11 ms·

Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds

173 points by elorant 6y ago

ghostpepper 6y ago
This is very sad but seems inevitable. Corals are fascinating organisms, behaving as both animals and plants, but more importantly they are the foundation of the ocean ecosystems where they exist. Hundreds of millions of people depend on them indirectly. If you want to learn more about coral bleaching there is a great documentary called Chasing Coral, available on Netflix and YouTube.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  The documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGGBGcjdjXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGGBGcjdjXA Off to watch it now.
amelius 6y ago
Perhaps a stupid question, but why wouldn't coral reefs naturally move to colder areas (closer to the poles)? EDIT: turns out they do: https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-oceans-warm-tropical-corals-seek-refuge-in-cooler-waters https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-oceans-warm-tropical-coral...
- I_Byte 6y ago
  The problem isn’t necessarily that they won’t move to colder areas (well that is a problem for coastal regions susceptible to hurricanes, etc, but I digress). The problem is that the waters around those reefs are warming up faster than the reefs could ever possibly hope to move. Reefs are built by corals excreting calcium carbonate onto their attached surface. This process is an incredibly slow one with mature reefs taking many hundreds of thousands of years to form. The reefs can’t keep ahead of water temperatures that are projected to change within the next 50 years.
- lmilcin 6y ago
  Acidity increases everywhere and does not depend on temperature. Also, coral reefs grow extremely slowly.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    At the end-Permian extinction, nearly everything that made carbonate skeletons was wiped out, probably because of the enormous amounts of CO2, SO2, and HCl that were produced. Coral had to re-evolve from non-carbonate producing species.
- rektide 6y ago
  My understanding is that temperature is only part of the problem. Acidification is ongoing, due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. That's a global problem: the ocean is literally starving for oxygen, everywhere. If the thermohaline cycle in the Atlantic continues slowing down, there will be significantly less water circulating. There's a risk that bigger & bigger parts of the ocean just sit, don't flow, and thus never get exposed to the air: that they truly deeply & forever run out of oxygen. The dynamical processes of earth are being disrupted. We talk about extreme weather being the risk, but a lack of weather, a lack of variety, a forever hot, non-humidity bearing (higher temperatures carry less humidity) sit-and-stew earth, just sitting here, baking, is the hell we are headed to. The dynamical processes risk becoming static, stagnant situations. The flow of life & change & systems is being baked off the planet.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Applejinx 6y ago
    Nope. Chaos theory says very much the opposite, and our experience is tending to back chaos theory here. I mean yes what you describe would also be bad, but it's not that we're going to see. I can't speak to the thermohaline cycle: perhaps you're describing something that'll happen specifically in the depths of the ocean? Sounds bad. Up here where WE live, the possible extremes of weather are factors of chaotic energy, and small increases in global temperature will produce wider potential swings in weather behavior. So we are not at all going to see 'a lack of variety' and we're not seeing it now. We're seeing 'wait, WHAT' weather and it's only going to get worse. The challenge is surviving those energies. Never mind colonizing Mars or Venus, the challenge we'll face is clinging on to THIS planet, and a hell of a lot of people will end up not able to survive what's coming. And it's subcultures like Hacker News we'll depend on, for people who'll come up with the 300-mph storm windows etc. I own a house: I'm not thrilled at what's going on. I'm trying to work out what I've got to do in order to not be taken out by some kind of weather extreme beyond what we used to have when I was growing up.
    - rektide 6y ago
- pvaldes 6y ago
  Coral reef and corals are different things. A coral is just an animal. Will settle in any suitable place reached by sea currents. If the currents in their place go from poles to equator will never survive to settle there. A coral reef needs 1000 years and several submarine mounts to appear. It hosts tens of thousands of species interacting together, is more complex than the more complex software that we could imagine and not all of those species can just move with the coral and survive in the new area. Algae for example, that are of crucial importance in the survival of the reef, both as symbionts but also as competitors. Wipe the 10% of the species, just the rare ones, and you will have still a stunning "virgin" coral reef but is neither healthy nor sustainable long term. Wipe all the uncommon species of coral and Acropora will refill all empty space so technically there is plenty of coral still. Wipe all sharks and there will be a chain of unexpected consequences down on the food chain. The reef works as a whole entity. Is about quantity but also about quality of the remaining corals.
- Arnt 6y ago
  You already have several answers, but I want to add a different one. A bird that was very common when I was a boy is dying now. Why doesn't it just move a few km northwards, to where the temperature is right for it? It doesn't because it needs craggy islands in a shallow sea and the right temperature range. A lot of species can move, but that doesn't mean that there are many suitable new locations. What we have now has been optimised for the current geography and climate over a long, long time. Shifting all the locations 100km isn't likely to produce as many geography/climate matches.
mikedilger 6y ago
Article has no link. Here is the report: https://www.science.org.au/supporting-science/science-policy-and-analysis/reports-and-publications/risks-australia-three-degrees-c-warmer-world https://www.science.org.au/supporting-science/science-policy...
- mikedilger 6y ago
  The report sites a lot of papers, many of which by one report author Hoegh-Guldberg who has been studying reefs and claiming they are at risk since at least 1999. One of the latest of those papers puts it like this (ideas which the article does not accurately represent): "Even if the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement are achieved, coral reefs are likely to decline by 70–90% relative to their current abundance by midcentury." "Although alarming, coral communities that survive will play a key role in the regeneration of reefs by mid-to-late century. Here, we argue for a coordinated, global coral reef conservation strategy that is centred on 50 large (500 km2) regions that are the least vulnerable to climate change and which are positioned to facilitate future coral reef regeneration." Hoegh-Guldberg, Ove, Kennedy, E. V., Beyer, H.L., McClennen, C., Possingham, H.P., 2018. Securing a Long-term Future for Coral Reefs. Trends Ecol. Evol. 33, 936–944. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.09.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.09.006 They are not "doomed" they are "at risk".
  - klyrs 6y ago
    That sounds pretty doomed to me. They're saying that mass destruction is inevitable, and the best path forward is to protect habitat that's got the best chance of future regrowth. Of course, "best chance" is according to imperfect modeling and optimism that people will actually get their shit together on the Paris treaty in the next 30 years. And if 70-90% loss doesn't sound like "doom" to you, may I have 80% of your assets?
    - mikedilger 6y ago
      If it's doomed, why bother? If it's at risk, I can still be motivated to do something to save it.
bb123 6y ago
This is so incredibly sad, and I feel so helpless that this is slipping through our fingers. I fear I’ll never get a chance to see a coral reef in real life, and it looks almost certain that my children won’t. Is there anything we can do as individuals to help? I tried looking into conservation efforts but it seems like any amount of money we could hope to donate isn’t going to make a drop of difference to sea temperature change. Coral reefs aren’t like tigers or pandas, they’re just too delicate and complex to survive in any human made environment.
