Gyzzzzlbex looks around and says, “Hey Azzterixx I don’t remember all this water covering up the city. I know it’s been two hundred years since we last visited this planet, but I’m sure there wasn’t this much water here then.”

            Azzterixx replies, “And where are all the people? I didn’t see a soul when we were on the way down here in our space ship. This planet was heavily populated when we last visited.”

            “Maybe they killed themselves off with those nuclear bombs they were testing in the desert when we had that hard landing in Roswell, New Mexico.”

            “Nah,” says Azzterixx, “My monitor doesn’t show any radiation.”

            “Well maybe there’s something here in the United Nations headquarters that will tell us what happened.”

            The two aliens look around in the various rooms and find a library.

            Azzterixx picks up a weighty tome, browses through it, then says, “Well look here Gyzzzzlbex, this document says that it is unequivocal that humans have warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land of this planet through release of green house gases and that there have been widespread and rapid changes to the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere and biosphere as a result.”

            Gyzzzzlbex walks over to where Azzterixx is standing and tries to read over his shoulder. “What is that big book you are quoting from?”

            Azzterixx says, “It’s called Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. It’s by some panel of experts here at the United Nations called the International Panel on Climate Change. And holy cow it is 4000 pages long.”

            Gyzzzzlbex says, “How about turning the page there Azzterixx.”

            Azzterixx does so and they both inhale sharply.

            “So that’s what killed them all,” says Gyzzzzlbex.

            “Yes and they calculated it all out in this report. Amazing. They knew if they didn’t drastically cut green house gas emissions that the global surface atmospheric temperature could rise by as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. How sad. Well I guess our mission here is done.”

            As the aliens turn to leave Gyzzzzlbex says, “I wonder why they did nothing to stop green house gas emissions, knowing what they did?”

            I wonder too. I read the news coverage of the recent United Nations Climate Summit in Scotland which reported of a consensus among scientists and environmental organizations that the agreement reached there by some 200 countries will not be enough to mitigate greenhouse gases impacts on our climate. It’s been since January 2016 that I’ve written anything on how climate change is impacting the oceans, so I thought I’d take a hard look at the scientific research presented by the IPCC report on Climate Change: The Physical Science Basis just issued in 2021 versus the report by the same name from 2014. I wrote four posts on climate change in 2016 that covered:  ocean temperature changes, sea level rise, and ocean salinity. So I’m going to follow that process again in this blog to let long time readers catch up with the current science. Here is a link to the first post I wrote in 2016 (https://waterblogger.org/general-information/oceans-and-climate-change/ ).