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I'm pretty sure we can create artificial coral reefs in a controlled environment. They won't go extinct.
by bufferoverflow 8y ago
I'm pretty sure we can create artificial coral reefs in a controlled environment. They won't go extinct.
- adrianN 8y agoI'm pretty sure there are still many species in the reefs that we haven't discovered yet.
- intended 8y agoThere are already attempts to do that. There are a few corals which manage this. But their not going extinct is not the problem. The environment is like a jumbled stack of stilts holding up a house. There’s enough stilts that if a few of them get eaten by termites, there’s enough redundancy to keep the house upright. The system is interconnected and deep enough to end up fine. What’re happening is that many supports are dead, others are rotten and still more are weakening. This means that eventually, one support will collapse and set off a contagion. A collapse chain, similar to what happened during the 2008 crisis. Reef collapse means a whole chunk of ecosystem dies - and it’s never coming back in multiple human life times. This impacts every creature that depends on that ecosystem.