- foobiter 6y ago
  tigers and pandas have such small natural habitats now that they’re effectively extinct in the wild; i’m not advocating for it, but it seems like nothing outside of large scale ecoterrorism can do anything fast enough to save our charismatic megafauna for anything other than morbid exhibition
  - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    Large scale ecoterroism sounds good. Bomb the houses of those burning the forests. More effective than Facebook posts asking them to stop.
  - lenkite 6y ago
    Actually, wild tiger population has doubled (in India) in the last 12 years. https://www.businessinsider.in/science/environment/news/indias-tiger-population-has-nearly-doubled-in-12-years/articleshow/77220681.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/science/environment/news/indi... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-49148174 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-49148174
    - foobiter 6y ago
      it’s easy to double when numbers are under 5,000. Many ecologists are not as rosy as the indian government about this... 95% of their range is gone at this point and there’s not a lot of genetic diversity; a single disease can wipe out of the population. We’d need nearly 100,000 tigers to have the diversity to avoid this, and we’re not on track for that by a long shot. https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/tigers-genetic-diversity-041814.html https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/tigers-genetic-div...
deanCommie 6y ago
What do climate change denialists think about stories like this? Do they A) Think it's a complete lie/exaggeraiton, and the Barrier Reef will be fine? B) Think it's happening but not because of human activity (a massive die off across thousands of kilometers is totally natural, dude) C) Agree that it's caused by humans, but that it's too late to do anything about (probably true), but that also it's not worth taking action on the REST of our emissions even though it could help prevent extinctions and irreversible ecosystem changes in areas we haven't even discussed yet. D) Agree that it's caused by humans, but trying to do anything will destroy the economy, and the livelyhood of people that depend on it, so it's not worth doing E) Agree that it's caused by humans, and renewable energy is cheap enough now that the economy will be fine, but trying to do anything about it will cause a reduction in corporate profits for a couple of companies, so it's not worth doing. As recently as 10 years ago it feels like most conservatives were in Category A Looking at the statements of most right-wing politicians, it seems that we are approaching critical mass of entry into group D. How do people live with themselves knowing the mental gymnastics they are doing to remain "right" and never admit their thinking was flawed in any way shape or form...
- foobiter 6y ago
  they simply do not give a shit about coral reef and do not understand ecological systems
- hansvm 6y ago
  Anecdotally, most I've talked to fall into (B) or (D).
- AussieWog93 6y ago
  Your comment is most likely being downvoted because it is ideological flamebait, not because people disagree with your opinion. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - deanCommie 6y ago
    I can accept that in broader society, climate change is an "ideological" concept. I cannot accept that it would be inside a well educated circle like hackernews. It should not be any more controversial than flat earth theory or moon landing conspiracies. So, I think it's reasonable for me to try to understand, anthropologically speaking, the mindset of a modern climate change denialist. My uncharitable and editorialized descript of their perspectives is perfectly justifiable. These people are actively perpetuating information and policy decisions that will cause the deaths of millions in the next century, the displacement of 100s of millions of more, and a reduction in the quality of life of billions. They are not worthy of my civility. Civility is what is leading to the the status quo where we as a society - both left and right - have just accepted that the great barrier reef will be dead within a decade, and our children's children will only read about coral reefs in textbooks.
bawbag 6y ago
I am in my 30's, and I know this. I was taught this as a kid. I did a stupid report on it in primary school. No one cares. No one has a relationship to Coral. Most people see it as some weird sea stick, like a tree. The Coral will all die and I don't know what articles like this are trying to say? Go back in time? Pretend that your solar panel will save them?
ghastmaster 6y ago
I find it hard to believe that ancient creatures that have lived through this many times in history are somehow unable to do it again. The temperature estimates in the article do not eclipse highs in fairly recent history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periods_and_events_in_climate_history#/media/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periods_and_events_in_... Nor does the rate of change exceed that of what the earth experienced as recently as 8k years before present. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene#/media/File:North-western_European_Holocene_Climate_Proxies_and_Culture_Stages,_by_Hans_J.J.G._Holm.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene#/media/File:North-wes...
- hillbillydilly 6y ago
  low effort climate denialism posts- oversimplified, pedantic and contrarian, for what? "Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years" https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123324 https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123324 seriously two clicks.
  - ghastmaster 6y ago
    Please use full sentences and reply to my argument or observation, not my intention. It took me a minute to decipher what exactly you were saying because your reply was not clear. Key points from your link: > About 56 million years ago, a mysterious surge of carbon into the atmosphere warmed the planet and turned the oceans corrosive. In about 5,000 years, atmospheric carbon doubled to 1,800 parts per million (ppm), and average global temperatures rose by about 6 degrees Celsius. > In the last hundred years, rising carbon dioxide from human activities has lowered ocean pH by 0.1 unit, an acidification rate at least 10 times faster than 56 million years ago, says Hönisch. What I cannot figure out is why if OA and global temps are dependent on atmospheric CO2, why has there not been major die offs in recent history(particularly 8k years before present. It seems to be that OA is particularly hard to study.
- prezjordan 6y ago
  The creatures have, the reef has not.
shoo 6y ago
What kind of annual sustained global emissions reductions would be necessary to have a 50-50 chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees? [0] 2018 estimates of the carbon budget remaining for a 50% chance of less than 1.5C warming: 200 Gt CO_2-e -- 800 Gt CO_2-e [1]. Lots of uncertainty, I will ignore tails on both sides. Assume current global emissions are around 35 Gt CO_2-e / year [2][3]. Since it is now 2021, not 2018, subtract about 105 Gt CO_2-e from the remaining budget, giving a range of around 95 -- 695 Gt CO_2-e remaining. Crude estimate of years remaining until carbon budget for 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5C is exhausted: 2 years -- 20 years, assuming steady 35 Gt CO_2-e / year emissions. Let's make things easier and relax the target and aim to reduce emissions to 5% of current levels -- a massive drop of 95%, not the full 100%. This relaxed target does not try to achieve net zero emissions, but to merely get us into the ballpark of where that a zero net emissions goal could perhaps be reachable with enough additional effort. Supposing we are unlucky and reality is consistent with the scenario where we have two years of carbon budget remaining. To stay within the relaxed budget we would need to consistently sustain 78% annual drop in emissions per year for two years. Supposing we are lucky and reality is consistent with the scenario where there are twenty years of carbon budget remaining. To stay within the relaxed budget we would need to consistently sustain 14% annual drop in emissions