Slashdot Mirror
AI Identifies Heat-Resistant Coral Reefs In Indonesia (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Between 2014 and 2017, the world's reefs endured the worst coral bleaching event in history, as the cyclical El Nino climate event combined with anthropogenic warming to cause unprecedented increases in water temperature. But the June survey, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's family foundation, found the Sulawesi reefs were surprisingly healthy. In fact they were in better condition than when they were originally surveyed in 2014 -- a surprise for British scientist Dr Emma Kennedy, who led the research team.
A combination of 360-degree imaging tech and Artificial Intelligence (AI) allowed scientists to gather and analyze more than 56,000 images of shallow water reefs. Over the course of a six-week voyage, the team deployed underwater scooters fitted with 360 degree cameras that allowed them to photograph up to 1.5 miles of reef per dive, covering a total of 1487 square miles in total. Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia then used cutting edge AI software to handle the normally laborious process of identifying and cataloguing the reef imagery. Using the latest Deep Learning tech, they 'taught' the AI how to detect patterns in the complex contours and textures of the reef imagery and thus recognize different types of coral and other reef invertebrates. Once the AI had shown between 400 and 600 images, it was able to process images autonomously. The Ocean Agency has published a short 2-minute video on YouTube about the Coral Triangle survey.
A combination of 360-degree imaging tech and Artificial Intelligence (AI) allowed scientists to gather and analyze more than 56,000 images of shallow water reefs. Over the course of a six-week voyage, the team deployed underwater scooters fitted with 360 degree cameras that allowed them to photograph up to 1.5 miles of reef per dive, covering a total of 1487 square miles in total. Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia then used cutting edge AI software to handle the normally laborious process of identifying and cataloguing the reef imagery. Using the latest Deep Learning tech, they 'taught' the AI how to detect patterns in the complex contours and textures of the reef imagery and thus recognize different types of coral and other reef invertebrates. Once the AI had shown between 400 and 600 images, it was able to process images autonomously. The Ocean Agency has published a short 2-minute video on YouTube about the Coral Triangle survey.
I wonder if Paul's family gave them the money because his boat almost completely destroyed a reef a couple years back.
It is nice that Paul Allen is actually funding things that really help society. Finding coral that can deal with the heat is really important to a lot of ocean life.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Trump and company, and all republican politicos, need to be STOPPED at all costs before we all DIE! Where is braveheart's king when you need him!
unless they can start growing this coral everywhere as fast as the current coral is dying then there are still going to be a large die-offs in oceans. The proliferation of this coral is the kind of thing you would expect to happen naturally over thousands of years. We still need to clean up this planet.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Even if global temperatures rise, there will still be patches that aren't affected, or are even cooler than they were before, thanks to a shift in currents. Maybe this patch of reef isn't hardier, just luckier. That could be good news...maybe the existence of local garden spots is better than a magic supercoral that will someday replace all the extinct varieties worldwide.
I think the phrase is, "Life...finds a way."
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
So those so-called 'environmentalists' are dishonest
They have lied to us that 'warming waters killed coral reefs'
Just don't confuse coral "bleaching" with dying. It's normal for coral to "bleach" (expel their algae) every few years, and there can be dozens of different causes.
Around 40% of the time, after the bleaching event a different composition of algae takes the place of the expelled algae, about 50% of the time the same type of algae re-colonizes the polyps, and about 10% of it dies.
You do realise there are dozens of species?
Or there are varieties of coral that can take a few degrees more than others. We know so little, we could be looking at the equivalent of all breeds of dog dying out, except say beagles. In some years time all dogs are beagles. And similarly, we risk that in some years from now the only coral will be one or two kinds of coral, not a collection of 100+ types of coral.
"we know so little" Maybe you should do more studies then instead of writing panicked breathless articles. Find out what is happening before making uninformed decisions.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sorry, but you're being anti-scientific on this. It's established fact that many species of coral are vulnerable to a 2c difference in temperature. It's trivial to reproduce in a lab, and we've witnessed it in nature en-masse simultaneously over sites distributed globally.eliminating the possibility of things like pathogens (because they can't travel that quickly, and because lab testing found none).
Your argument is, at this point, equivalent to saying the earth is flat.
"It's established fact that many species of coral are vulnerable to a 2c difference in temperature." Which species are you talking about?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Australia has a pretty big reef and what have the australian gov done with 444million dollars ?
awarded the largest ever non-profit grant to an organisation with six staff members "without due diligence, without a proper tender process, without them even requesting it"
Great Barrier Reef Foundation then took big minning exec's a on snorkelling tour
contact Mr Frydenberg here :
https://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Parliamentarian?MPID=FKL
Snowflake Coral
Seriously guys, it's just a computer program. When will we cut the hype?
