
Warming Ocean Temperatures Are Starving Reefs and Harming Marine Life - ShubhamBadal
http://www.newsweek.com/coral-bleaching-warming-ocean-temperatures-starving-reefs-771104
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rb808
That Chasing Coral documentary is well worth looking at. They had the perfect
metaphor - the divers were filming a dying reef, and staying on a floating
bar/club just above it where people were partying.

[https://www.netflix.com/title/80168188](https://www.netflix.com/title/80168188)

~~~
gaahrdner
This is a fantastic documentary, and extremely sobering.

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notadoc
Any diver, snorkeler, or spear fishermen can tell you reef ecosystems are in
serious trouble.

And it's certainly not just warming temperatures, it's also acidification,
overfishing, destructive fishing with dynamite and cyanide, and overwhelming
volumes of plastic and trash in the ocean. It's fairly rare to find a reef
that doesn't have garbage embedded in it today.

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crispinb
Hardly seems like news to anyone remotely sentient. Economic 'growth' at a
real physical level is straightforward entropy increase. Complex evolved
systems are destructured to fuel & supply crude technological systems.

Expect more of this until most complex living systems collapse.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Seems unnecessarily pessimistic.

Life itself is a complex system that radically altered its environment - and
here we are now, billions of years later.

I'm not a climate change denier. The problem is very real, it's huge, it's
definitely caused by us, and it needs to be addressed by taking a variety of
vigorous measures. I just don't see it as a mandatory death sentence. There
are some ways to deal with it, and we'll figure out more if needed.

~~~
crispinb
> Life itself is a complex system that radically altered its environment - and
> here we are now, billions of years later.

We are replacing complex systems maintained by homeostatic dynamic stabilities
with simple systems requiring continuous inputs from the very systems we're
deconstructing. And we're doing so on drastically asymmetrical time scales --
we're increasing the complexity of the replacement systems orders of magnitude
more slowly than we are deconstructing existing ones.

> I'm not a climate change denier. The problem is very real

Climate breakdown is not the problem. It's just the most exigent of literally
hundreds of breakdowns caused by a malignant ideology (unending so-called
economic growth). We have only 50-70 harvests left due to rapid topsoil loss.
Freshwater is disappearing fast. Most ecosystems on the planet are in various
stages of collapse.

> There are ways to deal with it

If we put all hands on deck and made it a global priority, we might avert the
complete breakdown of the stable climate our agriculture depends on. Whether
this would be enough to deal with other crises is questionable. It would be
worth trying.

But the question is irrelevant, because all hands are not on deck. They're
mostly working on trivia, warfare, and further ecosystem destruction. There
isn't the slightest hint that we are ready to deal with any of our global
crises (indeed, on most issues, we're slowly retreating into national,
mutually-hostile bunkers).

> and we'll figure out more if needed.

Ah. The faith-based solution.

~~~
candiodari
> We are replacing complex systems maintained by homeostatic dynamic
> stabilities

Yes because sudden unsustainable population explosions of animal and plant
species is strange, weird, and never happened unless humans were responsible
for it.

Oh wait. Nope. It's in fact ridiculously common. Areas that have had the same
fauna and flora for thousands of years are a rare exception, they're not
common at all. Exceptions include of course extreme environments like deserts
or ice sheets.

Rapid unsustainable change is the norm in nature, not the exception.

That means that human population growth fueled by fossil fuels is not strange,
nor will it be anywhere near as destructive as advertised.

> unending so-called economic growth

Okay, now look up what happened to species whose growth stagnates. Now, don't
get me wrong. After a total disaster, their populations usually remain over
zero for millions of years, so they don't quite go extinct, or perhaps I
should say, not very quickly. They do however lose 90%+ population in a short
time.

That seems like a much preferable way of living, doesn't it ?

> We have only 50-70 harvests left due to rapid topsoil loss. Freshwater is
> disappearing fast. Most ecosystems on the planet are in various stages of
> collapse.

This is the norm, not the exception. Also, they're in a state of change, not
collapse. The end result is simple: we will need to adapt, and failure to
adapt will affect humans in the exact same way it will affect every other
species.

> Ah. The faith-based solution.

Well, having the economy adapt worked for thousands of years, and most
attempts at forcing a fix from above are documented disasters.

I don't get it. Just how many examples of governments forcing change ending in
disaster do people need to admit that they do not have a solution. That they
are not in fact any better than, for example, the early 20th century
socialists and that their solutions, however well-intentioned and however
"true" and non-corrupt and ... their execution will be, it can't work ?

The problem is that you need to come up with a solution, not one that would
work in theory if you had total and complete willing obedience of 100% of the
world population, you need a solution that would mostly work if 90% of your
own party was doing their very best to sabotage it, with 50% of the higher up
posts in the party taken up by malevolent psychopaths. Why ? Because they
will. Look at Bill Clinton, arguably leader of progressive America for over a
decade, and then remember that he used his power to force women to have sex
with him. And on the other side of the coin, there's Trump. Grabs 'em by ...
Those are the people in charge. This is the real world.

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vixen99
Nature paper published January 2018.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25152](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25152)

"Using a new method of measuring krypton and xenon ratios in Antarctic ice
core, an estimated temperature rise of just 0.1°C over the last 50 years was
determined. This is well below many other estimates of ocean temperature
increase. Mean global ocean temperature increased by 2.57 ± 0.24 degrees
Celsius over the last glacial transition (20,000 to 10,000 years ago)."

~~~
anigbrowl
You linked to the journal abstract, but your quote is from this article:
[https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/04/new-study-from-
scripp...](https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/04/new-study-from-scripps-puts-
a-crimp-on-claims-of-recent-rising-ocean-temperatures/)

Please attribute your quotes correctly.

~~~
vixen99
Correction noted - thanks! The same observation "0.1 degree warming in 50
years" is made here
[https://sciencesources.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-01/u...](https://sciencesources.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-01/uoc
--nsi010318.php) as well and is evidently authorial - Severinghaus?

"Our precision is about 0.2 ºC (0.4 ºF) now, and the warming of the past 50
years is only about 0.1 ºC," he said, adding that advanced equipment can
provide more precise measurements, allowing scientists to use this technique
to track the current warming trend in the world's oceans. "

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arca_vorago
When is the last time oceans were this warm and warming up this fast?

~~~
anigbrowl
~100k years ago [https://www.sciencealert.com/the-last-time-the-ocean-was-
thi...](https://www.sciencealert.com/the-last-time-the-ocean-was-this-hot-sea-
levels-got-9-metres-higher)

~~~
woodandsteel
According to the link, the temperature was as warm back then, but the warming
trend that got the ocean there was much, much slower.

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RickJWagner
From Newsweek. Of interest, Newsweek had a cover story in 1975 titled "The
Cooling World" that suggested cooling "may portend a drastic decline for food
production."

A 1974 Time magazine article "Another Ice Age?" painted a similarly bleak
picture:

    
    
        "When meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe, they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."
    

I guess the pendulum swings back and forth for some of these news sources.