per year for twenty years. What might sustained 14% annual drops in emissions feel like? It seems like world annual emissions dropped 7% in 2020 vs 2019 [3]. In the trailing decade 2010-2019 we were seeing about 1% annual growth in emissions. So if we assume Covid is entirely responsible for that difference, that's a 8% emissions reduction -- perhaps transient that will bounce back -- from a one-off event. If we consistently had two different Covid-scale economic shocks every year for twenty years, each with a corresponding _permanent_ reductions in emissions, that might suffice to maintain the 14% _permanent_ annual drop in emissions necessary to reduce emissions to 5% of current levels by 2041. To benchmark against reality and pick on my own country: Australia's federal government reckons it is on track to reduce emissions to 480 Mt CO_2-e by 2030, from 540 Mt CO_2-e in 2019 [4]. This corresponds to sustaining a 1.1% annual drop in emissions for eleven years. [0] I don't think limiting warming to at most 1.5 degrees C is a goal that is intentionally reachable from within the current human system. It is worth doing some back of the envelope accounting exercise every now and again to get a feel for the remaining carbon budget & the scale of the challenge. [1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-much-carbon-budget-is-left-to-limit-global-warming-to-1-5c https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-much-carbon-budget-... [2] I am being optimistic and rounding down to 35 Gt from 36.4 Gt in 2019 to make the numbers easier. Let's ignore 2020's data as not representative of what humans do in a typical year, due to the pandemic shock, although hopefully some of the behaviour change will be sticky (WFH, etc). [3] https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/images/carbonbudget/Infographic_Emissions2020.jpg https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/images/carbonbudg... [4] https://www.industry.gov.au/data-and-publications/australias-emissions-projections-2020 https://www.industry.gov.au/data-and-publications/australias...
shoo 6y ago
One lens to think about this is the lens of species extinction [+]. The world is currently experiencing species extinction at a rate significantly higher than the background rate, due to direct and indirect human causes: > In contrast to the the Big Five [mass extinction events], today’s species losses are driven by a mix of direct and indirect human activities, such as the destruction and fragmentation of habitats, direct exploitation like fishing and hunting, chemical pollution, invasive species, and human-caused global warming. > If we use the same approach to estimate today’s extinctions per million species-years, we come up with a rate that is between ten and 10,000 times higher than the background rate. > Even considering a conservative background rate of two extinctions per million species-years, the number of species that have gone extinct in the last century would have otherwise taken between 800 and 10,000 years to disappear if they were merely succumbing to the expected extinctions that happen at random. [...] > It would likely take several millions of years of normal evolutionary diversification to “restore” the Earth’s species to what they were prior to human beings rapidly changing the planet. -- https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-mass-extinction-and-are-we-in-one-now-122535 https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-mass-extinction-and-ar... I tried to find a source for the claim of "several million years of normal evolutionary diversification" to restore the previous level of biodiversity. After backtracking through a few layers of citations, we find this pair of studies: > Lu, P. J., Yogo, M. & Marshall, C. R. Phanerozoic marine biodiversity dynamics in light of the incompleteness of the fossil record. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA103, 2736–2739 (2006) > Alroy, J. Dynamics of origination and extinction in the marine fossil record. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA105, 11536–11542 (2008) The more recent of the two studies concludes the following: > The new [marine invertibrate fossil record] data show that two biotic mechanisms have hastened recoveries from mass extinctions and confined diversity to a relatively narrow range over the past 500 million years (Myr). First, a drop in diversity of any size correlates with low extinction rates immediately afterward, so much so that extinction would almost come to a halt if diversity dropped by 90%. Second, very high extinction rates are followed by equally high origination rates. The two relationships predict that the rebound from the current mass extinction will take at least 10 Myr, and perhaps 40 Myr if it rivals the Permo-Triassic catastrophe. Regardless, any large event will result in a dramatic ecological and taxonomic restructuring of the biosphere. -- https://www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11536.full https://www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11536.full In the event where coral reefs were killed, and all the species they support became extinct, in 10 -- 40 million years we might expect to find that biodiversity had recovered again -- perhaps unlikely to see reefs again, but perhaps something rich and strange. [+] : reduction of habitat doesn't necessarily imply species extinction, although it is going to put populations that depend upon those habitats under more stress -- stress that they may not be able to recover from
an4rchy 6y ago
Assuming we can make and dump dry ice / ice at scale through renewable energy, would it be a feasible / meaningful solution to even try, in order to extend time (not reduce temperature)? Came across this interesting idea of storing ship emissions as dry ice at the bottom of the ocean. [1]https://fathom.world/co2-spears-decarbonise-ccs/ https://fathom.world/co2-spears-decarbonise-ccs/
- webkike 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/0SYpUSjSgFg https://youtu.be/0SYpUSjSgFg
- btilly 6y ago
  Absolutely not. Adding carbon dioxide to water creates carbonic acid, which dissolves shellfish shells and coral reefs. In fact ocean acidification from dumping carbon dioxide in the air is already putting us at risk of losing most of our shellfish in the next few decades.
ghiculescu 6y ago
I grew up in Queensland. During school in the late 90s, we were taught the same thing, except the reef was meant to already be gone by today. When I visited a few years ago, it was stunning. Hopefully this report won’t come true either, but it is hard to believe anyone predicting what Australia will be like in 2100. In any case, particularly on a forum like this, we should argue about what technological ideas we can use to radically transform this gloomy prediction of the future. Rather than just accepting it as fact.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  You would be “stunned” by 1% of the Great Barrier Reef and wouldn’t notice the missing 99%. This bias is the central topic of the book “The Once and Future World”.
  - whymauri 6y ago
    See also: "David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet" which tackles similar themes w.r.t. conservation and nature.
  - gkop 6y ago
    Would you clarify your point? I think you may be saying that the reef could already have been dead to a large extent at the time of parent commenter’s visit, but it’s not clear...
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Just because you went to see some natural wonder and were amazed doesn’t imply that it hasn’t been radically degraded.
    - tedk-42 6y ago
      I agree with the rebbutal. We saw a few bits of the reef and some was stunningly beautiful. Other bits in comparison were heavily bleached and not looking healthy at all. It's a collective effort from the whole world we'll need to reverse the damage.
DesiLurker 6y ago
I know this is a sensitive topic with in the west but how about reducing meat consumption (esp red meat) so we cut down ghg emissions. plus more eco-friendly transportation like EVs & fewer flights for vacations. as the saying goes an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
- ianlevesque 6y ago
  Or we could do something that actually helps like moving transportation and power generation to renewables.
  - ridicter 6y ago
