animal agriculture, combined with a global switch to a plant-based diet, would effectively halt the increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases for 30 years and give humanity more time to end its reliance on fossil fuels, according to a new study by scientists from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.”-Science Daily
Title- “Replacing animal agriculture and shifting to a plant-based diet could drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions, according to new model”
Date: February 1, 2022
Source: Stanford University
Summary:
“Phasing out animal agriculture represents ‘our best and most immediate chance to reverse the trajectory of climate change,’ according to a new model developed by scientists.”
A person who follows a plant based diet uses 60% less CO2, uses 1/11 the fossil fuels, 1/13th the water, and 1/18th the land. (Source: Stanford edu)
The most comprehensive meta-analysis conducted to date with 119 countries and 40,000 farms, shows avoiding animal products is the “SINGLE BIGGEST WAY” to reduce our environmental impact on Earth.
-Oxford University, Joseph Poore
““Converting grass into [meat] is like converting coal to energy. It comes with an immense cost in emissions,” environmental researcher Joseph Poore told the Guardian. Animal agriculture is directly responsible for at least 15.4 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, of which around 24 percent is nitrous oxide (N20), 26 percent is methane (CH4), and 50 percent is carbon dioxide (C02).
Contrary to popular belief, transportation only accounts for a tiny part (usually less than 10 percent) of a food’s carbon footprint. For example, it accounts for just 0.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from beef. This means that swapping meat for plant-based alternatives will reduce your carbon footprint more than buying local meat.
The farming of ruminants such as cows and sheep, who naturally produce methane when they digest food, makes animal agriculture the biggest source of CH4 (methane) emissions in the U.S. Methane does not live as long in the earth’s atmosphere as carbon dioxide, but it has 86 times more warming potential in the short term.”
https://ffacoalition.org/articles/animal-agriculture-environment/
A report on the scanty media coverage of this most important fact:
“Only 7% of climate articles mentioned animal agriculture and they rarely discussed its impact on climate change. Across the 1,000 articles we examined, only a handful of stories reported in depth on the connection between consuming animal products and climate change. Most articles that mentioned animal agriculture failed to discuss the emissions and environmental degradation caused by the industry, let alone the importance of reducing meat consumption or switching to a plant-based diet to fight climate change. When diets were discussed, the effectiveness of plant-based diets was sometimes downplayed or, more often than not, presented almost as an afterthought rather than a legitimate strategy to mitigate climate change.
The animal agriculture industry is often portrayed as a victim of climate change rather than a significant cause. Our qualitative analysis revealed that instead of citing animal agriculture’s negative environmental impact, climate articles that discussed the industry in any depth generally focused on how climate change is impacting animal agriculture. Multiple articles discussed how flooding, drought, and heatwaves have caused livestock losses both in the U.S. and abroad, and how this affects the livelihoods of farmers, while failing to mention the role that the animal agriculture industry plays in the climate crisis.
There are countless missed opportunities to discuss animal agriculture in the context of climate change. Energy, transportation, emissions, and fossil fuels were given the spotlight in climate coverage: These topics were mentioned in up to 68% of climate articles but were rarely tied to animal agriculture, despite the connections and parallels between them. For instance, transportation is responsible for roughly the same amount of emissions as the animal agriculture industry and is part of that industry, yet just 8% of climate articles mentioning transportation also referenced animal agriculture.
Impactful subsectors of animal agriculture are also not given enough attention by the media. Cattle farming is responsible for about 62% of animal agriculture emissions (FAO, 2022), yet cows were mentioned in just 30% of animal agriculture articles. Similarly, methane came up in 22% of animal agriculture articles despite accounting for 54% of the sector’s emissions.”
https://faunalytics.org/animal-ag-in-climate-media/
Distressing to see that a robust discussion of climate change was quickly hijacked into something else.
That rapidly warming oceans are of grave concern should be a given. Sadly, “unprecedented” seems accurate to me when used to describe most climate metrics today. For instance, have a click on yesterday’s Links and take a gander at the graph in the Leon Simon’s tweet that Ignacio refers to above in comment #1. That gap qualifies as “unprecedented”. In Canada, so far this year wildfires have burned roughly 27 million acres. The previous full fire season record set in 1995 was 17.5 million acres. Consider also that Canada’s wildfire season continues through October. “Unprecedented” is being kind. Does anybody really think China’s got forty years to hit “net zero”? Four?
