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As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

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Re: As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

#81

Post by tlb »

swsdsailor wrote: post #14

I am very interested in using tech to help the ocean. Does anyone have ideas for technical solutions to this?

Ocean electrolytic deacidification is interesting. CO2 dissolved in the ocean makes it more acidic, which disrupts marine biology and slows down further CO2 absorption. You can extract acid from ocean water using electrolysis, raising the pH back to natural levels. This requires energy input, but could be more cost-effective than direct CO2 capture. It may be able to pay for itself by selling the acid for industrial use.

https://www.ebbcarbon.com is one company building it.

Re: As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

#82

Post by kuhewa »

a2tech wrote: post #63
kuhewa wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps your friends work in a region like the GOM where anoxic zones are a substantial and growing issue or regions where management remains poor so the sentiment would be accurate for their domain, but it isn't even close to holding true globally for all fish stocks, neither effects of low oxygen nor overharvesting etc. There were big improvements in stock assessment and fisheries management around 15-20 years ago…

North Atlantic, Great Lakes, African great lakes, and northern Pacific. Lots of hand waving about improvements but the people who I know that work directly with it and have dedicated their lives to studying such things say the opposite.

> Lots of hand waving about improvements

I imagine it doesn't seem ironic to you because people you trust gave a compelling narrative, but for the rest of us all you've given us is (second-hand) handwaving. All we mutually have to go off of is data, and anyone can go check what stocks are being taken off the overfished list [1] in a some of the areas you named. I'm not claiming all fish stocks are doing great. Some remain overfished, some are in bad shape or shifting out of their historical ranges due to climate, etc. But unconditional doomerism applies here at least as poorly as it does on average.

[1] https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/sustainable-fisheries/status-...

Re: As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

#84

Post by amateurCoder5 »

the_third_wave wrote: post #24

How did fish manage during the climatic optimum [1] some 8500 to 5500 years ago when it was between 1.5°C and 4°C warmer than it is now, let alone during the previous interglacial periods [2] which were markedly warmer than the Holocene (i.e. the current interglacial period)? If there was a marked reduction in ocean life due to reduced oxygen levels that should be visible in fossil records. If there was no such reduc…

The climatic optimum you refer to was cooler than today. From the wiki you reference:

A study in 2020 estimated that the average global temperature during the warmest 200 year period of the HCO, around 6,500 years ago, was around 0.7 °C warmer than the mean for nineteenth century AD, immediately before the Industrial Revolution, and 0.3 °C cooler than the average for 2011-2019.

Re: As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

#85

Post by stevenwoo »

aaron_m04 wrote: post #26
ChatGTP wrote: post #8

Looks like we are the paper clip optimising narrow AI we’ve all been afraid of after all… We don’t make paper clips though, we’ve optimised to make money and turn everything into it. So ashamed to be part of of it,

I'm starting to accept that we are done for. The only thing that gives me hope is that maybe some alien civilization out there in the universe successfully avoided this great filter.

Speculative fiction of Lilith’a Brood by Octavia Butler comes to mind, it was good but so bleak I had to stop in second book.

Re: As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

#86

Post by 29athrowaway »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #46
a2tech wrote: post #35

My friends who are fishery people (biologists) are all pretty sure we've doomed commercial fisheries in the ocean. It's too late to recover and no one really wants to fix the issues. Enjoy your seafood while you can because they think they'll be gone before our generation dies out.

By then we will be 3D printing fatty toro sashimi w/out the mercury.

By then we will be inside cans of soylent green.

Re: As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

#87

Post by stevenwoo »

throwanem wrote: post #9
ChatGTP wrote: post #8

Looks like we are the paper clip optimising narrow AI we’ve all been afraid of after all… We don’t make paper clips though, we’ve optimised to make money and turn everything into it. So ashamed to be part of of it,

Many science fiction authors have made surprisingly incisive contemporary critiques in the forms of allegory and metaphor. Bostrom is unusual mainly in that he doesn't seem to know when he is doing it.

Asimov’s The Gods Themselves description of economics reads sort of like Onion headlines of today but from fifty years ago.

Re: As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

#88

Post by over_bridge »

ChatGTP wrote: post #8

Looks like we are the paper clip optimising narrow AI we’ve all been afraid of after all… We don’t make paper clips though, we’ve optimised to make money and turn everything into it. So ashamed to be part of of it,

Line go up.

Everything else can be sacrificed as long as the line keeps going up (GDP, stock market, revenue, profit, share price - take your pick). No politician will risk doing anything that makes the line go down even if it boosts 'non line' metrics like happiness, health, social connections, free time, any environmental measures, home ownership, min wage)

Re: As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

#89

Post by actionfromafar »

bruce511 wrote: post #70
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there has ever been a time in all of human history with so many existential threats. Between catastrophic climate change and resource depletion, AI, the danger of nuclear war, COVID and other potential pandemics, economic insecurity for most of the population, and farmed irrational extremist political movements, we seem to have quite a lot to deal with. Might as well just have Carrington Event 2.0 and b…

I know I being picky, but nuclear war is the only existential threat there. It's unlikely that any pandemic would make humans go extinct. Covid showed that isolating population groups is possible, especially if bounded by water (Australia, new Zealand etc). Mass death sure, but not extinction. Climate change will probably reduce livable spaces (although people already live in extremes like Alaska and Sahara) but huma…

Humans will survive. The global civilisation, might not.

Re: As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

#90

Post by actionfromafar »

harry8 wrote: post #69
minsight wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hope you can eat that.

Ok this conversation can get pretty silly, let's try to avoid that. Now at 2023 we have lifted more people out of poverty and ill-health in both raw numbers and as a percentage of the population than any time in the planet's history. Without prescribing anything in so far as dealing with the world's problems, be careful flippantly trading that off. It may not be you, your friends and your family that previously watch…

When the oil is running out, how will you make the fertiliser?
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