What we are losing with climate change

The ongoing mass extinction era necessarily accelerates

First, the latest data point from CNN: Scientists have more evidence to explain why billions of crabs vanished around Alaska:

Fishermen and scientists were alarmed when billions of crabs vanished from the Bering Sea near Alaska in 2022. It wasn’t overfishing, scientists explained — it was likely the shockingly warm water that sent the crabs’ metabolism into overdrive and starved them to death.

But their horrific demise appears to be just one impact of the massive transition unfolding in the region, scientists reported in a new study released Wednesday: Parts of the Bering Sea are literally becoming less Arctic.

The research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found warmer, ice-free conditions in the southeast Bering Sea — the kind of conditions found in sub-Arctic regions — are roughly 200 times more likely now than before humans began burning planet-warming fossil fuels.

Two-hundred times more likely? Where have I heard that recently?

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So, in the case of Alaska, we’re not talking vast stretches of time. We’re talking within the life of a snow crab fisherman — a livelihood disappeared (or moved poleward) by climate change.

Here, clearly, snow crabs were incapable of moving sufficiently, could not adapt fast enough, and thus ended up dead in droves (mass starvation).

To me, this is no different from what we’re seeing in the Dry Corridor that links El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

About ten million people being climatically “starved” off the land and sent packing to cities, the next country over, and/or eventually the United States.

Adapt, move, or die.

If we want to keep these people in place, like Biden tasked Harris with investigating, then we have to — in ways both figurative and literal — make it rain. We have to keep it habitable and economical or depopulation will ensue.

Pulling back our lens: this is mass extinction period #6 in world history.

This one, driven by heat and dryness and habitat loss (all human-driven), is wiping out the invertebrates more than the vertebrates. Humans, being the latter, tend to view nature narrowly along those terms, which diminishes our sense of the ongoing loss and thus encourages denialism.

What? Says Bjorn Lomborg, I keep telling you the polar bears are fine!

True enough. Just too narrow a lens.

Meanwhile, the Holocene or Anthropocene extinction era marches on, with the UN predicting that we’ll lose half the world’s species by 2100. That would be on top of what is calculated to be a 30% loss since 1500. A combined 80% would put us right up there with the rest. And there is plenty going on right now, with some estimates suggesting that around 35% of animal and plant species could become extinct in the wild by 2050 due to global climate change.

When we look over the past eras, we spot familiar causes, yes?

Are we increasing sea levels? Check!

Changing the chemistry of the oceans? Check!

Changing the atmosphere? One trillion tons of carbon …

Climate in severe flux? Roger!

Ocean losing oxygen? Seven percent loss estimated by 2100.

No big-time volcanos or asteroids, thank God!

Just realize that we’re checking the strong majority of the historical boxes. Earth has seen this movie before and knows how it ends — for the majority of species.