Research published Thursday in the journal Science warns that runaway global warming driven by carbon dioxide emissions has put marine life at risk of the most catastrophic mass extinction since the “Great Dying” 250 million years ago, when 90% of all ocean species were wiped out.

Using models of varying emissions scenarios, Princeton University scientists Curtis Deutsch and Justin Penn found that the continued burning of fossil fuels and “business-as-usual global temperature increases” are likely to result, by 2300, in mass extinctions of marine systems “on par with past great extinctions.”

“With accelerating greenhouse gas emissions, species losses from warming and oxygen depletion alone become comparable to current direct human impacts within a century and culminate in a mass extinction rivaling those in Earth’s past,” the researchers write. “Polar species are at highest risk of extinction, but local biological richness declines more in the tropics.”

While their findings are dire, Deutsch and Penn go out of their way to emphasize […]