Is this the new normal? Is this the formal beginning of abrupt catastrophic climate change? Will La Nina stage a return and grace us with a couple extra years of existence? Not even Marianne Williamson’s crystal ball will tell, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
New normal means a system that has stabilized. There is no evidence of stability, no prediction of stability, and no reason to presume stability. One could say the new normal is change – a statement with no meaning.
Unfortunately, IMHO, climate scientists did not explain really really clearly the difference between weather and climate, and this provided a giant wiggle room to invalidate climate science (when really commenting on weather) by interest groups with agendas – many of which actually acknowledge climate change internally.
Since “shifting baselines” has taken on a life of its own since it was coined by fisheries biologist Daniel Pauly in his classic 1-page 1995 paper, it’s worth checking out the original.
It’s one of those rare papers that I’ve used in reading lists for both 1st-years and grad students.
That’s a cool paper. Thanks.
There are a number of large marine reserves in the world today. For example, the UK has a 600,000km2 park in the Indian Ocean where fishing is prohibited. The park is also so remote that hardly anyone goes – I met someone who took his boat there and he said it was absolutely teeming with fish.
I wonder if the study of these reserves can shed some light on the right “baseline” of fishing stocks before humans began their plunder…? As per my first comment above, it is my belief that nature bounces back very quickly when we get out of the way.
Jared Diamoned mentioned the issue of shifting baselines in his “Collapse” book when describing the cut of the last tree on the Easter Island…
As always, very interesting conversation on a difficult topic. I think even as many want to believe that this is just a new normal and all will be good the data seems to suggest otherwise. I think we all would prefer not to address this issue and am almost a 100% sure we will not until we are in much worse shape than today just because that it how we as a human race operate. It seems very plausible that all the changes we are making to the environment cannot continue without some serious consequences but not 100% sure exactly what those consequences are going to be. Either way, as long as GDP growth is the focus and none of us can avoid buying new things all the time, myself included, there is unlikely to be any significant changes. As always, thank you for the great information and all of the good discussion that happens here :)
Here is a modest suggestion for a “climate change” article that might actually be useful. Instead of the trite boring safe articles that always highlight the harbingers of the “end times” and how X political group isn’t doing anything about the hurtling end times train roaring down on us, how about an article listing the X number of things that you sitting there reading these words could start doing tomorrow yourself?
But darn it, those things you could start doing today might and probably will require you to change your life style. The horror. So never ever consider and actually do anything personally but wait for the X political group to force you to do something sometime in the future. And you know damn well that X group will never do a damn thing but write learned articles and have learned meetings. You know that as a fact as you read these words.
Here is one simple thing I did. I reduced my lawn to the point where I use a non motorized push mower to mow it and from start to finish it takes me 15 minutes. OK now then lets get the snarky responses to this all of which can be summarized as “Can’t do that here and that is a drop in the bucket that won’t change anything.”
Well look in the mirror. See that person there? Let X group fix this mess because I cannot. Yeah it is a problem but hey I got my own so I’ll wait for more learned articles justifying my total inaction. I even gave them a contribution and got a nifty bumper sticker!
So OK. Here is my simple modest request. Let’s see an article that lists X number of things that I could do immediately upon reading the said article that would help the end the problem. And oh, no spending of say more than $200 total. No buying an electrical vehicle. No buying a heat pump. And for the love of God, no ridiculous “write your X group” a personal note about your concerns.
Okay. Now for the retorts which all justify non-action by the individuals who feel I am unrealistic. A list of things to do right this minute…..a modest request.
Perhaps another personal initiative to consider would be choosing not to eat “industrial production” meat and dairy products.
