BBC: "World's oceans in 'shocking' decline"

[auroraglacialis]

we're seeing changes that are happening faster than we'd thought, or in ways that we didn't expect to see for hundreds of years."
...
But more worrying than this, the team noted, are the ways in which different issues act synergistically to increase threats to marine life.
...
Life on Earth has gone through five "mass extinction events" caused by events such as asteroid impacts; and it is often said that humanity's combined impact is causing a sixth such event.

The IPSO report concludes that it is too early to say definitively.

But the trends are such that it is likely to happen, they say - and far faster than any of the previous five.

"What we're seeing at the moment is unprecedented in the fossil record - the environmental changes are much more rapid," Professor Rogers told BBC News.
...
Carbon dioxide levels are now so high, it says, that ways of pulling the gas out of the atmosphere need to be researched urgently - but not using techniques, such as iron fertilisation, that lead to more CO2 entering the oceans.

"We have to bring down CO2 emissions to zero within about 20 years,"

The sentence "things are getting worse far faster than we expected" is becoming something of a running meme among environmental scientists it seems, as I hear it from every part of that scientific field from climate change to oceanography to biodivery to ecosystem science...

[CyanRachel]

Yes, I heard this news too, and it doesn't sound good at all. This is sad, very sad only.
We've got to do something -- the time to act is now!
I want to find out ways that I can do my part to help.

[mikkowilson]

The good news is that once we - humans - die; the planet will, over time, evolve on happily without us.


- Mikko

[Raiden]

Yeah, the CO2 stuff is getting really bad.

As the concentration of CO2 increases, the ocean becomes more acidic, because CO2 + Water = Carbonic Acid.

Molluscs and Crustaceans have shells that dissolve in more acidic environments. If this keeps up, the ocean really will be totally destroyed, because all of those animals will die, and then the food web will collapse.