Is something ailing The Register’s Lewis Page ? Despite having access to the text of a recent research paper about the Sun’s recent output, and its short-term impact on surface temperatures on Earth, and having had plenty of time to read plain English reviews of the paper’s findings in everyday language, he still writes it up poorly (in my humble opinion). Could this be due to internal bias, I ask myself ? Or is Lewis Page being wilfully contrarian ? Who can say ?
It seems that anthropogenic interference with the atmosphere has undermined two important things :-
(a) The ability of phytoplankton to reproduce because of the heat and the acidity of the oceans – thereby compromising the base of the entire global food chain and, more seriously,
(b) By reducing the conditions for phytoplankton success, cutting off one of the “Carbon sinks” on the planet that we really need to soak up a proportion of the excess Carbon Dioxide that we are pumping into the air.
https://climateprogress.org/2010/07/29/nature-decline-ocean-phytoplankton-global-warming-boris-worm/
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/full/nature09268.html
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/edsumm/e100729-03.html
https://www.physorg.com/news199471106.html
https://scienceblips.dailyradar.com/story/global-phytoplankton-decline-over-the-past-century/
Currently, the world’s biomass processes somewhere between 40% and 50% of all humankind’s excess Carbon Dioxide emissions, the CO2 we have made by taking Fossil Fuels out of the ground and burning them.
If this Carbon sink becomes less effective, Global Warming will become much stronger, as there will be a faster build-up of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.
Isn’t the Earth amazing ? Doesn’t it inspire you to awe ?
And look how we human beings continue to mess the nest, burn the sky, smoke out children’s lungs, tarmac over paradise. We tear down trees to turn to kitchen paper and throwaway napkins. We carve up Nature so we can feast every day. We turn the whole world ocean into a chemistry set so we can have exotic plastics, fertilisers and inks.
Yes, we’re small, but we’re too significant. Our abuse of fossil fuels means we could still be responsible for the genocide of not only ourselves, but the vivicide of the rest of Life on Earth.