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Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists
- jgalt212 11y agoShouldn't reefs just migrate north in the northern hemisphere, and southwards in the southern hemisphere? I know this process can be quite slow, but on a long enough time frame it's conceivable there may be no net loss and possibly even a gain global reef acreage?
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoYes this has happened repeatedly thru geological history. I live in Iowa, and its limestone rock is all coral. We're 100's of miles from any ocean today. But coral is built to respond gradually over decades. It's never going to be able to migrate in time at this rate.
- scarmig 11y agoA temperature delta over a millennium is very different than that same delta over a century. Coral reef ecosystems take centuries to establish themselves and mature. They can't simply grow legs and walk a couple miles north every year.
- scarmig 11y agoTo answer your question: sure, 2000 years from now it's hard to predict total acreage, and it may well be higher (or lower). But there's little uncertainty that on the timescale of centuries, corals will be devastated, and that means really bad things for us and our children, to say nothing of the health of marine ecosystems.
- fche 11y ago"corals will be devastated, and that means really bad things for us and our children" What "really bad things" would you or your children suffer, should all the corals suddenly become sentient and beam into outer space? Just curious.
- n72 11y agoFrom the article: "An estimated 30 million small-scale fishermen and women depend on reefs for their livelihoods, more than one million in the Philippines alone. In Indonesia, fish supported by the reefs provide the primary source of protein."
- fche 11y agoThanks, so it's a human-food availability concern.
- n72 11y agoI think it's also the problem that we just can't predict what the consequences are of such a large ecological change.
- beatpanda 11y agoIt's also inherently a problem that we're going to lose lots of plant and animal species that depend on the coral reefs, simply because those plants and animals are beautiful and we will have been responsible for their deaths. "Well don't worry, we'll just get food from somewhere else" is not a real answer. At some point, life on a dead planet just isn't worth it anymore.
- tremon 11y agoI think that's so shortsighted, it borders on being rude. It's the most direct impact it has on us, yes, but it's not just food availability for humans that's impacted. We are looking at the devastation of an entire habitat. Many species that rely on that habitat may cease to exist. As a consequence, many species that eat animals from that habitat may disappear too. Worst-case, we're faced with the disappearance of an entire food chain. And since many large ocean species travel the entire world, the consequences will not remain local.
- greeneggs 11y agoRegarding water temperature, there are two big changes when you move away from the equator: 1. Temperatures drop. 2. Temperature variability increases. (Seasons are more meaningful away from the equator.) The second issue, of temperature variability, is a main problem that prevents reefs from migrating away from the equator in response to global warming. The corals can't tolerate a wide range of temperatures. The other problem, as you say, is the time frame. Reefs are built up over thousands of years, and we are warming and acidifying the oceans over mere decades. (And ocean acidification isn't helped at all by moving away from the equator.)
- victorology 11y agoThis is truly sad. Wonder what effects on the larger ecosystem the death of this amount of coral will have.
- codecamper 11y agoMany ecosystems have been already reduced to: grass, goat, pig, sheep, cow, person, dog, cat Currently we catch wild fish to eat. That will cease some day (we'll run out) & we will grow most of our fish in farms. So.... these are probably the last 100 years of wildlife. Unless people make drastic changes.
- ageofwant 11y agoDo yourself a disservice browse using Google Earth with satellite view turned on to any location and zoom out. See if you can spot what is left between the mono-culture farmlands. We have already sterilised much of the earths surface.
- appleflaxen 11y agoThere is a whole lot of climate change evidence coming out that is terrifying. At what point does this become so scary that something happens to increase the taxes on fossil fuels so that consumption will go down? Falling renewable prices are not enough, and use-based taxes are the single best way to let individuals make their own decisions about what/how much to use. Carbon credits are a good market-based solution too, but it seems likely that people and industries will try to game the system.
- blondie9x 11y agoSo true. Washington is too tainted by vested interests that seek to procrastinate shift. Time has literally run out. From here we are already in catch up mode. It seems like a revolution is necessary to stop them from acting against humanity's long term existence for their short term financial gain.
- gedy 11y agoWashington could be taken over by the Green party, ban fossil fuels, etc - and we'd still be in trouble due to China, et al with their increasing CO2 output. Reminds me a bit of banning plastic bags in California to help the ocean. That's lovely, but given Asia dumps something like 150 times the amount plastics into the ocean, so is basically meaningless.
