More Than 80% of the World's Reefs Hit By Bleaching After Worst Global Event On Record (theguardian.com) 58
The world's coral reefs have been pushed into "uncharted territory" by the worst global bleaching event on record that has now hit more than 80% of the planet's reefs, scientists have warned. From a report: Reefs in at least 82 countries and territories have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white since the global event started in January 2023, the latest data from the US government's Coral Reef Watch shows.
Coral reefs are known as the rainforests of the sea because of their high concentration of biodiversity that supports about a third of all marine species and a billion people. But record high ocean temperatures have spread like an underwater wildfire over corals across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, damaging and killing countless corals.
Coral reefs are known as the rainforests of the sea because of their high concentration of biodiversity that supports about a third of all marine species and a billion people. But record high ocean temperatures have spread like an underwater wildfire over corals across the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, damaging and killing countless corals.
Guys (Score:2)
Quit going to the beach and emptying bottles of Clorox into the sea.
Re:Quit emptying Clorox bottles into sea (Score:2)
But we have protect the sharks from Covid, batteries, and Hannibal Lecter!
Re:Guys (Score:5, Insightful)
Seltzer and club soda is great for gently removing stains, or for bleaching coral. The main ingredients are simple, water and carbon dioxide.
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Re:Guys (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, corals existed in times when the Earth was much hotter and had much higher levels of CO2, like in the Mesozoic where the levels hit 2000 ppm. The thing is, the coral *species* were entirely different ones. Current coral species wouldn't survive in such conditions. Dinosaurs did just fine back then, so 2000 ppm doesn't preclude the existence of animals, but if you got in a time machine and went back then you'd be so neurologically impaired you probably wouldn't survive.
So it's not the level of CO2 that's the problem. It's a rate of change species and ecosystems can't adapt to. Given a million years to adapt to a change from 310ppm CO2 to 420, coral reefs would shrug that off with evolution. But after making that change in just seventy years, half the coral reefs in the world are gone. If we manage to hit 500ppm, it's likely all of the reefs will be gone forever, or until convergent evolution produces a similar ecosystem in millions of years.
Re: Guys (Score:2)
" if you got in a time machine and went back then you'd be so neurologically impaired you probably wouldn't survive"
Based on what?
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Based on a CO2 level of 2000 ppm. CO2 is toxic. 2000 ppm won't kill you outright, but you would experienced unending respiratory and neurological distress.
Re: Guys (Score:2)
Considering that OSHA tolerates 5000 ppm, indoors, aren't you hyperventilating a little?
Do you see how I might think you start from an emotional, "climate change kills!" mood affiliation then cherry-pick data that is really consistent with both your explanation and more benign interpretations of the effects of climate change?
Re: Guys (Score:4, Informative)
Considering that OSHA tolerates 5000 ppm, indoors, aren't you hyperventilating a little?
That's the limit for 8 hours of exposure, and it's probably too high.
Relatively recent work shows that cognitive effects [amazonaws.com] kick in at about 1000 ppm in humans.
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"long-term exposure limit (24 hours): 1800 mg/m3 (1000 ppm)"
https://www.canada.ca/en/healt... [canada.ca]
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Corals seem to have managed the sudden change that killed the dinosaurs.
Not well. Approximately 60% of late-Cretaceous scleractinian coral genera failed to cross the K–Pg boundary into the Paleocene. [wikipedia.org]
But what really killed off the corals was the sudden change at the other end of the dinosaurs. The end Permian extinction event saw the extinction of all all tabulate and rugose corals.
Re:20% seems like an odd number? (Score:5, Informative)
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We objectively do. Back in 2016 there was a major project to map and categorise all the coral reefs on the planet. They analysed millions of satellite images to map them out. There's virtually none we don't know of. Reefs are shallow, you can see them quite easily from space.
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That project was about coral reefs in depths of up to 15 meters. https://coral.org/en/blog/the-... [coral.org]
And:
"Reef-building corals prefer clear and shallow water, where lots of sunlight filters through to their symbiotic algae. It is possible to find coral reefs at depths exceeding 91 m, but reef-building corals generally grow best at depths shallower than 70 m."
