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Oceans are in fact largely great blue deserts. Occupying less than one percent of the ocean floor, coral reefs are home to more than twenty-five percent of mari

by eloff 8y ago

Oceans are in fact largely great blue deserts. Occupying less than one percent of the ocean floor, coral reefs are home to more than twenty-five percent of marine life. And 90% of all ocean life is found in coastal waters. To me this means that we should invest a focused effort in planting coral reefs in protected areas (and protecting additional areas for the same.) This would have the effect of creating more marine sanctuaries safe from human fishing pressure, which will seed surrounding fishery areas and become a win-win. New Zealand has done this to great effect (creating protected areas, not planting reefs.) I think however the typically human reaction is see a coral reef that's dying and try to use re-planting to bring it back to life. Unless that's coupled with re-planting higher-temperature corals, that's neither going to work or be sustainable as the Oceans continue to warm for hundreds of years to come. I would rather see more resistant corals being planted, or coral reefs being planted in colder waters. Lastly, while it is a great tragedy that the coral reefs are dying, it should be noted that the Earth has been here before and come back from it at the end of the last ice age when sea levels rapidly rose 400 feet and drowned all of Earth's reefs at the time. That doesn't make things any less tragic, or absolve us of the blame, but perhaps helps frame things by remembering that Earth is not a steady-state system but a rather a system of constant flux and adaptation. I hope that in the same way humans have been having massive negative effects on nature and the climate, we can also pool together and create some equally impressive positive effects on the natural world.