- whyenot 11y ago> banning plastic bags in California to help the ocean They were banned because they don't decompose, so they end up all over the place. Not just in the ocean, but on the beach, in creeks, lakes, anywhere near a highway, etc. As an example local to Silicon Valley, Stevens Creek used to be completely clogged with plastic bags. It's gotten a lot better now.
- anexprogrammer 11y agoThey've banned plastic bags in the UK too. Of course any wasteland or street is still littered with fast food plastic, plastic bottles and the excessive packaging found in most supermarkets. We have slightly effective recycling schemes for a tiny proportion of what we use, and massive amounts of recycling end up shipped to the developing world to be dumped. Manufacturers of TVs, appliances, IoT toys and any thing else using plastics aren't required to own their debris at end of lifespan. So, as is typical with modern politics, we've had a token gesture that affects the public but utterly avoids the real issue. The oceans are doomed unless we grow up and own our debris as a species.
- agumonkey 11y agoAt this point I welcome catastrophe. Nobody listens anyway so a clear message from nature is the only way.
- scarmig 11y agoYeah, the deaths of millions of poor farmers in developing countries will totally get the West to start caring about the problem!
- andy_ppp 11y agoYeah or millions of migrants heading to Europe fleeing ISIS, a situation in which climate change has played a massive role. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-and-rising-food-prices-heightened-arab-spring/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-and...
- ageofwant 11y agoAs much as I share your sentiment any catastrophe will almost certainly be dismissed as natural or, my personal favourite "act of God". And the massive loss of innocent species and their worlds is too high a price to pay for that education. Also, it bears noting that these facts have been well understood for some time now. Its simply being ignored because it is inconvenient. Its a great pity that catastrophe is needed to force the masses to force the powers that be to affect change, all the while those powers were very much aware of the coming crisis. How could they not be ?
- agumonkey 11y agoWe have to recognize at that point that the human as a whole is still incapable of dealing with this. Either too busy trying to live (sorry for third world people) or too self centered to not think about short term profits. As for loss of biodiversity, nature doesn't care and if we managed to tilt a planet's climate to the point of wiping half of our own selves from it.. then good for the planet.
- eggy 11y ago
- blondie9x 11y agoIt's sad how many apps are being written lately by "innovators" and "entrepreneurs" to try and monetize already existing free services that function perfectly. Where are the real innovators and scientists who will tackle the biggest threat humanity has ever faced? Is it only Musk and Cook and Bezos amongst us? We need to stop writing apps to monetize what is already provided to consumers as free services and focus on the big issues of today. We should use technology to solve the biggest problems. Our talent to code and design systems should be used in ways that move society further towards sustainability. Climate change could ruin everything we have ever built. Everything we ever do in our lives including our families could fade forever if we don't act swiftly.
- scarmig 11y agoI can't tell what you mean by your reference to Musk, but if you're criticizing him for this in particular, you're pretty off base. He's (successfully) innovating in a broken system, and what he's doing will benefit any future evolutions of our current system. Or is it that there aren't enough Musks? If so, sure, but there are plenty of really smart, really hardworking engineers helping implement his vision.
- AznHisoka 11y agoSo you're asking people to stop wanting money? The people who want to solve life threatening problems will do so and the people who want to make "trivial" apps to make lots of money will do so. Asking us to just do the former is pointless. Also what about people who aren't entrepreneurs and work at industries like finance, law, and first country problems? Shouldn't they be held under the same scrutiny? What's so special about tech entrepreneurs that they'll should be more responsible? Knowing how to code Ruby and deploy in Docker is not the same skill set needed to come up with climate change solutions.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- adventured 11y agoYou make an extremely good point. I had not considered that every time a person complains about duplication of apps, or developers that make trivial apps for money (instead of 'changing the world'), the same standard should be applied to the tens of millions of service and industrial jobs that are mostly clones of each other and could be considered trivial by the same standard. For example: we really need to do something about all of these people working at Costco, trying to make their car and rent payments. It's ridiculous, the duplication of labor going on, where people aren't doing anything original. That would be considered a cruel, borderline malevolent statement. And following through on it would result in a hundred million people being unemployed. Somehow the standard changes when a person is mostly seeking to earn a living off of an app however.
