

A World Without Coral Reefs - raymondh
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/a-world-without-coral-reefs.html

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nkoren
It's worth noting that a world without coral reefs is hardly unprecedented.
Approximately 14,000 years ago, every coral reef in the world would have been
destroyed by Meltwater Pulse 1A[1], an event which caused sea levels to rise
by 20 metres in just a few hundred years. Although this must have caused the
demise of the complex reef ecosystems, coral itself survived, presumably as
isolated individuals and very small clusters. Afterwards, sea levels continued
to rise rapidly, and the large reefs that we have today could not become
established until about 7,000 years ago, when the sea levels finally
stabilised. The corresponding ecosystems have evolved only since then.

For this reason, I am mostly unconvinced that the (admittedly horrible)
disruption which we are causing today will irrevocably knock things back to a
precambrian state. When you look at history of our planet over evolutionary
timescales, you see all kinds of disruptive events -- rapidly rising or
falling seas; bolide impacts as powerful as tens of millions of nuclear bombs
-- which the planet has managed to shrug off with apparent ease. With one
exception, most of the harm we are causing seems to be along these lines. So
even if the great reefs die off, then my expectation would be that coral
itself would continue to survive in niches. 10,000 years from now -- long
after we've wised up or died off -- there could very well be great reefs
again, and our disruption would be relegated to a small blip in the overall
evolutionary record. The planet's losses will ultimately be minimal; the
_real_ losers will be our children, who will inherit a less beautiful and
wondrous world than the one we know. I've swum through coral reefs, and it's
painful to think that the next few dozen generations won't be able to
experience that kind of beauty. But from the planet's perspective -- looking
at evolutionary timescales -- this may not be a particularly big deal.

The one real and substantial caveat to my nonchalance is ocean acidification.
It is truly global compared to other forms of ocean pollution, acts as a
disruptor to individual cells rather than to the (more resilient than we give
them credit for) ecosystem relationships, and is making an excursion that may
be unprecedented in the past 300 million years. In contrast to things like
changes in sea levels and temperatures -- which actually happen _all the time_
when you take the long view -- evolutionary timescales give no assurance that
ocean acidification will be a survivable event. It is something that merits a
much higher level of attention than it's getting.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltwater_pulse_1A>

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yaakov34
I really recommend reading the thread at
<http://coris.noaa.gov/exchanges/coralfuture/coral_future.pdf> \- this is a
discussion by working scientists, and although it's from 2001, the predictions
of the demise of coral reefs were already very current then. It's a good
introduction to the huge complexity of reasoning about these systems, which
involve more feedback loops than a non-expert can even imagine. What I take
away from that discussion is that there is no serious researcher in the field
who doesn't see the coral reefs disappearing at a huge rate, but there is no
consensus about the dominant mechanism; I think (although I am not an expert)
that the arguments of those who see pollution and overfishing as the main
cause are more persuasive.

For example, a very large fraction of coral reefs around Sri Lanka disappeared
in the 1990s, and this apparently had more to do with the fact that people
blasted them and hauled them away to be used as limestone in the construction
industry, than with any subtle changes in the pH of seawater. In the (very
plausible) opinion of some of the scientists from that discussion, most coral
reefs will die off long before the pH changes really become significant. It
would be great if someone who is a researcher in this field could give us some
more recent results and data.

~~~
ckuehne
"It would be great if someone who is a researcher in this field could give us
some more recent results and data."

There you go: Reef winners and losers in a warmer world: <http://www-
public.jcu.edu.au/news/JCU_099903>

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ScottBurson
Is it completely ridiculous to imagine that ocean acidification could be
countered? I'm imagining something like having cargo ships sprinkle sodium
hydroxide in their wakes. Could any such plan be workable?

~~~
saalweachter
The most straight-forward way to counter ocean acidification is to reduce the
amount of atmospheric CO2. If the atmospheric concentration shifts, the ocean
will release the CO2 it's absorbed and its pH will go up.

Granted, that's a pretty tall order. Ideally, we would reduce the atmospheric
CO2 from ~400ppm (where it's out now) to 200ppm (where it was before the whole
industrial revolution began). At the very least, we probably want to reverse
the current trend of +2.0ppm / year to (say) -2.0ppm / year, so hopefully we
skim under whatever the wire is.

