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Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study

#41

Post by marcosdumay »

endorphone wrote: post #24
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with you, it's not unreasonable to try to correct for expected press sensationalism.

Sure, if the root post analyzed the study, or even did the most cursory skim of it, and pointed out how the article differed from its conclusions, that would be valuable. They didn't. They blanket dismissed it, gave their own theory, and expressed how tired they are from this cross they must bear. https://www.unitgraphics.com/deox/IUCNDeoxreportBOOK15-11-20... (77MB) There's the actual study. The BBC article is prett…

The article title is even not accurate with the contents. Why must the GP dig any deeper?

Re: Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study

#42

Post by aazaa »

Cannot fathom why articles like this fail to link to the original source report. Here it is:

https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documen...

In particular, I wanted to see what new contributions this report was making in measurement of ocean oxygen concentrations. Section 2.1 appears to be the place this is covered, but all I see is a review of previous work by others.

The report is extraordinarily vague about what exactly were the experiments the authors did (if any). It's not structured like a research paper and reads instead like a very long executive summary. I expected to find a detailed analysis of how O2 measurements were conducted, and the possible limitations of the techniques, but there was none.

Re: Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study

#43

Post by NeedMoreTea »

simonsarris wrote: post #28
endorphone wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Warmer waters hold less oxygen. This is fundamental, scientific fact.. The article specifically mentions the relatively small problem of run-off, and then the broader problem of, you know, entire oceans. A relatively constant, albeit still problematic, issue with runoff is pretty mild compared to the potentially for extremely wide-scale change from climate, hence the alarmism. To snidely quote from the beginning of y…

> Warmer waters hold less oxygen. This is fundamental, scientific fact.. Their own characterization is more nuanced than that. The study says that solubility changes account for about 15% (10-30%) [their % and range] of the oxygen change measured. They mention that most of the oxygen loss is at deep levels which are not affected by solubility, though there may be other second order effects from warming. In the sectio…

Of course they're more nuanced than your blanket dismissal too. For example

"As the ocean warms from the surface, stratification is expected to increase, with a tendency for a slowing down of the ocean circulation. A slowed down circulation is expected to account for up to 50% of observed deoxygenation in the upper 1000m, and for up to 98% in the deep ocean (>1000m)."

Hardly all farming runoff then. In fact that looks like the vast majority is heating related as the article notes. Yet of course we need to mitigate runoff too, given the enormous dead patch in the Gulf of Mexico.

Re: Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study

#44

Post by simonsarris »

endorphone wrote: post #33
simonsarris wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Warmer waters hold less oxygen. This is fundamental, scientific fact.. Their own characterization is more nuanced than that. The study says that solubility changes account for about 15% (10-30%) [their % and range] of the oxygen change measured. They mention that most of the oxygen loss is at deep levels which are not affected by solubility, though there may be other second order effects from warming. In the sectio…

"Their own characterization is more nuanced than that." Of course it's more nuanced. I'm speaking directly to their conclusions relative to global warming, clearly, and your very firm put-down of it, though you seem to be backtracking now. "The study is fine and full of expected caveats. The reporting is bad." How is the reporting bad? Why? Because it doesn't take a contrarian approach because the science of a massiv…

The reporting is bad because:

1. Oceans are not running out of oxygen, as the title suggests

2. The article leads with 700 ocean sites suffering from low oxygen, up from 45 in 1960, which is not because of oxygen solubility but because of eutrophication. The paper specificually discusses eutrophication here, and goes on to mention "but through nutrient and organic loading management about 70 (10%) of them can now be classified as recovering." (see section 2.5 intro) But that's not shitty doom-saying so it goes unsaid that it's eutrophication and that it's getting better and can be made better independent of warming.

Re: Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study

#45

Post by bamboozled »

I’d almost wish Governments would do more to fight climate change so we can stop talking about it.

Not only are we facing the end of civilisation as we know it, it’s going to be a long ass grind to the end constantly discussing the climate crises in between dodging one catastrophe after the next and obsessing over it all.

I hardly remember life without talking about it, but I do remember it was nicer and more simple.

Will deniers get sick of denying soon so we can move on ?

