9 ms·

An Ominous Heating Event Is Unfolding in the Oceans

175 points by morsch 4y ago

xwdv 4y ago
How quickly could heat resistant fish be reproduced through natural selection? Years? Fish breed fast right? Sharks have been around for millions of years with a lot of variance in ocean temperatures.
- Juliate 4y ago
  Over the periods fishes evolved, their habitat wasn’t under heavy attack/occupation, neither were their populations hunted at the current scale.
- neom 4y ago
  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200427125154.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200427125154.h...
- Arnt 4y ago
  Sharks are pelagic, which means that they live in the open ocean, they don't need to be near either any coast, the surface or the bottom. Pelagic fish can wander, with some restrictions. Species that need a coast are in less luck, for example. The next appropriate coast may be far away. The Great Barrier Reef can't just migrate to Antarctica, even if there is a suitable coastline down there, because it can't get there from where it is. There is no continuously habitable area from where it is now to the potential new habitat.
  - Rufbdbskrufb473 4y ago
    Is there anything stopping it from migrating down to the southern coast of Australia?
    - tastyfreeze 4y ago
      As conditions change that is likely to happen. Corals are broadcast spawners. The larva will settle in a hospitable environment wherever that happens to be.
  - Scarblac 4y ago
    > Sharks are pelagic, which means that they live in the open ocean, they don't need to be near either any coast, the surface or the bottom. Some sharks are. There are 400+ species and plenty of them live near coasts or the bottom.
    - Arnt 4y ago
      Oh right, in theory I knew that. Sorry. But have the non-pelagic shark species survived any climate changes that would force them to migrate across a large inhospitable area? Sharks have survived very long as a group, but it's not clear to me that most/all of the individual species that have existed still do.
- redprince 4y ago
  Maybe some fish will survive a rapid change in their ecosystem. I'd be worried, that most probably will die when their capacity to adapt is exceeded either directly or through breakdown of food chains. Though I'd be more worried about effects like seasonal oceanic dead zones increasing in size and persisting longer. I don't think too many fish will evolve into a species not requiring oxygen anytime soon.
- myshpa 4y ago
  Heat resistant and anaerobic ? Years? Why so long ? /s https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ (natural speed of changes vs. anthropocene) https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-trajectory-of-the-Anthropocene-The-Great-Acceleration-Source-Steffen-et-al-2015_fig1_344401109 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-trajectory-of-the-An... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Acceleration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Acceleration The "hockey stick" is just starting. - Marine life: Warmer sea temperatures can lead to changes in the distribution and behavior of marine species, with some moving to cooler waters or changing their migration patterns. This can also affect the growth and reproduction rates of different marine organisms, which can have cascading effects on the food chain. - Coral reefs: Coral reefs are highly sensitive to changes in sea temperature, and prolonged exposure to temperatures above 21 degrees Celsius can cause coral bleaching, which can lead to their death. This can have significant impacts on the many species that depend on coral reefs for food and habitat. - Ocean currents: Changes in sea temperature can affect ocean currents, which can in turn impact weather patterns and climate. Warmer sea temperatures can lead to more frequent and severe weather events such as hurricanes and typhoons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin... - Sea level rise: As sea temperatures rise, the water expands, contributing to sea level rise. This can lead to flooding and erosion in coastal areas and impact the livelihoods of people who depend on these areas for fishing and tourism. - Decreased solubility: As sea temperature increases, the solubility of oxygen in seawater decreases. This means that warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen than cooler water. Therefore, as sea temperatures rise, the amount of oxygen available for marine life decreases. - Increased stratification: Warmer water is less dense than cooler water, so as the sea temperature rises, the water column becomes more stratified, with warmer water sitting on top of cooler water. This can prevent oxygen-rich surface water from mixing with deeper water, leading to the formation of oxygen-depleted zones. - Algae blooms: Warmer sea temperatures can promote the growth of certain types of algae, such as harmful algal blooms. These blooms can consume large amounts of oxygen when they decompose, leading to oxygen-depleted zones in the surrounding water. - Oxygen-depleted zones, also known as hypoxic or anoxic zones, can have significant impacts on marine ecosystems. When oxygen levels become too low, many marine organisms, such as fish, shellfish, and crabs, can suffocate and die. This can have cascading effects on the food chain and lead to the loss of commercially important species. Additionally, the decomposition of dead marine organisms in these zones can release harmful gases such as hydrogen sulfide, which can be toxic to marine life and humans.
- chewbacha 4y ago