    Reducing emissions to zero, scarily enough, is the minimum. We actually need to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere in order to prevent further temperature increases, which lag behind CO2 concentration by years.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - 2421n 6y ago
    Meat consumption is a huge driver of agriculture, which is responsible for the run off chemicals that are killing the reefs and it requires even more transportation and power consumption! Stop being so smug, you're clueless.
diplodocusaur 6y ago
Suppose we ceased to exist. Are we certain that nature would 'repair' itself? What's the 'good' state measured by (objective function)? If we don't have it defined, I don't think we fully understand our relationship with the natural world and how to fix it.
- samschooler 6y ago
  It would “repair” itself in the sense that the animals already endangered may go extinct, the damage we caused would run its course. But over a few millennia our effect on our environment would slowly go away and life and the planet would move on without us. Global warming is an issue for life, but because it affects humans and the economy is why we care. Animal will migrate, go extinct, or adapt, but ultimately the ecosystem will move on.
- ip26 6y ago
  What's the 'good' state In simple terms my understanding is, high biodiversity. More diversity is correlated with resilience, adaptability, etc.
  - shrubby 6y ago
    https://imgur.com/a/Yy59VjX https://imgur.com/a/Yy59VjX this shows exactly what we've done to biodiversity. Biomass of farm animals, human and wildlife compared. The equivalent ratio is present everywhere we go.
    - diplodocusaur 6y ago
      awfully biased. At least link to the actual study
- pfdietz 6y ago
  > Are we certain that nature would 'repair' itself? Our mere presence casts an anthropic shadow over observations of how likely disastrous environmental outcomes have been. For example, any extinction worse than the end Permian extinction would likely have prevented mammals from surviving, and humans then evolving. So just by our presence we can rule out the occurrence of such an event, even if (without us) it could perhaps have been likely. Perhaps planets like Earth are just normally unstable, falling into states that destroy their biospheres, and Earth itself has been extremely lucky. There's no reason to think that luck will continue.
mrfusion 6y ago
Just to play devils advocate (Im a huge reef supporter) This report seems to say the opposite? Are there flaws? https://www.thegwpf.com/claims-of-dramatic-loss-of-great-barrier-reef-corals-are-false%E2%80%A8/ https://www.thegwpf.com/claims-of-dramatic-loss-of-great-bar...
- kristopolous 6y ago
  First, let's set aside that this is a secretive climate change denial lobbying group that's been under multiple investigations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundati...) and is headquartered at the same office as an industrial mining lobbying group and look at the actual claim. They quote fired climate skeptic Peter Ridd (https://www.desmogblog.com/peter-ridd https://www.desmogblog.com/peter-ridd) who has been funded by numerous industrial groups and coincidentally made claims that their products are harmless. This time he misreads AIMS data for which AIMS has openly criticized him before on (that's why he had to create his own chart and not use one of AIMS). AIMS of course, firmly and clearly states the opposite of his findings: https://www.aims.gov.au/docs/research/climate-change/declining-coral-growth.html https://www.aims.gov.au/docs/research/climate-change/declini... . Coincidentally the GPWF is fairly well known for intentionally deceptive graphics https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Warming_P... Anyway, then the article says the author of the claim they are criticizing, Terry Hughes of James Cook University "refused to make public the raw data". This is linguistic acrobatics. His research team had already made public the data so he personally couldn't make it public a second time because that's not how language works. Here's the data: https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.ncjsxksrq https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.ncjsxk... So in summary they lied about the data not being public and cited someone who intentionally misrepresented data and has been censured for that multiple times, all in 243 words. That's some achievement!
flyGuyOnTheSly 6y ago
I just had a childish thought. Why don't we just completely trash the barrier reef and focus on saving the next reef that isn't completely trashed.
- somishere 6y ago
  The GBR is one of the least trashed reefs, I think that's the point.
mrlonglong 6y ago
Can't we build some nuke plants and use their output to cool the seas along the barrier reef?
- sokoloff 6y ago
  You can move heat from one place to another with a variety of means. Where do you propose we put the massive amount of heat energy extracted from the water?
dopeboy 6y ago
Has anyone here dove in the great barrier reef? How's it compare to SEA?
shrubby 6y ago
These are all symptoms of over consumption, warming, plastic... Bill Gates's idea of spraying chalk dust into the stratosphere is duct tape that will maybe address one of the symptoms. There are close to eight billion of us here. The planet absorbs twenty billion tonnes of CO2. That gives a quota of three tonnes for each of us, divided equally. Three tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year, per person. Three tonnes. I live in a Nordic country where the average emissions are over ten tonnes per a year. How is that not comparable to Nazi era Germany, where normal folk knew what was happening but did nothing to prevent it from happening? Except maybe few thingies. Germans were gassing a group of people alienated and we're gassing our own children. Germans trying to act to stop the gassing would likely be killed, we're facing the consequence of upsetting someone. Tell me how I (or anyone else) justify using over four times the sustainable amount of resources and pretend to be a goodie? #3TA
- shrubby 6y ago
  Three tonnes of course is a rough guideline. But my idea is that 2020 equivalent of three tonnes should be a good guideline for the coming decades to fix most of our sustainability problems. Tech will progress simultaneously and help us in offsetting the accumulated burden, but what we really need is to relearn the moderation that was present daily just some decades ago.
- 01100011 6y ago
  I think a lot of us are going forward with the hope that technology will improve and we will find solutions. You can take individual action. I did for a couple decades. It was, more or less, a waste of time and energy, but I felt smug for a while. The world needs more Elon Musks, not more smug Westerners. There are billions of people in the developing world who want their world to continue to develop, and right now that takes energy.
  - shrubby 6y ago
    Tech wont come in time as we're passing tipping points all the time, the due date was already. Only chance is psychology of moderation and realizing the statistics of the over consumption. Oxfam told in their report that the top 1% contributed twice the amount of the lowest 50% over the course of last 25 years. And out of that consumption of the rich, most is vain. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-ric...
hntroll666 6y ago
This stuff is not science, it's fear propaganda. Scientists and the media form a kind of complex that allows each to get what they want without consequence when their claims turn out to be wrong. The scientists get publicity, which helps with grants. The media gets to run a scary story, which puts money in their pocket. In twenty years, when doomsday has still failed to materialize, nobody will remember the claims, just like most people today don't remember the doomsday prophecies of twenty years ago. There's no reckoning. There's no penalty to the scientists or the journalists for endlessly dumping toxic waste on the public.
- barryhoodlum 6y ago
  You could say the same about a "nothing bad will ever happen" opinion like yours, except a different group benefits from it.
EdwinLarkin 6y ago
Without a global agreement/government I dont see the issue of climate change getting solved anytime soon. In many countries in Europe we are required to return plastic bottles to stores for recycling. Meanwhile in China they ferry water in plastic bottles everyday to people because tap water there is undrinkable.

