Published on Thursday, October 3, 2013 by
Common Dreams
Human Assault Pushes Ocean to Limit Unseen in 300 Million Years'We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change,' warns report. 'The next mass extinction may have already begun.'The news, the evidence that supports it, and the warning that accompanies it could hardly be more dire.
The latest audit by an international team of marine scientists at the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) found that the world's oceans and marine life are facing an unprecedented threat by combination of industrial pollution, human-driven global warming and climate change, and continued and rampant overfishing. According to the report, The State of the Ocean 2013: Perils, Prognoses and Proposals, the degradation of the ocean ecosystem means that its role as Earth’s ‘buffer’ is being seriously compromised. As a result, the authors of the report call for "urgent remedies" because the "rate, speed, and impacts of change in the global ocean are greater, faster, and more imminent than previously thought." "[Last week's] UN climate report confirmed that the ocean is bearing the brunt of human-induced changes to our planet. These findings give us more cause for alarm – but also a roadmap for action. We must use it." -Prof. Dan Laffoley, IUCN Driven by accumulations of carbon, the scientists found, the rate of acidification in the oceans is the highest its been in over 300 million years. Additionally, de-oxygenation--caused by both warming and industrial runoff--is stripping the ocean of its ability to support the plants and animals that live in it. The combined stressors, according to the report, are "unprecedented in the Earth's known history. We are entering an unknown territory of marine ecosystem change, and exposing organisms to intolerable evolutionary pressure. The next mass extinction may have already begun." Professor Alex Rogers of Somerville College, Oxford, and Scientific Director of IPSO said: “The health of the ocean is spiraling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought. We are seeing greater change, happening faster, and the effects are more imminent than previously anticipated. The situation should be of the gravest concern to everyone since everyone will be affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on Earth.” Among the report's comprehensive findings, the panel identified the following areas as of greatest cause for concern:
Regarding the urgency of the crisis, the marine scientists issued a stark warning to world governments, called on leaders to take immediate action, and offered the following steps they said "must" be taken:
In response to the IPSO study that arrived just one week after the IPCC report on climate change which also highlighted the threat of global warming to the oceans, Professor Dan Laffoley, of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said: “What these latest reports make absolutely clear is that deferring action will increase costs in the future and lead to even greater, perhaps irreversible, losses. The UN climate report confirmed that the ocean is bearing the brunt of human-induced changes to our planet. These findings give us more cause for alarm – but also a roadmap for action. We must use it." IPSO was tweeted comments and coverage regarding the report and its findings: ____________________________________
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