  Fish aren’t likely the ones at risk. Corals, plankton, and other invertebrates that can’t move too far are going to be heavily selected against if they aren’t heat tolerant. My lab in college used to study heat shock and how it impacted evolution. Our theory was that a rapidly heating environment could expose latent genetic diversity that heat shock proteins masked through chaperoning the folding. We demonstrated this in fruit flies. We could see a rapid change if it’s prolonged enough.
  - Hammershaft 4y ago
    Plankton concerns me because it's a primary source of the oxygen we breathe.
    - beebeepka 4y ago
      Also a major food source for plenty of species
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    Isn't spawning of some fish species heavily impeded by high ocean temperature? They'd probably adjust to it over a few generations if we weren't overfishing them at the same time, but as-is I'm not too optimistic.
    - chewbacha 4y ago
      That’s a good point actually and I hadn’t considered the fish that have delicate spawning. Eggs and fry cannot travel far.
- Mistletoe 4y ago
  I think years is several magnitudes off for how fast evolution works. https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2011/aug/lasting-evolutionary-change-takes-about-one-million-years https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2011/aug/lasting-evol...
- bwb 4y ago
  its also the people made speed of this change... natural selection works over a really long time period, requiring it work in a x years not so much :)
- Scarblac 4y ago
  A problem is that because of the increased CO2 concentrations, ocean weather is becoming more acidic at the same time. That's a huge problem on its own for many species.
tgmatt 4y ago
No paywall https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%2Fan-ominous-heating-event-is-unfolding-in-the-oceans%2F https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%...
- luroc 4y ago
  Missing graph: https://media.wired.com/photos/644b17b8ef8671d76d4a856f/master/w_1280,c_limit/science_oisst2.1_world2_sst_day.jpg https://media.wired.com/photos/644b17b8ef8671d76d4a856f/mast... source: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
leoh 4y ago
Higher heat means a greater amount of dissolved gasses, which means more more acidity due to an ability to capture more co2.
- chemeng 4y ago
  Colder liquids hold more dissolved gas than warmer ones.
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  You've got that the wrong way around, higher heat means fewer dissolved gases [1]. This is part of the mechanism which lies behind the CO₂ concentration fluctuations in the atmosphere and the main reason why the atmospheric CO₂ concentration changes trail temperature changes in the same - temperature increases are followed by CO₂ concentration increases, temperature decreases lead to decreased CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere. The oceans are CO₂ sinks when temperatures go down, CO₂ sources when they go up. [1] You can easily test this yourself by taking two bottles of carbonated water. Put both bottles in the fridge for a day or so until they reach the same temperature, the cooler the better. Now carefully open both bottles so as to avoid a pressure shock leading to outgassing. Put one bottle back into the fridge without the cap on and leave the other one out in some warmer spot, also without the cap. Leave them there for a day or so, then put the caps back on. Take the bottle from the fridge and put it next to the one in the warmer spot, both caps on and leave it there for a day or so until it reaches the same temperature. Feel the pressure on both bottles and notice the one from the fridge is higher. Open both bottles and notice more gas pressure has built up in the one from the fridge. Test the water and notice the water from the bottle from the fridge is more heavily carbonated than the water from the other bottle.
  - GalenErso 4y ago
    > the atmosphere and the main reason why the atmospheric CO₂ concentration changes trail temperature changes in the same - temperature increases are followed by CO₂ concentration increases, temperature decreases lead to decreased CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere. Wrong. CO₂ concentration increases lead to increased temperatures. > Greenhouse gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight. Larger amounts of these gases trap more heat in Earth's lower atmosphere, causing global warming. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change Please don't confuse the public even more when a lot of people couldn't care less about climate change in the first place. If you confuse the half of the population that still cares about finding solutions to the problem, you'll end up causing more harm than good. I don't even care if you're correct, but it's vital for the sake of the climate that we maintain a narrative that is simple and consistent over time. Saying "ahktchually, temperature increases are followed by CO₂ concentration increases" plays right in the hands of climate deniers, who will say we can't even get our story straight, and tune off the people who care, 99% of whom don't know more about climate change than I've written above. In the realm of PR, the small print doesn't matter. People only care about the broad strokes. Save the footnotes and magic tricks for the seminars. And, yeah, PR matters to save the climate. Sorry for being a little confrontational, but I had to get this out.
boringg 4y ago
