In a recent paper published in the journal BioScience, marine biologist Carlos Duarte and co-authors argue there should be "an organized auditing of ocean calamities" to better assess the drivers behind large scale disruptions of ocean ecosystems and, importantly, whether the disruptions are human-caused. The over-arching goal of these audits, as described in the full-text, would be to prevent the public from becoming overwhelmed in response to an "overly negative message" that suggests the "ocean is beyond restoration." The authors hold that some internal bias inherent to science as well as external biases in the media "contribute to perpetuating the perception of ocean calamities in the absence of robust evidence."
Duarte et al's argument is restrained, academic and sophisticated compared to the criticisms from the deniersphere, but that doesn't mean it's entirely accurate. As evidence, the Nature write-up ends by quoting Ralph Keeling of the Scripps Institution, whose work on coastal "dead zones" Duarte et al use as an example in their study. Keeling points out that while Duarte et al suggest it's wrong to call disruptive changes to ocean ecosystems "calamities," his own paper didn't actually even use the term calamity. So the Duarte et al paper, according to Keeling, "is kind of committing the same sin it's railing against in the cast of this as a series of calamities. The literature doesn't call it calamities. That's their own hyperbolic language."
Speaking of hyperbole, Climate Depot has already put up a link to the Nature story, and we expect others to follow suit.
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