173 points by elorant 6y ago

This is very sad but seems inevitable. Corals are fascinating organisms, behaving as both animals and plants, but more importantly they are the foundation of the ocean ecosystems where they exist. Hundreds of millions of people depend on them indirectly. If you want to learn more about coral bleaching there is a great documentary called Chasing Coral, available on Netflix and YouTube.

MattGaiser 6y ago
The documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGGBGcjdjXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGGBGcjdjXA Off to watch it now.

amelius 6y ago

Perhaps a stupid question, but why wouldn't coral reefs naturally move to colder areas (closer to the poles)? EDIT: turns out they do: https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-oceans-warm-tropical-corals-seek-refuge-in-cooler-waters https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-oceans-warm-tropical-coral...

I_Byte 6y ago
The problem isn’t necessarily that they won’t move to colder areas (well that is a problem for coastal regions susceptible to hurricanes, etc, but I digress). The problem is that the waters around those reefs are warming up faster than the reefs could ever possibly hope to move. Reefs are built by corals excreting calcium carbonate onto their attached surface. This process is an incredibly slow one with mature reefs taking many hundreds of thousands of years to form. The reefs can’t keep ahead of water temperatures that are projected to change within the next 50 years.
lmilcin 6y ago
Acidity increases everywhere and does not depend on temperature. Also, coral reefs grow extremely slowly.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  At the end-Permian extinction, nearly everything that made carbonate skeletons was wiped out, probably because of the enormous amounts of CO2, SO2, and HCl that were produced. Coral had to re-evolve from non-carbonate producing species.
rektide 6y ago
My understanding is that temperature is only part of the problem. Acidification is ongoing, due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. That's a global problem: the ocean is literally starving for oxygen, everywhere. If the thermohaline cycle in the Atlantic continues slowing down, there will be significantly less water circulating. There's a risk that bigger & bigger parts of the ocean just sit, don't flow, and thus never get exposed to the air: that they truly deeply & forever run out of oxygen. The dynamical processes of earth are being disrupted. We talk about extreme weather being the risk, but a lack of weather, a lack of variety, a forever hot, non-humidity bearing (higher temperatures carry less humidity) sit-and-stew earth, just sitting here, baking, is the hell we are headed to. The dynamical processes risk becoming static, stagnant situations. The flow of life & change & systems is being baked off the planet.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Applejinx 6y ago
  Nope. Chaos theory says very much the opposite, and our experience is tending to back chaos theory here. I mean yes what you describe would also be bad, but it's not that we're going to see. I can't speak to the thermohaline cycle: perhaps you're describing something that'll happen specifically in the depths of the ocean? Sounds bad. Up here where WE live, the possible extremes of weather are factors of chaotic energy, and small increases in global temperature will produce wider potential swings in weather behavior. So we are not at all going to see 'a lack of variety' and we're not seeing it now. We're seeing 'wait, WHAT' weather and it's only going to get worse. The challenge is surviving those energies. Never mind colonizing Mars or Venus, the challenge we'll face is clinging on to THIS planet, and a hell of a lot of people will end up not able to survive what's coming. And it's subcultures like Hacker News we'll depend on, for people who'll come up with the 300-mph storm windows etc. I own a house: I'm not thrilled at what's going on. I'm trying to work out what I've got to do in order to not be taken out by some kind of weather extreme beyond what we used to have when I was growing up.
  - rektide 6y ago
pvaldes 6y ago
Coral reef and corals are different things. A coral is just an animal. Will settle in any suitable place reached by sea currents. If the currents in their place go from poles to equator will never survive to settle there. A coral reef needs 1000 years and several submarine mounts to appear. It hosts tens of thousands of species interacting together, is more complex than the more complex software that we could imagine and not all of those species can just move with the coral and survive in the new area. Algae for example, that are of crucial importance in the survival of the reef, both as symbionts but also as competitors. Wipe the 10% of the species, just the rare ones, and you will have still a stunning "virgin" coral reef but is neither healthy nor sustainable long term. Wipe all the uncommon species of coral and Acropora will refill all empty space so technically there is plenty of coral still. Wipe all sharks and there will be a chain of unexpected consequences down on the food chain. The reef works as a whole entity. Is about quantity but also about quality of the remaining corals.
Arnt 6y ago
You already have several answers, but I want to add a different one. A bird that was very common when I was a boy is dying now. Why doesn't it just move a few km northwards, to where the temperature is right for it? It doesn't because it needs craggy islands in a shallow sea and the right temperature range. A lot of species can move, but that doesn't mean that there are many suitable new locations. What we have now has been optimised for the current geography and climate over a long, long time. Shifting all the locations 100km isn't likely to produce as many geography/climate matches.

mikedilger 6y ago

Article has no link. Here is the report: https://www.science.org.au/supporting-science/science-policy-and-analysis/reports-and-publications/risks-australia-three-degrees-c-warmer-world https://www.science.org.au/supporting-science/science-policy...

mikedilger 6y ago
The report sites a lot of papers, many of which by one report author Hoegh-Guldberg who has been studying reefs and claiming they are at risk since at least 1999. One of the latest of those papers puts it like this (ideas which the article does not accurately represent): "Even if the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement are achieved, coral reefs are likely to decline by 70–90% relative to their current abundance by midcentury." "Although alarming, coral communities that survive will play a key role in the regeneration of reefs by mid-to-late century. Here, we argue for a coordinated, global coral reef conservation strategy that is centred on 50 large (500 km2) regions that are the least vulnerable to climate change and which are positioned to facilitate future coral reef regeneration." Hoegh-Guldberg, Ove, Kennedy, E. V., Beyer, H.L., McClennen, C., Possingham, H.P., 2018. Securing a Long-term Future for Coral Reefs. Trends Ecol. Evol. 33, 936–944. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.09.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.09.006 They are not "doomed" they are "at risk".
- klyrs 6y ago
  That sounds pretty doomed to me. They're saying that mass destruction is inevitable, and the best path forward is to protect habitat that's got the best chance of future regrowth. Of course, "best chance" is according to imperfect modeling and optimism that people will actually get their shit together on the Paris treaty in the next 30 years. And if 70-90% loss doesn't sound like "doom" to you, may I have 80% of your assets?
  - mikedilger 6y ago
    If it's doomed, why bother? If it's at risk, I can still be motivated to do something to save it.

bb123 6y ago

This is so incredibly sad, and I feel so helpless that this is slipping through our fingers. I fear I’ll never get a chance to see a coral reef in real life, and it looks almost certain that my children won’t. Is there anything we can do as individuals to help? I tried looking into conservation efforts but it seems like any amount of money we could hope to donate isn’t going to make a drop of difference to sea temperature change. Coral reefs aren’t like tigers or pandas, they’re just too delicate and complex to survive in any human made environment.

