...But, as a Biologist, that's not what keeps me awake at night. Changing the temperature of the planet by a degree or two will cause massive changes in climate patterns, droughts, floods, raising sea levels etc.
But that's NOTHING compared to what will happen if the ocean temperature change starts killing the photosynthetic algae that supplies the Earth with most of its oxygen. As bad as it is, we can LIVE with floods, droughts, and forest fires. We CAN'T live without oxygen.
1. Will the increase in ocean temperature kill the algae that live in coral reefs? Yes. It's already doing that now. (See 'bleaching' of the Great Barrier Reef.)
2. If the ocean heats up a couple of degrees, it may kill the algae at the equator. But won't that also make it possible for the algae to grow farther north and south to compensate? YES, but there isn't as much light there. So, you still end up getting less oxygen.
3. Can you fight the effects of global warming using 'GLOBAL DIMMING?' (This is a plan that's been around for awhile. You throw sulfuric acid into the upper atmosphere to block out some of the solar radiation. This is essentially what happens when volcanos erupt, and throw a lot of sulfuric acid into the atmosphere.) YES! This will solve the problem of global warming, but it will make the loss of oxygen producing algae even worse.
4. Our best hope is that scientists can use genetic engineering to create algae that are more temperature resistant, and flood the oceans with them before we all suffocate. The bad news, of course, is that MAGA will probably have put all the scientists in jail by then, for perpetuating the 'green hoax.'
We're fucked.
Everybody remembers Heston's line from Soylent Green. SOILENT GREEN IS PEOPLE! Does anybody remember the line before that? Soylent Green was supposed to be made from algae. But the climate had changed so much that the algae and oceans were dying, so they had to make it out of people instead.
How about that? Soylent Green predicted the future, but we all missed the point by focusing on the wrong thing entirely. Pretty symbolic of the human race, isn't it?
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