It's all pretty shocking and we have all been places where this evidence is very much in your face. It's more difficult to feel the immediacy when you spend time on the water in a beautiful and pristine looking coastal setting. Part of the issue is that so much of what you describe is below the surface and the rest, like acidification and de-oxygenation, is invisible. Part of the problem is that I have no personal experience to compare the coast of Nova Scotia now with the coast 50 or 200 years ago. I'm excited to see a whale or fish rising to the surface, but shouldn't that be normal? I have read accounts of coastal New England from the colonial era and it's described as teeming with life. Part of it was just good advertising but there is enough other evidence to suggest that the ocean we go to see would be considered a dead zone by those early visitors. On another note Jason, I have to remark on your simile "like a bulldozer at a pie-eating contest". Are you checking to see if I'm reading or did you just suffer a Clive Cussler moment.
Thanks, Tom. I didn't realize I'd created a Cussler-ism... But I'll take it as a badge of honor until I hear otherwise.
You're right on re: the difficulty of seeing the changes. We need to see back in time and below the surface to really feel the transformation. Otherwise we rely entirely on the data and analyses. The Gulf of Maine looks fine from the shore of Muscongus Bay, but the data says otherwise: temp and acidity up, green crabs moving in, etc. And another piece of the puzzle is knowing that rapid enduring change is not normal. Fluctuation, yes, but not a hockey-stick graph on climate and extinctions. We've all grown up with this cultural norm of constant change (along with constant growth), particularly with technology, and I wonder if we unconsciously apply that norm to a transforming natural world too. On some level do we think that if phones and computers regularly become outmoded, then maybe so do cod and puffins?
It's all pretty shocking and we have all been places where this evidence is very much in your face. It's more difficult to feel the immediacy when you spend time on the water in a beautiful and pristine looking coastal setting. Part of the issue is that so much of what you describe is below the surface and the rest, like acidification and de-oxygenation, is invisible. Part of the problem is that I have no personal experience to compare the coast of Nova Scotia now with the coast 50 or 200 years ago. I'm excited to see a whale or fish rising to the surface, but shouldn't that be normal? I have read accounts of coastal New England from the colonial era and it's described as teeming with life. Part of it was just good advertising but there is enough other evidence to suggest that the ocean we go to see would be considered a dead zone by those early visitors. On another note Jason, I have to remark on your simile "like a bulldozer at a pie-eating contest". Are you checking to see if I'm reading or did you just suffer a Clive Cussler moment.
Thanks, Tom. I didn't realize I'd created a Cussler-ism... But I'll take it as a badge of honor until I hear otherwise.
You're right on re: the difficulty of seeing the changes. We need to see back in time and below the surface to really feel the transformation. Otherwise we rely entirely on the data and analyses. The Gulf of Maine looks fine from the shore of Muscongus Bay, but the data says otherwise: temp and acidity up, green crabs moving in, etc. And another piece of the puzzle is knowing that rapid enduring change is not normal. Fluctuation, yes, but not a hockey-stick graph on climate and extinctions. We've all grown up with this cultural norm of constant change (along with constant growth), particularly with technology, and I wonder if we unconsciously apply that norm to a transforming natural world too. On some level do we think that if phones and computers regularly become outmoded, then maybe so do cod and puffins?