foobiter 6y ago
tigers and pandas have such small natural habitats now that they’re effectively extinct in the wild; i’m not advocating for it, but it seems like nothing outside of large scale ecoterrorism can do anything fast enough to save our charismatic megafauna for anything other than morbid exhibition
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  Large scale ecoterroism sounds good. Bomb the houses of those burning the forests. More effective than Facebook posts asking them to stop.
- lenkite 6y ago
  Actually, wild tiger population has doubled (in India) in the last 12 years. https://www.businessinsider.in/science/environment/news/indias-tiger-population-has-nearly-doubled-in-12-years/articleshow/77220681.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/science/environment/news/indi... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-49148174 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-49148174
  - foobiter 6y ago
    it’s easy to double when numbers are under 5,000. Many ecologists are not as rosy as the indian government about this... 95% of their range is gone at this point and there’s not a lot of genetic diversity; a single disease can wipe out of the population. We’d need nearly 100,000 tigers to have the diversity to avoid this, and we’re not on track for that by a long shot. https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/tigers-genetic-diversity-041814.html https://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/tigers-genetic-div...

deanCommie 6y ago

What do climate change denialists think about stories like this? Do they A) Think it's a complete lie/exaggeraiton, and the Barrier Reef will be fine? B) Think it's happening but not because of human activity (a massive die off across thousands of kilometers is totally natural, dude) C) Agree that it's caused by humans, but that it's too late to do anything about (probably true), but that also it's not worth taking action on the REST of our emissions even though it could help prevent extinctions and irreversible ecosystem changes in areas we haven't even discussed yet. D) Agree that it's caused by humans, but trying to do anything will destroy the economy, and the livelyhood of people that depend on it, so it's not worth doing E) Agree that it's caused by humans, and renewable energy is cheap enough now that the economy will be fine, but trying to do anything about it will cause a reduction in corporate profits for a couple of companies, so it's not worth doing. As recently as 10 years ago it feels like most conservatives were in Category A Looking at the statements of most right-wing politicians, it seems that we are approaching critical mass of entry into group D. How do people live with themselves knowing the mental gymnastics they are doing to remain "right" and never admit their thinking was flawed in any way shape or form...

foobiter 6y ago
they simply do not give a shit about coral reef and do not understand ecological systems
hansvm 6y ago
Anecdotally, most I've talked to fall into (B) or (D).
AussieWog93 6y ago
Your comment is most likely being downvoted because it is ideological flamebait, not because people disagree with your opinion. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deanCommie 6y ago
  I can accept that in broader society, climate change is an "ideological" concept. I cannot accept that it would be inside a well educated circle like hackernews. It should not be any more controversial than flat earth theory or moon landing conspiracies. So, I think it's reasonable for me to try to understand, anthropologically speaking, the mindset of a modern climate change denialist. My uncharitable and editorialized descript of their perspectives is perfectly justifiable. These people are actively perpetuating information and policy decisions that will cause the deaths of millions in the next century, the displacement of 100s of millions of more, and a reduction in the quality of life of billions. They are not worthy of my civility. Civility is what is leading to the the status quo where we as a society - both left and right - have just accepted that the great barrier reef will be dead within a decade, and our children's children will only read about coral reefs in textbooks.

bawbag 6y ago

I am in my 30's, and I know this. I was taught this as a kid. I did a stupid report on it in primary school. No one cares. No one has a relationship to Coral. Most people see it as some weird sea stick, like a tree. The Coral will all die and I don't know what articles like this are trying to say? Go back in time? Pretend that your solar panel will save them?

ghastmaster 6y ago

I find it hard to believe that ancient creatures that have lived through this many times in history are somehow unable to do it again. The temperature estimates in the article do not eclipse highs in fairly recent history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periods_and_events_in_climate_history#/media/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periods_and_events_in_... Nor does the rate of change exceed that of what the earth experienced as recently as 8k years before present. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene#/media/File:North-western_European_Holocene_Climate_Proxies_and_Culture_Stages,_by_Hans_J.J.G._Holm.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene#/media/File:North-wes...

hillbillydilly 6y ago
low effort climate denialism posts- oversimplified, pedantic and contrarian, for what? "Oceans Acidifying Faster Today Than in Past 300 Million Years" https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123324 https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123324 seriously two clicks.
- ghastmaster 6y ago
  Please use full sentences and reply to my argument or observation, not my intention. It took me a minute to decipher what exactly you were saying because your reply was not clear. Key points from your link: > About 56 million years ago, a mysterious surge of carbon into the atmosphere warmed the planet and turned the oceans corrosive. In about 5,000 years, atmospheric carbon doubled to 1,800 parts per million (ppm), and average global temperatures rose by about 6 degrees Celsius. > In the last hundred years, rising carbon dioxide from human activities has lowered ocean pH by 0.1 unit, an acidification rate at least 10 times faster than 56 million years ago, says Hönisch. What I cannot figure out is why if OA and global temps are dependent on atmospheric CO2, why has there not been major die offs in recent history(particularly 8k years before present. It seems to be that OA is particularly hard to study.
prezjordan 6y ago
The creatures have, the reef has not.

