Certainly not the right... scientists are a bunch of blowhard
lefties. God will create more species if we need 'em. Monsanto is
working on a cow fish.


PARIS (AFP) – Pollution and global warming are pushing the world's
oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for
tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists warned Monday.

Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding
open-water "dead zones," toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of
big fish stocks -- all are accelerating, they said in a report
compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world's top
ocean experts.

Sponsored by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean
(IPSO), the review of recent science found that ocean health has
declined further and faster than dire forecasts only a few years ago.

These symptoms, moreover, could be the harbinger of wider disruptions
in the interlocking web of biological and chemical interactions that
scientists now call the Earth system.

All five mass extinctions of life on the planet, reaching back more
than 500 million years, were preceded by many of the same conditions
now afflicted the ocean environment, they said.

"The results are shocking," said Alex Rogers, an Oxford professor who
heads IPSO and co-authored the report. "We are looking at consequences
for humankind that will impact in our lifetime."

Three main drivers are sickening the global marine environment, and
all are a direct consequence of humans activity: global warming,
acidification and a dwindling level oxygen, a condition known as
hypoxia.

Up to now, these and other impacts have been studied mainly in
isolation. Only recently have scientists began to understand how these
forces interact.

"We have underestimated the overall risks, and that the whole of
marine degradation is greater than the sum of its parts," Rogers said.
"That degradation is now happening at a faster rate than predicted."

Indeed, the pace of change is tracking or has surpassed the worst-case
scenarios laid out by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) in its landmark 2007 report, according to the new assessment.

The chain reaction leading to increased acidification of the oceans
begins with a massive influx of carbon into Earth's climate system.

Oceans act as a massive sponge, soaking up more than a quarter of the
CO2 humans pump into the atmosphere.

But when the sponge becomes too saturated, it can disrupt the
delicately balanced ecosystems on which marine life -- and ultimately
all life on Earth -- depends.

"The rate at which carbon is being absorbed is already far greater now
than during the last globally significant extinction of marine species
55 million years ago," when some 50 percent of deep-sea life was wiped
out, the report said.

That event, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, may
be an ancient dress rehearsal for future climate change that could be
even more abrupt and more damaging, some scientists fear.

Pollution has also taken a heavy toll, rendering the oceans less
resilient to climate change.

Runoff from nitrogen-rich fertiliser, killer microbes, and
hormone-disrupting chemicals, for example, have all contributed to the
mass die-off of corals, crucial not just for marine ecosystems but a
lifeline for hundreds of millions of people too.

The harvesting up to 90 percent of some species of big fish and
sharks, meanwhile, has hugely disrupted food chains throughout the
ocean, leading to explosive and imbalanced growth of algae, jellyfish
and other "opportunistic" flora and fauna.

"We now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such
as coral reefs, within a single generation," said Daniel Laffoley,
head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN)
World Commission on Protected Areas, and co-author of the report.

"And we are also probably the last generation that has enough time to
deal with the problems," he told AFP by phone.