Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds • Hacker News Board

Re: Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds

#101

Post by thitcanh » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 5:23 AM UTC

ghiculescu wrote: post #52

I grew up in Queensland. During school in the late 90s, we were taught the same thing, except the reef was meant to already be gone by today. When I visited a few years ago, it was stunning. Hopefully this report won’t come true either, but it is hard to believe anyone predicting what Australia will be like in 2100. In any case, particularly on a forum like this, we should argue about what technological ideas we can…

“My friends got covid and they’re fine” comes to mind:

1. Your anecdotal experience is meaningless.

2. I’d rather have scientists confidently say “we’ll all die if we don’t change” than “eh maybe it’ll be alright, let’s wait and see” while business continues as usual.

Getting the population riled up about #realistic# scenarios is a good way to actually changing things.

Re: Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds

#102

Post by kristopolous » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 5:25 AM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #61

Just to play devils advocate (Im a huge reef supporter) This report seems to say the opposite? Are there flaws? https://www.thegwpf.com/claims-of-dramatic-loss-of-great-bar...

First, let's set aside that this is a secretive climate change denial lobbying group that's been under multiple investigations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Policy_Foundati...) and is headquartered at the same office as an industrial mining lobbying group and look at the actual claim.

They quote fired climate skeptic Peter Ridd (https://www.desmogblog.com/peter-ridd) who has been funded by numerous industrial groups and coincidentally made claims that their products are harmless.

This time he misreads AIMS data for which AIMS has openly criticized him before on (that's why he had to create his own chart and not use one of AIMS). AIMS of course, firmly and clearly states the opposite of his findings: https://www.aims.gov.au/docs/research/climate-change/declini... . Coincidentally the GPWF is fairly well known for intentionally deceptive graphics https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Warming_P...

Anyway, then the article says the author of the claim they are criticizing, Terry Hughes of James Cook University "refused to make public the raw data". This is linguistic acrobatics. His research team had already made public the data so he personally couldn't make it public a second time because that's not how language works. Here's the data: https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.ncjsxk...

So in summary they lied about the data not being public and cited someone who intentionally misrepresented data and has been censured for that multiple times, all in 243 words. That's some achievement!

Re: Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds

#103

Post by shrubby » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

These are all symptoms of over consumption, warming, plastic... Bill Gates's idea of spraying chalk dust into the stratosphere is duct tape that will maybe address one of the symptoms.

There are close to eight billion of us here. The planet absorbs twenty billion tonnes of CO2. That gives a quota of three tonnes for each of us, divided equally.

Three tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year, per person. Three tonnes.

I live in a Nordic country where the average emissions are over ten tonnes per a year. How is that not comparable to Nazi era Germany, where normal folk knew what was happening but did nothing to prevent it from happening?

Except maybe few thingies. Germans were gassing a group of people alienated and we're gassing our own children. Germans trying to act to stop the gassing would likely be killed, we're facing the consequence of upsetting someone.

Tell me how I (or anyone else) justify using over four times the sustainable amount of resources and pretend to be a goodie?

#3TA

Re: Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds

#104

Post by adrianN » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #57

Ancalagon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is the correct answer and I’m just now realizing it. Basically this means everyone going mostly or entirely vegetarian, restricting air travel, clean transport and energy and reduction of general production of crap (not only because the crap itself produces warming but also the shipping).

I get downvoted everytime I say this, but if someone wants to make a difference: 1. Don’t eat meat. 2. Don’t get in airplanes. 3. Don’t drive a car. 4. Live in as small a house/apartment as you can. 5. Don’t have kids. It turns out that when people ask, “But what can I do?” What they really mean is “What can I do that won’t really inconvenience me that much?”

What you're proposing is of course good and mostly matches my lifestyle, but it's not a solution. If everybody did everything you say we could probably cut down our CO2 emissions by 70% or so. What do we do about the remaining 30%, except wait until the no-child policy eradicates humanity? We still need to get rid of all fossil fuels. Luckily we already have the technology to do so, and by building that out we can keep most of our lifestyle with far less emissions.