r00fus 8y ago
> Earth has been here before The Earth may be effectively eternal (from a human standpoint), but human species is not. More likely, humans will be around, but modern human society would likely suffer an extinction event at some point with our trajectory. I like your idea of higher-temp corals. Are you aware of efforts to repopulate corals based on varieties that are temperature resistant?
- eloff 8y ago
  Humans are not likely to go extinct anytime soon - anything that can wipe out the most adaptable and one of the most numerous and widely distributed species - would leave the Earth uninhabitable to pretty much all higher life forms. That doesn't mean we can't trash the place or experience massive drops in population. There does appear to be hope on the higher temperature corals, but I don't know of any plan to actually plant reefs like that. Australia, which benefits economically from tourism to the great barrier reef should take a serious look at it: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/the-coral-triangle/2018/aug/13/ai-identifies-heat-resistant-coral-reefs-in-indonesia https://www.theguardian.com/environment/the-coral-triangle/2...
  - vkou 8y ago
    Humans are unlikely to go extinct, but our modern society/lifestyle is very likely to.
    - eloff 8y ago
      I would debate "very likely", but yeah it's modern civilization that's more at risk here. I think it's still an unlikely outcome though.
  - empath75 8y ago
    > would leave the Earth uninhabitable to pretty much all higher life forms. Why are you ruling that scenario out?
    - eloff 8y ago
      I don't see us doing that to ourselves. Climate change won't accomplish that, nuclear war won't accomplish that, biological warfare gone wrong wouldn't likely accomplish that. I just don't see it happening. That doesn't mean it's impossible.
      - guelo 8y ago
        Anything above around 7 degrees of warming puts the human species itself at risk. Above 3 degrees civilization falls apart. Both of these are within range of possibility in the lifespan of children born today. All it would take is a few more Trump-style presidencies.
        mehrdadn 8y ago
        > Anything above around 7 degrees of warming puts the human species itself at risk. Above 3 degrees civilization falls apart. Could you elaborate/provide links on this? How/why would these happen?
        irrational 8y ago
        I think the OPs point is even then there would still be enough humans around to keep the species going. They probably wouldn't have todays technological benefits, but a few thousand humans could probably survive.
ip26 8y ago
while it is a great tragedy that the coral reefs are dying, it should be noted that the Earth has been here before and come back from it Nobody's worried the reefs will never come back. They are worried they won't be back anytime soon and we'll have to make do for the next hundred thousand years.
- eloff 8y ago
  You're off by about two orders of magnitude there, judging from recent history. But even then, that's a long time from a human perspective, I think we could re-plant reefs the same way we replant forests on timescales of a couple generations or less. Edit: obviously it would be better if we didn't have to do that, but that ship has sailed.
  - irrational 8y ago
    2 orders of magnitude in which direction?
    - 100-times 8y ago
      And isn't easier to say how many multiples of ten, instead of trying to sound smart with the ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE?
jniedrauer 8y ago
> it should be noted that the Earth has been here before and come back from it There weren't 7 billion humans back then. My big concern is that we're well above the pre-green-revolution carrying capacity of Earth and it wouldn't take all that much to put us in a position where we can't feed 3 billion people. It's possible that a greenhouse earth will give us more arable land to work with, and we'll be just fine. It's likely that things will become ugly during the transition, as formerly arable land becomes desert, the oceans stop providing food, and mass migration causes global unrest. A lot of people are going to starve.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago
  For those that want to dive deeper it looks like this meta-analysis might be a good starting point for the human carrying capacity of the earth. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/54/3/195/223056 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/54/3/195/223056 > When taking all studies into account, the best point estimate is 7.7 billion people; the lower and upper bounds, given current technology, are 0.65 billion and 98 billion people, respectively.
  - wavefunction 8y ago
    Seems like this calculation completely disregards the emotional effects of that many people in such close proximity.
    - derekp7 8y ago
      Would AR/VR help with this at all? I was thinking that with the earlier article about Japan's micro apartments, if having the walls covered with 3D screens (or even mirrors) would give a bigger sense of space and help with mental well being.
      - jniedrauer 8y ago
        I can say from experience that VR absolutely helps dispel cabin fever. I once lived in a fairly small apartment in a dense city. Turning on a big box fan in my VR area and then going out to wide open spaces like the mountains in Skyrim VR made me feel better almost instantly.
slothario 8y ago
The earth is in a state of constantly flux, but when food supplies dwindle, the end result is famine, war, bloodshed, chaos and death. The earth will recover from humans, but I don't want to be around for a mass human extinction.
NeoBasilisk 8y ago
>Earth is not a steady-state system but a rather a system of constant flux and adaptation. I just want to point out that the main mechanism of adaptation is that the creatures less suited to survival die out.
zacharycohn 8y ago
"...it should be noted that the Earth has been here before and come back from it at the end of the last ice age when sea levels rapidly rose 400 feet and drowned all of Earth's reefs at the time." No one is seriously arguing that the earth is going to be literally destroyed, despite what anti-science Republicans would lead you to believe. People are saying "the Earth that we know, love, have co-evolved with will be destroyed, and the assumptions that we built our cities, countries, and societies around will be turned on their heads. This will be replaced with a harsh world with wild extremes, natural disasters in places that aren't built for them, and more intense natural disasters in places that might be used to current, weaker ones. Perpetuating this willful misinterpretation, even by acknowledging it, is a disservice to the future.
- basetop 8y ago
  Democrats are just as anti-science as republicans. I wish people would leave politics out of this because it gets us nowhere. Insulting half of the political structure isn't going to help anything. Also, the Earth as we "know, love, have co-evolved with" has been destroyed many times just in the past few thousand years. Climate change isn't a new phenomenon. The earth wasn't this magical garden of eden with perfect climate just for us. We just got out of an ice age just a few decades ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
  - crispinb 8y ago
    > Insulting half of the political structure isn't going to help anything Bear in mind that having 'half of the political structure' maintaining prescientific views re our planet's climate systems has become quite eccentric in 2019 - the US and Australia being the worst offenders. Most of the rest of the world has moved on from outright primitivism to mere obfuscation. Which is some kind of progress, but not enough. Anyway, at this stage the US far right Republican party is now enough of a worldwide laughing stock for insults to potentially be worthwhile. At some point there's a chance that half the US citizenry may come to see themselves reflected back as obscurantist and backward. > Climate change isn't a new phenomenon. The earth wasn't this magical garden of eden with perfect climate just for us No, but agricultural civilisation emerged from a background of a relatively stable climate. The range of possible near-term consequences of our current GHG gas emissions include (at scary probabilities, rising as new research comes in) ones that all but eliminate large scale agriculture. This has not been faced in the last 10k years, not with a 7-12 billion population, and not with the additional insults of soil and fresh water loss, habitat destruction, insect population collapses etc. Most ecological scientists are pretty terrified of what's coming at us at this point.
chongli 8y ago
To me this means that we should invest a focused effort in planting coral reefs in protected areas (and protecting additional areas for the same.) I'm not a marine biologist, but from my understanding the big threat to coral reefs is ocean acidification. If this trend continues, we won't be able to do anything to save the reefs. There's no use in re-planting corals if the entire ocean is too acidic for them to survive in, coastal or otherwise.
- ar_turnbull 8y ago
  It’s also temperature. Reefs bleach at a certain temperature. They can recover from this, but very slowly and not if they bleach again the next year and the year after that. Apparently this is what happened the last two years. Also, apparently it’s never happened two years in a row before. Source: Was at the Great Barrier Reef a month ago. The marine biologist on board was very informative.