Would need to dive deeper to get a better handle here. But if what they are pointing to is accurate and wholesale then that is disturbing. Insane amount of energy to heat up the ocean like that - transfer that to all our weather systems, yikes
nunuvit 4y ago
From the introduction: > Rhode points out that temperatures this week were just under two-tenths of a degree warmer than the previous record. “Two-tenths doesn’t sound like a lot—but in ocean terms two-tenths is actually a lot because it doesn’t warm as quickly as the land,” he says. As you can see from the chart’s record of past years, March is normally when average sea surface temperatures start declining. But then the article wanders away from that point before saying when the temperatures do start declining. This is a big failing of science advocacy as it relates to journalism, public policy, and public discourse. Two-tenths of a degree requires interpretation to understand its significance, and it feels like a small number. Instead, lead with something like the oceans should have started cooling down a month ago but they haven't. It's more relatable and gets right to the point. I'm neither criticizing this article nor science journalism in general. I just wanted to draw a comparison to the issue where science communicators need to figure out how to more effectively present information to journalists, policy makers, and the general public.
- 23B1 4y ago
  Journalism continues to let humanity down as a (rightfully) protected profession that simultaneously uses that protection to operate with both impunity and irresponsibility. And I'm not talking about political bias (though that contributes greatly to the distrust people have in media), I'm talking about what you describe; the failure to communicate nuance, the rush to publish without a clear picture of the facts, the use of emotional manipulation to generate clicks, the oversimplification or misrepresentation of the truth. It doesn't matter when you're reporting on celebrity gossip. It matters greatly when you're reporting on things that could destroy our species.
  - logifail 4y ago
    > It doesn't matter when you're reporting on celebrity gossip Umm, personally I find that fairly distasteful too. "Paparazzi pictures of Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman and Bridget Fonda have circulated online, feeding into an odd desire to force reclusive actors back into the spotlight"[0] Now everything is done in service of ever more clicks and hence ads, I find myself less and willing to consume traditional journalism. At all. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/apr/21/hollywood-actors-privacy-paparazzi-trend https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/apr/21/hollywood-actor...
smitty1e 4y ago
Lost me at the second word in the title. I need a quantified, ISO-standardized meaning for "ominous" ahead of mentally tagging The Famous Article as "clickbait". At best.
- estebarb 4y ago
  In startup jargon: Earth co announces end of life for most of its product line, unless it receives significant bail out.
- hh3k0 4y ago
  > Lost me at the second word in the title. Don't sweat it, that's what dictionaries are for.
- fauxpause_ 4y ago
  Look at the chart. Looks pretty ominous to me.
  - smitty1e 4y ago
    It's supposed to.
    - fauxpause_ 4y ago
      Disingenuous take. The data itself is ominous. This is not manufactured.
Mildlypolite 4y ago
[flagged]
- tarr11 4y ago
  I dislike people posting directly from chatGPT without attribution.
  - Mildlypolite 4y ago
    Corrected.
  - 13of40 4y ago
    I think you just unlocked a new fear of mine. I can't tell whether that's ChatGPT or not.
    - Mildlypolite 4y ago
      It's scientifically based, I fear people here who are talking about a coming ice age and people who aren't able to understand the possible severity and significance of this event. That is Much more frightening.
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.md/8vu62 https://archive.md/8vu62
sometimeshuman 4y ago
Related, days ago the BBC reported what I assumed was a typo that the ocean temperature has risen 13.8C the past ~30 years. After reading the article I tried to double check the source but couldn't easily find it. Yesterday HN's top 30 had a similar story from some blog I had never heard of. Their source was the BBC and a paper that didn't show 13.8C. Now we have a typo(?) spreading like a virus. The chart in this Wired article shows a ~1.38C difference which is alarmingly high. What troubles me is how many people, even HN'ers, just ran with a 13.8C number without question. Am I missing something ? Is there any scientific paper showing 13.8C, which would likely kill a significant portion of marine life ? I'll do a time-boxed (2 years) boycott of the BBC until proven otherwise.
- fauxpause_ 4y ago
  Obviously a typo > I'll do a time-boxed (2 years) boycott of the BBC until proven otherwise. Oh wow
- hyperpape 4y ago
  I find it a bit weird that you’re publicly criticizing people for sharing poorly sourced claims…while not sharing any links to the supposed articles that were so bad. Anyway, here’s a BBC article about oceans warming. “13.8C” appears in it. But it doesn’t claim oceans globally heated up by 13.8C. It says a specific area of the ocean was 13.8 C hotter than average in March, while making it clear that the oceans globally were nowhere near that much hotter than average. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934 P.S. I do think it's reasonable to be a little nervous about that 13.8C number--it's really enormous, and it is off the scale for that map that the Wired article shared. But that's not the same as what you said.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    Jeez, embarrassing for GP