Re: Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds

#105

Post by shrubby » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 5:34 AM UTC

shrubby wrote: post #103

These are all symptoms of over consumption, warming, plastic... Bill Gates's idea of spraying chalk dust into the stratosphere is duct tape that will maybe address one of the symptoms. There are close to eight billion of us here. The planet absorbs twenty billion tonnes of CO2. That gives a quota of three tonnes for each of us, divided equally. Three tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year, per person. Three tonn…

Three tonnes of course is a rough guideline. But my idea is that 2020 equivalent of three tonnes should be a good guideline for the coming decades to fix most of our sustainability problems.

Tech will progress simultaneously and help us in offsetting the accumulated burden, but what we really need is to relearn the moderation that was present daily just some decades ago.

Re: Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds

#106

Post by sokoloff » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 5:35 AM UTC

mrlonglong wrote: post #77

Can't we build some nuke plants and use their output to cool the seas along the barrier reef?

You can move heat from one place to another with a variety of means. Where do you propose we put the massive amount of heat energy extracted from the water?

Re: Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds

#107

Post by hntroll666 » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 5:41 AM UTC

This stuff is not science, it's fear propaganda. Scientists and the media form a kind of complex that allows each to get what they want without consequence when their claims turn out to be wrong. The scientists get publicity, which helps with grants. The media gets to run a scary story, which puts money in their pocket. In twenty years, when doomsday has still failed to materialize, nobody will remember the claims, just like most people today don't remember the doomsday prophecies of twenty years ago. There's no reckoning. There's no penalty to the scientists or the journalists for endlessly dumping toxic waste on the public.

Re: Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds

#108

Post by hnick » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 5:41 AM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #57

Ancalagon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is the correct answer and I’m just now realizing it. Basically this means everyone going mostly or entirely vegetarian, restricting air travel, clean transport and energy and reduction of general production of crap (not only because the crap itself produces warming but also the shipping).

I get downvoted everytime I say this, but if someone wants to make a difference: 1. Don’t eat meat. 2. Don’t get in airplanes. 3. Don’t drive a car. 4. Live in as small a house/apartment as you can. 5. Don’t have kids. It turns out that when people ask, “But what can I do?” What they really mean is “What can I do that won’t really inconvenience me that much?”

The Tragedy of the Commons is a rebuttal to this.

Re: Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds

#109

Post by adrianN » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 5:41 AM UTC

shoo wrote: post #31

What kind of annual sustained global emissions reductions would be necessary to have a 50-50 chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees? [0] 2018 estimates of the carbon budget remaining for a 50% chance of less than 1.5C warming: 200 Gt CO_2-e -- 800 Gt CO_2-e [1]. Lots of uncertainty, I will ignore tails on both sides. Assume current global emissions are around 35 Gt CO_2-e / year [2][3]. Since it is now 2021…

You make the wrong assumption that emission reductions have to come from economic disruption. Building solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, and EVs can be done with no economic disruptions at all and, when done at sufficient scale, can reduce our emissions by at least 70%.

Re: Barrier Reef doomed as up to 99% of coral at risk, report finds

#110

Post by 01100011 » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 5:57 AM UTC

shrubby wrote: post #103

These are all symptoms of over consumption, warming, plastic... Bill Gates's idea of spraying chalk dust into the stratosphere is duct tape that will maybe address one of the symptoms. There are close to eight billion of us here. The planet absorbs twenty billion tonnes of CO2. That gives a quota of three tonnes for each of us, divided equally. Three tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year, per person. Three tonn…

I think a lot of us are going forward with the hope that technology will improve and we will find solutions.

You can take individual action. I did for a couple decades. It was, more or less, a waste of time and energy, but I felt smug for a while. The world needs more Elon Musks, not more smug Westerners. There are billions of people in the developing world who want their world to continue to develop, and right now that takes energy.