by eloff 8y ago

r00fus 8y ago

> Earth has been here before The Earth may be effectively eternal (from a human standpoint), but human species is not. More likely, humans will be around, but modern human society would likely suffer an extinction event at some point with our trajectory. I like your idea of higher-temp corals. Are you aware of efforts to repopulate corals based on varieties that are temperature resistant?

eloff 8y ago
Humans are not likely to go extinct anytime soon - anything that can wipe out the most adaptable and one of the most numerous and widely distributed species - would leave the Earth uninhabitable to pretty much all higher life forms. That doesn't mean we can't trash the place or experience massive drops in population. There does appear to be hope on the higher temperature corals, but I don't know of any plan to actually plant reefs like that. Australia, which benefits economically from tourism to the great barrier reef should take a serious look at it: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/the-coral-triangle/2018/aug/13/ai-identifies-heat-resistant-coral-reefs-in-indonesia https://www.theguardian.com/environment/the-coral-triangle/2...
- vkou 8y ago
  Humans are unlikely to go extinct, but our modern society/lifestyle is very likely to.
  - eloff 8y ago
    I would debate "very likely", but yeah it's modern civilization that's more at risk here. I think it's still an unlikely outcome though.
- empath75 8y ago
  > would leave the Earth uninhabitable to pretty much all higher life forms. Why are you ruling that scenario out?
  - eloff 8y ago
    I don't see us doing that to ourselves. Climate change won't accomplish that, nuclear war won't accomplish that, biological warfare gone wrong wouldn't likely accomplish that. I just don't see it happening. That doesn't mean it's impossible.
    - guelo 8y ago
      Anything above around 7 degrees of warming puts the human species itself at risk. Above 3 degrees civilization falls apart. Both of these are within range of possibility in the lifespan of children born today. All it would take is a few more Trump-style presidencies.
      - mehrdadn 8y ago
        > Anything above around 7 degrees of warming puts the human species itself at risk. Above 3 degrees civilization falls apart. Could you elaborate/provide links on this? How/why would these happen?
      - irrational 8y ago
        I think the OPs point is even then there would still be enough humans around to keep the species going. They probably wouldn't have todays technological benefits, but a few thousand humans could probably survive.

ip26 8y ago

while it is a great tragedy that the coral reefs are dying, it should be noted that the Earth has been here before and come back from it Nobody's worried the reefs will never come back. They are worried they won't be back anytime soon and we'll have to make do for the next hundred thousand years.

eloff 8y ago
You're off by about two orders of magnitude there, judging from recent history. But even then, that's a long time from a human perspective, I think we could re-plant reefs the same way we replant forests on timescales of a couple generations or less. Edit: obviously it would be better if we didn't have to do that, but that ship has sailed.
- irrational 8y ago
  2 orders of magnitude in which direction?
  - 100-times 8y ago
    And isn't easier to say how many multiples of ten, instead of trying to sound smart with the ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE?

jniedrauer 8y ago

> it should be noted that the Earth has been here before and come back from it There weren't 7 billion humans back then. My big concern is that we're well above the pre-green-revolution carrying capacity of Earth and it wouldn't take all that much to put us in a position where we can't feed 3 billion people. It's possible that a greenhouse earth will give us more arable land to work with, and we'll be just fine. It's likely that things will become ugly during the transition, as formerly arable land becomes desert, the oceans stop providing food, and mass migration causes global unrest. A lot of people are going to starve.

