US scientists say marine heatwaves are sweeping the globe and that it is unstoppable.

Unstoppable. What a horrific word and yet that is what climate scientists say is happening with marine heat waves, these events are seriously damaging life in the oceans.

The oceans have been doing humans a massive favor by taking in over 40-60% more heat than previously thought according to peer research published in the journal Nature. Missing sixty percent of temperature rise over 25 years is a BFD.

Oceans take in 93% of all heat that is trapped by greenhouse gas emissions and stores it below the surface - suggesting even faster rates of damage from greenhouse gases. That fact is why humans have been able to delude themselves that everything is ok with the climate because the oceans have been taking in the intense heat that we otherwise would be feeling or dying. But now that heat has begun to be released, and we can see the evidence in stronger cyclones, more drought, flooding, and heatwaves.

According to the study, this warming water means that there is even less time to reduce CO2 emissions, more threats to coral reefs and kelp forests, faster sea level rise from thermal expansion, more rapid melting of the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, more damaging hurricanes, and more significant Nor’easters.

The warming oceans have begun to wreak havoc on marine life. In a nutshell, ocean warming is smothering the oceans.

Laura Poppic writes in Scientific American: 

Escaping predators, digestion and other animal activities—including those of humans—require oxygen. But that essential ingredient is no longer so easy for marine life to obtain, several new studies reveal.

In the past decade ocean oxygen levels have taken a dive—an alarming trend that is linked to climate change, says Andreas Oschlies, an oceanographer at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, whose team tracks ocean oxygen levels worldwide. “We were surprised by the intensity of the changes we saw, how rapidly oxygen is going down in the ocean and how large the effects on marine ecosystems are,” he says.

It is no surprise to scientists that warming oceans are losing oxygen, but the scale of the dip calls for urgent attention, Oschlies says. Oxygen levels in some tropical regions have dropped by a startling 40 percent in the last 50 years, some recent studies reveal. Levels have dropped more subtly elsewhere, with an average loss of 2 percent globally.

From Phys.org:

The largest extinction in Earth's history marked the end of the Permian period, some 252 million years ago. Long before dinosaurs, our planet was populated with plants and animals that were mostly obliterated after a series of massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia.

Fossils in ancient seafloor rocks display a thriving and diverse marine ecosystem, then a swath of corpses. Some 96 percent of marine species were wiped out during the "Great Dying," followed by millions of years when life had to multiply and diversify once more.

What has been debated until now is exactly what made the oceans inhospitable to life—the high acidity of the water, metal and sulfide poisoning, a complete lack of oxygen, or simply higher temperatures.

New research from the University of Washington and Stanford University combines models of ocean conditions and animal metabolism with published lab data and paleoceanographic records to show that the Permian mass extinction in the oceans was caused by global warming that left animals unable to breathe. As temperatures rose and the metabolism of marine animals sped up, the warmer waters could not hold enough oxygen for them to survive.

The study is published in the Dec. 7 issue of Science.

From International Business Times:

Malin Pinsky, a professor at Rutgers University, also said that the events would most likely become more common and turn even more severe unless society reduces greenhouse gas emissions. What is even more alarming is that record-breaking events related to global warming have started becoming “normal.” Such big hits may eventually have long-lasting and detrimental effects.

“In the space of one week, scientific publications have underscored that unless we take evasive action, our future oceans will have fewer fish, fewer whales and frequent dramatic shifts in ecological structure will occur, with concerning implications for humans who depend on the ocean,” Dr. Éva Plagányi of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia said. She also claimed that oceanic heat waves are like wildfires.

A Rutgers-led study in the journal Science today supports this as researchers found that climate change has profound effects already on fisheries across the globe. The study claims that as much as 15 percent to 35 percent decline in fisheries swept the East China Sea and the North Sea. Similarly, ocean warming also contributed to a drop in sustainable catches. From 1930 to 2010, the estimated decline is around 4.1 percent for many species of shellfish and fish.

"We were stunned to find that fisheries around the world have already responded to ocean warming," Pinsky said. He co-authored the study.

All hands on deck, the climate is in more trouble than we thought. Again, we are destroying the foundation of life as we know it, and doing it in record time. This news is not a shiny new object such as a bigot calling somebody a repulsive name or the brouhaha over Representative Omar. I suppose it all depends on what outrages someone. Unfortunately for everyone on earth, we will pay a deadly price for our willful ignorance and apathy.

Many scientists say that we can slow down the damage if we decarbonize rapidly. We could save some of what is left. A 3C world will be a hell of a lot better than an 8C.

I have no doubt the 2020 election will be about climate change, Republicans want the country to mock and laugh at us so they will make it an issue, and Democrats are nervous of a backlash.

A backlash could happen, but the thing is, this summer and the summer of 2020 are going to be godawful hot with storms and wildfires. Voters will be swayed with their own eyes. This election is our last chance, we have run out of time to dither any longer. The GOP is taking a huge risk on mocking the science.