That sinking feeling

You know, people have been sounding the alarm bells for decades now about one thing or another. It's just that that thing seems to vary in just about every detail other than the resultant End Of Life As We Know It. In the 70s the atmosphere was cooling and a new ice age was imminent. In the 80s the human population curve had no plateau. In the early 90s there was still talk of the approaching turmoil caused by the complete consumption of all the oil and gas deposits.

The latest clangor, however, is a little different. Even before town crier Al Gore won his Oscar, there were near-weekly reports from some other far-flung corner of the globe where a new study found evidence that this time we're really doomed. I mean just completely fucked.

And the pace of these findings seems to be increasing. It's not just the bandwagon, here, but really truly a fundamental shift in the workings of the planet. Just now, for example, we learn that the great Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica is basically saturated with carbon dioxide... something that wasn't supposed to happen until well after 2050.

And why does that matter? Well, it turns out that the Southern Ocean is one of the planet's largest natural carbon reservoirs, accounting for 15% of the global carbon sink. And it's full. Not only does that alter the chemistry of the sea, but it also means there's fewer places left to sequester the millions of tons of CO2 we keeping spewing forth. So it'll accumulate even faster in the atmosphere and heat the place up that much faster.

Hear ye, hear ye, revise those estimates folks, it's about to get even warmer.