Welp

[Content Note: Climate change.]

Suzanne Goldenberg for the Guardian: "Warming of oceans due to climate change is unstoppable, say US scientists."

The warming of the oceans due to climate change is now unstoppable after record temperatures last year, bringing additional sea-level rise, and raising the risks of severe storms, US government climate scientists said on Thursday.

The annual State of the Climate in 2014 report, based on research from 413 scientists from 58 countries, found record warming on the surface and upper levels of the oceans, especially in the North Pacific, in line with earlier findings of 2014 as the hottest year on record.

Global sea-level also reached a record high, with the expansion of those warming waters, keeping pace with the 3.2 ± 0.4 mm per year trend in sea level growth over the past two decades, the report said.

Scientists said the consequences of those warmer ocean temperatures would be felt for centuries to come – even if there were immediate efforts to cut the carbon emissions fuelling changes in the oceans.

"I think of it more like a fly wheel or a freight train. It takes a big push to get it going but it is moving now and will continue to move long after we continue to pushing it," Greg Johnson, an oceanographer at Noaa's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, told a conference call with reporters.

"Even if we were to freeze greenhouse gases at current levels, the sea would actually continue to warm for centuries and millennia, and as they continue to warm and expand the sea levels will continue to rise," Johnson said.

And while timeframes described in "centuries and millennia" may seem like an excuse to be indifferent to climate change now, the reality is that the warming and rising of the oceans even in small increments now is underwriting the increasing severity of storms and the heat waves which are already causing displacement and death in many parts of the world.

I am anything but indifferent to climate change, but I remain pessimistic about generating the collective resolve to meaningfully address it.