shoo 6y ago

What kind of annual sustained global emissions reductions would be necessary to have a 50-50 chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees? [0] 2018 estimates of the carbon budget remaining for a 50% chance of less than 1.5C warming: 200 Gt CO_2-e -- 800 Gt CO_2-e [1]. Lots of uncertainty, I will ignore tails on both sides. Assume current global emissions are around 35 Gt CO_2-e / year [2][3]. Since it is now 2021, not 2018, subtract about 105 Gt CO_2-e from the remaining budget, giving a range of around 95 -- 695 Gt CO_2-e remaining. Crude estimate of years remaining until carbon budget for 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5C is exhausted: 2 years -- 20 years, assuming steady 35 Gt CO_2-e / year emissions. Let's make things easier and relax the target and aim to reduce emissions to 5% of current levels -- a massive drop of 95%, not the full 100%. This relaxed target does not try to achieve net zero emissions, but to merely get us into the ballpark of where that a zero net emissions goal could perhaps be reachable with enough additional effort. Supposing we are unlucky and reality is consistent with the scenario where we have two years of carbon budget remaining. To stay within the relaxed budget we would need to consistently sustain 78% annual drop in emissions per year for two years. Supposing we are lucky and reality is consistent with the scenario where there are twenty years of carbon budget remaining. To stay within the relaxed budget we would need to consistently sustain 14% annual drop in emissions per year for twenty years. What might sustained 14% annual drops in emissions feel like? It seems like world annual emissions dropped 7% in 2020 vs 2019 [3]. In the trailing decade 2010-2019 we were seeing about 1% annual growth in emissions. So if we assume Covid is entirely responsible for that difference, that's a 8% emissions reduction -- perhaps transient that will bounce back -- from a one-off event. If we consistently had two different Covid-scale economic shocks every year for twenty years, each with a corresponding _permanent_ reductions in emissions, that might suffice to maintain the 14% _permanent_ annual drop in emissions necessary to reduce emissions to 5% of current levels by 2041. To benchmark against reality and pick on my own country: Australia's federal government reckons it is on track to reduce emissions to 480 Mt CO_2-e by 2030, from 540 Mt CO_2-e in 2019 [4]. This corresponds to sustaining a 1.1% annual drop in emissions for eleven years. [0] I don't think limiting warming to at most 1.5 degrees C is a goal that is intentionally reachable from within the current human system. It is worth doing some back of the envelope accounting exercise every now and again to get a feel for the remaining carbon budget & the scale of the challenge. [1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-much-carbon-budget-is-left-to-limit-global-warming-to-1-5c https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-much-carbon-budget-... [2] I am being optimistic and rounding down to 35 Gt from 36.4 Gt in 2019 to make the numbers easier. Let's ignore 2020's data as not representative of what humans do in a typical year, due to the pandemic shock, although hopefully some of the behaviour change will be sticky (WFH, etc). [3] https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/images/carbonbudget/Infographic_Emissions2020.jpg https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/images/carbonbudg... [4] https://www.industry.gov.au/data-and-publications/australias-emissions-projections-2020 https://www.industry.gov.au/data-and-publications/australias...

shoo 6y ago

One lens to think about this is the lens of species extinction [+]. The world is currently experiencing species extinction at a rate significantly higher than the background rate, due to direct and indirect human causes: > In contrast to the the Big Five [mass extinction events], today’s species losses are driven by a mix of direct and indirect human activities, such as the destruction and fragmentation of habitats, direct exploitation like fishing and hunting, chemical pollution, invasive species, and human-caused global warming. > If we use the same approach to estimate today’s extinctions per million species-years, we come up with a rate that is between ten and 10,000 times higher than the background rate. > Even considering a conservative background rate of two extinctions per million species-years, the number of species that have gone extinct in the last century would have otherwise taken between 800 and 10,000 years to disappear if they were merely succumbing to the expected extinctions that happen at random. [...] > It would likely take several millions of years of normal evolutionary diversification to “restore” the Earth’s species to what they were prior to human beings rapidly changing the planet. -- https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-mass-extinction-and-are-we-in-one-now-122535 https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-mass-extinction-and-ar... I tried to find a source for the claim of "several million years of normal evolutionary diversification" to restore the previous level of biodiversity. After backtracking through a few layers of citations, we find this pair of studies: > Lu, P. J., Yogo, M. & Marshall, C. R. Phanerozoic marine biodiversity dynamics in light of the incompleteness of the fossil record. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA103, 2736–2739 (2006) > Alroy, J. Dynamics of origination and extinction in the marine fossil record. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA105, 11536–11542 (2008) The more recent of the two studies concludes the following: > The new [marine invertibrate fossil record] data show that two biotic mechanisms have hastened recoveries from mass extinctions and confined diversity to a relatively narrow range over the past 500 million years (Myr). First, a drop in diversity of any size correlates with low extinction rates immediately afterward, so much so that extinction would almost come to a halt if diversity dropped by 90%. Second, very high extinction rates are followed by equally high origination rates. The two relationships predict that the rebound from the current mass extinction will take at least 10 Myr, and perhaps 40 Myr if it rivals the Permo-Triassic catastrophe. Regardless, any large event will result in a dramatic ecological and taxonomic restructuring of the biosphere. -- https://www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11536.full https://www.pnas.org/content/105/Supplement_1/11536.full In the event where coral reefs were killed, and all the species they support became extinct, in 10 -- 40 million years we might expect to find that biodiversity had recovered again -- perhaps unlikely to see reefs again, but perhaps something rich and strange. [+] : reduction of habitat doesn't necessarily imply species extinction, although it is going to put populations that depend upon those habitats under more stress -- stress that they may not be able to recover from

an4rchy 6y ago

Assuming we can make and dump dry ice / ice at scale through renewable energy, would it be a feasible / meaningful solution to even try, in order to extend time (not reduce temperature)? Came across this interesting idea of storing ship emissions as dry ice at the bottom of the ocean. [1]https://fathom.world/co2-spears-decarbonise-ccs/ https://fathom.world/co2-spears-decarbonise-ccs/

webkike 6y ago
https://youtu.be/0SYpUSjSgFg https://youtu.be/0SYpUSjSgFg
btilly 6y ago
Absolutely not. Adding carbon dioxide to water creates carbonic acid, which dissolves shellfish shells and coral reefs. In fact ocean acidification from dumping carbon dioxide in the air is already putting us at risk of losing most of our shellfish in the next few decades.

ghiculescu 6y ago

I grew up in Queensland. During school in the late 90s, we were taught the same thing, except the reef was meant to already be gone by today. When I visited a few years ago, it was stunning. Hopefully this report won’t come true either, but it is hard to believe anyone predicting what Australia will be like in 2100. In any case, particularly on a forum like this, we should argue about what technological ideas we can use to radically transform this gloomy prediction of the future. Rather than just accepting it as fact.

jeffbee 6y ago
You would be “stunned” by 1% of the Great Barrier Reef and wouldn’t notice the missing 99%. This bias is the central topic of the book “The Once and Future World”.
- whymauri 6y ago
  See also: "David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet" which tackles similar themes w.r.t. conservation and nature.
- gkop 6y ago
  Would you clarify your point? I think you may be saying that the reef could already have been dead to a large extent at the time of parent commenter’s visit, but it’s not clear...
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Just because you went to see some natural wonder and were amazed doesn’t imply that it hasn’t been radically degraded.
  - tedk-42 6y ago
    I agree with the rebbutal. We saw a few bits of the reef and some was stunningly beautiful. Other bits in comparison were heavily bleached and not looking healthy at all. It's a collective effort from the whole world we'll need to reverse the damage.