  - sometimeshuman 4y ago
    You are right, I saw what appeared to be a 10X lower value in Wired and posted my misunderstanding prematurely. Here's the the blog post that appeared on HN's top 30 from yesterday. But I still can't find a reference to a paper with the 13.8C number in either the BBC article or the blog post. It may be in my blindspot.* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35747417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35747417 *Sorry HN (and BBC), I had surgery recently and am taking narcotics. I won't post for a while since I'm not sure my thinking is clear and I may be criticizing unfairly.
hedora 4y ago
This isn’t too surprising. We already know the global currents are collapsing. That‘ll likely lead to an ice age for Northern Europe within the next 100 years. Anyway, the graph isn’t too surprising. The northern hemisphere isn’t mixing with the cooler southern hemisphere much as it should, causing the spike. Next, the northern Atlantic will stop mixing, and then high latitude places like the UK, France and east of there will freeze. It’s kind of surprising the article doesn’t mention any of this. It made the news rounds again a few weeks ago. The ice age prediction isn’t new, either: PBS ran a good special on it explaining the issue in the mid 1990’s. They predicted 10-50 years for the to ice age to start once the current started collapsing. We’re on track for a 2050-2090 start of ice age by their estimates, and events are tracking what I remember of their predictions. Scientists are saying that, if it happens, it’ll be in 2100-2120 now, but I think they are overly-optimistic. I wish I could find a copy of that program.
- kneebonian 4y ago
  I thought that the sea caps were all going to melt, the polar bears would have no homes and the sea level was going to rise by like 50 feet. I was also told that no one had ever predicted a global ice age, that was all conspiracy theory nonsense based on misinformation. I'm not trying to even be snarky now I'm just wondering where the heck the prediction of an ice age is coming from?
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    Climate change is driven by increasing atmospheric opacity to infrared. The greenhouse effect: sunlight in, heating of the surface, infrared can't return to space. This doesn't just warm the world evenly, it disrupts the circulation of winds and currents globally. As a result, some areas now warm will get cold, and vice versa. Some wet areas will dry up, some dry areas will get wetter. That's the short term, climatologically speaking. Longer term effects are as you say.
  - hedora 4y ago
    There is a reason it is called “climate change”, not “global warming”. We are poking a big system we don’t understand, and are sure something bad will happen, just not exactly what. In this scenario (which seems to be playing out), the ice caps rapidly melt, dumping cold water into global ocean currents, causing them to stall out for a thousand years or so. Those currents cool the equator and warm the temperate zones. Without them, the habitable (without indoor heating/cooling) fraction of the planet drops by some large percentage.
ankit219 4y ago
Hate it when scientific publications too started focusing more on creating fear and uncertainty rather than explaining what is going on. This has been the case for a while now. In this case, there are possible explanations as to why this is happening. [1] explains some of them. I don't understand why Wired chose to omit those. This Wired article just states that ocean temps are high, without going into causes, anomalies or even reasons or theories. Going by [1] > But there's an immediate cause too: the rare triple-dip La Niña is over. During this cycle, cooler water from deep in the ocean upwells to the surface. It's like the Pacific Ocean's air conditioner is running. But now the air conditioner is turned off. It's likely we're set for an El Niño, which tends to bring hotter, dryer weather to Australia. > When you run your air conditioner, you're masking the heat outside. It's the same for our oceans. La Niña brought three years of cooler conditions, while global warming continued apace. I don't mind an article with details of what is going on. Obviously that is important. But as a science journalist, there is an equal responsibility to help try and explain it. If not anything else, contextualize it. Thousands of people will read it and share it. [2[ is also a better coverage of the same story before the follow up with reasons. As a direct comparison, notice the difference in tone, and how they contextualize what is happening. [1]: https://phys.org/news/2023-04-hot-ocean-temperatures-hottest.html https://phys.org/news/2023-04-hot-ocean-temperatures-hottest... [2]: https://phys.org/news/2023-04-earth-hot-sudden-ocean-spike.html https://phys.org/news/2023-04-earth-hot-sudden-ocean-spike.h...
- ftxbro 4y ago
  > Hate it when scientific publications too started focusing more on creating fear and uncertainty rather than explaining what is going on. Just so I'm clear, you are calling Wired a scientific publication? EDIT: Thanks for the explanation of the science parts by the way. I read it instead of the article.
  - ankit219 4y ago
    What i meant was that a publication which covers topics related to science and have specific reporters with beats around those topics. poor choice of words. Also credit to phys.org to be honest. They explain these topics in very simple terms