There is no humane or sustainable way to exploit and murder animals. “Free range”, “grass-fed”, “humane”, “high-welfare”, “RSPCA-approved” and “Red Tractor” are simply industry marketing labels to make consumers feel OK about their purchases. It changes nothing for the animals. Dairy is inherently cruel, arguably worse than meat, since female cattle are exploited for their reproductive system, raped, forcibly impregnated, then separated from their newborn, who if he is male, will be shot in the head on his first day of life, tortured in a lightless pen for veal or shipped off to be slaughtered, and if female, will be kept in solitary confinement hutches until they reach the age when they can be repeatedly raped and exploited as well. They will be forced to give birth, be separated from their infants, and then slaughtered once their milk production wanes – it takes such a toll on their bodies that they can hardly stand up by then. There just is no humane way to kill or exploit someone who would prefer to live free.
The only ethical option would be to go vegan, and if you really must have these products (which are horrible for your health by the way), support cultivated meat and precision fermentation companies.
Is there a humane or sustainable way to exploit and murder plants?
Salad is murder.
Bread is mass infanticide. (So is oatmeal, by the way.)
Never fly, period. Eat local produce.
Reduce Reuse Recycle
Don’t fly
Stop buying single serve products with tons of packaging.
Don’t drive
Stop eating meat
Honestly though, none of that really matters if there aren’t larger societal changes. And that brings us back around to the politics of the issue which seem pretty intractable to me. I’m very pessimistic about the notion that individual actions can impact climate change in a significant fashion.
What millions of individual actions by millions of individual actors could do is to let those millions of individual actors see eachother seeing eachother perform their millions of individual actions. Such mutual visible-comrade cross-discovery could allow for those millions to organize themselves into political action strike-forces to force or otherwise achieve pro-conservation policies at social governmental levels.
And in the meantime, such visibly taken individual actions may lend the individual actors enough credibility in the eyes of their friends, neighbors, relatives, and etc., that they may be listened to when they say that individual actions of the sort they themselves are taking are not going to end up being enough.
So individua action has its uses as an organizing and reachout tool even if nothing else.
Everyone who working in the advertising industry (needs proper definition)/public relations quits. So the message that every human deserves/can aspire to a two car garage, stops going out?
I see around me people who are embedded in a culture (?)/mileau (I can’t think of the right word) that normalizes mindless consumption. So how about having some personal responsibility and leaving that industry?
Thirding the suggestion to stop paying for sentient animals to be bred into existence, tortured, exploited, and murdered (and trillions more massacred at sea and dying in painful ways – yes, they feel pain, they are all conscious, they are all individuals and value their lives).
Going vegan is a hugely impactful action you can take. Don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t have an impact or play it down. Watch documentaries Earthlings, Dominion, Land of Hope and Glory, and HOPE: What You Eat Matters, and share them with everyone you know. Get active and spread the word; watch how vegan activists do outreach on YouTube (Earthling Ed, Joey Carbstrong, Very Vegan Mom, Amazing Vegan Outreach – AVO with Alex Bez, Vegan Muscle Outreach, The Victim’s Perspective, Natalie Fulton, Clif Grant, Arvind Animal Activist, Dr Faraz Harsini and many more); they are simply amazing. The only thing you will regret is not doing it sooner. There are no reasons not to make the change.
“The worldwide phase out of animal agriculture, combined with a global switch to a plant-based diet, would effectively halt the increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases for 30 years and give humanity more time to end its reliance on fossil fuels, according to a new study by scientists from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.”-Science Daily
Title- “Replacing animal agriculture and shifting to a plant-based diet could drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions, according to new model”
Date: February 1, 2022
Source: Stanford University
Summary:
“Phasing out animal agriculture represents ‘our best and most immediate chance to reverse the trajectory of climate change,’ according to a new model developed by scientists.”
A person who follows a plant based diet uses 60% less CO2, uses 1/11 the fossil fuels, 1/13th the water, and 1/18th the land. (Source: Stanford edu)
The most comprehensive meta-analysis conducted to date with 119 countries and 40,000 farms, shows avoiding animal products is the “SINGLE BIGGEST WAY” to reduce our environmental impact on Earth.
