Last weekend I had a few drinks with an oceanographer and we inevitably spent some time talking about climate change and its effects on the world. He had a lot of insights that I thought I would share.

First off, the oceans have a topography the same way land masses do, and it is an insanely complex science with thousands of factors determining average sea level. For example, the rise in sea level in New York city is more than twice the average rise in sea level, and this is because melting ice from Greenland is disrupting natural currents, long island is dropping in altitude due to tectonic plate leveling, and we dropped a lot of weight on it. If all the ice in Greenland melted sea level around their coast would actually drop, because the land would expand like a sponge after you took weight off of it, and because the ice has a gravitational pull which would no longer be present.

The acidification of the oceans is a huge problem. Certain types of phytoplankton and shell building animals including coral can not form their shells in an increasingly acidic environment. We do not know what effect this would have on the ecology of the planet as a whole should a large portion of the worlds ocean life die. In fact, no model has ever been produced because we do not understand how these systems work on a fundamental level. It is possible that the ecology adapts rapidly, but it is also possible that it could cascade out of control. We have no idea what will happen.

"It's an experiment which may be best if left alone, on account of this is our only planet, after all the effects may be irreversible, but we just don't know." He told me after I asked his opinion on the effects.

If we had started a 3% per year cutback on world wide CO2 emissions starting in 1995 we would not have any any problems in the foreseeable future, however we now may have to cut back up to 50% a year to avoid ecological damage. Imagine everyone making that kind of cutback. You would have to eat half the calories from meat, turning off half of your lights, driving your car half the amount you currently do on a road that has received half the maintenance it would normally get because concrete production releases a lot of CO2. Everyone would have to do all of those things, because if you only do a few then it doesn't have the full impact.

Humans are not going anywhere, but our lives may change drastically to medieval subsistence farming level wealth, although many modern technologies will still be readily available. He believes that humans will survive any ecological disaster, although the global economy will take a huge hit due to the loss of oceanic and coastal resources.

"This is an ecological problem that people misunderstand, although quite frankly no one is really capable of seeing the big picture because of how complex this issue is. The UN report is for real, we need personal action from everyone to avoid calamity. Most of the waste isn't from large companies, its from the everyday choices of individuals."

There are tons of little things that have a huge impact that most of us do without realizing. For example, taking long hot showers is very wasteful because the water needed to be treated, pumped to your house, and heated which consumes energy. So if you are not using it it goes to waste.

We discussed a lot of other things, but this post is getting kind of long and by now I'm sure you are feeling as self-conscious as me, so I'm going to end it here. Hope you all learned something from this, feel free to ask me any questions.