DesiLurker 6y ago

I know this is a sensitive topic with in the west but how about reducing meat consumption (esp red meat) so we cut down ghg emissions. plus more eco-friendly transportation like EVs & fewer flights for vacations. as the saying goes an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.

ianlevesque 6y ago
Or we could do something that actually helps like moving transportation and power generation to renewables.
- ridicter 6y ago
  Reducing emissions to zero, scarily enough, is the minimum. We actually need to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere in order to prevent further temperature increases, which lag behind CO2 concentration by years.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- 2421n 6y ago
  Meat consumption is a huge driver of agriculture, which is responsible for the run off chemicals that are killing the reefs and it requires even more transportation and power consumption! Stop being so smug, you're clueless.

diplodocusaur 6y ago

Suppose we ceased to exist. Are we certain that nature would 'repair' itself? What's the 'good' state measured by (objective function)? If we don't have it defined, I don't think we fully understand our relationship with the natural world and how to fix it.

samschooler 6y ago
It would “repair” itself in the sense that the animals already endangered may go extinct, the damage we caused would run its course. But over a few millennia our effect on our environment would slowly go away and life and the planet would move on without us. Global warming is an issue for life, but because it affects humans and the economy is why we care. Animal will migrate, go extinct, or adapt, but ultimately the ecosystem will move on.
ip26 6y ago
What's the 'good' state In simple terms my understanding is, high biodiversity. More diversity is correlated with resilience, adaptability, etc.
- shrubby 6y ago
  https://imgur.com/a/Yy59VjX https://imgur.com/a/Yy59VjX this shows exactly what we've done to biodiversity. Biomass of farm animals, human and wildlife compared. The equivalent ratio is present everywhere we go.
  - diplodocusaur 6y ago
    awfully biased. At least link to the actual study
pfdietz 6y ago
> Are we certain that nature would 'repair' itself? Our mere presence casts an anthropic shadow over observations of how likely disastrous environmental outcomes have been. For example, any extinction worse than the end Permian extinction would likely have prevented mammals from surviving, and humans then evolving. So just by our presence we can rule out the occurrence of such an event, even if (without us) it could perhaps have been likely. Perhaps planets like Earth are just normally unstable, falling into states that destroy their biospheres, and Earth itself has been extremely lucky. There's no reason to think that luck will continue.

mrfusion 6y ago

Just to play devils advocate (Im a huge reef supporter) This report seems to say the opposite? Are there flaws? https://www.thegwpf.com/claims-of-dramatic-loss-of-great-barrier-reef-corals-are-false%E2%80%A8/ https://www.thegwpf.com/claims-of-dramatic-loss-of-great-bar...

kristopolous 6y ago
First, let's set aside that this is a secretive climate change denial lobbying group that's been under multiple investigations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundati...) and is headquartered at the same office as an industrial mining lobbying group and look at the actual claim. They quote fired climate skeptic Peter Ridd (https://www.desmogblog.com/peter-ridd https://www.desmogblog.com/peter-ridd) who has been funded by numerous industrial groups and coincidentally made claims that their products are harmless. This time he misreads AIMS data for which AIMS has openly criticized him before on (that's why he had to create his own chart and not use one of AIMS). AIMS of course, firmly and clearly states the opposite of his findings: https://www.aims.gov.au/docs/research/climate-change/declining-coral-growth.html https://www.aims.gov.au/docs/research/climate-change/declini... . Coincidentally the GPWF is fairly well known for intentionally deceptive graphics https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Warming_P... Anyway, then the article says the author of the claim they are criticizing, Terry Hughes of James Cook University "refused to make public the raw data". This is linguistic acrobatics. His research team had already made public the data so he personally couldn't make it public a second time because that's not how language works. Here's the data: https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.ncjsxksrq https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.ncjsxk... So in summary they lied about the data not being public and cited someone who intentionally misrepresented data and has been censured for that multiple times, all in 243 words. That's some achievement!

flyGuyOnTheSly 6y ago

I just had a childish thought. Why don't we just completely trash the barrier reef and focus on saving the next reef that isn't completely trashed.

somishere 6y ago
The GBR is one of the least trashed reefs, I think that's the point.

mrlonglong 6y ago

Can't we build some nuke plants and use their output to cool the seas along the barrier reef?

sokoloff 6y ago
You can move heat from one place to another with a variety of means. Where do you propose we put the massive amount of heat energy extracted from the water?

dopeboy 6y ago

Has anyone here dove in the great barrier reef? How's it compare to SEA?

shrubby 6y ago

These are all symptoms of over consumption, warming, plastic... Bill Gates's idea of spraying chalk dust into the stratosphere is duct tape that will maybe address one of the symptoms. There are close to eight billion of us here. The planet absorbs twenty billion tonnes of CO2. That gives a quota of three tonnes for each of us, divided equally. Three tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year, per person. Three tonnes. I live in a Nordic country where the average emissions are over ten tonnes per a year. How is that not comparable to Nazi era Germany, where normal folk knew what was happening but did nothing to prevent it from happening? Except maybe few thingies. Germans were gassing a group of people alienated and we're gassing our own children. Germans trying to act to stop the gassing would likely be killed, we're facing the consequence of upsetting someone. Tell me how I (or anyone else) justify using over four times the sustainable amount of resources and pretend to be a goodie? #3TA

shrubby 6y ago
Three tonnes of course is a rough guideline. But my idea is that 2020 equivalent of three tonnes should be a good guideline for the coming decades to fix most of our sustainability problems. Tech will progress simultaneously and help us in offsetting the accumulated burden, but what we really need is to relearn the moderation that was present daily just some decades ago.
01100011 6y ago
I think a lot of us are going forward with the hope that technology will improve and we will find solutions. You can take individual action. I did for a couple decades. It was, more or less, a waste of time and energy, but I felt smug for a while. The world needs more Elon Musks, not more smug Westerners. There are billions of people in the developing world who want their world to continue to develop, and right now that takes energy.
- shrubby 6y ago
  Tech wont come in time as we're passing tipping points all the time, the due date was already. Only chance is psychology of moderation and realizing the statistics of the over consumption. Oxfam told in their report that the top 1% contributed twice the amount of the lowest 50% over the course of last 25 years. And out of that consumption of the rich, most is vain. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-ric...

hntroll666 6y ago

This stuff is not science, it's fear propaganda. Scientists and the media form a kind of complex that allows each to get what they want without consequence when their claims turn out to be wrong. The scientists get publicity, which helps with grants. The media gets to run a scary story, which puts money in their pocket. In twenty years, when doomsday has still failed to materialize, nobody will remember the claims, just like most people today don't remember the doomsday prophecies of twenty years ago. There's no reckoning. There's no penalty to the scientists or the journalists for endlessly dumping toxic waste on the public.

barryhoodlum 6y ago
You could say the same about a "nothing bad will ever happen" opinion like yours, except a different group benefits from it.

EdwinLarkin 6y ago

Without a global agreement/government I dont see the issue of climate change getting solved anytime soon. In many countries in Europe we are required to return plastic bottles to stores for recycling. Meanwhile in China they ferry water in plastic bottles everyday to people because tap water there is undrinkable.