Those clever Chinese climate hoaxers have been at their work as the rest of us have been distracted by our petty concerns and by former presidents* who have been revealed to have canoodled with porn stars. For example, the oceans just had their hottest year since people started calculating the heat of the seas. From the BBC:
Fueled by climate change, the world's oceans have broken temperature records every single day over the past year, a BBC analysis finds. Nearly 50 days have smashed existing highs for the time of year by the largest margin in the satellite era. Planet-warming gases are mostly to blame, but the natural weather event El Niño has also helped warm the seas. The super-heated oceans have hit marine life hard and driven a new wave of coral bleaching. The analysis is based on data from the EU's Copernicus Climate Service. Copernicus also confirmed that last month was the warmest April on record in terms of global air temperatures, extending that sequence of month-specific records to 11 in a row.
This is decidedly not a good thing. If we manage to screw up the oceans beyond all recall—and, between fossil fuels and plastic containers and sewage, we're well on our way to doing just that—then that's the ball game for us, species-wise.
For many decades, the world's oceans have been the Earth's 'get-out-of-jail card' when it comes to climate change. Not only do they absorb around a quarter of the carbon dioxide that humans produce, they also soak up around 90% of the excess heat. But over the past year, the oceans have displayed the most concerning evidence yet that they are struggling to cope, with the sea surface particularly feeling the heat. From March 2023, the average surface temperature of the global oceans started to shoot further and further above the long-term norm, hitting a new record high in August. Recent months have brought no respite, with the sea surface reaching a new global average daily high of 21.09C in February and March this year, according to Copernicus data.
And there already is massive collateral damage going on. Undersea coral is being "bleached" at an alarming rate, ruining its ability to sustain the lives of the other species that depend on it. (Coral is home to 25 percent of all marine species.) And then there are the penguins.
Unusually warm seas may also have taken a direct toll on one of the most beloved ocean-going creatures in the coldest continent, the emperor penguin. "There have been examples of the sea-ice collapsing before emperor chicks have properly fledged, and there have been mass drowning events," says Prof Meredith. "The emperor penguin is a threatened species because of climate change, and the sea-ice and the ocean temperatures are strongly implicated in that."
In addition, the warming seas are causing an influx of invasive species all over the world. For example, the waters around Great Britain are now home to a huge population of sea squirts, which are native to Japan but have now commandeered the ocean floor off Wales to the detriment of native species.
"They prevent the growth of native organisms in the areas that they colonise," says Prof Iain Barber, head of Life Sciences at Aberystwyth University. "Because they do so well in our environment, they can potentially take over huge areas of the seabed." Species that are more invasive appear to be responding more strongly to global warming and the increasing water temperatures, Prof Barber says.
Ah, but you say, nature is always in flux. Evolution is a constant churn. Nova Mieszkowska, a marine biologist at the University of Liverpool who appears in a video accompanying the BBC story, grants all that, but she also explains that the changes wrought by the climate crisis are happening too fast for evolution to keep up. She says:
The thing that I've seen is that species are not all moving at the same rate, so things are moving north but not at the same speed. So all the community compositions are changing everywhere because different species are moving at different rates.
I find it all quite sad. I mean, nature is never static. The environment is always changing, and species respond. The problem with climate change is that it's happening too quickly for evolution to catch up with it, which is why we're seeing all these shifts because species can't evolutionarily adapt to it. I think if I were a barnacle, I'd be quite worried."
I'm worried that, in certain important ways, we're all becoming barnacles here.
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