-Oxford University, Joseph Poore
““Converting grass into [meat] is like converting coal to energy. It comes with an immense cost in emissions,” environmental researcher Joseph Poore told the Guardian. Animal agriculture is directly responsible for at least 15.4 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, of which around 24 percent is nitrous oxide (N20), 26 percent is methane (CH4), and 50 percent is carbon dioxide (C02).
Contrary to popular belief, transportation only accounts for a tiny part (usually less than 10 percent) of a food’s carbon footprint. For example, it accounts for just 0.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from beef. This means that swapping meat for plant-based alternatives will reduce your carbon footprint more than buying local meat.
The farming of ruminants such as cows and sheep, who naturally produce methane when they digest food, makes animal agriculture the biggest source of CH4 (methane) emissions in the U.S. Methane does not live as long in the earth’s atmosphere as carbon dioxide, but it has 86 times more warming potential in the short term.”
https://ffacoalition.org/articles/animal-agriculture-environment/
Go vegan. Watch the documentaries Earthlings, Dominion, Land of Hope and Glory and HOPE: What You Eat Matters and show them to everyone you know. Get active in the movement; learn from activists like Earthling Ed, Joey Carbstrong, Very Vegan Mom, The Victim’s Perspective, Clif Grant, Natalie Fulton, Vegan Muscle Outreach, Dr Faraz Harsini and Alex Bez (AVO Amazing Vegan Outreach). There’s no reason not to go vegan. You’ll only regret not doing it sooner.
Don’t let anyone tell you it won’t make a significant impact.
“The worldwide phase out of animal agriculture, combined with a global switch to a plant-based diet, would effectively halt the increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases for 30 years and give humanity more time to end its reliance on fossil fuels, according to a new study by scientists from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.”-Science Daily
Title- “Replacing animal agriculture and shifting to a plant-based diet could drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions, according to new model”
Date: February 1, 2022
Source: Stanford University
Summary:
“Phasing out animal agriculture represents ‘our best and most immediate chance to reverse the trajectory of climate change,’ according to a new model developed by scientists.”
A person who follows a plant based diet uses 60% less CO2, uses 1/11 the fossil fuels, 1/13th the water, and 1/18th the land. (Source: Stanford edu)
The most comprehensive meta-analysis conducted to date with 119 countries and 40,000 farms, shows avoiding animal products is the “SINGLE BIGGEST WAY” to reduce our environmental impact on Earth.
-Oxford University, Joseph Poore
““Converting grass into [meat] is like converting coal to energy. It comes with an immense cost in emissions,” environmental researcher Joseph Poore told the Guardian. Animal agriculture is directly responsible for at least 15.4 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, of which around 24 percent is nitrous oxide (N20), 26 percent is methane (CH4), and 50 percent is carbon dioxide (C02).
Contrary to popular belief, transportation only accounts for a tiny part (usually less than 10 percent) of a food’s carbon footprint. For example, it accounts for just 0.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from beef. This means that swapping meat for plant-based alternatives will reduce your carbon footprint more than buying local meat.
The farming of ruminants such as cows and sheep, who naturally produce methane when they digest food, makes animal agriculture the biggest source of CH4 (methane) emissions in the U.S. Methane does not live as long in the earth’s atmosphere as carbon dioxide, but it has 86 times more warming potential in the short term.”
https://ffacoalition.org/articles/animal-agriculture-environment/
It’s a mistake for people to bang on about corals, as interesting as they are. The average person doesn’t really give two hoots about corals, apart from a boat trip on their vacation.
We should start talking about phytoplankton. Because quite a lot of the oxygen we need to live is generated by the phytoplankton in the oceans.
What impact is ocean heating having upon them? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151201094120.htm and https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.869618/full and https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/8/6/201/htm and https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-20560-5
And also the amount of oxygen dissolved in the ocean. Which fish need. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50690995. Perhaps goodbye omega-3?
As Upton Sinclair put it,
Look at the photos of “homes for sale” anywhere in the US..the garage is the biggest and most noticeable part of the house. Then the “inside” photos show the garage filled to the roof with crap. Also u see humongous, industrial washers and dryers and the ubiquitous “walk in” closet, where one can park a second car. Anyway, my point is this absurd “hugeness” in everything must end.