https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/humanity-will-not-survive-extinction-of-most-marine-plants-and-animals/
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The scientists warn there are only a few years left before the consequences become catastrophically clear when fish, whales and dolphins become extinct, with grave implications for the planet. In the report, the researchers from the Global Oceanic Environmental Survey Foundation (Goes) state: āAn environmental catastrophe is unfolding. We believe humanity could adapt to global warming and extreme weather changes. It is our view that humanity will not survive the extinction of most marine plants and animals.ā
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Do they represent our inevitable future?
Maybe they can also double as sun shields?
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Hmmm. I havenāt seen any corroboration of this result by other scientists - in fact thereās a brand-new article in Nature that demonstrates a much more complex situation than āall but wiped out.ā Although thereās no question that the climate/plankton relationship is important, until thereās confirmation Iād be skeptical of this groupās result.
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I have checked and news sources other than the Sunday Post still donāt seem to have anything on the subject, which makes it seem like a mistake to me. I admit to being biased though. I know our ecosystem is in terrible shape and getting worse, but genuinely canāt handle the thought of that being true.
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Yeah it seems like 90+% of all the oceanās plankton being wiped out would be the kind of thing a lot of people would have noticed by now? Itās not like the effects would be subtle or take years to make themselves known.
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Or, when our Texas Freedom GridĀ® crashes again, perhaps useful for baking, drying jerky, and brewing tea?
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Not sure if this is useful, but GOES followed up with a response to social media criticism:
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That tweet doesnāt appear to really address the criticism. I donāt doubt that the paperās citations are all peer reviewed - itās how the citations are used thatās important. And it seems pretty clear after a cursory glance at the papers the tweet links to that these are not people who should be taken seriously. Have a look at one of the titles:
āClimate regulating ocean plants and animals are being destroyed by toxic chemicals and plastics, accelerating our path towards ocean pH 7.95 in 25 years which will devastate humanity.ā
This is a title a crank would write, not a serious, credible scientist.
ETA: oops, it looks like the tweet I was responding to was swapped out. Iām still going to leave this response, though. Hereās the thread that GOES was responding to, though I canāt find their tweet again:
ETAA: It gets even worse:
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Itās probably OK
Everythingās fine 
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I mean, we are in the middle of a mass extinction and refuse to do anything about it because a handful of sociopathic executives want their numbers to go higher instead. The headlines that are definite this week are people getting subjected to deadly heat around the world, and it has been really hard to cope with what that means.
But at least thatās not weāre actually all dead already and just havenāt noticed. It occurs to me that if plankton completely collapsed, it would at the very least get reported for its immediate effect on herring and sardine catches, since those are basically shiny little plankton scoops and still have āeconomic importanceā.
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Not to mention massive and immediate die-offs of even larger organisms like basking sharks. This hasnāt happened. There is no corroborative evidence of an immediate extinction event WRT plankton.
The best explanation in this case is bad science - as noted above in the linked tweets, Dryden has no research record outside of GOES, has a massive conflict of interest, and is in other ways a climate change denier and crank. Heās getting way more mileage out of this story than it deserves.
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I did catch the tweet you initially linked before it was swapped, and it mentioned that he expects the increased carbon dioxide to be beneficial to land plant growth since itās basically food for them, which is classic denier nonsense (itās not the limiting factor for growth, but often temperature and water are, not to mention other organisms).
Thank you for confirming the rest of this is about as thought out. The world is in a lot of trouble, but misreporting like this does not help.
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No, it didnāt. Hereās the tweet I swapped out for the GOES rebuttal page because the rebuttal had the same info as the tweet.
https://mobile.twitter.com/goes_foundation/status/1549001696281595904
Perhaps the info mentioned came from another tweet or source.
That tweet basically consists of two links. From the first one:
We are biologists and perhaps we think differently to other professions, but it is our view that land-based nature will benefit from extra carbon dioxide in the environment ā it is after-all plant food. We also believe that humanity could adapt to global warming, extreme weather changes, and with enhanced plant growth humans could even flourish from an abundance of new resources in the form of plant life.
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Um, if that is accurate, holy shit, thatās really bad!
As others have pointed out, something like this should have sent up huge alerts from multiple sources.
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Seems to not be accurate, fortunately.
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