ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTROPHE PASSED “POINT OF NO RETURN” EIGHT YEARS AGO, SCIENTISTS SAY

 

According to The Guardian, climate scientists have warned that excessive heat in the Earth's seas has crossed the "threshold of no return" since 2014.

It's damning new data that confirms our route to climate disaster — or, more accurately, that we're already in one.

According to Kyle Van Houtan, a researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and co-author of a new study about the findings published in the journal PLOS Climate, "we've shown that climate change is not something that is uncertain and may happen in the distant future — it's something that is a historical fact and has already occurred."

Extreme Heat

Temperature data from 1920 to 2019 was examined by Van Houtan and his colleagues. By 2015, temperatures had reached their 50-year high, marking the "point of no return," according to the experts.

"2014 was the first year for the worldwide ocean to reach the 50% threshold of high heat, therefore becoming 'normal,' with the South Atlantic (1998) and Indian (2007) basins crossing this barrier earlier," the researchers wrote in the report.

And 1998 “was 24 years ago - that is astounding,” Van Houtan told The Guardian.

Species like lobster and scallops along the northeast coasts of the United States and Canada are the first to feel the strain. In fact, 14 Alaskan fisheries have already been labeled federal disasters.

The findings present a bleak picture that should serve as a forewarning of what's to come.

Professor John Abraham of the University of St Thomas told the newspaper, "Oceans are crucial to understanding climate change." "They cover nearly 70% of the planet's surface and absorb more than 90% of global warming heat," says the report.