Geoscience Reference
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drying out or freezing as water moves between planetary interior,
crustal surface, atmosphere, and outer space. The new astronomy will
capture oceans young, middle-aged, and old, being born and dying.
We are on the verge of not just a new chapter in oceanography—or
exo-oceanography, if you like—but of setting up an entirely new
library of oceans, for the diversity and complexity of cosmic oceans
will be beyond anything that we can dream of. Truth will be stranger
than both fiction and scientific hypothesizing alike—and that is even
before we think of the kind of life forms that may be evolving in those
extraterrestrial waters.
As these new seascapes open up in front of us, we are here on Earth
at another transition: the likely transformation—and biological
impoverishment—of our own Earthly oceans that surely still repre-
sent a cosmic jewel, even on this widest of universal canvases. For it
seems very likely that, over the coming decades, the oceans of Earth
will undergo a transformation the like of which has not been seen for
many millions of years. The changes wrought by warming, acidifica-
tion, overfishing, and pollution threaten to kill off not just many spe-
cies, but also whole ecosystems—not least the extraordinary biological
riches of the coral reefs.
It is still—just—not too late to stop or slow this marine holocaust,
and there have been many useful initiatives, both national and inter-
national. The setting up of marine reserves helps sharply depleted
fish populations to recover to something like their former numbers.
Current discussions on how the International Law of the Sea may
evolve have as one central theme the effects—and possible control—
of harmful human activities. 181 Handing the control of local marine
resources to local communities has been found to be effective in
slowing decline.
The real key to our oceans' future, though, is how we as a global
human society manage our need for enormous amounts of energy.
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