Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

edition.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 127 posts

Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

#41

Post by mirimir »

A2017U1 wrote: post #26
joe_the_user wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population of humans is booming. What a shame you had to spoil your otherwise reasonable argument with this canard. In most areas of the global (the Americas, Europe, Asia above India), population is not booming but shrinking. Moreover, the destruction of various sorts we see hardly the result of booming population by itself but massive resource wastage of variety of sorts combined overall short-sightedness. Clim…

Most projections are for about 10 billion people by 2050. Even if the population stopped growing today developing countries are rapidly modernising. A few billion people soon to be middle class consumers. The world can't cope with every Chinese person consuming as much as the average American, and they are quickly moving down that path, meat and dairy consumption is a good example of this.

Yes, that was exactly my point. India too, and Southeast Asia generally. Maybe even substantial parts of Africa. As far as global climate change goes, we ain't seen nothing yet :(

Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

#42

Post by throwaway5752 »

jaytaylor wrote: post #9

Why are those guys in the videos touching and tugging on the coral? Quite certain that's a no-no, and setting a terrible example for others. For reference, see "Coral Etiquette" [0]: Simply touching corals to see what they feel like can cause the death of an entire colony. Oils from your skin can disturb the delicate mucous membranes which protect the animals from disease. [0] https://sailhawaii.com/hawaii-wildlife/c…

The etiquette is different for you and me than on of the world's foremost, eminent researchers. He has a different level of understanding of what is harmful and not harmful.

Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

#43

Post by mirimir »

dev_dull wrote: post #24
negadave wrote: post #23

It's cognitive dissidents. We all know this is happening to every aspect of our enviornment and that we as humans are behind it. But of course we're not going to give up our material world, and we'll continue to disbelieve only because it threatens our very nature of the animal that minipulates materials. The planet isn't doomed, we are. We're creating conditions that are feeding back on us in a negitive way. We will…

Fairly morose even for internet standards. The Earth is plenty capable of plunging into an ice age without human intervention. Also no matter what an asteroid is eventually going to destroy the earth or it will get swallowed up by some exploding star. Those facts still should paralyze you. We are all plenty capable of improving the lives of ourselves and others today. What’s stopping you?

Isn't that whataboutism?

None of those things are relevant for you and your children and grandchildren. But global climate change and ecological collapse almost certainly will be.

Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

#44

Post by roenxi »

adrianN wrote: post #34
roenxi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The far right have been advocating or at least partial to Nuclear power since as far back as the late Howard government in '07. Cory Bernardi has a bill before the Senate right now titled "Nuclear Fuel Cycle (Facilitation) Bill 2017". France with nuclear remains the first world country with the cheapest, cleanest, and probably safest power. There is no branch of politics committed to "maintaining Australia's CO2 emis…

There is the branch of politics that really likes those coal mining jobs and doesn't want policies that threaten the use of coal.

That branch isn't the far right though. That branch is the people who represent electorates with lots of coal mines (ironically likely to be voting Labor, who are perceived as left aligned).

The perception that anyone likes coal because there is a massive pro-coal conspiracy is missing out on the Occam's Razor idea that there is broad electoral support for cheap power that the right wing, far right or otherwise, are happy to support.

Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

#45

Post by mirimir »

cam_l wrote: post #40
jimmcslim wrote: post #3

Well, we’ve just had another “coup” here in Australia... our 6th Prime Minister in 10 years, so yeah there’s definitely a steady hand on the tiller of Australian climate policy...

Oh, come on now. The previous prime minister Mal (and current deputy leader Josh) gave the great barrier reef $444m. They are doing their very best to save it. I mean sure, the charity they gave it to never asked for it, and have only 6 people working for them. And of course they were good friends of the party, ex-exxon, ex-origin (gas fracking), ex-jbp (most corrupt gov in aus history). No oversight, no investigatio…

It doesn't matter. There's no way that Australia could "save" the reef. At best, maybe they could bioengineer something that looked enough like a reef to keep tourists happy. Or maybe just replace it with plastic and stuff ;)

Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

#46

Post by adrianN »

thiagocsf wrote: post #36
jaytaylor wrote: post #9

Why are those guys in the videos touching and tugging on the coral? Quite certain that's a no-no, and setting a terrible example for others. For reference, see "Coral Etiquette" [0]: Simply touching corals to see what they feel like can cause the death of an entire colony. Oils from your skin can disturb the delicate mucous membranes which protect the animals from disease. [0] https://sailhawaii.com/hawaii-wildlife/c…

How could something that dies at a mere human touch have survived for so long?

By living in an environment that was free of the things that kill it.

Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

#47

Post by labster »

api wrote: post #30
quickben wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently the medusas will eat whatever is left from the fish. They thrive in high acidity.

Ocean acidification frightens me more than climate change. Moving Miami is doable. Look at how fast Dubai was built. Sea walls and flood control are also things we know how to do. Ocean ecosystem collapse could be absolutely catastrophic and there is no mitigation.

In theory if you could mix the oceans faster (I know lol), you could begin dissolving the deposited calcium carbonate at the bottom and buffering the oceans with even more bicarbonate ions. Unfortunately this happens naturally on the time scale of centuries, which is super fast for geology but not great news for corals.

Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

#48

Post by disc »

thiagocsf wrote: post #36
jaytaylor wrote: post #9

Why are those guys in the videos touching and tugging on the coral? Quite certain that's a no-no, and setting a terrible example for others. For reference, see "Coral Etiquette" [0]: Simply touching corals to see what they feel like can cause the death of an entire colony. Oils from your skin can disturb the delicate mucous membranes which protect the animals from disease. [0] https://sailhawaii.com/hawaii-wildlife/c…

How could something that dies at a mere human touch have survived for so long?

That's a bit relativistic; no? How could something that dies at a mere gram of arsenic have survived for so long?

Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

#49

Post by adrianN »

wolf550e wrote: post #22
grecy wrote: post #13

Not that the headline exactly matches the article, but at this point is there any well educated forward-thinking person who doesn't think the planet is headed for a catastrophe? The population of humans is booming.. and surely any intelligent person can see that eventually, at some point something will have to give. Maybe it will be when there are 10 billion of us, or 20, or 100, but surely, at some point something's…

UN world population projection for 2100 is 11.2B. Stop with the Malthusianism. https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/world-popul...

Well given that even at our current population levels we're headed for a massive catastrophe unless we implement quite radical measures to reduce our carbon footprint I don't find it very comforting that we'll top out at 50% more people.

Re: Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘massive death’

#50

Post by joe_the_user »

mirimir wrote: post #38
joe_the_user wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the human population is no longer growing exponentially. Which is to say it isn't "booming". But mean resource use and pollution per capita is still growing. Indeed total resource is huge and massively destructive but that use isn't even happening in any uniform per capita basis but rather some individuals, processes and organizations consume far more than others. Bitcoin for example, air conditioning Dubai for…

I didn't argue that resource use and pollution per capita is uniform. It's obviously not. But damn, just look at the aggregate indicators. CO2 emissions are still growing exponentially. Ecological degradation is increasing exponentially. We're starting to see widespread firestorms across the northern hemisphere.

I agree we in a horrible, crisis situation. I simply believe pointing to overpopulation as a primary cause is wrong headed. The world's nations could stop a country's worth of energy use tomorrow by banning bitcoin as just a single example. There are other, harder examples but the (awful) problem of stopping runaway really doesn't seem related to a "booming" human population - the quote I originally took issue with.
Post reply on HN