
Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists - hvo
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/world/asia/climate-related-death-of-coral-around-world-alarms-scientists.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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Gedrovits
First of all, don't give up too easy. It's a lot easier to say: we are
screwed, my contribution will not change anything. This is wrong approach to
the problem, changes start from somewhere.

Imagine the startup, who don't have customers yet and just gives up (because
what's point, they will not come). The more traction they have, the more
snowballish it become.

How regular people can help?

1) Try to use renewable materials around you (bags, not plastic bags, use the
fabric)

2) Sort the garbage (don't know about US), but in Europe this is real thing
(organic, general, electronics, etc)

3) Try to limit the car or any fossil fuel usage in your household.

3.1) Don't have 1 car per each family member

4) Don't buy and throw away clothes too often, if you do, return to second
hand

5) Use energy saver functions at it's max

6) Stop searching for someone to blame and "Just DO IT!" (c) Shia

How IT people can help?

1) Write less energy consumption programs and servers, they eat too much now

2) Move toward real innovations in "green" tech, not the pseudo ones to
collect money and bail

Samsung once done the big screen phone, how the iPhone users called them?
"Shovel" phones / users. Then came this "innovative" Apple iPhone with the
same big screen and it suddenly became "mainstream". Don't be afraid to be
first in something good, especially if this is a future of your planet.

Don't expect that someone will make this problems "go away" or people fly away
from here. Humans managed to make orbit a trash can too, so we don't go
anywhere in far future.

~~~
hacker42
I think the only way out is political top-down decisions rather than mental
shifts. Habits are just too strong and the competitive disadvantage of
frugality just too inconvenient for most of our primate brains.
Environmentalism and passive-aggressively oppressing of habits via high moral
self-standards is too easily strawmanned or misinterpreted as ideology by the
mobs. -- The most ignorant win.

The largest impact will be by China, India and Africa, so we'll quickly need
to popularize green energy such as solar and perhaps the kinds of nuclear
technology which can't be used for weapons (nuclear waste might be preferable
over damages caused by pollution and climate change).

We need to be decisive and strong, which might involve bold and expensive
media events and populism.

The ones who are able to think in the long term need to stop fighting
themselves for superficial issues, political correctness and minor details. We
need to strengthen our arguments instead and keep in mind that we are
following the same ultimate goal.

~~~
Joof
One way to influence politics is to spread the culture of being habitually
green. The big gains may all be political or require extensive city design,
but changing the mindset to 'people want green; and superficial won't cut it'
is a big part of making that happen.

Do I want to give up my car? No. What if I did want to; how would that change
my outlook? I'd want cities and a job that accommodates those desires. What if
everyone wanted to? Those cities would be built and politics might make cars
more restricted.

~~~
Gedrovits
OK, so you want car, then we need to find out WHY you need it. The real reason
behind it and make it more optimal.

There are hybrid, full electric cars out there, so if something hard to be
changed, we can try to replace it with more optimal.

Going back Dark Age again will not help a lot and people will not agree to
this.

------
xfactor973
I planted about 50 fruit trees and bushes when I moved into my new place. I
also converted the electric to 100% renewable. Other than dumping my natural
gas heater I'm not sure what's left that I can do to help reduce climate
change.

~~~
mooreds
What is your commute like? What politicians do you support?

Those are both ways you can affect climate change.

~~~
nothrabannosir
I see a lot of down-vote worthy responses to OP, and more downvotes. But in
this case, I honestly don't see it: why is this not a fair question? I mean,
in a genuinely neutral sense; isn't he right?

~~~
downandout
_> in a genuinely neutral sense_

Asking if someone supports politicians that claim to be eco-conscious while
raising campaign money, who are almost universally left-leaning, is far from
"neutral". There are places on the Internet to espouse political support for
either side. This, however, is not one of them.

~~~
giaour
Supporting environmentally friendly legislation is orthogonal to the economic
concerns that divide the left and right. It's true that environmentalists are
associated with the left in the US, but that's not true everywhere in the
world.

~~~
downandout
And therein lies the problem. In the US, one cannot support politicians that
will be amenable to reasonable, environmentally friendly legislation without
embracing leftist economic ideologies as well. That said, once again I think
HN is not the place to discuss or voice support for specific political views
one way or the other. There are plenty of fact-based, scientific discussions
to be had on this topic.

~~~
giaour
My point was that you were the first one to bring up any particular political
affiliation. There are Republicans who support environmental protection, like
John McCain in his 2008 bid for president. If the OP is conservative, he might
follow the advice you were responding to by lobbying for changes to the
Republican Party platform.

------
ageofwant
Australian here (that was very hard for me to confess)

There was a bit on the news about the massive bleaching event up north, a few
mentions on tv. Once in the paper.

My current minister for the environment Greg Hunt, or as he is know amongst
his admirers: " Fucking Festering Cunt Hunt", and his jolly band of Liberals
(don't be confused, in Australia "Liberal" means far-right fucking nutjob)
could care less about the environment and have, on national TV, dismissed
climate change as "absolute crap".

We elected this government, and there is a significant chance that we will
vote for them again before the end of the year. Fuck me dead if I know why.

I apologize for the cussing, but I believe its appropriate.

(edit: added more fucks)

------
dflock
If you'd like to know what you can do about this personally, here's some solid
ideas from Bret Victor:
[http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)

~~~
throwaway16410
At my company, Genability, we all read and enjoyed that Bret Victor post and
we've been using it for recruitment.

If you want to help scale clean energy technology and get a healthy dose of
optimism in the process, we're hiring:
[http://genability.com/careers/vp_of_engineering.html](http://genability.com/careers/vp_of_engineering.html)

------
appleflaxen
There is a whole lot of climate change evidence coming out that is terrifying.

At what point does this become so scary that something happens to increase the
taxes on fossil fuels so that consumption will go down?

Falling renewable prices are not enough, and use-based taxes are the single
best way to let individuals make their own decisions about what/how much to
use.

Carbon credits are a good market-based solution too, but it seems likely that
people and industries will try to game the system.

~~~
codecamper
It's very sad that reefs are dying, but it seems that their whole existence
was very much tied to a very specific amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
(about 265 ppm co2)

The scary thing is that these reefs are so incredibly diverse & their creation
took millions of years. Millions of years to create and they can be globally
destroyed in just 200 or so years.

It's also scary is to consider what else may be balanced just as precariously.

~~~
donatj
How did they survive the ice ages and previous warm ages, and what makes this
different?

~~~
chillydawg
Individual reefs probably would not have survived. The polyps would have taken
root elsewhere (probably closer to the equator in ice ages). The organisms
have evolved over millions of years and are clearly hardy to drastic climate
change. The issue is that the reefs themselves will certainly die and big, new
ones won't form for thousands of years. So from our point of view, they're
"extinct".

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jgalt212
Shouldn't reefs just migrate north in the northern hemisphere, and southwards
in the southern hemisphere?

I know this process can be quite slow, but on a long enough time frame it's
conceivable there may be no net loss and possibly even a gain global reef
acreage?

~~~
scarmig
A temperature delta over a millennium is very different than that same delta
over a century.

Coral reef ecosystems take centuries to establish themselves and mature. They
can't simply grow legs and walk a couple miles north every year.

~~~
scarmig
To answer your question: sure, 2000 years from now it's hard to predict total
acreage, and it may well be higher (or lower). But there's little uncertainty
that on the timescale of centuries, corals will be devastated, and that means
really bad things for us and our children, to say nothing of the health of
marine ecosystems.

~~~
fche
"corals will be devastated, and that means really bad things for us and our
children"

What "really bad things" would you or your children suffer, should all the
corals suddenly become sentient and beam into outer space? Just curious.

~~~
n72
From the article: "An estimated 30 million small-scale fishermen and women
depend on reefs for their livelihoods, more than one million in the
Philippines alone. In Indonesia, fish supported by the reefs provide the
primary source of protein."

~~~
fche
Thanks, so it's a human-food availability concern.

~~~
beatpanda
It's also inherently a problem that we're going to lose lots of plant and
animal species that depend on the coral reefs, simply because those plants and
animals are beautiful and we will have been responsible for their deaths.

"Well don't worry, we'll just get food from somewhere else" is not a real
answer. At some point, life on a dead planet just isn't worth it anymore.

------
felixbraun
Excellent related book: »The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea« by
Callum Roberts.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Ocean-Life-Fate-
Man/dp/067002354X](http://www.amazon.com/The-Ocean-Life-Fate-
Man/dp/067002354X)

[https://twitter.com/Prof_CallumYork](https://twitter.com/Prof_CallumYork)

------
darkseas
I had understood Terry Hughes comments [1] to be that he _expects_ up to half
the corals that bleach to die. Has their been follow up surveys already? The
final mortality could be much worse, particularly among the ornate, fast
growing species, but it will be tough to know for a little while yet. [1]
[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-28/great-barrier-reef-
cor...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-28/great-barrier-reef-coral-
bleaching-95-per-cent-north-section/7279338)

------
blondie9x
An interesting point that people aren't talking about is food waste.

It's estimated that wasted food contributes 13-17% to aggregate global
warming.

Who will write an app to help people waste less food and monetize by reduce
costs and savings for users and businesses?

[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b05088](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b05088)

------
victorology
This is truly sad. Wonder what effects on the larger ecosystem the death of
this amount of coral will have.

~~~
codecamper
Many ecosystems have been already reduced to:

grass, goat, pig, sheep, cow, person, dog, cat

Currently we catch wild fish to eat. That will cease some day (we'll run out)
& we will grow most of our fish in farms.

So.... these are probably the last 100 years of wildlife. Unless people make
drastic changes.

------
blondie9x
It's sad how many apps are being written lately by "innovators" and
"entrepreneurs" to try and monetize already existing free services that
function perfectly. Where are the real innovators and scientists who will
tackle the biggest threat humanity has ever faced? Is it only Musk and Cook
and Bezos amongst us?

We need to stop writing apps to monetize what is already provided to consumers
as free services and focus on the big issues of today.

We should use technology to solve the biggest problems. Our talent to code and
design systems should be used in ways that move society further towards
sustainability.

Climate change could ruin everything we have ever built. Everything we ever do
in our lives including our families could fade forever if we don't act
swiftly.

~~~
AznHisoka
So you're asking people to stop wanting money?

The people who want to solve life threatening problems will do so and the
people who want to make "trivial" apps to make lots of money will do so.

Asking us to just do the former is pointless.

Also what about people who aren't entrepreneurs and work at industries like
finance, law, and first country problems? Shouldn't they be held under the
same scrutiny? What's so special about tech entrepreneurs that they'll should
be more responsible? Knowing how to code Ruby and deploy in Docker is not the
same skill set needed to come up with climate change solutions.

~~~
adventured
You make an extremely good point.

I had not considered that every time a person complains about duplication of
apps, or developers that make trivial apps for money (instead of 'changing the
world'), the same standard should be applied to the tens of millions of
service and industrial jobs that are mostly clones of each other and could be
considered trivial by the same standard.

For example: we really need to do something about all of these people working
at Costco, trying to make their car and rent payments. It's ridiculous, the
duplication of labor going on, where people aren't doing anything original.

That would be considered a cruel, borderline malevolent statement. And
following through on it would result in a hundred million people being
unemployed. Somehow the standard changes when a person is mostly seeking to
earn a living off of an app however.

~~~
losteric
Are you proposing that we should intentionally keep around duplicate labor?

Duplication of work is a cardinal sin of technology and automation. Millions
of jobs have already been destroyed by software, and the rate of obsoletion is
only growing. A few thousand LoC and a couple racks of hardware can destroy
tens of thousands of jobs. That's why software companies are highly valued.
Aggregated across the entire industry and we've replaced millions of jobs
already... Hopefully we'll see that number hit tens of millions within a
couple decades.

Apps... most apps are frivolous, bordering toys. They add value like a hot dog
vendor adds value to a baseball game. Why would app creators be treated any
differently?

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happytrails
All of this is caused by too many humans. Too much livestock, overfishing,
pollution from energy, cars etc... Root cause, us.

------
kinkywizard
How alarmed are they exactly?

Oh my God Oh my God We are all going to die alarmed

I have bad feeling about this alarmed

Or Hm how odd alarmed

~~~
ocschwar
"Hope you don't mind giving up seafood" alarmed.

~~~
miracle_code
"Unless you like jellyfish" calmed.

------
agumonkey
At this point I welcome catastrophe. Nobody listens anyway so a clear message
from nature is the only way.

~~~
ageofwant
As much as I share your sentiment any catastrophe will almost certainly be
dismissed as natural or, my personal favourite "act of God". And the massive
loss of innocent species and their worlds is too high a price to pay for that
education.

Also, it bears noting that these facts have been well understood for some time
now. Its simply being ignored because it is inconvenient. Its a great pity
that catastrophe is needed to force the masses to force the powers that be to
affect change, all the while those powers were very much aware of the coming
crisis. How could they not be ?

~~~
agumonkey
We have to recognize at that point that the human as a whole is still
incapable of dealing with this. Either too busy trying to live (sorry for
third world people) or too self centered to not think about short term
profits. As for loss of biodiversity, nature doesn't care and if we managed to
tilt a planet's climate to the point of wiping half of our own selves from
it.. then good for the planet.

------
silliconeheart
Where I live, in the summer seasons, fireflies would would scatter the night
sky, and in such plentiful numbers that I had never thought I would stop
seeing them in just a couple of years. Only in a matter of 12 years, the
fireflies have vanished from my area. Last 1-2 years I have not seen a single
one.

------
guscost
When discussing environmental stuff, often activists will say that I "deny
climate change". I understand what they mean (that I don't believe the risk of
_catastrophic anthropogenic_ climate change is grave enough to demand
government intervention) but I still have to point out that we live on a rocky
planet in space, where everything including the climate constantly changes.

You might be alarmed by a very specific change like this one, and you might
want to do everything possible to stop it. That's completely understandable
and I wish you success in your advocacy. But the way I see it, change is
perhaps the only constant feature of our world, and change absolutely is going
to mean death of a bunch of coral sometimes. Go far enough with the rhetoric
and it sounds like an argument that the climate _shouldn 't_ change, which is
futile.

I hope the mainstream environmentalism will someday "grow up" to a point where
people understand that change is inevitable, and that as long as we exist we
actively participate in the change. Then rather than setting arbitrary
"natural" criteria and bemoaning corruption like depressed Platonists, and
rather than starting witch hunts after people, we can focus on how that change
should be planned for and what actually can or should be done to manage it.

~~~
ocschwar
If you want to wallow in ignorance about how and why "the climate constantly
changes" and what that means for our civilization, that is your prerogative.

But don't expect to be treated with respect.

You're making a pitiful excuse to dismiss trends that threaten trillions of
dollars of inherited infrastructure investment that is at risk of being made
useless, and that threaten the comfort and safety of billions of people.

~~~
guscost
> trends that ... threaten the comfort and safety of billions of people

Again I don't agree that the threat indicated by these trends is as grave as
you claim. I agree there is strong evidence of a grave threat to this coral
ecosystem, and Australian coastal tourism.

~~~
ageofwant
And what are the consequences of you being wrong ?

~~~
ocschwar
"At least some of the activism is motivated by fear, when people notice this
or that smaller problem, get very scared by warnings of much bigger problems
to come, and make the not-completely-rational choice to give up freedom for
the promise of safety. " And just what "freedoms" are we talking about here?
Please elaborate so we can mock your argument a little more thoroughly. \-----

~~~
guscost
The freedom to drill an oil well on land you own, for example.

And by the way, I'm _very_ used to "not being treated with respect" from the
opposition on this topic. Usually they aren't so eager to keep mentioning it,
though. What's the deal?

~~~
mikeash
I see nothing wrong with drilling an oil well on your own land. Where we have
a problem is when you start spreading that oil, or stuff derived from it, in
my air and water. For reasons I don't understand, the "property rights and
personal freedom" crowd usually (though certainly not always) thinks the
freedom to pollute outweighs the freedom not to have your property polluted.

~~~
guscost
> I see nothing wrong with drilling an oil well on your own land.

Yet drilling an oil well is currently illegal on a lot of private land in the
US.

> Where we have a problem is when you start spreading that oil, or stuff
> derived from it, in my air and water.

Air and water pollution are regulated separately by another group. I don't
have any problem with this kind of regulation unless it gets out of hand
(classifying CO2 as pollution for example).

~~~
mikeash
Why is preventing you from putting CO2 into other people's air "out of hand,"
and not common sense property rights?

~~~
guscost
Because we do it every time we exhale. Criminalizing _breathing_ (or any
policy that could be interpreted as such in the future) is way beyond "out of
hand", it's the lowest form of fascist garbage I've ever seen during my time
in America.

~~~
mikeash
CO2 regulations no more criminalize breathing than noise ordinances do. The
quantities involved are vastly different.

