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Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study
- revscat 7y agoNeoliberal economics — or really any economic theory — is not going to prevent an apocalypse.
- sambull 7y agoNope they can't price this in; and would look and whistle the other way if they had too.
- ianai 7y agoDo you want a climate change dictator?
- sambull 7y agoDictator? I simply said the market/and economists can't price in damage to our environment and won't. If you feel any regulation on a corporation is being a dictator than maybe the answer is yes in your context. We've had to dictate the direction many times in the past when industry has become to exploitative of either labor or resources.
- ThomPete 7y agoThe latest major scale dictation was Chinas 1 child policy and that lead to a bunch of different problems. And what businesses are being exploitative? 95% of what you take for granted is made by using fossil fuels whether, tires, medicine, food, concrete, cement, steel manufactoring, computers, machines, contact lenses, textiles, pesticides, plumbing, housing, damns, solar cells, windmills, the internet and I could go on. What are you suggesting we dictate and what price are you ready to pay for this? Are you also going to go to war with china when they won't stop pulling their population out of poverty. You speak as if the environment was this perfect non-hostile place before we came along, but reality is it's the other way around. Nature is hostile and dangerous and we've used fossil fuels to make it less dangerous. The positive externalities if fossil fuels far outweigh the negative. That doesn't mean we should continue using fossil fuels but we better have a realistic alterantive IMO.
- radicalbyte 7y agoThe market certainly can be regulated in such a way as to effectively price in the costs. If we can have companies following constructs such as Sarbanes-Oxley then they can most certainly follow the constraints of environmental constructs. Unless you mean that certain vested interests will bankroll politicians to cut regulation? Then yes, that is a very big problems (see: Koch industries buying their way out of environmental legislation) but not insurmountable.
- ianai 7y agoSo I don’t have the answer here. I do like Jay Inslee’s argument for simply making mandates to cut emissions and carbon usage. Ie mandating ever increasingly efficient fuel ratings on vehicles. He says that’s an easier policy change than forcing costs on people through laws or created markets that can be undone in a following cycle. It’s all got to be on the table and considered though. The entire energy footprint of almost all of the industrial revolution through to current needs to be undone in some way. There’s an inherent requirement on the energy that must be expended in order to do that, by the laws of thermodynamics/physics.
- ben_w 7y agoAre the laws of physics democratic?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- revscat 7y agoMaybe? You’re still seem to be thinking about this in anachronistic terms. Every political and economic philosophy is based upon the unspoken assumption that there will always be a climate hospitable to human life. This means that neoliberalism is flawed at its core. Every economic and social theory that does not start with addressing the external costs of carbon dioxide is incorrect at its foundation.
- ivanhoe 7y agoWithout some form of government or entity to dictate and enforce the laws the free market wouldn't stay free for long, country would turn into Somalia quickly. Why is this different?
- ryuukk_ 7y agothey want apocalypse, so they can sell safety
- Proven 7y agoOceans have no owner and most pollution comes from free riders. There's no owner, no exchange takes place and there is no capitalism involved. I would also bet that most pollution comes from undeveloped countries. I don't want to pay for anyone's free-riding. Let me know how much for 100sq miles of sea and we'll talk. I can afford to pay someone to find and sue nearby polluters.
- ThomPete 7y agoPure clickbait "If countries continue with a business-as-usual approach to emissions, the world's oceans are expected to lose 3-4% of their oxygen by the year 2100." That's not running out of oxygen. This is newsmaking, not news reporting and BBC should know better.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y agoI don't know the [potentially exponential] knock-on effects of a 3-4% decrease of oxygen in the ocean. Do you?
- ThomPete 7y agoI know it's not "Ocean running out of oxygen"
- simonsarris 7y agoBoy are characterizations like this getting tired. An actually accurate title would read something like: Farm and industry run-off in certain areas of the world is depleting oxygen in certain parts of the ocean. The vast majority of the issue isn't related to rising temps, it would still be there if there were no rising temps. It is the agricultural and industrial runoff in what I suspect are very, very specific parts of the ocean. The title "as temperatures rise" is totally dishonest. It's probably closer to something like "as demand for palm oil increases" (not trying to finger that one crop, but its more accurate than "as temperatures rise"). > "To stop the worrying expansion of oxygen-poor areas, we need to decisively curb greenhouse gas emissions as well as nutrient pollution from agriculture and other sources." If you want to do something decisive, point out where these oxygen depleted areas are, and do something to stop the runoff. That's the main problem. Tying it in to the much more nebulous "carbon emissions" hurts more than it helps but its like climate writers cannot help themselves. Imagine if everyone trying to stop the ozone-depletion problem did this. Nothing would have gotten done to this day. Find the smallest unit of actionable, measurable change and try to change that first. EDIT hokay lets read the study: BBC: "Around 700 ocean sites are now suffering from low oxygen, compared with 45 in the 1960s." Section 2.5 summary on page 109 (PDF) or page 85 of the report, two bullets: • Over 900 areas around the world have been identified as experiencing the effects of eutrophication. Of these, over 700 have problems with hypoxia, but through nutrient and organic loading management about 70 (10%) of them can now be classified as recovering. • There is no other environmental variable of such ecological importance to coastal ecosystems that has changed so drastically in such a short period of time as a result of human activities as dissolved oxygen. Look, the part BBC wants to spook you with? It's eutrophication! It is independent of warming and can be fixed independent of warming. This is a good thing! It is already being fixed in some areas, which is even nicer. All I ask is that we actually decouple these from "warming" so we can do something about them faster.
