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We're going on holiday to the Great Barrier Reef in a few months. I think it's quite likely to be the first and last time I see it in any state worth visiting f

We're going on holiday to the Great Barrier Reef in a few months. I think it's quite likely to be the first and last time I see it in any state worth visiting for many years. Irrespective of how successful or unsuccessful the far-rights are in maintaining Australia's CO2 emission levels, I believe it's already too late - we've crossed from 'recovery is possible' to 'rebuilding is the only way' and that will take decades if not centuries. /opinion

ekianjo 8y ago
As far as I understand it recovery was never possible by the time we realized what was happening. We have no good way to capture CO2 and no actionable way worldwide to reduce CO2 production fast enough. Even if we stopped producing CO2 right now the levels in the atmosphere would still continue to have detrimental effects for dozens of years.
- pilsetnieks 8y ago
  Dozens of years are manageable, if the cost is avoiding an ELE. Short term thinking is what got us in this mess, maybe it's time to think on larger timescales.
- greglindahl 8y ago
  > no actionable way worldwide to reduce CO2 production fast enough. People disagree about that one, but OK, your view is certainly one that a fair number of people agree with.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    I know that some people claim we could but it is often because they do not look at every angle, especially economics, and scalability. Global scale endeavors tend to be complex and require long timelines.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      There is a known straight-forward way to solve the economic problem. You impose a large carbon tax per ton of CO2 and use 100% of the money to subsidize power generation from non-fossil energy sources per KWh. Schedule regular increases in the rate over time, announced years in advance. There are only two real impediments to this happening. The first is lobbying from oil and coal companies (especially in the United States). The only solution for it is to have the will to tell them off and do it anyway. The second is that nobody wants to do it alone. Having a carbon tax is a relative disadvantage -- if everybody does it then everybody is in the same boat, but if only you do it then everyone else is going to out-compete you, so you need some coordination method. In particular, what keeps happening is that Europe and China are willing to reduce emissions but not if the United States won't and the United States has a large oil industry that it doesn't want to see destroyed even though that's what needs to happen. The answer is for the other countries to be serious about it and not take no for an answer -- literally stop trading with countries that won't do it. Give the US the choice between the oil industry and literally every other industry and the choice is easy. That doesn't work for everyone. It isn't going to get a random African dictatorship to reduce its emissions. But none of the countries it wouldn't work on are major carbon emitters to begin with. The problem is that nobody is willing to put their foot down.
      - listenallyall 8y ago
        > lobbying from oil and coal companies (especially in the United States) Ooooh, blame those evil, all-powerful, unstoppable, puppet-master "lobbyists." How about reality: China uses 4x the coal as the USA. https://www.theatlas.com/charts/Nya6gW4s https://www.theatlas.com/charts/Nya6gW4s
        wk_end 8y ago
        China’s well more than 4x the population of the US. Those stats, from 2012, are quite outdated, too; while still the largest users of coal (but again, largest country) they’re rapidly and aggressively investing in green energy and cutting back on coal use. The Chinese produce much less carbon per capita than Americans do [1] and recently hit their carbon reduction targets well ahead of schedule [2]. [1] https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-climatechange-carbon/china-meets-2020-carbon-target-ahead-of-schedule-xinhua-idUSKBN1H312U https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-climatechange-carbo...
- adrianN 8y ago
  A good chunk of the CO2 we released will only be captured by geological processes that take thousands of years.
roenxi 8y ago
The far right have been advocating or at least partial to Nuclear power since as far back as the late Howard government in '07. Cory Bernardi has a bill before the Senate right now titled "Nuclear Fuel Cycle (Facilitation) Bill 2017". France with nuclear remains the first world country with the cheapest, cleanest, and probably safest power. There is no branch of politics committed to "maintaining Australia's CO2 emission levels". There is a branch that wants cheap, and a branch that wants specific technologies. And the status quo seems to be holding until Australia decides which option is better.
- adrianN 8y ago
  There is the branch of politics that really likes those coal mining jobs and doesn't want policies that threaten the use of coal.
  - roenxi 8y ago
    That branch isn't the far right though. That branch is the people who represent electorates with lots of coal mines (ironically likely to be voting Labor, who are perceived as left aligned). The perception that anyone likes coal because there is a massive pro-coal conspiracy is missing out on the Occam's Razor idea that there is broad electoral support for cheap power that the right wing, far right or otherwise, are happy to support.
    - kibibu 8y ago
      Our far-right just wants to kick out foreigners and ignore refugees and doesn't give a shit about anything else
- cschwarm 8y ago
  > France with nuclear remains the first world country with the cheapest, … France had a nationalized electricity grid when it build its nuclear fleet. So, the demand side was nationalized (EDF), and they made sure to nationalize the supply side of nuclear as well (Areva). This was probably the main reason why Nuclear is cheap in France: They standardized the design on the supply side (only two designs in 30 years) and they could deploy top-down without having to pay anyone to shut down the pre-existing plants (since they already owned them). In a free market setting, nuclear is not going to be cheap.
gammateam 8y ago
Florida used to have substantial reefs. Now there are none and rebuilding efforts have just resulted in piles of tires thrown into the gulf that no fish or polyps give a crap about. Corals are done. Visit so you can tell your kids you saw them, when you are chaperoning their field trip to the museum of natural history.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
Counter opinion: Hazelwood Power Station was decommissioned under the watch of a Liberal government. The station was listed as the least carbon efficient power station in the OECD in a 2005 report by WWF Australia, making it one of the most polluting power stations in the world.[3] At 1.56 tonnes of CO2 for each megawatt hour of electricity, it was 50% more polluting than the average black coal power station in New South Wales or Queensland. Hazelwood emitted 14% of Victoria's annual greenhouse gas emissions and 3% of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station
- tempestn 8y ago
  That's a good thing, but it doesn't really counter the parent's point. It's going to take a lot more than closing one power plant to turn around global warming.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    Oops, sorry. I read two comments, got distracted, then wrote a response to a comment that didn't real exist. Should probably get some more sleep.
h4b4n3r0 8y ago
I’ve read it had died off in the past and recovered afterwards. This had happened 5 times in the past 30000 years, From that it would logically follow that recovery is possible, just not for these particular specimens. Additionally, it’s hard to tell if the current bleaching is as fatal as everyone here seems to assume. FWIW scientists seem to think the situation is grave, but not as grave and hopeless as the mass media portrays it: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/scientists-pronounce-great-barrier-reef-dead/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/scientists-pronounce-great.... Of course the more balanced view doesn’t drive the clicks quite as well.
- andai 8y ago
  I've been wondering about this. If they're this sensitive to change, then this can't be the first time massive bleaching has happened. > Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said that he was “not impressed by the [article’s] message that we should give up on the [Great Barrier Reef], or that it is already dead.”
- singularity2001 8y ago
  Yes. Downvoting your valid perspective is stupid. More resilient species would quickly fill the gaps and they have. Problem is temperatures are not stable, so every rebuilt reef will need to be rebuilt again in some years. Maybe full recovery when man is gone.