- silliconeheart 11y agoWhere I live, in the summer seasons, fireflies would would scatter the night sky, and in such plentiful numbers that I had never thought I would stop seeing them in just a couple of years. Only in a matter of 12 years, the fireflies have vanished from my area. Last 1-2 years I have not seen a single one.
- guscost 11y agoWhen discussing environmental stuff, often activists will say that I "deny climate change". I understand what they mean (that I don't believe the risk of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is grave enough to demand government intervention) but I still have to point out that we live on a rocky planet in space, where everything including the climate constantly changes. You might be alarmed by a very specific change like this one, and you might want to do everything possible to stop it. That's completely understandable and I wish you success in your advocacy. But the way I see it, change is perhaps the only constant feature of our world, and change absolutely is going to mean death of a bunch of coral sometimes. Go far enough with the rhetoric and it sounds like an argument that the climate shouldn't change, which is futile. I hope the mainstream environmentalism will someday "grow up" to a point where people understand that change is inevitable, and that as long as we exist we actively participate in the change. Then rather than setting arbitrary "natural" criteria and bemoaning corruption like depressed Platonists, and rather than starting witch hunts after people, we can focus on how that change should be planned for and what actually can or should be done to manage it.
- ocschwar 11y agoIf you want to wallow in ignorance about how and why "the climate constantly changes" and what that means for our civilization, that is your prerogative. But don't expect to be treated with respect. You're making a pitiful excuse to dismiss trends that threaten trillions of dollars of inherited infrastructure investment that is at risk of being made useless, and that threaten the comfort and safety of billions of people.
- ageofwant 11y agoAustralian here (that was very hard for me to confess) There was a bit on the news about the massive bleaching event up north, a few mentions on tv. Once in the paper. My current minister for the environment Greg Hunt, or as he is know amongst his admirers: " Fucking Festering Cunt Hunt", and his jolly band of Liberals (don't be confused, in Australia "Liberal" means far-right fucking nutjob) could care less about the environment and have, on national TV, dismissed climate change as "absolute crap". We elected this government, and there is a significant chance that we will vote for them again before the end of the year. Fuck me dead if I know why. I apologize for the cussing, but I believe its appropriate. (edit: added more fucks)
- dflock 11y agoIf you'd like to know what you can do about this personally, here's some solid ideas from Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/
- throwaway16410 11y agoAt my company, Genability, we all read and enjoyed that Bret Victor post and we've been using it for recruitment. If you want to help scale clean energy technology and get a healthy dose of optimism in the process, we're hiring: http://genability.com/careers/vp_of_engineering.html http://genability.com/careers/vp_of_engineering.html
- darkseas 11y agoI had understood Terry Hughes comments [1] to be that he _expects_ up to half the corals that bleach to die. Has their been follow up surveys already? The final mortality could be much worse, particularly among the ornate, fast growing species, but it will be tough to know for a little while yet. [1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-28/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching-95-per-cent-north-section/7279338 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-28/great-barrier-reef-cor...
- xfactor973 11y agoI planted about 50 fruit trees and bushes when I moved into my new place. I also converted the electric to 100% renewable. Other than dumping my natural gas heater I'm not sure what's left that I can do to help reduce climate change.
- kilovoltaire 11y agoAwesome. Now you could help other people do similar things.
- mooreds 11y agoWhat is your commute like? What politicians do you support? Those are both ways you can affect climate change.
- nothrabannosir 11y agoI see a lot of down-vote worthy responses to OP, and more downvotes. But in this case, I honestly don't see it: why is this not a fair question? I mean, in a genuinely neutral sense; isn't he right?
- downandout 11y ago>in a genuinely neutral sense Asking if someone supports politicians that claim to be eco-conscious while raising campaign money, who are almost universally left-leaning, is far from "neutral". There are places on the Internet to espouse political support for either side. This, however, is not one of them.
- giaour 11y agoSupporting environmentally friendly legislation is orthogonal to the economic concerns that divide the left and right. It's true that environmentalists are associated with the left in the US, but that's not true everywhere in the world.
- felixbraun 11y agoExcellent related book: »The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea« by Callum Roberts. http://www.amazon.com/The-Ocean-Life-Fate-Man/dp/067002354X http://www.amazon.com/The-Ocean-Life-Fate-Man/dp/067002354X https://twitter.com/Prof_CallumYork https://twitter.com/Prof_CallumYork
- kinkywizard 11y agoHow alarmed are they exactly? Oh my God Oh my God We are all going to die alarmed I have bad feeling about this alarmed Or Hm how odd alarmed
- ocschwar 11y ago"Hope you don't mind giving up seafood" alarmed.