- czbond 7y agoI'm not informed enough to make a reply comment, but thank you for adding clarity - it informed me.
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- chrisco255 7y agoAlarmism is becoming an art form.
- thinkcontext 7y agoOne of the best ideas I've run across to fight this (aside from stopping the sources of the problem) is vertical ocean farming. You grow kelp on cables hanging vertically in the water column, interspersed with mussels, oysters and scallops. The kelp feeds on the nitrogen and phosphorus runoff and release oxygen and the bivalves filter the water. The small scale work done so far shows the water gets cleaner and local fish population increases. Kelp grows incredibly quickly and it can be eaten by humans and animals or used as fertilizer. The farming can be done by experienced watermen who probably have suitable boats but are underemployed due to fishing restrictions. https://www.greenwave.org/ https://www.greenwave.org/ https://ideas.ted.com/vertical-ocean-farms-that-can-feed-us-and-help-our-seas/ https://ideas.ted.com/vertical-ocean-farms-that-can-feed-us-...
- aazaa 7y agoCannot fathom why articles like this fail to link to the original source report. Here it is: https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documents/2019-048-En.pdf https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documen... In particular, I wanted to see what new contributions this report was making in measurement of ocean oxygen concentrations. Section 2.1 appears to be the place this is covered, but all I see is a review of previous work by others. The report is extraordinarily vague about what exactly were the experiments the authors did (if any). It's not structured like a research paper and reads instead like a very long executive summary. I expected to find a detailed analysis of how O2 measurements were conducted, and the possible limitations of the techniques, but there was none.
- acidburnNSA 7y agoArticles about scientific papers should be required to link right at the top. Oftentimes all the hyperlinks are to other articles by the same journalist or publisher. It's insanity. A firefox plugin that somehow finds the original source and pops it up would be incredible.
- bamboozled 7y agoI’d almost wish Governments would do more to fight climate change so we can stop talking about it. Not only are we facing the end of civilisation as we know it, it’s going to be a long ass grind to the end constantly discussing the climate crises in between dodging one catastrophe after the next and obsessing over it all. I hardly remember life without talking about it, but I do remember it was nicer and more simple. Will deniers get sick of denying soon so we can move on ?
- fold_right 7y ago> I’d almost wish Governments would do more to fight climate change so we can stop talking about it. But what is "more" and how much is enough so the complainers stop complaining? No rational being is denying climate change -- governments are not promoting pollution or whatever. We can face the end of civilization in more ways than just climate change. There are many other issues that are currently equally, if not more, important than climate change. The perpetual complainers should get sick of complaining so we can move on.
- hanniabu 7y ago> No rational being is denying climate change I would agree, yet we have many of those people in our government. The US president and vice president are both climate change deniers. > governments are not promoting pollution or whatever The current US administration has rolled back many clean water acts and signed away protected land to mine for resources. > There are many other issues that are currently equally, if not more, important than climate change. Please, do tell, because I don't see it.
- viburnum 7y agoThe worry now is that we’re moving from climate denial to climate fascism (climate change is happening so we need to concentrate the suffering on the undesirables).
- perfunctory 7y ago> I’d almost wish Governments would do more to fight climate change Stop wishing. Go do something about it.
- krona 7y agoIf this were a simple result of rising ocean temperatures on a global scale, wouldn't we expect oxygen levels in the atmosphere to increase? That doesn't seem to be happening (quite the opposite.) So, where is the oxygen?
- jellicle 7y agoThere isn't a lot of oxygen in water to start with, as solubility is low. If we somehow made the Earth's oceans completely oxygen-free, it wouldn't add noticeably to the amount of oxygen in the air.
- steveloco1999 7y agolie
- lcall 7y agoWe don't have to be surprised about some of these events, since they have been predicted in the scriptures, for now, for a long time (ice melting, storms, quakes, waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds, fires/smoke, all things in commotion, and other significant catastrophic events--not just the usual levels of them). I greatly appreciate the science and am glad for progress in our efforts. But I think we are not competent to solve planet-wide issues when we have largely rejected the instructions given by the earth's Creator (like, honesty, the Golden Rule, etc, etc): we have a hard time trusting each other even when we say we agree. I'm glad we can share our own thoughts. We need His help both to address important issues globally, and in our personal lives. And importantly, we can be OK. Related, more detailed thoughts at http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html , a simple site w/ no javascript or sales).