"Mesophotic coral ecosystems are typically found at depths ranging from 30-40 m and extending to over 150 m in tropical and subtropical regions."
"Deep-sea
Time for desperate methods yet? (Score:3)
There are more heat tolerant symbiotic pairs for corals ... you could seed them. You can accelerate the evolution by bypassing ocean currents and random chance.
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If Kevin Costner can evolve gills, then fish can wear skimpy bikinis!
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That actually sounds like a reasonable idea.
We sure as hell aren't going to reverse global warming, especially here in the USA where our Admin is intent on accelerating it with the dramatic change in energy policy.
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We sure as hell aren't going to reverse global warming, especially here in the USA where our Admin is intent on accelerating it with the dramatic change in energy policy.
Have you read the platform documents from both the Republican and Democratic Parties? I have. Compare and contrast the plank both parties published for energy production. I did that and found very little to separate them.
Of course each party will talk shit about the other in their plans for producing energy but in the end both parties will talk about more nuclear power, incentives for increased energy efficiency, and increasing domestic fossil fuel production. The Democrats will try to hide how they are
Re:Time for desperate methods yet? (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.ciphernews.com/art... [ciphernews.com]
"“America’s nuclear energy renaissance starts now.”
So said Chris Wright, secretary of the United States Energy Department, in late March. He was announcing his agency had relaunched a Biden-era program to award $900 million in support of new small modular reactors.
lol. lmao even
"Earlier that month, the Energy Department also announced it was disbursing an almost $57 million loan to restart a nuclear power plant in Michigan." -well thats good from the admin, right?
"Today's disbursement is Holtec’s second disbursement of funds from the Loan Programs Office (LPO) since the announcement of its financial loan close in September 2024. LPO funds go toward the plant restart and ensuring the plant is NRC compliant." -oh, Biden
"A bipartisan law passed in 2024 required the NRC to speed up its regulatory processes, and the agency “has worked hard” to make changes, said Scott Burnell, spokesperson for the NRC, including steps like replacing in-person meetings with electronic filings. There have been signs of success: It took less than 18 months for the NRC to issue Kairos Power construction permits for a test reactor facility in Tennessee, and a safety report for TerraPower’s construction permit in Wyoming landed a month ahead of schedule." - Biden
"Congress appropriated $3.4 billion toward developing nuclear-fuel supply chains as part of the IRA and the bipartisan government funding bill in March 2024. Centrus is vying for this funding, which it thinks would ideally go to American companies. An Energy Department spokesperson didn’t respond directly to a question about whether this part of the IRA could be at risk." -Biden
"Last week, the Energy Department announced it was committing to meeting the “near-term” fuel needs of five advanced reactor companies from small government stockpiles. It’s a notable first step, but not enough for commercial-scale supply chains." -a verbal commitment but nothing concrete from the current admin
"The U.S. imports virtually all of its uranium, for example, and depends largely on Russia and China to enrich that uranium before it becomes fuel." -Lets see how many uranium mines come online in the next 4 years
"Republicans in Congress are currently weighing the rollback of many clean energy provisions in the IRA. If those credits are eliminated, the nuclear industry would need a new tax credit to help ramp up development and construction, Edwards said." - Not a good sign
"Besides cash infusions, the nuclear industry also needs reliable tax credits for investment and production, like those included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), in order to be cost competitive." -Biden again! From the top rope!
we all look forward to 12 paragraphs about how the democrats are so evil in every other wayso none of this counts since in the past they held a different position
heres the deal, if you want nuclear power to succeed you're gonna need a lot, and i mean a fuckin lot, of government support and only party believes government can do anything at all much less actually make it happen. maybe in 3.5 years ill be eating crow but i imagine youll be here spouting off just the same but you got this one wrong and ya brains is all cooked crispy on alt-media.
