The next mass extinction may have already begun" warns a new report. If global warming isn’t currently as bad as it could be, scientists say, it’s because the oceans have been absorbing carbon and heat from the atmosphere. But while we have them to thank for slowing the rate of climate change on land, the oceans’ health is increasingly at risk — and their decline is happening more quickly than previously thought.
“We have been taking the ocean for granted,” writes the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), a non-governmental group of leading scientists, in a new report. But we’re no longer going to be able to ignore the large-scale decimation already occurring.
A “deadly trio” of warming, deoxygenation and increased acidification combined, the report found, are posing an even greater threat to the oceans than they would alone. While the carbon absorbed from the atmosphere promotes increased warming and acidification, pollution from sewage and fertilizer is creating algae blooms that decrease the ocean’s levels of oxygen. The report found that overfishing, too, threatens marine life.