X6S1x6Okd1st 8y ago
For those that want to dive deeper it looks like this meta-analysis might be a good starting point for the human carrying capacity of the earth. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/54/3/195/223056 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/54/3/195/223056 > When taking all studies into account, the best point estimate is 7.7 billion people; the lower and upper bounds, given current technology, are 0.65 billion and 98 billion people, respectively.
- wavefunction 8y ago
  Seems like this calculation completely disregards the emotional effects of that many people in such close proximity.
  - derekp7 8y ago
    Would AR/VR help with this at all? I was thinking that with the earlier article about Japan's micro apartments, if having the walls covered with 3D screens (or even mirrors) would give a bigger sense of space and help with mental well being.
    - jniedrauer 8y ago
      I can say from experience that VR absolutely helps dispel cabin fever. I once lived in a fairly small apartment in a dense city. Turning on a big box fan in my VR area and then going out to wide open spaces like the mountains in Skyrim VR made me feel better almost instantly.

slothario 8y ago

The earth is in a state of constantly flux, but when food supplies dwindle, the end result is famine, war, bloodshed, chaos and death. The earth will recover from humans, but I don't want to be around for a mass human extinction.

NeoBasilisk 8y ago

>Earth is not a steady-state system but a rather a system of constant flux and adaptation. I just want to point out that the main mechanism of adaptation is that the creatures less suited to survival die out.

zacharycohn 8y ago

"...it should be noted that the Earth has been here before and come back from it at the end of the last ice age when sea levels rapidly rose 400 feet and drowned all of Earth's reefs at the time." No one is seriously arguing that the earth is going to be literally destroyed, despite what anti-science Republicans would lead you to believe. People are saying "the Earth that we know, love, have co-evolved with will be destroyed, and the assumptions that we built our cities, countries, and societies around will be turned on their heads. This will be replaced with a harsh world with wild extremes, natural disasters in places that aren't built for them, and more intense natural disasters in places that might be used to current, weaker ones. Perpetuating this willful misinterpretation, even by acknowledging it, is a disservice to the future.

basetop 8y ago
Democrats are just as anti-science as republicans. I wish people would leave politics out of this because it gets us nowhere. Insulting half of the political structure isn't going to help anything. Also, the Earth as we "know, love, have co-evolved with" has been destroyed many times just in the past few thousand years. Climate change isn't a new phenomenon. The earth wasn't this magical garden of eden with perfect climate just for us. We just got out of an ice age just a few decades ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
- crispinb 8y ago
  > Insulting half of the political structure isn't going to help anything Bear in mind that having 'half of the political structure' maintaining prescientific views re our planet's climate systems has become quite eccentric in 2019 - the US and Australia being the worst offenders. Most of the rest of the world has moved on from outright primitivism to mere obfuscation. Which is some kind of progress, but not enough. Anyway, at this stage the US far right Republican party is now enough of a worldwide laughing stock for insults to potentially be worthwhile. At some point there's a chance that half the US citizenry may come to see themselves reflected back as obscurantist and backward. > Climate change isn't a new phenomenon. The earth wasn't this magical garden of eden with perfect climate just for us No, but agricultural civilisation emerged from a background of a relatively stable climate. The range of possible near-term consequences of our current GHG gas emissions include (at scary probabilities, rising as new research comes in) ones that all but eliminate large scale agriculture. This has not been faced in the last 10k years, not with a 7-12 billion population, and not with the additional insults of soil and fresh water loss, habitat destruction, insect population collapses etc. Most ecological scientists are pretty terrified of what's coming at us at this point.

chongli 8y ago

To me this means that we should invest a focused effort in planting coral reefs in protected areas (and protecting additional areas for the same.) I'm not a marine biologist, but from my understanding the big threat to coral reefs is ocean acidification. If this trend continues, we won't be able to do anything to save the reefs. There's no use in re-planting corals if the entire ocean is too acidic for them to survive in, coastal or otherwise.

ar_turnbull 8y ago
It’s also temperature. Reefs bleach at a certain temperature. They can recover from this, but very slowly and not if they bleach again the next year and the year after that. Apparently this is what happened the last two years. Also, apparently it’s never happened two years in a row before. Source: Was at the Great Barrier Reef a month ago. The marine biologist on board was very informative.