This summer we’ve been seeing quite a lot of news surrounding record weather patterns, unbearable heat waves, and smoke so dense we thought we were chillin in Eric Foreman’s basement for a bit too long. Although these headlines peaked the interest of my tree-hugging self, they also seemingly desensitized me to further “record-breaking” pollution or climate disaster news. I knew it had come too far when I saw an article with the title “Ocean Temperatures Hit 90 Degrees, Fueling Further Weather Disasters” and instinctually, thought about the age old question… what constitutes something as soup?
Insert: a cartoon chef and a Spanish grandfather arguing over if gazpacho is considered soup or not in the middle of a boiling ocean. -Oops, I just gave The Economist it’s next cover page, my bad.
On a serious note though, our lack of public urgency, negligence, and the excuse that “it has to make economic sense” is wreaking havoc on our planet right before our eyes. Oceans and our marine ecosystems play a vital role in balancing our atmospheric emissions. In recent decades our oceans have soaked up around 90% of the heat caused by our greenhouse gas emissions and continue to trigger a vicious cycle of hotter land temperatures, hotter seas, stronger storms, loss of marine life, rising sea levels, and a bunch of other impacts we don’t even know about yet.
For any of you more casual climate crusaders I want you to keep in mind that this isn’t another “plastics polluting our oceans, save the sea turtles” article. This is a “our planet’s built-in climate regulator and the back-bone of our global trade-routes, not to mention over half of the species on Earth are in danger” type of article. Even DJ Khaled had to take a pause when his coastal Atlantic Miami waters reached temperatures nearing 90F. And if you were wondering if our recent wildfires, droughts, extreme storms, and rising ocean temperatures were connected, I’d tell you that you’re on to something because that is entirely correct. Heating of our large bodies of water alters atmospheric pressures, which changes the direction, strength, and moisture carried in winds known as jet streams — leading to things like extreme heat domes like we saw in Houston recently. So if you’re still in the camp that “it has to make economic sense”, then it may be worth a second glance, according to marine scientist Deborah Brosnan, we could see costs of around $1 trillion annually just from hot-ocean-amplified catastrophes to people and infrastructure in the coming decades.
So to answer your question:
Oxford defines soup as-
Soup
A liquid dish, typically made by boiling meat, fish, or vegetables, etc. in stock or water.
We may not be at boiling yet, but we sure as hell are on our way to a big ol’ Ocean Soup.
Link to the Bloomberg article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-25/soaring-ocean-temperatures-are-fueling-global-natural-disasters#xj4y7vzkg