Some researches claim that the Little Ice Age was caused by the reforestation
of the Americas after Europeans accidentally killed all of the Americans who
were keeping the content pretty clear of trees. [1] It is estimated that
reforesting the Americas sucked about 6ppm to 10ppm of CO2 out of the
atmosphere.

So one way to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere is to grow a _lot_ of trees (or
other plant life). And then do that every year for about a century; it's not
enough to simply reforest even the entire world once, because that would
probably only suck (say) 20ppm of CO2 out of the atmosphere, a mere tenth of
the target. So after you grow your primordial forest, you need to chop it all
down, bury it (or do anything else with the wood that doesn't release its
carbon back into the atmosphere), and then plant a new forest, and keep doing
it over and over again for however long it takes to get the atmospheric CO2
levels to where you want them to be.

So it's _possible_ to counter ocean acidification, and maybe not even that
hard (hell, you're even creating a bit of a "wood rush", since you're going to
have lumber coming out of your ears by the time you've regrown enough trees to
cover the world ten times over), but I don't really see it happening.

ETA: Based on the figures for tree productivity [2] it looks like you'd need
to add about 90 million square km (5% of the Earth's land area) of forests
operating at peak productivity to go from +2ppm to -2ppm atmospheric CO2.

[1] <http://phys.org/news/2011-10-team-european-ice-age-due.html> [2]
<http://www.safnet.org/answer/kids_corner.cfm>

~~~
einhverfr
Two points about the Little Ice Age:

1) There is no consensus as to whether it was global or just hemispheric and

2) At least in Europe, it was well underway by the 1200's, so the timing with
that theory is off.

~~~
saalweachter
1) The temperature effect doesn't really matter. Trees remove CO2 from the
atmosphere which raises the pH of the oceans.

2) You're confusing the end of the Medieval Warm Period with the beginning of
the Little Ice Age. The Medieval Warm Period ended in approximately 1250 AD;
the Little Ice Age began in approximately 1550 AD. While it is possible that
the two events are related, there is no reason to assume they are.

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mkl
This TED talk is relevant and very interesting/disheartening: "Jeremy Jackson:
How we wrecked the ocean", <http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_jackson.html>

It was enough to make me stop eating fish.

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cageface
There must be some way hackers can help do something about things like this.
Maybe a Kiva for environmental issues or something?

Surely some of the brainpower we're burning on social media and cute mobile
apps could be redirected this way.

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javajosh
This is a marketing piece masquerading as advocacy. What's the difference? An
advocate won't personally profit from the course of action they are
recommending. A marketer will. I say this because this man's conclusion is,
basically, "The coral reefs are disappearing. Fund my research more."

This does, of course, put research scientists into a bit of a bind.
Presumably, since they are the ones looking at these systems in detail, they
are the "early warning system" for any catastrophic change. When they see
catastrophe, what should a research scientist do? Write an op-ed piece in the
Times asking for more research funding? I don't think so.

I think the correct move is to _complete the fucking research_. "Completion"
means to come up with some really solid conclusions, and if the system is on
course to do something nasty, to have a list of actionable steps to change it.
Then, you advocate that list of actionable steps, citing your research as the
basis for it. Presumably, you will NOT personally profit from those steps
(except, perhaps, as a consultant).

Now, I can hear the objectivist/egoist hacker contingent's hackles raise - why
_shouldn't_ a research scientist profit from their research? Was not that
their blood and tears and insight? Actually, I think that should be open for
them - but they should call it marketing, not advocacy, and it should be
clearly a matter of personal enrichment. The thing that an objectivist should
focus on is the hypocrisy of a "call to action" masquerading as altruistic
concern over the environment, when it is really a quite selfish concern for
securing one's own funding source. It's not that I'm against securing one's
own funding source, but to do it under the guise of advocacy is flat out
wrong.

~~~
user49598
I feel you're a bit off base, and are just being negative. Roger Bradbury may
be trying to get his research funded but he's also trying to make a
difference. You're just trying to out him as some kind of greedy scientist.
He's right, we're loosing our reefs. He's also trying to research possible
ways to keep a resemblance of what they once were around for future enjoyment.
There is nothing wrong with that, and quite frankly it reads at worst like a
kickstarter page for science.