Over billions of years the evolution took care of that.Gosh the bloody rock that extinguished almost all life few millions years ago so it is not nice but nature will take care of it. The constant alarm about change is of course understandable. If the good citizens that raise these alarms all the time took time to spread condoms in Africa (for the starters) that would help more that constant talking about how bad global anthropocentric warming is. If you believe in it do something real go and promote use of condoms. You may help prevent spread of aids and other std there too - consider that a worthwhile bonus.
What do smoking or wearing seatbelt have to do with the LIES told by the environmentalists?
CO2 is a TRACE GAS you bloody lunatics. Its present atmospheric concentration of "410 parts per milllion" is the same as only 1 part in 2500. Do you have any idea how powerful a greenhouse effect CO2 would need to have for the 1 part in 7700 (which is the contribution of mankind) to have any effect whatsoever on the temperature? Even pure CO2 isn't a very powerful greenhouse gas. Water vapor is vastly more effective. There is ZERO CHANCE any warming which has affected coral could be anthopogenic. ZERO!
It probably is, or at least a sizable portion of it is. There's some temperature difference that will result in the death of 50% of all coral, just like there's a dosage for any substance that will be lethal for 50% of people. It might not be two degrees, but it's some amount.
That really isn't the point though, as once you've killed off that bottom 50%, the surviving population that will pass on its genes are the 50% that are more tolerant of heat. Assuming the change doesn't happen to rapidly as to cause an extinction, the parts of the population with the genes most fit for the new environment will be more reproductively successful and you eventually end up with a population that is more suited to its environment.
Life as a whole is pretty damned resilient. After Chernobyl, there were some people who thought it would be a lifeless radioactive hellscape for some time, but it didn't take long for some plants to develop a tolerance for the radiation and thrive in an area that would be deadly for everything else that didn't adapt to it. I don't think we should use this is an excuse to allow ourselves to damage the environment, but rather that we should reject arguments calling for radical action because otherwise life will perish.
Information: A minor species of coral that isn't as vulnerable to heat doesn't cancel out all the vast swathes of coral that's already dead/dying from heatstroke.
But I'm sure this "news" will be published all over the USA's disinformation system before breakfast.
No sig today...
a) Can we talk about both things?
b) Condoms in Africa is a religious issue. We can help beat that by promoting critical thinking via. discussions about, eg., global warming.
No sig today...
There is no such thing as "anthropogenic warming". There is no proof that it exists.
Bacteria get immune to antibiotics. (99% die off, then resistant survivors reproduce.) Similar for corals - heat kills off a lot, a few survives. With time, the survivors fill in. Of course the process is much slower with corals, they reproduce slower than bacteria.
Yes. I think a lot of people are to committed to things never changing. Life adapts its what life does, people adapt its what people do. However I think we should still watch, think, and act carefully.
Things will change, they may change in ways we will like and ways we wont. A lot produce will be larger and more energy dense as C02 levels go up. That might actually help us feed larger populations. Other things are happening we might not like so well.
Chernobyl is a fine example. Overall the biome might have more life and be more diverse. However smaller shorter lived animals have been favored. The same seems to be true of plants. We are not small short lived creaters and as a species I don't think we'd want to be smaller and have shorter life spans as an adaptation. The same goes for plants. We want things like big long lived trees for hardwood timber. Fast growing soft wood isn't as useful for some applications we care about. Some exceptions exist; groups of wolves for example are doing very well but the aspect of the radiation that is helping them is increased small prey; but mostly keep us away so we don't compete with or hunt them.
More broadly looking at the world in general we are seeing a decrease in diversity. That is probably dangerous. I will allow for the possibility that might not be true; there could have been an explosion of new microbial specie that we simply are not counting and haven't noticed. I don't think we really want to return to world of sludge really. The reality is the climate is changing. I think we should probably drop the hubris that 'we' are the prime movers but we can acknologe we have more than enough influence to impact the time horizons and we might be able to nudge certain things in one direction or another. It would be good to nudge things in directions we want to go.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I read an interesting article about Chernobyl's fauna, and they aren't really resistant to radiation or anything, get lots of cancer and so on, but overall the affect on them from the radiation isn't as bad as having humans there, so the populations are doing better than where humans are.
Considering that per capita CO2 production in the poorer parts of Africa is about 1% of the USA, perhaps some family planning and access to birth control in America might accomplish more.
Scientists identify heat resistant reefs using algorithms. Millennials: walking, talking hyperbole machines. I think they are the real 'artificial' intelligence.
