Five years to ecological collapse
A few days ago, I read about this WWF report (PDF) making two statements in particular. First,
over the past 50 years (1970-2020), the average size of monitored wildlife populations has shrunk by 73%.
And this warning:
It is no exaggeration to say that what happens in the next five years will determine the future of life on Earth.
Today, I came across an article in The Guardian, "Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature's carbon sink failing?" (via Tildes.net). The comments linked to this tweet by _binshi_, which says:
Hey, earth systems scientist here!
We have absolutely no idea why this is happening. All of our models currently underpredict climate change, we never expected the carbon sinks to fail. Expect major ecosystem collapse w/i the next 5-10 yrs
The news article points to preliminary findings that natural land and sea carbon sinks will become less effective with a rise in global temperature. Droughts and wildfires reduce vegetation and release CO2. Glacier melt may slow the ocean's carbon sink process (while also producing more extreme weather events).
A variety of ecological signs suggest that the next five years will be momentous.