What significance does that have with the content of this article?

A few people in the comments have pointed out problems with the reporting, and the general motive of downplaying environmental issues aligns with those of the aforementioned media company.

I don't mean to imply anything wrong with the article, but I totally agree that bringing this up is relevant. The potential motivations of who is telling you something is very important. One of the first things I did was google "who owns national geographic". Then I looked through the comments here to see if it'd been mentioned. (I would've made a similar comment, despite the almost inevitable downvoting which I see has so far happened to your comment.)

One might also want to check the linked article and its source, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Reports (I also don't mean to imply anything about that.)

Agreed. The article itself doesn't seem wildly biased from a cursory glance, and I'm not really qualified to comment on its scientific rigor, but it's worth being aware of potential sources of bias nonetheless.

And National Geographic has just been sold to Disney. I assure you, the ownership doesn't affect reporting on a story like this.