Quote of the Day (David Wallace-Wells, on Global Warming’s Impact on the Oceans)

“More than 90 percent of all the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by the greenhouse effect goes into the oceans, and while climate-conscious humans may regard this as a lucky break for life on land, the math implies a different and less narcissistic emphasis: that the planet’s water, home also to a majority of its life, has absorbed nine times as much global warming as the world above the surface we know so well — and worry over so much.”—Science writer David Wallace-Wells, “The Impacts of Global Warming Are Invisible, But They’re Unimaginably Vast—With Long-Term Consequences That Will Be Hard to Predict,” The New York Times Magazine, June 30, 2024

The image accompanying this post of David Wallace-Wells was taken Sept. 28, 2019, at the 2019 Göteborg Book Fair (talking about his book The Uninhabitable Earth) by Vogler.

Quote of the Day (Helen Czerski, on Being ‘Citizens of an Ocean World’)

“Marine heat waves and hot spots can have severe local effects, as ocean life struggles to survive the increasing temperatures or moves to find cooler water, disrupting the ecosystems in those places. But the bigger picture is that any change to the ocean engine will matter, because the way this engine hums dictates conditions for the rest of life on Earth. Living on a blue planet isn't about the color, lovely though it is. The ocean is the dominant feature of Earth, and we live in its shadow. This is about our identity as citizens of an ocean world, which is broadcast to the universe, written in blue light.”— British physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski, “The Shifting Flows of Our Overheating Oceans,” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 30-Oct. 1, 2023

I took the image accompanying this post while on vacation in Hilton Head, S.C., in November 2014.

Quote of the Day (Lord Byron, on ‘The Glad Waters of the Dark Blue Sea’)

“O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,    
Our thoughts are boundless, and our souls as free,   
Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam,
Survey our empire, and behold our home.” —English Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), The Corsair: A Tale (1814)

I took the image accompanying this post while on vacation in Hilton Head, SC, in November 2014.