ekianjo 8y ago

As far as I understand it recovery was never possible by the time we realized what was happening. We have no good way to capture CO2 and no actionable way worldwide to reduce CO2 production fast enough. Even if we stopped producing CO2 right now the levels in the atmosphere would still continue to have detrimental effects for dozens of years.

pilsetnieks 8y ago
Dozens of years are manageable, if the cost is avoiding an ELE. Short term thinking is what got us in this mess, maybe it's time to think on larger timescales.
greglindahl 8y ago
> no actionable way worldwide to reduce CO2 production fast enough. People disagree about that one, but OK, your view is certainly one that a fair number of people agree with.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  I know that some people claim we could but it is often because they do not look at every angle, especially economics, and scalability. Global scale endeavors tend to be complex and require long timelines.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    There is a known straight-forward way to solve the economic problem. You impose a large carbon tax per ton of CO2 and use 100% of the money to subsidize power generation from non-fossil energy sources per KWh. Schedule regular increases in the rate over time, announced years in advance. There are only two real impediments to this happening. The first is lobbying from oil and coal companies (especially in the United States). The only solution for it is to have the will to tell them off and do it anyway. The second is that nobody wants to do it alone. Having a carbon tax is a relative disadvantage -- if everybody does it then everybody is in the same boat, but if only you do it then everyone else is going to out-compete you, so you need some coordination method. In particular, what keeps happening is that Europe and China are willing to reduce emissions but not if the United States won't and the United States has a large oil industry that it doesn't want to see destroyed even though that's what needs to happen. The answer is for the other countries to be serious about it and not take no for an answer -- literally stop trading with countries that won't do it. Give the US the choice between the oil industry and literally every other industry and the choice is easy. That doesn't work for everyone. It isn't going to get a random African dictatorship to reduce its emissions. But none of the countries it wouldn't work on are major carbon emitters to begin with. The problem is that nobody is willing to put their foot down.
    - listenallyall 8y ago
      > lobbying from oil and coal companies (especially in the United States) Ooooh, blame those evil, all-powerful, unstoppable, puppet-master "lobbyists." How about reality: China uses 4x the coal as the USA. https://www.theatlas.com/charts/Nya6gW4s https://www.theatlas.com/charts/Nya6gW4s
      - wk_end 8y ago
        China’s well more than 4x the population of the US. Those stats, from 2012, are quite outdated, too; while still the largest users of coal (but again, largest country) they’re rapidly and aggressively investing in green energy and cutting back on coal use. The Chinese produce much less carbon per capita than Americans do [1] and recently hit their carbon reduction targets well ahead of schedule [2]. [1] https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-climatechange-carbon/china-meets-2020-carbon-target-ahead-of-schedule-xinhua-idUSKBN1H312U https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-climatechange-carbo...
adrianN 8y ago
A good chunk of the CO2 we released will only be captured by geological processes that take thousands of years.

