
Climate change: Marine heatwaves kill coral instantly - pseudolus
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49255642
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egdod
How much of a temperature fluctuation does a marine heatwave involve? I’d
assume much smaller swings than in the air. Surprising it’s enough to kill off
the coral.

edit: looks like a couple degrees C

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avip
You can look at
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997%E2%80%9398_El_Ni%C3%B1o...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997%E2%80%9398_El_Ni%C3%B1o_event)
for the extreme answer (spoiler: picked at 11 °C)

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SwetDrems
Are there any active attempts by any large organizations to reduce the
temperature of the planet?

I know there is plenty of funding from government and industry into green
technologies to reduce carbon emissions to eventually reduce the total carbon
in the atmosphere, but is that enough to cool the earth before greater
catastrophic events occur?

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minikites
The biggest hurdle are the millions of people who believe climate change isn't
real and therefore doesn't need to be addressed.

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cs02rm0
I've never really understood why that's significant other than perhaps degree
of motivation. Even for someone who doesn't believe in climate change or the
man made aspect of it I'd have thought, say, cleaner air, cars with instant
torque and cheaper energy would be broadly desirable.

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sokoloff
They would be broadly desirable if there were no downsides to them.

A $2500 used Toyota Corolla beats a Model 3 on purchase price, insurance, 5
year TCO, and on "how far and flexibly can I road trip it?"

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Causality1
Have there been any attempts to engineer coral that isn't as sensitive to
increased temperatures?

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kevin_thibedeau
It's not all doom and gloom. They are migrating to higher latitudes.

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ilove_banh_mi
The first coral reef ecosystems formed more than 200 million years ago (CO2
level was 5-10x higher than today). Each particular coral reef can last up to
5,000 years, possibly longer. Since these biological ecosystems have persisted
and evolved through enormous planet-wide changes, from snowball Earth to much
hotter climates and even through mass-extinction events -- I'm not worried
about their long-term survival, nor should you be.

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asteli
250 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic extinction killed off 96% of
marine species. The planet bounced back (eventually). Took between a couple
million and a few tens of millions of years to recover.

The North Korea/South Korea demilitarized zone is a wildlife refuge. Native
species have thrived in the area around the Chernobyl disaster after people
peaced out. The Earth will soldier on.

We still have to deal with sea level rise, anthropogenic climate change, coral
destruction, deforestation, because _we_ have to deal with the effects. First-
order effect of coral destruction is loss of habitat for fish, leading to
collapse of marine species that use that habitat, leading to collapse of
certain kinds of commercial fishing, leading to loss of livelihood and a food
source for coastal communities.

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kiliantics
And the first people to be hit hardest by the destruction of marine ecosystems
will be the poorest people on earth who depend on fishing for survival. The HN
community will be largely unaffected till many millions have died so it is
easy for people to have views like the GP comment if they lack empathy for the
less fortunate.

Now is not a time for flippant comments about the robustness of life and
nature "in general". Now is a time for very radical and drastic action to
prevent even worse outcomes than the terrors which humans who are alive now
are already guaranteed to face.

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ThomPete
And the best way to arm the poorest so they can deal with the consequences is
to give them access to cheap reliable energy.

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smnplk
In my opinion, there are only two things humans need to do:

1\. get rid of the nuclear power fear 2\. eat way less meat

Here you go, I solved it, now gimme a Nobel peace prize.

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WA
Ok I’ll bite:

1\. Where do you store the waste? How do you calculate the risk of a nuclear
accident and weight this against the negative impacts of climate change?

2\. How do you achieve this on a global scale?

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smnplk
1\. Look into thorium-based nuclear power. Also, I think each country should
have its own nuclear waste facilities, not a single barrel of nuclear waste
should leave the border. Nuclear power kills fewer people than solar per unit
of electricity.

2\. Tricky. Educate kids. But of course, I am not delusional about human
nature.

Checkout this talk
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak)

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Lutzb
looked into thorium. that's at least 50 years in the future. there are so many
engineering challenges involved to ensure failsafe operation (primary,
secondary systems)

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smnplk
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbt4AlYQfdI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbt4AlYQfdI)

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terminalhealth
What's the recovery rate of corals that have experienced heat waves? I'd
imagine that species which can withstand the heat are going to fill the empty
spots?

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throwaway5752
[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/great...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/great-
barrier-reef-coral-not-recovering-climate-change/)

As the climate and the Earth's ecosystems move into unprecedented states
(including treating it like a tensor and including the rate of change) there
is little reason for that degree of optimism.

