Oceans

Know what would be really different? If you’re sitting around with friends enjoying dinner, and suddenly you start eating your knife and fork. Of course you can’t eat silver or plastic, but edible utensils do exist, and you might have seen them recently on Facebook.
A video of a guy biting into a spoon is making the rounds, and I’m a little ashamed to admit that instead of thinking about how much plastic would be kept out of landfills and oceans, I immediately wanted to get my hands on some so I could pull off the above dinner scenario.

by Larry Kummer, from the Fabius Maximus website
The public policy debate about climate science shows the dysfunctional nature of the US media. Here’s another example of how propaganda has contaminated the news reporting of this vital subject, looking at stories about a new study of our oceans.

The saying, “There’s plenty of fish in the sea” will be utter nonsense by 2050, scientists say, because plastic will dominate the oceans.
Use of plastic has increased 20-fold in the past half-century, and plastic production is expected to double over the next 2 decades and nearly quadruple over the next 50 years. Nearly 1/3 of all plastic packaging “escapes collection systems,” CNN Money reports.

The world’s oceans are filled with plastic. More than 5 million pieces of it are floating around, being eaten by fish and passed up the food chain. Every year, more than 100,000 marine animals and seabirds are killed by plastic waste.
Illustration: P. Huey. Sourced from U.T. Bornscheuer, Science 351:1154 (2016).
Of the 342 million tons of plastic produced each year, a tiny fraction of it – about 14% – is recyclable.

by Judith Curry
Estimates of the rate of sea level rise are diverging.

For background on the topic of sea level rise, see these previous posts:

by Alan Longhurst
I think this paper on on ocean tides, sea-floor volcanoes and Milankevitch cycles is a game changer.

by Bob Tisdale
A closer look at the uncertainties in the mid 20th century ocean surface temperatures.

In previous posts at WattsUpWithThat and at my blog ClimateObservations, I’ve discussed the new NOAA “pause-buster” sea surface temperature dataset (ERSST.v4) a number of times since the publication of Karl et al. (2015)—latest to earliest:

Feeling excluded from traditional routes of marine protection, a new wave of young activists with an entrepreneurial spirit are going it alone and taking the future of the oceans into their own hands

by Zeke Hausfather and Kevin Cowtan
A buoy-only sea surface temperature record supports NOAA’s adjustments.

by Judith Curry
Small atoll islands may grow, not sink, as sea level rises.

Recent headlines highlight the plight of Kiribati: