Slashdot Mirror
The De-Evolution of the Ocean
An anonymous reader writes to mention an LA Times article entitled 'A Primeval Tide of Toxins.' The article looks at changing conditions in the world's oceans, and the resulting explosion in the growth of algae, jellyfish, and other primitive lifeforms. From the article: "In many places -- the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fjords of Norway -- some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago. Jeremy B.C. Jackson, a marine ecologist and paleontologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, says we are witnessing 'the rise of slime.'" The article is parting of a just-beginning series on our changing world called Altered Oceans.
They tell us that
We got our tails.
Evolving down
To little snails.
I say it's all
Just wind in sails.
Were we once men?
We were DE-VO!
This is just like the American political scene.
Who'da thunk it?
The opposite of progress is congress
If the biology of the sea is reverting back to a more primative state, it could mean that a biological reset and redesign is happening. Go back to a checkpoint in the design, scrap what came after it and start again to see if the new design can better cope with the changed environment.
How that is de-evolution?
I read where researchers have long suspected that fertilizer runoff from big farms can trigger sudden explosions of marine algae capable of disrupting ocean ecosystems and even producing "dead zones" in the sea. It's hard to imagine that the huge oceanic volume can be affected by such relatively miniscule runoffs, but apparently that is the case.
Sigs cause cancer.
Why is this devolution? It is simply selection pressure: the higher life forms are pressured into extinction, and the jellyfish and algae go back to evolving: one taxonomy branch is pruned so that another may try. That IS evolution (well, a big hoerkin' chunk of it).
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Evolution is not directional, so the ocean cannot de-evolve.
It's funny when people claim that things are evolving into "higher" or "lower" forms, as if people are the obvious pinnacle of the process.
What's happening is that the rate of change in the environment is faster than many species can keep up. When you have 10,000 individuals in a population and they breed every 5 years, they can only "absorb" so much change. When you have a species that has billions of individuals and reproduce every 20 minutes, they can take massive environmental change and thrive in it.
The genetic diversity in the bigger population is vast and there's bound to be some individuals with higher tolerance of whatever the change is, be it increased temperatures, environmental toxins, or loss of food supplies. If one individual has the gene that boosts survival, it can propagate through the species very rapidly due to short lifespans.
Think of the human species as the biological equivalent as a comet hitting the earth and you've got it about right.
I haven't read the article yet, but it seems that the more advanced organisms are always going to be the first to die out from changes in the environment, because they're specially adapted to the current situation. Less advanced organisms are more likely to be generally viable, so changes that affect the more advanced won't affect the basic organisms.
It seems straightforward enough that if something can't survive the system, its death is progress for the system as a whole.
I'm not a biologist, but why is this de-evolution? Evolution is just organism's adapting to their environment over many generations through natural selection. There have been plenty of times when simpler organism's triumphed when more complex ones failed. Take the dinosaurs for instance. Simple things like cockroaches and small rodents survived while the much larger and more complicated dinosaurs died out. Types of bacteria have been around basically forever (as far as life on the Earth is concerned).
Really, (again, I'm not a biologist) it seems like simpler organisms are generally the things that make it through massive changes in the enviornment, because the more complicated animals are too-adapted to the current condiditions and can't evolve fast enough (too long of lifespans maybe?). The exception to this might be animals (humans) that are smart enough to either adapt their enviornment to them (for better or worse), or use tools to protect themselves from that change.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
that the more complex an organism the more it is adapted to it's niche environment and the easier it would be to affect it's ability to reproduce when stresses are added to said environment.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
I dunno.
I mean I came across this website and it says "news for nerds, stuff that matters." So I says to myself I says great!, I'm a nerd! Let's read us some stuff that matters. But this, this, this is no good. I just don't think it +matters+.
Just sayin. The headline banner of this website is misleading is all.
(ha-ha, verification word for this post is "slapped" -- too funny)
Is it possible that an upsurge in small organisms in the oceans will return some of the atmospheric carbon we worry about so much to the sea bed once they die?
Just a thought...
C-x C-s C-x k
We humans are drastically changing the environment. In this century we will see mass extinction. We will also see mass adaptations and new speciation. The hardiest and most successful new species may turn out to be the bacteria and engineered organisms and ultimately nanotechnological devices that can break down and reprocess our industrial waste. Who is to say all of this isn't natural? We're 100% natural, we evolved here and we're part of this system. Whatever we do, it's natural by definition.
The question is, what do we place value upon keeping around? The polar bears, the coral reefs, the rain forests? Polar bears are cute. Have you ever walked through a forest? I'd like for my kids to be able to go diving someday...
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
The changes in the ocean have nothing to do with the chemicals we dump in the sea. The ocean is far too resilient to be affected by man. And if it isn't, then the free market will care for it. And if the ocean isn't resilient and the free market doesn't want to take care of it, then maybe the ocean and its life forms are not worth saving.
Any questions?
PS: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is fiction, I tell you. Fiction!
[neo con / libertarian parody off]
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Whatever the cause, over-hunting, over fishing, toxic waste, global warming, it means something to us in terms of food. People talk about environmental changes in terms that don't mean quite so much as food. If it affects our food supplies, then it really affects us.
As far as "de-evolution" is concerned, it'll take another 500 million+ years before anything "new" comes about if ever. But what it does mean is that we will likely starve to death before we see whatever comes next.
De-evolution implies that evolution includes some drive toward more and more complexity. This simply isn't true. Evolution drives to best adapt an organism to it's surroundings, sometimes additional complexity is one solution. And anyway I would bet this particular effect is primarily just due to overfishing.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Does anyone have any good recipies for jellyfish and algae?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
all the complex organisms are having abortions from the unplanned pregnancies. After all its the humans way out of raising children.
</sarcasm>
I'm from Williamsport, PA. At one time, that small, now drug-ridden city was called the "Lumber Capital of the World", and had the highest level of millionaires per-capita in the entire world. Unfortunately, demand for lumber rose a little faster than the trees did, and now is not the same. In 6th or 7th grade, we went out to a nature preserve (that the power plant owns - I believe the government made them due it due to all the coal pollution). He explained to us why there were so many evergeen trees in the area and not much in the way of deciduous forest. The explanation seemed pretty logical to me - Once everything in the forest was killed off by the lumberjacks, it pretty well fucked up the ecosystem. But life isn't so easily put off. First, the lesser photosynthetic life returns, ferns, small plants, etc. and so on up until you finally get pine trees, and then deciduous trees. Animal life takes just as long to return. I never saw an elk until I was probably 16 or so (I'm 20 now.), and now they actually auction off a few elk tags a year.
Once we figure out how to stop destroying our oceans, the balance will correct itself, but it will take many, many years. I kinda wonder how long until my hometown returns to it's former affluent ways (ha.).
Well, I for one don't.
No one said the LA Times was smart... Its just an offspring of the NY Times.
"Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked."
How that is de-evolution?
It's not de-evolution. In this case, the less complex organisms work best in that environment. So, really, it's survival of the most-fit. Wait... I've heard that somewhere before...
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Caulerpa taxifolia seems to be a good candidate for taking over the worlds seas and oceans.
o ad/ew_caulerpa.en.pdf
Originally a genetically modified strain was found that survived well in aquariums in Germany, and this strain was accidently released by the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, it quickly spread and seems to be impossible to destroy effectively. As it is asexual technically it is the same plant, there is no known predator apart from one slug I think. It is currently spreading like wildfire and nobody really knows what to do. It easily spreads via ships ballast tanks, and the plant is toxic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caulerpa_taxifolia
http://www.grid.unep.ch/product/publication/downl
A real disaster in the making..
less complex organisms are just adapting more quickly to the new environment. In the span of a blue whales lifetime a bacterium can go through 400,000 generations.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
"The article is parting of a just-beginning series on our changing world called Altered Oceans."
Leaving so soon? Could you please show the icebergs the way out, while you're at it?
Now I'm just waiting for everyone to start collapsing into this primordial sea...
it is extinction, not de-evolution. de-evolution would be when complex lifeforms' offsprings are less complex than their parents.
It's a beautiful world we live in
A sweet romantic place
Beautiful people everywhere
The way they show they care
Makes me want to say
It's a beautiful world
For you
It's a wonderful time to be here
It's nice to be alive
Wonderful people everywhere
The way they comb their hair
Makes me want to say
It's a wonderful place
For you
Hey
Tell me what I say
Boy 'n' girl with the new clothes on
You can shake it to me all night long
Hey hey
It's not for me
On a rather more serious note, it's already happening. In the Baltic sea, for example, one third of the organisms and plants living down at the bottom have already died. The cod is more or less extinct there. The rest of it will probably die soon too. The world is dying, and it may be too late to do anything about it.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Lake Erie was pretty much dead in the 1970s. Agricultural runoff and phosphate based cleaning products in sewage had acted as fertilizer for the algae. The algae took all the oxygen out of the water and the fish had died off. We changed a couple of laws and banned a couple of chemicals and fish returned to Lake Erie. If we had the will, we could do the same for the oceans. We have managed to ban ozone depleating chemicals for instance. Of course, we still have to solve the problem of various European nations (Spain comes to mind) completely stripping all the fish from wherever their fleet goes.
The solution is just a matter of international political will.
Free Soup.
By de-evolution, you mean de-Creation, right?
Creationism is an equally valid scientific explanation, regardless of any evidence to the contrary!
This is an excellent but truely saddening article. The same way the oceans were seemingly impervious to human actions for the past 50 years - how much harder will it be for us to clean up the mess.. or more likely we are going to just write off beautiful oceans and show our kids photos.
In my opinion, this is analogous to the switch from Dumb Terminals to Desktop Workstations and then back to Thin Clients in corporate America ... it's just a cycle. Eventually it'll swing back in favour of the big fish. :)
Something changed the environment and the DINO's left the scene..
We changed the ocean, beyond the ability to adapt, of large animals with often long cycles between generations...
Small life with rapid breeding cycles can adapt much faster, etc... so it's not surprising that they
are thriving in a eco system increasingly devoid of some the larger predators..
But I see it as more of the ebb and flow of evolution then it working "forward" and in "reverse." That's
a rather false dichotomy. Evolution just works.. those unfit, large or small or mid sized for that matter fall away by the "roadside." Those that can adapt and survive do...
http://www.hawknest.com/
Now, you can't compare "complexity" to chromosome counts, but I'd suggest that there's some rather complex little critters out there.
I'm sorry, I just had to point this sentence out:
With a tug on the trip-rope, the bulging sack unleashed its massive load.
20th century
"the way the beach is kissed by the sea,
poluted now but in our hearts still clean"
--Insane Jane in a tribute to Pete Townshend)
21 century
"Jellyfish heaven - were Jellyfish go
to get away from mormons - and drunk eskimos
jellyfish heaven
is a lot
like L.A.
--Dead Milkmen
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
This is assuming that this damage to the oceans can continue indefinitely. A massive extinction of marine animals would make its way up the food chain. Land life would eventually be affected, both by the stuff we're already doing and by the extinction of their marine food. Eventually, it will affect humans. We'd start dying off too, leading to basically a collapse of civilization. It would return us to the stone age. With civilization gone, the damage to the oceans will stop.
It's very hard to kill all humans. Even now we don't have enough nukes and chemical weapons to kill every single person on Earth. You can probably get 99%, but that still leaves 62,000,000...
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
In the year 2200, the domineering Grey goo supremacy has been challenged by the Green goo rebels in a battle of epic proportions!
The new, better toxic oceans will simply be a tought playing field for our watery bretheren. The competition will be fierce, but in the end the seas will be populated by new fish. Better fish. New, better races of ATOMIC SUPERFISH THAT I SHALL BEND TO MY WILL AND RULE THE WORLD! Ha ha ha ha! Despair, ye mortals, and weep! Oh, Discordia!
Imagine! Goldfish that shoot lasers from their eyes! Tuna that can bite through adamantium! Shrimp that can do your taxes! Coelacanths that can write bug free code! Oh, the mind wobbles. More toxins! DUMP MORE TOXINS, DAMMIT!
Not meaning to lampoon scientists (science is the best religion weve got) but shouldnt they be a wee bit more careful? that paragraph comes off to me as " I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit. I always do that!!". I also think that i have now traded in my grey goo fears for toxic ocean weeds. Thats some sort of progress i guess.
One things for sure, go to the beach whilst you still can.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
From the British Royal Society:
"Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide"
One possible consequence, down the road: Ocean waters become acid enough to prevent phytoplankton from forming exoskeletons.
Which means the entire marine ecosystem collapses, and Red Lobster is reduced to offering All You Can Eat Guppy Fry-Days. (Oxygen fee waived for parties over ten.)
it's not proven that drinking and driving doesn't kill pedestrians.
. . . but if you rewind the VCR of evolution and let it play again, the show won't be the same.
It could tens of thousands of years for all the niches to re-fill. And because ecological niches are defined in large part by what life is already around, the new species that arise won't be the same as the ones we are used too and benefit from.
We could end up with an ocean without fish worth eating. They could be bony or greasy or, like a lot of fish species, poisonous.
And the human survivors living in the depleted, impoverished ecosystems we leave behind will utterly despise us for our careless, irresponsible, wasteful ways.
This reminds of that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation when the whole crew starts to de-evolve. Classic!
Some really smart and nice people who happen to lack the grab-everything instinct struggle for survival, while greedy morons thrive. No surprise.
Considering that man is endlessly debating on whether to do anything about dramatic increased CO^2 output, it looks like mother nature is taking the leadership role. Eventhough we would like to think that we can "destroy" this planet by our actions, we need to realize that we are simply guests. It has had Billions of years to mature its loopback mechanisms.
:-)
I for one say, "Thank you Mother Nature"!!..
Anyone remember the classic sci-fi dystopia "Soylent Green"? It posited a future dominated by ecological and societal ills like dying oceans, global warming, pollution, corporatist rule, poverty, societal breakdown, and massive overpopulation? All that was left for the masses to eat was plankton, a future the LA Times story might suggest. Food for thought. Soylent Red, anyone?
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
I for one welcome our new slime overlords!
Maybe you meant re-randomization?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
The strain in question wasn't genetically modified, at least not deliberately. According to the links you gave, it was exposed to tank chemicals and lighting, and that exposure appears to have caused it to mutate and gain increase ability to survive in cold water -- it's naturally found only in the tropics.
Also, it's not 'impossible to destroy effectively'. The PDF you linked to describes several methods that have been found effective, but only for relatively small infestations, like those that have been found in the United States and Australia. Introduction of the animals that eat taxifolia in its natural locations would probably clean up big infestations, but the effects of further alien introductions are nearly impossible to predict. So far it's spreading like wildfire only around the Mediterranean, but other temperate waters have to be watched for infestations (warmer waters aren't at risk, because they already have taxifola and its predators, and colder waters aren't at risk, because even this strain of taxifolia can't stand that much cold).
So, it's a cause for concern around the temperate waters of the world, but only a potential disaster in the Mediterranean area. It's similar to the Zebra Mussel, which is causing significant harm to the freshwater lakes and rivers of North America and Sweden.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
We can come up with all kinds of fun scientific observations as to the decline of larger, tastier species.
Or, perhaps, we could see if there's an answer in the question posed:
Why is it that tasty species are less able to survive in an environment where humans massively overfish and refuse to stop citing economic hardships?
Haven't you ever seen a cat lady?
She feeds them by the dozen or worse. She provides blankets, selecting perfectly unwrinkled ones in soothing colors to ensure the cats will be happy. She pays to have shelters built.
Even the less-crazy people are totally enslaved by crop plants. We built elaborate irrigation systems, protect the plants from disease, spread the seeds around the world...
Our environmental conditions changed drasticly about 40 years ago: birth control pills, abortion, and other baby-prevention mechanisms
We will evolve to defeat this. Formerly, the sex drive ensured reproduction. Sex drive is no longer enough. Those most fit to survive are those who really desire children. Faster but less-effective adaptations include stupidity (unable to properly use birth control) and a tendency toward fanatical religeon (Catholic or Islam).
Not many generations from now, today's low-birthrate areas will be back to having a dozen kids per woman. I think we could notice after several generations if we pay attention. I'll guess 300 to 400 years for full effect.
This mean the return of the Megalodon !?!? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcharodon_megalodon /
The text is misleading in the way it defines the word "evolution". It equates "more evolved" with "complex", and "less evolved" with "simple". This isn't correct. "Evolution", at least in biology, which is the topic here, is a concept almost synonym to "adaptation". Any life form able to survive in a given habitat is as much "evolved" as any other life form that is also able to survive in that habitat. The amount of cells it's composed of has no meaning to this. If algae are able to survive in the new oceans, and other complex life forms aren't, the that algae is by definition more "evolved" than those complex organisms. We, humans, are as much "evolved" as the bacteria that live inside us and as the amoeba that float in the air around us. And this same amoeba is more "evolved" than a Tiranossaurus Rex, because it is alive, and the TRex is dead. That's all there is to it.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Remember: survival of the fittest
Today, human evolutionary fitness means a burning desire to have children. Abortion and birth control will soon be defeated. People who use such things are being strongly selected against.
Evolution is moving fast on this one. We'll be back to having double-digit families in a few centuries at most. Eventually, people will be demanding high-tech help so that they can have several dozen kids per woman.
>we are witnessing the rise of slime
We sure are. We're seeing this in human society too - just look around you. Look at what is valued and not valued, the scandal of the day, and who is getting ahead in life and how they're doing it.
> When you have 10,000 individuals in a population and they breed every 5 years,
> they can only "absorb" so much change. When you have a species that has billions
> of individuals and reproduce every 20 minutes, they can take massive environmental
> change and thrive in it.
Again - this is not limited to the oceans - it's going on in human society too. The educated and responsible limit their breeding to managable numbers, while the uneducated, crackheads, fundamentalists and welfare elite are breeding like lab mice. It's just a matter of time before they overrun the place.
This is the real reason why the democrats and republicans no different in their goals - they just get there with a different means. They both want the general public to be subservient to and dependent on the government. The democrats do it by promising freebies and subsidies to anyone who asks to be relieved of the burden of taking responsibility for their own lives. The republicans do it in the name of god, "protecting the children", and more recently, "national security".
In the end, it's not going to be climate change or resource availability that does us in as a species. Science and technology can solve those problems. What's going to do the human race in is the growing culture of entilement, irresponsibility, willingness to sacrifice hard-won rights and principles of freedom for the sake of convenience, dependence on government to solve problems that should be solved by individuals, and legislating "equality" for those who expect to live at the expense of others while disregarding the laws and rules the rest of us have to live by - - not to mention the general stupidity of the overwhelming majority of the population.
You can summarize it this way - the dumber and less productive they are, the more they breed. It's just a matter of time before it catches up with us.
some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked.
This would seem to make perfect sense really. We are causing change, and evolution is made to cope with it. Smaller, simpler lifeforms are able to cope with change a lot easier than large complex organisms. The main reason for this is the life cycle for a plankton is what, 4 weeks? The life cycle for a dolphin is more like 3 years. So when you can get in over 30 times as many generations in the same amount of time, of course the plankton can evolve faster to cope better with changes in the environment. It's not de-evolution, it's just evolution that is more successful in the lower orders. Life is NOT evolving backwards. There's a reason you can't exterminate cockroaches.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Maybe if eventually all we can get is huge quantities of jellyfish we can recycle it to our favor. Some we could use to make biodiesel fuel, the rest of it use for land based agricultural fertiliser.
As to the algae, chlorella is said to be a decent food and somewhat good tasting(I read that someplace but never tried it myself).
Yeah yeah, but this may be my best chance of ever getting my question answered. :-)
When I was a kid, I have vague memories of seeing a movie at my grandparent's house. These might actually be two different movies I've mentally merged together, but here's the two scenes I remember.
A ship in a sea of fog can't see anything, and they're not moving. Looking down they're trapped in seaweed. Either the fog clears a bit or they start to cross the seaweed on foot, they use axes to chop the huge cables, in the distance you can see wreckage of old ships caught in the seaweed which goes on as far as the horizon. They might have used snow-shoes to walk on it.
Secondly, people on an island near the shore, being chased by 10 foot honeybees.
I probably remember this from the early to mid-80's, old movie or movies here. Anybody recognize this?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
What you all fail to see is that this is not a part of any natural evolution, what's happening in the oceans is by design. We made it like this because we like it like that (obviously).
I found the article somewhat long winded, but it made quite an impression on me. I am not a diver, but divers I know love the sea and value the sea life, all the varied kinds. The information in the article about the fireweed, and how fast it grows, reminded me of a science fiction novel I read in my youth called, "Its greener than you think". I think it is important to understand this weed, and cross it with cannabis as soon as possible, only kidding. This week is a nasty growth that should not be ignored. It is prolific, toxic, and interferes with our food chain. Some people have said the oceans are an important part of humanities' future, but IMHO not if it is choked with this toxic stuff. The increasing occurance of huge algea blooms is an indicator we should pay attention to. I didn't notice any political bias in the article, just a lot of information about ecological changes. If we are as smart as we think we are, attention should be paid. Douglas W. Goodall
I highly recommending reading the actual article, it is definitely worth it.
I think we might have it backwards. The less complex the higher the form of life, not the reverse the way we think of it today. If evolution were a recursive function you start out at the top of the tree with something simple. Then call evolution again with the current organism foreach possible change, the more branches you go the more complex and lower the life form becomes, perhaps the evolution function returns when either the branch fails or there are no more leaves.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Evolution can't "run in reverse." Evolution doesn't have a goal or a direction. Natural selection says that whatever organism is best adapted to a particular environment/nice will reproduce more. It doesn't say that that organism must be more "advanced" or complex than the ones that were in the niche before. Less complex organisms are better able to adapt to the changes happening in these particular environments. Maybe they'll get some new adaptations eventually that lead to their becoming more complex. Maybe not. Maybe the environment will change again to favor the more complex creatures. Maybe not. But it's certainly not running "in reverse."
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
This is merely survival of the fittest, one of the basic tenets of evolution. When something gets kicked out of their niche, this means evolution works as designed.
If the species that got kicked out of it's niche is one you loved more than the victor, oh well, my advise is ... adapt or die.
Evolution is what it is...
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
>>the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fjords of Norway
yeah... anyways what warenties that the "lower" life forms will survive? Nothing, it's just crap propagandha. But just so any of you don't get any ideas; yes well are ALL going to die.
Efficiency only flourishes when resources are scarce. When resources become more abundant those able to prolifirate faster do better than those able to utilize resources more efficiently.
This is why stupid people do better when there is more food to go around and this is why lower life forms do better when the water is warm -- there is more energy available.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"Design" implies purpose. I only meant to point out that some folks are perfectly happy with the idea that stuff can happen without purpose. In my experience stuff happens, on purpose, and otherwise. To me, the suggestion of a "biological reset" is nothing more than a continuation of the random selection, more commonly known as "Evolution". (There is no such thing as "de-evolution" - it is all "survival of the fittest". If simpler organisms survive better... that IS evolution, by definition.)
Anyhow, it may appear that even lower organisms have a "purpose", which is to begat more of the same. But that begs the question of why they would want to do that - the scientific answer, of course, is the whole point, to wit; They do it because if they didn't, they wouldn't be here now.
Now, your critical judgment of your child's artistic talent IS a judgment call. While there may be some deep ingrained sense of esthetics that make some art more pleasing than others, in modern terms, Art is whatever they decide is Art. As a parent, of course you may see it as "random", but you will say it is great! (Being one of them, in this case.) In any event, it was not random, your four year old certainly tried to do something on purpose, even if it was no more than "paint this paper" (although, I am sure some random spots did appear on the floor and various items of clothing which were not intentional.)
As far as your sig, Just because it can't be explained doesn't mean it isn't true. Science fits into reality... not the other way around. - don't forget this:
Just because it is true, doesn't mean many will not believe. Science gets closer and closer to the truth of reality whether you believe or not.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
At 1 billion humans, the planet would basically be a paradise.
At 11 billion, it is going to be hell on earth.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes have been a mixed success. While regulations and cleanup helped, some of the polution was also absorbed by the intrusion of a foreign species, the zebra mussel. The native fish didn't eat the mussel so they continued to filter polutants while some fish benefited from cleaner water, others suffered from trying to compete with the zebra mussels in the food chain. Then the intrusion of another foreign species, the goby. At least one of the two types of goby does eat the zebra mussels, and they are eatten by some native fish so the toxins have spread. There's a reason there are suggested limmits on how much Lake Erie fish people should eat. some related reading: http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/Programs/ais/
"22 astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?" Stephen Colbert
This is also an illustration of Gresham's Law, bad coin drives out good coin.
and
"I for one, welcome our new jellyfish overlords"
Am I the only one who picked up on this???
FTFA:
For many years, it was assumed that the oceans were too vast for humanity to damage in any lasting way. "Man marks the Earth with ruin," wrote the 19th century poet Lord Byron. "His control stops with the shore."
The presumption, then, was that because our "control" stops at the shore, our "mark" stops at the shore? How silly. Far more likely: the old guy figured this out way back when, wrote EXACTLY what he meant, and this goof read the line poorly.
We are only immortal for a limited time - Rush, Dreamline
Not that we'd discuss that
//de ~ 9cimi
Would you like that term better than "reset".
TFA describes conditions somewhat eerily similar to "Wonderful Life", while the lesson seems lost on people who write things like "evolution in reverse".
Evolution doesn't go "forward" or "reverse", rather species adapt with the genes they've got to changing conditions. If conditions favor slime, then slime we get (and maybe some highly adapted life form will learn to make slimeaide--maybe it will make a good way to power SUVs when the awl peaks).
Anyway, when Greenland melts and sea levels rise 20 feet, it will be good to have some good hardy slime to eat up all the toxins and organic waste the flooded cities will release...
When the country falls into chaos, politicians talk about 'patriotism'. Lao-Tzu
Humans, most of them, are heavily domesticated. Living in a society, any society, will select for or against certain traits.
A blog about stuff.
My personal experience is that cats dominate women (and mess up their brain completely),
women dominate men (and mess up their brain completely).
Stay away from women/cats.
at least since bush
Like the Internet, the ocean is not something you just dump stuff on; it ain't no dump truck. You put your stuff on a dump truck, and then it dumps your stuff into the ocean for you.
1) Normally the ocean is nutrient poor and oxygen rich.
2) Runoff from people is reversing the balance. ie. nutrient richness is causing bacteria to multiple and consume all the oxygen.
3) Most higher marine species need oxygen to survive. Algae and jellyfish don't.
4) Solution: Grow algae in the wastewater before it enters the ocean. Add lots of oxygen and sunlight to supercharge the reaction.
5) Profit from renewed fish stocks and free algae oil.
6) What was the problem again? Oh yeah finding venture capital people who want to get stinking rich.
Yes , but still genetically modified due to the action of the UV. I also realise its possible to 'bleach' small infestations, however many many sites are past 'small infestations' and releasing nudibranches (the only thing that can tolerate the poison and eat it) will no doubt only shift the problem to another type of problem.. Still noone has a good solution of what to do about this. It has been proven that taxifola kills off 80% of the natural marine life reducing diversity greatly, yet many people don't know about this problem - because most people can't see it.