175 points by morsch 4y ago

xwdv 4y ago

How quickly could heat resistant fish be reproduced through natural selection? Years? Fish breed fast right? Sharks have been around for millions of years with a lot of variance in ocean temperatures.

Juliate 4y ago
Over the periods fishes evolved, their habitat wasn’t under heavy attack/occupation, neither were their populations hunted at the current scale.
neom 4y ago
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200427125154.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200427125154.h...
Arnt 4y ago
Sharks are pelagic, which means that they live in the open ocean, they don't need to be near either any coast, the surface or the bottom. Pelagic fish can wander, with some restrictions. Species that need a coast are in less luck, for example. The next appropriate coast may be far away. The Great Barrier Reef can't just migrate to Antarctica, even if there is a suitable coastline down there, because it can't get there from where it is. There is no continuously habitable area from where it is now to the potential new habitat.
- Rufbdbskrufb473 4y ago
  Is there anything stopping it from migrating down to the southern coast of Australia?
  - tastyfreeze 4y ago
    As conditions change that is likely to happen. Corals are broadcast spawners. The larva will settle in a hospitable environment wherever that happens to be.
- Scarblac 4y ago
  > Sharks are pelagic, which means that they live in the open ocean, they don't need to be near either any coast, the surface or the bottom. Some sharks are. There are 400+ species and plenty of them live near coasts or the bottom.
  - Arnt 4y ago
    Oh right, in theory I knew that. Sorry. But have the non-pelagic shark species survived any climate changes that would force them to migrate across a large inhospitable area? Sharks have survived very long as a group, but it's not clear to me that most/all of the individual species that have existed still do.
redprince 4y ago
Maybe some fish will survive a rapid change in their ecosystem. I'd be worried, that most probably will die when their capacity to adapt is exceeded either directly or through breakdown of food chains. Though I'd be more worried about effects like seasonal oceanic dead zones increasing in size and persisting longer. I don't think too many fish will evolve into a species not requiring oxygen anytime soon.
myshpa 4y ago
Heat resistant and anaerobic ? Years? Why so long ? /s https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ (natural speed of changes vs. anthropocene) https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-trajectory-of-the-Anthropocene-The-Great-Acceleration-Source-Steffen-et-al-2015_fig1_344401109 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-trajectory-of-the-An... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Acceleration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Acceleration The "hockey stick" is just starting. - Marine life: Warmer sea temperatures can lead to changes in the distribution and behavior of marine species, with some moving to cooler waters or changing their migration patterns. This can also affect the growth and reproduction rates of different marine organisms, which can have cascading effects on the food chain. - Coral reefs: Coral reefs are highly sensitive to changes in sea temperature, and prolonged exposure to temperatures above 21 degrees Celsius can cause coral bleaching, which can lead to their death. This can have significant impacts on the many species that depend on coral reefs for food and habitat. - Ocean currents: Changes in sea temperature can affect ocean currents, which can in turn impact weather patterns and climate. Warmer sea temperatures can lead to more frequent and severe weather events such as hurricanes and typhoons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturning_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin... - Sea level rise: As sea temperatures rise, the water expands, contributing to sea level rise. This can lead to flooding and erosion in coastal areas and impact the livelihoods of people who depend on these areas for fishing and tourism. - Decreased solubility: As sea temperature increases, the solubility of oxygen in seawater decreases. This means that warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen than cooler water. Therefore, as sea temperatures rise, the amount of oxygen available for marine life decreases. - Increased stratification: Warmer water is less dense than cooler water, so as the sea temperature rises, the water column becomes more stratified, with warmer water sitting on top of cooler water. This can prevent oxygen-rich surface water from mixing with deeper water, leading to the formation of oxygen-depleted zones. - Algae blooms: Warmer sea temperatures can promote the growth of certain types of algae, such as harmful algal blooms. These blooms can consume large amounts of oxygen when they decompose, leading to oxygen-depleted zones in the surrounding water. - Oxygen-depleted zones, also known as hypoxic or anoxic zones, can have significant impacts on marine ecosystems. When oxygen levels become too low, many marine organisms, such as fish, shellfish, and crabs, can suffocate and die. This can have cascading effects on the food chain and lead to the loss of commercially important species. Additionally, the decomposition of dead marine organisms in these zones can release harmful gases such as hydrogen sulfide, which can be toxic to marine life and humans.
chewbacha 4y ago
Fish aren’t likely the ones at risk. Corals, plankton, and other invertebrates that can’t move too far are going to be heavily selected against if they aren’t heat tolerant. My lab in college used to study heat shock and how it impacted evolution. Our theory was that a rapidly heating environment could expose latent genetic diversity that heat shock proteins masked through chaperoning the folding. We demonstrated this in fruit flies. We could see a rapid change if it’s prolonged enough.
- Hammershaft 4y ago
  Plankton concerns me because it's a primary source of the oxygen we breathe.
  - beebeepka 4y ago
    Also a major food source for plenty of species
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Isn't spawning of some fish species heavily impeded by high ocean temperature? They'd probably adjust to it over a few generations if we weren't overfishing them at the same time, but as-is I'm not too optimistic.
  - chewbacha 4y ago
    That’s a good point actually and I hadn’t considered the fish that have delicate spawning. Eggs and fry cannot travel far.
Mistletoe 4y ago
I think years is several magnitudes off for how fast evolution works. https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2011/aug/lasting-evolutionary-change-takes-about-one-million-years https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/2011/aug/lasting-evol...
bwb 4y ago
its also the people made speed of this change... natural selection works over a really long time period, requiring it work in a x years not so much :)
Scarblac 4y ago
A problem is that because of the increased CO2 concentrations, ocean weather is becoming more acidic at the same time. That's a huge problem on its own for many species.