roenxi 8y ago

The far right have been advocating or at least partial to Nuclear power since as far back as the late Howard government in '07. Cory Bernardi has a bill before the Senate right now titled "Nuclear Fuel Cycle (Facilitation) Bill 2017". France with nuclear remains the first world country with the cheapest, cleanest, and probably safest power. There is no branch of politics committed to "maintaining Australia's CO2 emission levels". There is a branch that wants cheap, and a branch that wants specific technologies. And the status quo seems to be holding until Australia decides which option is better.

adrianN 8y ago
There is the branch of politics that really likes those coal mining jobs and doesn't want policies that threaten the use of coal.
- roenxi 8y ago
  That branch isn't the far right though. That branch is the people who represent electorates with lots of coal mines (ironically likely to be voting Labor, who are perceived as left aligned). The perception that anyone likes coal because there is a massive pro-coal conspiracy is missing out on the Occam's Razor idea that there is broad electoral support for cheap power that the right wing, far right or otherwise, are happy to support.
  - kibibu 8y ago
    Our far-right just wants to kick out foreigners and ignore refugees and doesn't give a shit about anything else
cschwarm 8y ago
> France with nuclear remains the first world country with the cheapest, … France had a nationalized electricity grid when it build its nuclear fleet. So, the demand side was nationalized (EDF), and they made sure to nationalize the supply side of nuclear as well (Areva). This was probably the main reason why Nuclear is cheap in France: They standardized the design on the supply side (only two designs in 30 years) and they could deploy top-down without having to pay anyone to shut down the pre-existing plants (since they already owned them). In a free market setting, nuclear is not going to be cheap.

gammateam 8y ago

Florida used to have substantial reefs. Now there are none and rebuilding efforts have just resulted in piles of tires thrown into the gulf that no fish or polyps give a crap about. Corals are done. Visit so you can tell your kids you saw them, when you are chaperoning their field trip to the museum of natural history.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

Counter opinion: Hazelwood Power Station was decommissioned under the watch of a Liberal government. The station was listed as the least carbon efficient power station in the OECD in a 2005 report by WWF Australia, making it one of the most polluting power stations in the world.[3] At 1.56 tonnes of CO2 for each megawatt hour of electricity, it was 50% more polluting than the average black coal power station in New South Wales or Queensland. Hazelwood emitted 14% of Victoria's annual greenhouse gas emissions and 3% of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station

tempestn 8y ago
That's a good thing, but it doesn't really counter the parent's point. It's going to take a lot more than closing one power plant to turn around global warming.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  Oops, sorry. I read two comments, got distracted, then wrote a response to a comment that didn't real exist. Should probably get some more sleep.

h4b4n3r0 8y ago

I’ve read it had died off in the past and recovered afterwards. This had happened 5 times in the past 30000 years, From that it would logically follow that recovery is possible, just not for these particular specimens. Additionally, it’s hard to tell if the current bleaching is as fatal as everyone here seems to assume. FWIW scientists seem to think the situation is grave, but not as grave and hopeless as the mass media portrays it: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/scientists-pronounce-great-barrier-reef-dead/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/scientists-pronounce-great.... Of course the more balanced view doesn’t drive the clicks quite as well.

andai 8y ago
I've been wondering about this. If they're this sensitive to change, then this can't be the first time massive bleaching has happened. > Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said that he was “not impressed by the [article’s] message that we should give up on the [Great Barrier Reef], or that it is already dead.”
singularity2001 8y ago
Yes. Downvoting your valid perspective is stupid. More resilient species would quickly fill the gaps and they have. Problem is temperatures are not stable, so every rebuilt reef will need to be rebuilt again in some years. Maybe full recovery when man is gone.