I think a lot of you have lost the plot - the cause of this imbalance doesn't appear to be from "natural" influence in the world - it primarily appears to be because of human interference that the world (not just in the oceans) is dying. So many of you are so content to say, "well it's evolution / de-evolution", but it's us that have caused these actions to occur. Us polluting water supplies, killing off wildlife, destroying the forests, I'm not surprised the world retaliates against us the way it does (earth quakes, tsunami's, hurricanes). Shifting the blame or the cause or the problems to "survival of the fittest" isn't a solution. It's an escape goat, meant to make us feel "better" about all the harm we're causing to the world. We're all so narrow minded and think we rule the world, when in reality we don't. Think to H. G. Wells' "War of the Worlds", what was the minor oversight of the aliens? And while some people have compassion in the world, which I've seen firsthand, but others want nothing more than the capitalistic / economic gain they can achieve by destroying lesser species that aren't as developed as us. At one point we were as weak and vulnerable as they were, we didn't always have the technology we had today. Surely these species require some assistance rather than hindrance? Are we not stunting their own evolution by constantly interfering in their daily lives? Eventually something is going to develop to the point where there is an advanced form of intelligence, and I don't think they're going to be very happy with us...
And I suppose they'd consider the extinction of dinosaurs as 'de-evolution' of the earth as well, since it killed off all of the larger life forms and left smaller ones to thrive...
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
This is selection pressure. People are poorly adapted to living in advanced countries. The failure to reproduce is clear evidence of this.
In time, we will adapt to our new environment. The evolutionary survivors are those who desire huge families. People without this desire will mostly fail to pass on their genes. After a few centuries of life with birth control and abortion, life will be back to normal.
I love the comments here that imply that we should just let things take their course. Call me crazy but I think having the oceans turn into a simple sludge of bacteria and jellyfish isn't the ideal we want. Seeing as the oceans are turning into this because of us it strikes me as a lazy excuse to turn around and claim that fixing it is a natural event that is beyond us. We got things to this point so we should take responsability for fixing it. No one forced us to dump fertilizers by the megaton on the land and create dead zones at river mouths, to use the oceans as dumps, or to fish them like they were bottomless buffets. It was a choice we made. Don't hide behind evolution or any of that crap for something we did.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
This kind of teleologico-evolutionary raving is no better than the kind of nonsense spouted by Creationists and is a nice example of how many people blindly subscribe to evolutionary theory as a kind of religion without having the faintest clue of what it's actually about.
Then again, maybe it's just poetic, like the rain dancing on the rooftop or life happening as a series of snapshots. After all, this is resulting the decimation of lifeforms that have evolved in modern conditions, leaving only the more ancient and "unevolved" lifeforms behind. What better term than an "evolutionary reset?"
I'm sure you could describe up the situation in a series of long sentences detailing with the most scientifically accurate prose possible what is going on, but the person you are railing against did it better by tagging the whole concept with just two words that summed up the whole shebang. "Evolutionary reset" -- a wiping out of more recently developed life.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
This is nonsense. Mutation isn't sufficient on its own and I doubt anyone has shown that this plant is more likely to mutate under aquarium lamps than under natural sunlight. More likely, it, with genes it already had, adapted to a cold water environment due to extensive breeding in cold water aquariums.
She... >__
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
She... >_<
Something big hit Mexico 250 000 000 years ago and wasn't enough to kill the dinosaurs; one of them crapped on my car from above this morning. >_<
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
I understand how pollution could lead to these increases in bacteria etc. Is it possible that the increase in methane gas (as noted here http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2274439& page=1) could also be playing a role in what life is able to survive while others do not?
You may argue about the term "de-evolution" - it's just evolution at work, as always.
e an30jul30,0,6670018,full.story
e an31jul31,0,7653060,full.story
e an1aug01,0,7088530,full.story
e an2aug02,0,71579,full.story
e an3aug03,1,809748,full.story
But this is really scary stuff. We humans are creating a lot of environmental pressure these days.
Here's the entire LA Times series so you don't have to wade though the Flash crap:
Part 1: A Primeval Tide of Toxins
Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This 'rise of slime,' as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-oc
Part 2: Sentinels Under Attack
Toxic algae that poison the brain have caused strandings and mass die-offs of marine mammals -- barometers of the sea's health.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-oc
Part 3: Dark Tides, Ill Winds
With sickening regularity, toxic algae blooms are invading coastal waters. They kill sea life and send poisons ashore on the breeze, forcing residents to flee.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-oc
Part 4: Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas
On Midway Atoll, 40% of albatross chicks die, their bellies full of trash. Swirling masses of drifting debris pollute remote beaches and snare wildlife.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-oc
Part 5: A Chemical Imbalance
Growing seawater acidity threatens to wipe out coral, fish and other crucial species worldwide.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-oc
thegodmovie.com - watch it
"Once you feng shui the organs a bit, it's kind of cozy."