tgmatt 4y ago

No paywall https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%2Fan-ominous-heating-event-is-unfolding-in-the-oceans%2F https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%...

luroc 4y ago
Missing graph: https://media.wired.com/photos/644b17b8ef8671d76d4a856f/master/w_1280,c_limit/science_oisst2.1_world2_sst_day.jpg https://media.wired.com/photos/644b17b8ef8671d76d4a856f/mast... source: https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/ https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

leoh 4y ago

Higher heat means a greater amount of dissolved gasses, which means more more acidity due to an ability to capture more co2.

chemeng 4y ago
Colder liquids hold more dissolved gas than warmer ones.
the_third_wave 4y ago
You've got that the wrong way around, higher heat means fewer dissolved gases [1]. This is part of the mechanism which lies behind the CO₂ concentration fluctuations in the atmosphere and the main reason why the atmospheric CO₂ concentration changes trail temperature changes in the same - temperature increases are followed by CO₂ concentration increases, temperature decreases lead to decreased CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere. The oceans are CO₂ sinks when temperatures go down, CO₂ sources when they go up. [1] You can easily test this yourself by taking two bottles of carbonated water. Put both bottles in the fridge for a day or so until they reach the same temperature, the cooler the better. Now carefully open both bottles so as to avoid a pressure shock leading to outgassing. Put one bottle back into the fridge without the cap on and leave the other one out in some warmer spot, also without the cap. Leave them there for a day or so, then put the caps back on. Take the bottle from the fridge and put it next to the one in the warmer spot, both caps on and leave it there for a day or so until it reaches the same temperature. Feel the pressure on both bottles and notice the one from the fridge is higher. Open both bottles and notice more gas pressure has built up in the one from the fridge. Test the water and notice the water from the bottle from the fridge is more heavily carbonated than the water from the other bottle.
- GalenErso 4y ago
  > the atmosphere and the main reason why the atmospheric CO₂ concentration changes trail temperature changes in the same - temperature increases are followed by CO₂ concentration increases, temperature decreases lead to decreased CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere. Wrong. CO₂ concentration increases lead to increased temperatures. > Greenhouse gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight. Larger amounts of these gases trap more heat in Earth's lower atmosphere, causing global warming. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change Please don't confuse the public even more when a lot of people couldn't care less about climate change in the first place. If you confuse the half of the population that still cares about finding solutions to the problem, you'll end up causing more harm than good. I don't even care if you're correct, but it's vital for the sake of the climate that we maintain a narrative that is simple and consistent over time. Saying "ahktchually, temperature increases are followed by CO₂ concentration increases" plays right in the hands of climate deniers, who will say we can't even get our story straight, and tune off the people who care, 99% of whom don't know more about climate change than I've written above. In the realm of PR, the small print doesn't matter. People only care about the broad strokes. Save the footnotes and magic tricks for the seminars. And, yeah, PR matters to save the climate. Sorry for being a little confrontational, but I had to get this out.

