CONCLUSIONS

The world ocean, which covers roughly 71 percent of Earth’s surface, has the thermal inertia and heat capacity to help maintain and ameliorate climate variability. However, greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are projected to cause global climate change in excess of normal patterns, which in turn will alter coastal and marine ecosystems that are already stressed from human development, environmental pollution, and over-fishing. We need to act now if we hope to avert far worse perturbations of the natural climate system.

Unfortunately, fundamental societal change is required—the political will to adopt cleaner fuels (gasohol, alcohol), increase the use of wind and solar energy, and increase the efficiency of the technologies that do use fossil fuels. All of these solutions are at hand, available, and even economical—especially when all costs are considered.

The complex web of currents, temperatures, salinity levels, and chemistry that fosters life in the ocean is at risk of being irreversibly ruptured by the unpredictable, unstable, and overwhelming consequences of climate change. We have the opportunity to ensure that the oceans continue to provide us with critical food and other services, even as we work to limit the damage caused by our own excess. Each new report on the anticipated and projected effects of this new era of climate unpredictability seems to underscore the futility of conservation efforts—on land and at sea. In the long term, philanthropy’s clear goal is to help bridge the gap between marine conservation and energy policy. However, focusing on resilience, on improving our knowledge of the oceans, and on fostering the ethic of moving quickly to limit human insult to our marine neighbors gives us more than a place to start—it gives us a strategy to improve sustainability in the short-term and in the long run.

Editor’s note

Climate change creates huge challenges for mankind. But focusing on climate change at the expense of ignoring other environmental issues also has its risks. When it comes to the world ocean, humans are stressing the system in myriad ways, and many of these stressors can be more easily mitigated than climate change. At the same time, there is every reason to believe that marine ecosystems that are intact and healthy are more resilient in the face of the inevitably changing climate. So while climate change is a wake-up call, recognition of the issue has even greater value in focusing our attention on a whole range of management and conservation measures that are needed to keep the world ocean alive and providing its many crucial services (including climate regulation).

Endnotes

¹This Ocean Observer is based on a paper commissioned by The Consultative Group on Biodiversity, written by Mark Spalding, and edited by Tundi Agardy of the World Ocean Observatory.

²The primary gasses which contribute to the greenhouse effect are: water vapor (H20), carbon dioxide (CO2), ozone (O3), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Developed countries produce roughly 70 percent of the CO2 emissions (mostly from burning fossil fuels). The United States, with only 5 percent of the world’s population, accounts for 22-26 percent of global CO2 emissions from human activities, and 20 percent of methane.

³Wolfson, R. and S. H. Schneider. 2002. “Understanding Climate Science.” In Climate Change Policy. Island Press, Washington D.C., pp. 3-51.

⁴Worm, B., H. K. Lotze, H. Hillebrand and U. Sommer. 2002.Consumer versus resource control of species diversity and ecosystem functioning. Nature 417

⁵Harvell, C.D., C.E. Mitchell, J.R. Ward, S. Altizer, A.P. Dobson, R.S. Ostfeld and M.D. Samuel. 2002. “Climate warming and disease risks for terrestrial and marine biota.” Science 296: 2158-2162. See also, Parson, E.A., L. Carter, P. Anderson, B. Wang and G. Weller. “Potential consequences of climate variability and change for Alaska.” U.S. National assessment of potential consequences of climate variability and change, Chapter 10. U.S. Global Change Research Program.

⁶Motavalli, Jim (ed.) 2004. Feeling the Heat: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Climate Change Routledge Publishers page 108.

⁷See Marc Kaufman’s Washington Post article entitled “Escalating Ice Loss Found in Antarctica – Sheets Melting in an Area Thought to be Unaffected by Global Warming. Page 1, January 14, 2008

⁸See article by Nicole Itano entitled “The Storied Mediterranean Faces Climate Change”, Christian Science Monitor Jan 14, 2008 edition

⁹Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2001. Third Assessment Report.

¹⁰Motavalli, Jim (ed.) Feeling the Heat page 119.

¹¹Rosen, Yereth “Warming climate disrupts Alaska Natives' lives” Reuters April 16, 2004.

¹²Motavalli, Jim (ed.) Feeling the Heat page 137

¹³NOAA 1998 Year of the Ocean “Impacts Of Global Climate Change” Washington, DC
available at: http://www.yoto98.noaa.gov/yoto/meeting/climate_316.html

¹⁴Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2001. Third Assessment Report.

¹⁵ Stevens, William K. “Linking Health Effects to Changes in Climate” New York Times, August 10, 1998.

¹⁶ See Shope, R. E. 1992. Impacts of global climate change on human health: Spread of infectious disease. Chapter 25 of Global climate change: Implications, challenges and mitigation measures, ed. S. K. Majumdar, L. S. Kalkstein, B. Yarnal, E. W. Miller, and L. M. Rosenfeld, 363-70. Easton, PA: The Pennsylvania Academy of Science. Available at http://www.ciesin.org/docs/001-367/001-367.html

¹⁷ For more information on health impacts, see the 2000 US Global Change Research Program’s “National Assessment of Climate Change” health issues analysis available at:
http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/overviewhealth.htm

¹⁸Schwartz, P. and D. Randall. 2003. An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Washington DC, page 1

¹⁹Schwartz, P. and D. Randall. 2003. An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Washington DC, page 3

²⁰Schwartz, P. and D. Randall. 2003. An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Washington DC, page 9

²¹ Available at http://www.imcafs.org