~~~
javajosh
Fine, then make a difference. "Fund research more to study the problem more"
is NOT a solution. Give me solutions. Don't say "Big hairy problem, no
solutions, but fund me to keep looking at it."

If more people had my attitude then maybe we'd not only get to see the pile of
shit (the disappearing reef problem) but also some shovels (real ways we can
help fix the problem). I'm not interested in getting all into the details of
the pile of shit, I just want a shovel, so give me one.

Edit: actually a kickstarter page for science is a great idea. Even better
would be a kickstarter page for making chemicals that can be dropped into the
ocean to safeguard reefs. Or a kickstarter page for lobbying government to
tighten regulations on run-off or global warming. Or a kickstarter page for
stimulating reef growth with low-level electric impulses (which is a real
thing). What about a solar powered bouy that stimulates reef growth?

There's a ton of stuff to do other than "study it more".

~~~
dbaupp
How do you propose to solve it then? The point of the further study is to work
out what solutions are going to be the most effective. Saying "give me
solutions" will likely result in a second rate solution that is optimal for
neither humans nor the reef.

~~~
javajosh
I propose to solve the problem by putting pressure on researchers. Researchers
are all about looking at things, and they get all excited about something, but
their only response is to look _more_ at those things. It's time to motivate
researchers to encourage behavior other than looking _more_ at stuff when you
see a problem.

If you can't even begin to identify possible corrective actions, then you have
no basis in which to claim there is a possible problem in the first place.
Whatever the problem is, poverty, health, environmental destruction - if the
problem cannot be addressed than why even bring it up?

Cancer is a good example. It's a problem, it doesn't have a good solution, but
we talk about it anyway. Does this explode my theory? No. Because there is no
cancer research that is trying to prove that cancer is a problem. We already
know that. The only cancer research that goes on is the kind designed to stop
cancer. Needless to say, I would not support any research into how cancer is
bad, but would support research into how to stop cancer.

In the same way, I would not support research into looking further into how
coral reef destruction is real and it's bad, but I would support research into
how to slow, stop, and reverse coral reef destruction (without causing lots of
other problems, of course).

Downvote me, I don't care.

~~~
MartinCron
Act first. Think later. What could possibly go wrong?

~~~
javajosh
Try reading.

OMG There's a comet hurtling toward the Earth. Let's spend more money to model
the collision! Will insects survive or just single-celled life? Let's spend
millions on computer simulations of the collision itself, answering important
questions about geology and previous extinction level events. Let's figure out
_precisely_ how bad it will be.

vs

OMG There's a comet hurtling toward the Earth. Let's spend some money
developing a plan to mitigate the risk - move the comet out of the way, or
destroy it, or in the worst case, prepare an "ark" so that humans can survive,
or at least launch some of our most precious info into space (or on the moon)
so that a future alien civilization will at least know we existed.

#

Obviously, the first case has no merit.

~~~
swa14
And once again, by your proposed model to fund science. How are we even going
to _know_ there's a comet hurling towards earth ? Gazing out there for neat
stuff in the cosmos isn't even a problem in the first place, so it's
completely useless by your metric.

>>move the comet out of the way, or destroy it, or in the worst case, prepare
an "ark" so that humans can survive"

Those are screenwriting scenarios

>>answering important questions about geology and previous extinction level
events. Let's figure out precisely how bad it will be.

The answers to those questions have allowed governments to, in as far as is
realistically possible, have scenarios and structures in place, for actual
world-wide calamity events.

>>Try reading.

You make some highly unorthodox points. There's nothing wrong with that in
itself; in fact, it's welcomed. But when people respond to those points and
indicate they have no merit (like how research scientists are in it for their
own enrichment), being rude and dismissive is not going to convince anyone
you're right; quite the contrary.

~~~
darkestkhan
Actually we can change orbit of comets/asteroids if we know few years ahead of
time that they will impact with Earth - by bombarding object with few hundreds
kilograms of "metal spheres" we cause small change in energy of object,
causing it to deviate from its orbit quite a bit in the long run.

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mmphosis
A World Without...

