In the long list of troubling climate change scenarios, there’s one that gets relatively little attention, but definitely has enormous potential consequences.

It goes like this:

The oceans are getting warmer — they are, after all, where 90 percent of global warming actually ends up. And when they warm up they expand, because that’s what warm water does. This raises our sea levels, but it also has another effect — it reduces the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water. That’s simply physics: Warmer water contains less oxygen.