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Yes , but still genetically modified due to the action of the UV.
It's a nit, but the PDF uses the term "genetically altered", which seems more appropriate. The word "modified" connotes deliberate action and most people would think it means gene-splicing. Actually, 'altered' isn't really very accurate either. The best way to describe it would probably be "new strain evolved in cold-water aquariums".
I also realise its possible to 'bleach' small infestations, however many many sites are past 'small infestations'
Not according to the PDF you linked to. According to that, only the Mediterranean has large infestations. As I said, it's a problem, but a local one, not a global disaster in the making.
releasing nudibranches (the only thing that can tolerate the poison and eat it) will no doubt only shift the problem to another type of problem
Undoubtedly true, but too bad, really, because nudibranchs are awesome. I've only seen a handful in the wild and they're beautiful. Nudibranchs would add a cool new element to Mediterranean diving (assuming they can live in the cooler water). Of course, there's no way to know what the all side effects might be so it would be a risky move.
Still noone has a good solution of what to do about this. It has been proven that taxifola kills off 80% of the natural marine life reducing diversity greatly, yet many people don't know about this problem - because most people can't see it.
I agree it's a problem, I just don't think the data you provided indicate it's as widespread as you implied.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Given two people who do not desire kids, the stupid one is much more likely to have lots of surviving offspring.
Given two people who strongly desire kids, the smart one is more likely to have lots of surviving offspring.
Given two people of equal intelligence, the one who most desires kids will be more likely to have lots of surviving offspring.
So we have a situation where intelligence is an advantage for people who strongly desire kids, but a grave disadvantage for people who do not strongly desire kids. Desire for having kids is strongly selected for, no matter what the intelligence. Intelligence will thus drop in the short term, but recover far into the future when the not-wanting-kids trait goes extinct.
Other children of your post have good points about the effects being concentrated in certain areas. But even if they weren't right, your math is irrelevant. It's not the volume of water compared to the volume of contaminated water, it's about the concentration of contaminents. No number that only talks about the volume of water itself matters a bit. I don't have appropriate numbers to recreate your math, but I'll just give an example:
By your numbers: The Gulf of Mexico, is about 7800 k cu km. The Mississippi releases about 1.1 cu km/day, or about 0.4 k cu km/year.
Let's assume that for a certain kind of agricultural contaminant 1 ppm is normally present in average Gulf water. This is an arbitrary number, but the math is all proportional for any amount the actual value is. (Which almost certainly varies by depth and location) and that a 25% change can be tolerated by the ecosystem (which is a HUGE change; imagine a 25% change in the amount of available oxygen in the air.) If that's true, Mississippi water having an average concentration of 4900 ppm would do the trick in a single year to wipe out the ecosystem.
If 5% is enough to destabilize the ecosystem, you only need 1000 ppm. If the effects are cumulative and you take a decade it would only be 490ppm (25%) or 100ppm (5%) Of course the article says that we've had about 4 decades of intensive fertilization...
And of course, that is making the wildly inaccurate assumption that these fertilizers are equally spread across all the volume in the Gulf. Let's assume that 5% of the Gulf water gets 90% of the Mississippi contaminents. I think this is probably extremely conservative, since they'll tend to settle in the delta which is relatively shallow, and the greater part of the volume comes from the depths.
For a cumulative 4 decades of buildup, now the Mississippi only needs to have 6.8 ppm for a 25% change or 1.36 (!) ppm to get a 5% change (compared to an oceans's natural value of 1ppm)
I would go one step further. Let's say that you figure out in some unlikely scientifically convincing way that 25% is an absolutely safe value for this change and that the Miss is only at perhaps 3 ppm, not 6.8. So the average of our 5% of the waters are safe. But what about the worst-off 2%? 1%? 0.1%? Since clearly it's NOT even distributed, as you move into smaller and smaller worse-off areas, you will definitely exceed any threshold you set if you look at a small enough area.
And even the 0.1% by VOLUME is 10s of thousands of square km of extremely eco-rich shallows.
[I have left out dividing by the amount of water added from the Mississippi, because as you point out the volume of water is relatively small. I've left out water interchanging outside the Gulf. I've left out whatever contaminent level was naturally present in the Miss; this is above that amount.]
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
...but desirable.
And I don't mean the aged rock band.
Aside from the implicit assumption that evolution has a direction, the article is misguided in the assumption that the current state of the planet is either supposed to be the way it is now, or will remain in any state permanently.
The world changes.