- miracle_code 11y ago"Unless you like jellyfish" calmed.
- draw_down 11y agoThe philosopher Slavoj Zizek often re-tells this joke: > There is an (apocryphal, for sure) anecdote about the exchange of telegrams between German and Austrian army headquarters in the middle of the First World War: the Germans sent the message "Here, on our part of the front, the situation is serious, but not catastrophic," to which the Austrians replied "Here, the situation is catastrophic, but not serious." His point is that this is the situation we find ourselves in today: ecologically and socially, the world is falling apart. We can see the catastrophe coming but we don't take it seriously.
- blondie9x 11y agoAn interesting point that people aren't talking about is food waste. It's estimated that wasted food contributes 13-17% to aggregate global warming. Who will write an app to help people waste less food and monetize by reduce costs and savings for users and businesses? http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b05088 http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b05088
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- happytrails 11y agoAll of this is caused by too many humans. Too much livestock, overfishing, pollution from energy, cars etc... Root cause, us.
- Opheliac 11y agoAs if life on Earth is this fragile with regards to temperature changes. Give me a fucking break. Even if global warming did somehow cause this, other life forms would seize the day and thrive under the new conditions. Life on Earth is fine when it comes to adapting to temperature changes. It excels at that. It always has. This is due to pollution, period. Nothing more, nothing less. Global warming hysteria is a Hollywood fairy tale being pushed to rationalize forcing a carbon credit tax onto all of us. It's just another wealth transfer scam to keep the shackles on the defenseless and the less fortunate. If you don't understand this by now, you're an idiot, because everyone outside of your insulated propaganda bubble already figured it out ages ago. The people pushing this scam need to give it a fucking rest already and move onto their next one, because this one isn't going anywhere and they're embarrassing themselves at this point. If you're going to be evil, at least exude some competence. Looking forward to this comment becoming light gray and unreadable as the asspained and talentless San Francisco fucktards working on their shitbrained dead-end startups extend their delicate index fingers (connected to hands that haven't struggled through an honest day's work in their entire lives) to click the downvote arrow. I'll wear it as a badge of pride. How about you spend some of that ill-earned VC welfare cash and buy some bleach to drink, you insufferable cuckolds. I hear it's 10% off on Amazon. Help save the world by ridding it of one more parasite.
- Gedrovits 11y agoFirst of all, don't give up too easy. It's a lot easier to say: we are screwed, my contribution will not change anything. This is wrong approach to the problem, changes start from somewhere. Imagine the startup, who don't have customers yet and just gives up (because what's point, they will not come). The more traction they have, the more snowballish it become. How regular people can help? 1) Try to use renewable materials around you (bags, not plastic bags, use the fabric) 2) Sort the garbage (don't know about US), but in Europe this is real thing (organic, general, electronics, etc) 3) Try to limit the car or any fossil fuel usage in your household. 3.1) Don't have 1 car per each family member 4) Don't buy and throw away clothes too often, if you do, return to second hand 5) Use energy saver functions at it's max 6) Stop searching for someone to blame and "Just DO IT!" (c) Shia How IT people can help? 1) Write less energy consumption programs and servers, they eat too much now 2) Move toward real innovations in "green" tech, not the pseudo ones to collect money and bail Samsung once done the big screen phone, how the iPhone users called them? "Shovel" phones / users. Then came this "innovative" Apple iPhone with the same big screen and it suddenly became "mainstream". Don't be afraid to be first in something good, especially if this is a future of your planet. Don't expect that someone will make this problems "go away" or people fly away from here. Humans managed to make orbit a trash can too, so we don't go anywhere in far future.
- x5n1 11y agoStop participating in the economy as much as possible. Learn to live a subsistence lifestyle. Move to the second or third world and learn how to live like the third world in a very small amount of space consuming the least amount of resources necessary to live. You can do it. Also don't have any children. While you do this the capitalists will be trying to move all the 3rd world people to the 1st world lifestyle. Just to balance things out.
- indlebe 11y agoThe fact that this is down voted shows what an elephant in the room this really is.
- 11y ago