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So said Chris Wright, secretary of the United States Energy Department, in late March. He was announcing his agency had relaunched a Biden-era program to award $900 million in support of new small modular reactors.
lol. lmao even
What was the position of the Democrat party before Biden was POTUS? What was Biden's position on energy before he was POTUS? There must be some record of this since Biden was VPOTUS for eight years and a US senator for something like 30 years.
I started my comments on how Democrats and Republicans are on the same page now on energy production and you try to straw man that into me being confused on where Democrats stand? Of course President Biden supported nuclear power. The issue is we've had the constru
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What has been a huge impediment to lower CO2 emissions out of the USA has been Democrats holding up the construction of new civil nuclear power plants,
What is holding up new civil nuclear power plants is economics. The alternatives are cheaper and quicker to build and more reliable with lower operating and maintenance costs. \
and new nuclear powered vessels for the US Navy and US Coast Guard. Again the issue is cost and operations. Nuclear powered naval vessels are great for operating range but that is not needed in something like a coast guard vessel. An the added expense means fewer vessels as the trade off. Nuclear/Natrium power's problem is not political, its economic. The only way they get built is to initially way under-estimate the cost and then use the sunk costs to make the decision to proceed despite much higher cost estimates. You almost always end up with a project that is very late and way over budget.
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What is holding up new civil nuclear power plants is economics.
That's bullshit.
In 12 states within in the USA there's been bans on new nuclear power, often for decades, and unless I'm missing something all the states are Democrat controlled. Most of those bans have been lifted in the last five years or so, something I pointed out before.
https://www.ncsl.org/environme... [ncsl.org]
The point I made earlier was that the two major parties had very different views on energy production in the USA but that changed quickly in the last few years, now it is difficult to tell them apart.
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That's going to keep happening so long as nuclear powered ships are a first-of-a-kind. Keep breaking that cycle on training people how to build nuclear powered ships and there will not be a standing crew of people experienced in construction. The same goes for nuclear power plants. It's not like solar and wind power projects came in under budget and on time out of the gate, they also had problems until there was a base of people trained in this industry and a certain kind of rhythm developed in construction.
Those aren't "political" problems, those are economic problems. The nuclear power industry has been around a long time and the problems have persisted.
In 12 states within in the USA there's been bans on new nuclear power,
There is only one state with an out and out ban. MInnesota. All the others allow plants under some conditions, although the usual condition requires there to be a permanent storage facility which does not exist. And several states set political barriers, including things like legislative approval, for building one. That leaves a lot of states where its possi
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At this point, honestly, rather than actually taking explicit aim at one of the largest and most skilled sets of propagandists and liars in the world - the fossil fuel industry - it's far simpler and smarter to just push resources at the technologies that will o
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At this point, honestly, rather than actually taking explicit aim at one of the largest and most skilled sets of propagandists and liars in the world - the fossil fuel industry - it's far simpler and smarter to just push resources at the technologies that will obsolete them: Solar power, electric cars, and grid scale batteries.
I agree, nobody will willingly walk away from fossil fuels unless provided a viable alternative.
Electric vehicles are rarely a viable alternative to a vehicle with a hydrocarbon burning engine under the hood. While in high school I bought into the claims that solar and batteries would save us to a point that I wrote papers on that for class assignments. I took that further while attending university. I signed up for a major in electrical engineering. I joined the university solar car competition team.
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Is it really a dramatic change? America's policy has been "pollution is bad but we're going to pollute anyway" forever. Democrats talk a good game, but then wind up approving oil leases anyway.
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Maybe this could be a crowd source effort if it was viable; the reef aquarium-keeping community is pretty hardcore by the nature of raising corals can be tricky, they would probably be more than down to contribute to a program to help raise these corals for eventual planting.
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Don't even try to convince me that nuclear power is bad, because university educated people like myself and most of the people that visit technology oriented websites like this are no longer the audience that needs convincing. The audience for this debate now includes beer drinking, t-shirt and torn jeans wearing, working class dudes.
