Harbingers—as the oceans heat up
21 January 2019“Harbingers” is an ongoing series of articles, stories, and reflections by Bhante Sujato on living in the age of global warming.
Five Hiroshimas per second.
That’s how much heat is being absorbed into our oceans. Dozens of thermonuclear bombs since you started reading this. More while you pause to take it in. More while you think, “Do I really want to read this?”
A recent article in the journal Science, “How fast are the oceans warming?” by Cheng, et al, says:
Climate change from human activities mainly results from the energy imbalance in Earth’s climate system caused by rising concentrations of heat-trapping gases. About 93% of the energy imbalance accumulates in the ocean as increased ocean heat content (OHC). The ocean record of this imbalance is much less affected by internal variability and is thus better suited for detecting and attributing human influences than more commonly used surface temperature records. Recent observation-based estimates show rapid warming of Earth’s oceans over the past few decades. This warming has contributed to increases in rainfall intensity, rising sea levels, the destruction of coral reefs, declining ocean oxygen levels, and declines in ice sheets; glaciers; and ice caps in the polar regions. Recent estimates of observed warming resemble those seen in models, indicating that models reliably project changes in OHC.
The rate of ocean warming for the upper 2000 m has accelerated in the decades after 1991 from 0.55 to 0.68 W m2. Multiple lines of evidence from four independent groups thus now suggest a stronger observed OHC warming.
Global warming is not waiting for us. It’s not sitting around, giving us a few years to get our policy agendas together. Scientists, governments, activists, and oil companies have known what is happening since the sixties. And this is where we are. The rise in ocean temperatures is tracking the rise in atmospheric CO2. And both of them are accelerating.
It’s horrifying and it’s getting worse.
The scientists keep their cool in the peer-reviewed paper, while their informal comments are becoming ever more desperate. Study co-author John Abraham, a professor of thermal sciences at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, said to Think Progress:
While there still is time to do something to slow this process down, it is too late to stop serious global warming, [which] is happening faster than we previously thought. We are also seeing the impacts, from superstorm hurricanes and typhoons, to drought and deadly wildfires. We are paying the consequences for ignoring the science for decades. What a terrible legacy the denialists have left us and our children.
With every message, every story, the same activist orthodoxy must be repeated, like a mantra, an attestation of a spiritual faith: we still have time, but we must act now. We have been saying the same thing for half a century, and this is where we are.
But we won’t act. This report will come and go like thousands have before it. Pale policies will limp into half-hearted deeds while the poor and the vulnerable suffer and we are distracted by the next shiny thing.
This is where we are. This is the world we have made. It is our home. And we are burning it to the ground.
It is time to accept what we have done. Time to treasure the fleeting days of summer. Time to wonder and time to rejoice. Time to breathe and time to love. For soon, there will be no time for any of this.
Make your choices, live your life. Do what is right, because it is the right thing to do. But don’t pretend to yourself that everything is fine. It’s not fine, and it’s not going to be fine.
This is where we are.