Re: Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study

#46

Post by topologistics »

endorphone wrote: post #15
simonsarris wrote: post #8

Boy are characterizations like this getting tired. An actually accurate title would read something like: Farm and industry run-off in certain areas of the world is depleting oxygen in certain parts of the ocean. The vast majority of the issue isn't related to rising temps, it would still be there if there were no rising temps. It is the agricultural and industrial runoff in what I suspect are very, very specific part…

Warmer waters hold less oxygen. This is fundamental, scientific fact.. The article specifically mentions the relatively small problem of run-off, and then the broader problem of, you know, entire oceans. A relatively constant, albeit still problematic, issue with runoff is pretty mild compared to the potentially for extremely wide-scale change from climate, hence the alarmism. To snidely quote from the beginning of y…

Is there any particular reason you are so snarky, rude, and dismissive?

Is there any particular reason that people on Hacker News become so snarky, rude, and dismissive whenever the topic of climate change comes up?

It's not even a conversation when people are just talking past each other.

Re: Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study

#47

Post by fold_right »

bamboozled wrote: post #45

I’d almost wish Governments would do more to fight climate change so we can stop talking about it. Not only are we facing the end of civilisation as we know it, it’s going to be a long ass grind to the end constantly discussing the climate crises in between dodging one catastrophe after the next and obsessing over it all. I hardly remember life without talking about it, but I do remember it was nicer and more simple.…

> I’d almost wish Governments would do more to fight climate change so we can stop talking about it.

But what is "more" and how much is enough so the complainers stop complaining?

No rational being is denying climate change -- governments are not promoting pollution or whatever. We can face the end of civilization in more ways than just climate change. There are many other issues that are currently equally, if not more, important than climate change.

The perpetual complainers should get sick of complaining so we can move on.

Re: Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study

#48

Post by simonsarris »

magicalist wrote: post #21
simonsarris wrote: post #8

Boy are characterizations like this getting tired. An actually accurate title would read something like: Farm and industry run-off in certain areas of the world is depleting oxygen in certain parts of the ocean. The vast majority of the issue isn't related to rising temps, it would still be there if there were no rising temps. It is the agricultural and industrial runoff in what I suspect are very, very specific part…

> It is the agricultural and industrial runoff in what I suspect are very, very specific parts of the ocean. I'm not sure why you think we should take your non-expert, evidenceless hot take on a BBC article more seriously than an actual study, but if you'd like to dig in more, here it is: https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/48892

I updated my comment with the part of the study that says the 700 danger zones are from eutrophication.

Re: Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study

#49

Post by duelingjello »

acollins1331 wrote: post #18
simonsarris wrote: post #8

Boy are characterizations like this getting tired. An actually accurate title would read something like: Farm and industry run-off in certain areas of the world is depleting oxygen in certain parts of the ocean. The vast majority of the issue isn't related to rising temps, it would still be there if there were no rising temps. It is the agricultural and industrial runoff in what I suspect are very, very specific part…

Warmer waters increase CO2 dissolution into the water.

CO2 solubility in H2O is inversely proportional to temperature but proportional to pressure. Even at 500 atmospheres (~5 km / ~15,000 ft depth), it's still not proportional to temperature. Whether a high-pressure environment precipitates out supercritical CO2 as a "solidish" hydrate or affects solubility is beyond my current laziness to look for. I would guess supercritical CO2 has a density higher than the densest water, but that's only a guess. (Paging Thunderf00t, CodysLab or NileRed to make a video.)

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ja01861a033

EDIT: I didn't see any replies before commenting, so "eventual consistency" of independent commenters likely led to what looks like piling-on. Sorry, that's not the intention.

Re: Climate change and nutrient pollution are depleting oxygen from oceans: study

#50

Post by ThomPete »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #22
ThomPete wrote: post #7

Pure clickbait "If countries continue with a business-as-usual approach to emissions, the world's oceans are expected to lose 3-4% of their oxygen by the year 2100." That's not running out of oxygen. This is newsmaking, not news reporting and BBC should know better.

I don't know the [potentially exponential] knock-on effects of a 3-4% decrease of oxygen in the ocean. Do you?

I know it's not "Ocean running out of oxygen"
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