For nuclear power to make money it will require enormous public subsidies:
(Gates TerraPower Natrium reactor) is estimated to cost $4 billion, with the DOE supplying half of that cost, and Gates contributing $1 billion of his money. (from wikipedia)
There is a huge public relations campaign to win political support for a technology that doesn't work without those subsidies. Lead by Bill Gates, who not coincidentally, is investing big time in the industry. And like all PR campaigns its pitches are emotional and aimed at people's identity.
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For nuclear power to make money it will require enormous public subsidies:
If true then that doesn't appear to bother the beer drinking buddies in the video.
One person in the video is a member of the legislature in Virginia, so if there is a need for subsidies then my guess is this man will vote for them as the alternative would be an energy shortage, even more expensive offshore wind projects, or some other equally undesirable alternative. The video was produced in Texas, two of the men at the table lived there through the ice storms that froze up the windmills and covered solar
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I see people are still not grasping the concept.
Do you believe the people in the video I posted earlier are not aware of these nuclear power projects? Do you realize that there are over 400 operating civil nuclear power plants in the world? They did not fail in spectacular ways as the four examples you gave or you would have been able to come up with a longer list. That's 4 failures out of 400 successes. Well, that's not quite true as the 400 reactors doesn't include many failures, and many successes th
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That PR campaign got some drunken dudes in Texas to dedicate a part of their weekly podcast to the subject.
No doubt. Money talks.
Too much causing too little (Score:2)
How did coral reefs survive the Jurassic? (Score:2)
Is it possible they have seen global warming before, and remember how to survive?
Re:How did coral reefs survive the Jurassic? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: How did coral reefs survive the Jurassic? (Score:2)
When you look at geological strata, how are you sure climate change took place more slowly in the past?
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We have a handy graph with cited data. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wi... [explainxkcd.com]
Re: How did coral reefs survive the Jurassic? (Score:2)
"Short warming or cooling spikes might be 'smoothed out' by these reconstructions, but only if they're small or brief enough"
So it depends on mood whether you look at the Great Unconformity and say "nothing happened for a billion years" or "lots of things could have happened and been erased"?
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Re: How did coral reefs survive the Jurassic? (Score:2)
"Corals have endured five mass extinctions, often disappearing for millions of years and returning with new species and structures. Modern coral reefs, largely built by scleractinian corals, are relatively new â" only becoming widespread in their current form during the Cenozoic, after the last mass extinction."
What if our hubris in thinking we can somehow save coral reefs is more dangerous to them than climate change?
What do you want us to do about it. (Score:1)
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I'm not going to be one of those people who say humans didn't play a role, but seriously. Good luck fixing this. How much energy is needed to raise the world's ocean temperatures by 0.1F
Someone should probably tell you lizard people that the goal is to decrease those temperatures.
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I'm not going to be one of those people who say humans didn't play a role, but seriously. Good luck fixing this. How much energy is needed to raise the world's ocean temperatures by 0.1F [math diarrhea]
Jesus F.....g Christ... If you don't care, just say you don't care. Yes, people will say mean things about you. People always have opinions about other people. That's life. Suck it up.
But please dispense with the pathetic and completely irrelevant piss-poor attempt at rationalization. Nukes aren't what's heating up the oceans. That big thermonuclear reactor in the sky is. And the more co2 in the atmosphere, the more the earth retains that heat.
It's not rocket science.
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Ah ha! Nuke the thing in the sky!!!
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I'm not going to be one of those people who say humans didn't play a role, but seriously. Good luck fixing this. How much energy is needed to raise the world's ocean temperatures by 0.1F
Or 77,002,800,000,000,000,000 Calories (aka Kcals), which is equivalent to ~91.7 quadrillion Jack Daniel's bacon cheeseburgers from TGI Friday's. (which are amazing, btw)
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It would take 3.00e+23 joules to raise the temperature by 0.1F, or 3.42 trillion "Fat Man" Nukes
How many suns, from which the earth absorbs 3.85e+24 joules annually, would it take? cite [ucdavis.edu]
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