Stanford Researchers Release Virtual-Reality Simulation That Transports Users To Ocean of the Future (ieee.org)

Tekla Perry writes: Stanford's Jeremy Bailenson and his Virtual Human Interaction Lab have for more than a decade been testing whether experiences from virtual reality can change real-world behavior. Now they are using their knowledge -- and expertise at developing VR software -- in what they hope will be a large-scale move towards making people behave better. The lab this week released, for free, a VR experience for the HTC Vive. It's aimed at giving people the sense of diving down to a coral reef -- but the real goal is getting them to consider how carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is killing the oceans. He hopes, with the dearth of good VR content available, this software will proliferate at least as fast as VR hardware does. Next up for the lab, a deep dive into homelessness. The experience is formally called "The Ocean Acidification Experience" and it's "intended to teach users about the chemistry behind ocean acidification, as well as the problems it causes, and what they can do to help prevent it," according to IEEE Spectrum. Bailenson describes the general story line by saying, "It starts with a globe. We talk about how we can see climate on the coastlines, but nobody can see how carbon dioxide affects the oceans. We then take you into a crowded city. You touch an exhaust pipe, and you then see carbon dioxide go into the atmosphere, and you're told to follow one particular molecule. Then you are in a boat, on the ocean, you see your molecule come towards you. You touch it and push it into the water; when it lands you see the chemical reaction that creates acid; that's the chemistry lesson. Then you are underwater, at this special reef in Ischia, Italy. This reef has naturally occurring carbon dioxide from underwater volcanoes; it shows how all our oceans will look by 2100. We take you to a normal reef, where you see coral, and count sea snails and species of fish. Then you go to an acidified reef; you see that algae have taken over the reef, there is no coral; there are fewer fish species, and no sea snails. The final scene tells you what you can do to help, prevent this future, including managing your own carbon footprint, talking to decision makers, and supporting research organizations."

Comments

So...FUD propaganda then?

[argStyopa]

"no coral"

Let's remember that coral is - literally - one of the oldest life forms on the planet.
They existed in much warmer, higher CO2 environments for hundreds of millions of years.

The tocsin that 'coral are dying' (implying that they're going to die out) is one of the more nakedly disingenuous pleas coming from the AGW crowd.

Re:So a bunch of retarded propaganda?

[JoeMerchant]

You exhale chemicals that make water acidic - you can measure that in a tabletop experiment, bubble exhaled breath through water and read it on a pH meter. It takes a tiny change in pH to start killing coral.

Now, that same chemical you exhale is exhaled by cars, trucks, and power plants by the tons per second. Every tree and plant on the planet can be burned to release more of that chemical, and we're deep into the process of doing just that, not only for the current crop of living trees, but also for the geologic deposits of plant growth from the "carboniferous period" when there were no fungi to rot plants when they died, so their dead bodies made coal deposits instead. New coal isn't forming (in bulk) because in today's biosphere, dead plants rot and convert to CO2 gas instead of solid coal.

Is it enough to change the oceans? Surveys in places like the Great Barrier Reef, hundreds of miles from the nearest human activity, say yes - over the last 40 years, mass quantities of corals have bleached and died.

Maybe some millennium new coral will evolve to be more acid resistant. Meanwhile, the ecosystems that depend on them will die off.