boringg 4y ago

Would need to dive deeper to get a better handle here. But if what they are pointing to is accurate and wholesale then that is disturbing. Insane amount of energy to heat up the ocean like that - transfer that to all our weather systems, yikes

nunuvit 4y ago

From the introduction: > Rhode points out that temperatures this week were just under two-tenths of a degree warmer than the previous record. “Two-tenths doesn’t sound like a lot—but in ocean terms two-tenths is actually a lot because it doesn’t warm as quickly as the land,” he says. As you can see from the chart’s record of past years, March is normally when average sea surface temperatures start declining. But then the article wanders away from that point before saying when the temperatures do start declining. This is a big failing of science advocacy as it relates to journalism, public policy, and public discourse. Two-tenths of a degree requires interpretation to understand its significance, and it feels like a small number. Instead, lead with something like the oceans should have started cooling down a month ago but they haven't. It's more relatable and gets right to the point. I'm neither criticizing this article nor science journalism in general. I just wanted to draw a comparison to the issue where science communicators need to figure out how to more effectively present information to journalists, policy makers, and the general public.

23B1 4y ago
Journalism continues to let humanity down as a (rightfully) protected profession that simultaneously uses that protection to operate with both impunity and irresponsibility. And I'm not talking about political bias (though that contributes greatly to the distrust people have in media), I'm talking about what you describe; the failure to communicate nuance, the rush to publish without a clear picture of the facts, the use of emotional manipulation to generate clicks, the oversimplification or misrepresentation of the truth. It doesn't matter when you're reporting on celebrity gossip. It matters greatly when you're reporting on things that could destroy our species.
- logifail 4y ago
  > It doesn't matter when you're reporting on celebrity gossip Umm, personally I find that fairly distasteful too. "Paparazzi pictures of Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman and Bridget Fonda have circulated online, feeding into an odd desire to force reclusive actors back into the spotlight"[0] Now everything is done in service of ever more clicks and hence ads, I find myself less and willing to consume traditional journalism. At all. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/apr/21/hollywood-actors-privacy-paparazzi-trend https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/apr/21/hollywood-actor...

smitty1e 4y ago

Lost me at the second word in the title. I need a quantified, ISO-standardized meaning for "ominous" ahead of mentally tagging The Famous Article as "clickbait". At best.

estebarb 4y ago
In startup jargon: Earth co announces end of life for most of its product line, unless it receives significant bail out.
hh3k0 4y ago
> Lost me at the second word in the title. Don't sweat it, that's what dictionaries are for.
fauxpause_ 4y ago
Look at the chart. Looks pretty ominous to me.
- smitty1e 4y ago
  It's supposed to.
  - fauxpause_ 4y ago
    Disingenuous take. The data itself is ominous. This is not manufactured.

Mildlypolite 4y ago

[flagged]

tarr11 4y ago
I dislike people posting directly from chatGPT without attribution.
- Mildlypolite 4y ago
  Corrected.
- 13of40 4y ago
  I think you just unlocked a new fear of mine. I can't tell whether that's ChatGPT or not.
  - Mildlypolite 4y ago
    It's scientifically based, I fear people here who are talking about a coming ice age and people who aren't able to understand the possible severity and significance of this event. That is Much more frightening.

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.md/8vu62 https://archive.md/8vu62

sometimeshuman 4y ago

Related, days ago the BBC reported what I assumed was a typo that the ocean temperature has risen 13.8C the past ~30 years. After reading the article I tried to double check the source but couldn't easily find it. Yesterday HN's top 30 had a similar story from some blog I had never heard of. Their source was the BBC and a paper that didn't show 13.8C. Now we have a typo(?) spreading like a virus. The chart in this Wired article shows a ~1.38C difference which is alarmingly high. What troubles me is how many people, even HN'ers, just ran with a 13.8C number without question. Am I missing something ? Is there any scientific paper showing 13.8C, which would likely kill a significant portion of marine life ? I'll do a time-boxed (2 years) boycott of the BBC until proven otherwise.

fauxpause_ 4y ago
Obviously a typo > I'll do a time-boxed (2 years) boycott of the BBC until proven otherwise. Oh wow
hyperpape 4y ago
I find it a bit weird that you’re publicly criticizing people for sharing poorly sourced claims…while not sharing any links to the supposed articles that were so bad. Anyway, here’s a BBC article about oceans warming. “13.8C” appears in it. But it doesn’t claim oceans globally heated up by 13.8C. It says a specific area of the ocean was 13.8 C hotter than average in March, while making it clear that the oceans globally were nowhere near that much hotter than average. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65339934 P.S. I do think it's reasonable to be a little nervous about that 13.8C number--it's really enormous, and it is off the scale for that map that the Wired article shared. But that's not the same as what you said.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Jeez, embarrassing for GP
- sometimeshuman 4y ago
  You are right, I saw what appeared to be a 10X lower value in Wired and posted my misunderstanding prematurely. Here's the the blog post that appeared on HN's top 30 from yesterday. But I still can't find a reference to a paper with the 13.8C number in either the BBC article or the blog post. It may be in my blindspot.* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35747417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35747417 *Sorry HN (and BBC), I had surgery recently and am taking narcotics. I won't post for a while since I'm not sure my thinking is clear and I may be criticizing unfairly.