Assuming the change doesn't happen to rapidly as to cause an extinction
From TFA: "The broad scientific consensus is that coral reef ecosystems worldwide risk collapse by as early as 2050". This means that based on current research, it will happen too rapidly for nature to handle. That is why the coral reef in this story is potentially important, because it could show an example of coral which is resilient enough to weather this rapid change. But then again the research here is in very early stages, so it doesn't appear they know why this coral is more resistant. Or even if it is the coral at all, instead of some other factor local to this area.
Life as a whole is pretty damned resilient. [...] I don't think we should use this is an excuse to allow ourselves to damage the environment, but rather that we should reject arguments calling for radical action because otherwise life will perish.
The danger is never that life won't find a way. The danger is if the change is too significant for humans to handle. This isn't about saving coral reefs so people can enjoy snorkeling, it is about the US$375 billion per year these reefs add to the global economy. And about the local human societies most at risk if this economic engine is damaged. Whether or not some plants survived and thrived in Chernobyl is not nearly as important as whether or not human crops survived in the area.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Things will change, they may change in ways we will like and ways we wont. A lot produce will be larger and more energy dense as C02 levels go up. That might actually help us feed larger populations. Other things are happening we might not like so well.
Higher CO2 levels will not help us feed larger populations. While it is true that increased CO2 levels do assist photosynthesis and increase plant growth, at least in certain plants. But this one minor advantage pales in comparison to the negative consequences of CO2. First off the increase in plant growth has diminishing returns, and eventually plateaus (at about 500 ppm). Second, global climate change will change which areas of the planet have the best climate for crops, but it won't change which areas have the most fertile land (at least not quickly enough). So overall arable land will decrease. Third, more severe weather will harm crop yields far more than increased CO2 levels will help.
There are benefits to higher CO2 levels, but they simply don't compare to the negatives. It is like having one strongly performing stock in your investment portfolio, but 9 others that are tanking by an even greater amount.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
...coral is one of the oldest, most durably-tolerant species on the planet, and not (generally) this delicate snowflake of a clade that will suddenly die because temps ticked up a degree or two?
Coral is HUNDREDS of milions of years old.
It has tolerated MUCH warmer and MUCH cooler conditions.
It has tolerated MUCH *faster swings* in temperature.
It will be here long after the last Green Ecomarxist's voice insisting that "coral is all dying!!" has faded away.
-Styopa
Wow! I guess all the tomato hothouses here in the Oxnard, CA area are stupid for upping their CO2 levels to > 1000 PPM! Who knew that growth of plants plateaus at 500 PPM - someone better tell NOAA!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Heat stroke?
Because the alleged increase in ocean temp is lower than the noise in the data and the natural change between day/night and summer/winter.
You agw zealots are so ignorant of basic science.
Wow! I guess all the tomato hothouses here in the Oxnard, CA area are stupid for upping their CO2 levels to > 1000 PPM! Who knew that growth of plants plateaus at 500 PPM - someone better tell NOAA!
The 500 PPM value came from a story about wheat and rice, and did mention it is different for different plants (corn is even lower). The article appeared to be focusing more on the large cash crops.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
So, just to be clear. The solution to climate change is to encourage invasive species?
Greed is the root of all evil.
Here's a study showing positive returns for increased wheat yields with CO2 up to 2000 PPM, but a maximal increase around 890 PPM.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The global body tasked with naming geological eras, the International Commission on Stratigraphy, has rejected the proposed Anthropocene epoch
And yet the term does have meaning in the scientific literature, though it may trigger readers of conspiracy blogs.
For example, Paul Jozef Crutzen (Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist) describes it thusly in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: "The term Anthropocene suggests: (i) that the Earth is now moving out of its current geological epoch, called the Holocene and (ii) that human activity is largely responsible for this exit from the Holocene, that is, that humankind has become a global geological force in its own right. "
Seems an apt description of what the paper shows is happening to coral, with the global proportion of coral being hit by bleaching per year rising from 8% in the 1980s to 31% today. The average reef was affected once every 25 to 30 years in the 1980s but now experiences bleaching every six years.
How "tolerant" of you!
If you aspirations are to be tolerated then you may want to find better sources. ;) This is a "news for nerds" site, not a conspiracy blog after all. Maybe avoid Ken Hamm and Samuel Shenton as well.
They were resistant, not immune. Still had problems.
RTF scientific paper.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You should try huffing that fulltime, and get rid of all those poisonous O2 molecules.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Nothing conspiratorial about that site. That's the issue - just because they report actual, published science
Cite the science if you have any.
You're recommending I commit suicide? Let's make a pact. You go first.