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Coral Reefs In Grave Danger, Say Climate Simulations
sciencehabit writes "Nearly every coral reef could be dying by 2100 if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, according to a new review of major climate models from around the world. The only way to maintain the current chemical environment in which reefs now live, the study suggests, would be to deeply cut emissions as soon as possible. It may even become necessary to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, say with massive tree-planting efforts or machines."
So what if all the Coral Reefs die,
Most of the sea life in the ocean will die. The reefs are a critical component of the food chain for fish of all sizes, including plenty that don't directly live on the reef itself.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"There is a very wide coral response to omega—some are able to internally control the [relevant] chemistry," says Rau, who has collaborated with Caldeira in the past but did not participate in this research. Those tougher coral species could replace more vulnerable ones "rather than a wholesale loss" of coral. "
I guess his views were not in line with the study, so his results were not included.
This should make the so-called skeptics pay attention as it represents a very real danger to people. Those broken up bits of dead coral can really cut your face when you bury your head in the sand.
Maybe you can drown it out with your manly gunfire?
I guess that's why your link says " disease is not considered a major threat to the Reef ."
Although apparently simply reading their own links is too hard for some people...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Alarmist much? The *current* coral reefs will die, but new ones will appear at locations where the CO2 level is currently too low for them.
They are dying much faster than they are growing. It takes decades to centuries to grow a new coral reef from scratch. In the meantime the oceans bioversity would be decimated past the point of no return for many species.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I like your open-minded approach - no, that's not sarcasm, I mean it. Yes, electricity from nuclear fission is cleaner overall than most other so-called baseload sources. It's still scary when something goes wrong - it doesn't matter about new designs, assurances, technological advances (which ARE impressive) - human fears are a factor, and must be dealt with, whether based on solid evidence, or FUD from greenpeace.
I live off-grid using subsidised solar PV, and a petrol generator for backup when it's rainy. If I was really strict about appliance usage when the weather is less than ideal (e.g. turn off the kids' computers), we wouldn't need the generator very much at all. Let's put aside the environmental impact of manufacturing solar PV for the moment, and focus on whether it's possible to live off-grid with solar PV. Is it possible to continue a high-energy-consumption lifestyle with old-style incandescent light bulbs, air-conditioning, electric clothes dryers, electric dishwashers, electric coffee-makers, electric ovens and stovetops? No, it's not. Is it possible to minimise your consumption of fossil fuels and still enjoy life? Hells yeah. No aircon, occasional use of the clothes dryer run directly off the generator, wood-fired stove (also supplies hot water and heating), hand-wash dishes while listening to internet radio, 2-3 major appliances at any one time, e.g. 2 computers and a washing machine, or vacuum cleaner and washing machine, etc. It can work, if you want it to. Right now, I'm typing this on a laptop, on a sunday evening, listening to internet radio (B.B. King, if you're interested) via another laptop amplified through an old boombox, my daughter is watching some silly movie on Nickleodeon on a 55" LCD TV, sourced via a HD decoder from a satellite dish, my wife is playing minecraft on her laptop with an external 24" LCD screen, and my son is doing the facebook thing on his iPad - it's about 5:45pm, so house lights will be coming on soon - they're a mix of 24VDC halogen, and 240VAC CFL. All it takes is willpower, and (gratefully acknowledged) Govt subsidised PV - yes, I DO pay my taxes, BTW. Mind you, even if it the gear wasn't subsidised, it still would have been cheaper than getting the mains extended to my place.
Not the right solution for everyone, obviously, but saying it can't be done is simply not true.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
And yet your linked article says that the increase of disease is thought to be due to the water being warmer. Yes, this is going to really put a dampener on the Global Warming campaign. And where did you get the idea that scientists will stop studying the reef just because it is thought to involve climate change?
Science doesn't work that way. The different disciplines don't go take a holiday when another group makes a discovery.
Did you leave your brains at work when you left on friday? If you could just, for a second or two, try to get it in your skull that potentially species-destroying events are not safely ignored and do not go away by wishful thinking, then *maybe* you could accept that there are a lot of people concerned about it. Maybe a tad more than the 100 lunatics you seem to think make up the entire society of "people who think it's a bad thing".
Doesn't it bother you that the news is starting to look like the introduction to Sunshine or similarly apocalyptic movies? That there are very serious issues with our entire food chain? That there are very serious issues with the ability to sustain our current standards of living if we go on like this?
The whole problem is *not* that most people think we need to give away boatloads of money to appease our conscience. That is just your personal straw man. You can keep setting it up and burning it down again, but no one in their right mind will accept your verbal hysteria as an argument. Most people just want to hold on to the standards of living we have. And not see it getting much worse, and see what their children potentially have to live through. If we do not act *now* we will never act until it is too late. And then, draconian measures will have to be implemented.
The geo-engineering measures are opposed by a lot of people because outside of a very small group of techno-fetishists, it does not *solve* the underlying issues (at best it just mitigates them - but even that is questionable), has side-effects that are unknown and potentially as lethal as the current issues we have. Since we have a very well-understood way of dealing with the CO2 issues, which is to stop spewing CO2 in the air, there is no reason to go to unproven options. Reducing CO2 output has no known harmful side-effects, except that old and established industries that cannot change their operations, will go the way of the dinosaurs. Boohoo. That's not a communist plot, that's a consequence of the bed those industries made and now have to lie in.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Wrong, decimated means every tenth soldier executed to encourage the others. Only 10% die.
So....reduced by 10% then?
That's an anachronistic definition. Modern definition, as defined by the OED:
kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I have a degree in biology from a uni in a tropical island country - there are so many non endangered yet critical species the mind boggles to drill down to specifics, the example I gave of monographs and journals was relayed from actual experience and not speculation; but if I must satisfy your laziness, then I shall provide as my example: the family of crustaceans generally known as krill. They are a cornerstone of the food web in sub-temperate and polar waters, with a diverse array of species feeding directly or indirectly from them, such as salmon, blue whales and penguins. They are also not nearly close to being endangered, yet if they did become endangered, the food security of several temperate and sub-arctic countries could be called into question.