hedora 4y ago

This isn’t too surprising. We already know the global currents are collapsing. That‘ll likely lead to an ice age for Northern Europe within the next 100 years. Anyway, the graph isn’t too surprising. The northern hemisphere isn’t mixing with the cooler southern hemisphere much as it should, causing the spike. Next, the northern Atlantic will stop mixing, and then high latitude places like the UK, France and east of there will freeze. It’s kind of surprising the article doesn’t mention any of this. It made the news rounds again a few weeks ago. The ice age prediction isn’t new, either: PBS ran a good special on it explaining the issue in the mid 1990’s. They predicted 10-50 years for the to ice age to start once the current started collapsing. We’re on track for a 2050-2090 start of ice age by their estimates, and events are tracking what I remember of their predictions. Scientists are saying that, if it happens, it’ll be in 2100-2120 now, but I think they are overly-optimistic. I wish I could find a copy of that program.

kneebonian 4y ago
I thought that the sea caps were all going to melt, the polar bears would have no homes and the sea level was going to rise by like 50 feet. I was also told that no one had ever predicted a global ice age, that was all conspiracy theory nonsense based on misinformation. I'm not trying to even be snarky now I'm just wondering where the heck the prediction of an ice age is coming from?
- cratermoon 4y ago
  Climate change is driven by increasing atmospheric opacity to infrared. The greenhouse effect: sunlight in, heating of the surface, infrared can't return to space. This doesn't just warm the world evenly, it disrupts the circulation of winds and currents globally. As a result, some areas now warm will get cold, and vice versa. Some wet areas will dry up, some dry areas will get wetter. That's the short term, climatologically speaking. Longer term effects are as you say.
- hedora 4y ago
  There is a reason it is called “climate change”, not “global warming”. We are poking a big system we don’t understand, and are sure something bad will happen, just not exactly what. In this scenario (which seems to be playing out), the ice caps rapidly melt, dumping cold water into global ocean currents, causing them to stall out for a thousand years or so. Those currents cool the equator and warm the temperate zones. Without them, the habitable (without indoor heating/cooling) fraction of the planet drops by some large percentage.

ankit219 4y ago

Hate it when scientific publications too started focusing more on creating fear and uncertainty rather than explaining what is going on. This has been the case for a while now. In this case, there are possible explanations as to why this is happening. [1] explains some of them. I don't understand why Wired chose to omit those. This Wired article just states that ocean temps are high, without going into causes, anomalies or even reasons or theories. Going by [1] > But there's an immediate cause too: the rare triple-dip La Niña is over. During this cycle, cooler water from deep in the ocean upwells to the surface. It's like the Pacific Ocean's air conditioner is running. But now the air conditioner is turned off. It's likely we're set for an El Niño, which tends to bring hotter, dryer weather to Australia. > When you run your air conditioner, you're masking the heat outside. It's the same for our oceans. La Niña brought three years of cooler conditions, while global warming continued apace. I don't mind an article with details of what is going on. Obviously that is important. But as a science journalist, there is an equal responsibility to help try and explain it. If not anything else, contextualize it. Thousands of people will read it and share it. [2[ is also a better coverage of the same story before the follow up with reasons. As a direct comparison, notice the difference in tone, and how they contextualize what is happening. [1]: https://phys.org/news/2023-04-hot-ocean-temperatures-hottest.html https://phys.org/news/2023-04-hot-ocean-temperatures-hottest... [2]: https://phys.org/news/2023-04-earth-hot-sudden-ocean-spike.html https://phys.org/news/2023-04-earth-hot-sudden-ocean-spike.h...

ftxbro 4y ago
> Hate it when scientific publications too started focusing more on creating fear and uncertainty rather than explaining what is going on. Just so I'm clear, you are calling Wired a scientific publication? EDIT: Thanks for the explanation of the science parts by the way. I read it instead of the article.
- ankit219 4y ago
  What i meant was that a publication which covers topics related to science and have specific reporters with beats around those topics. poor choice of words. Also credit to phys.org to be honest. They explain these topics in very simple terms