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

Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

phys.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 155 posts

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#51

Post by kibwen »

theultdev wrote: post #32
adamc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you willing to wait a few thousand years for a new coral to appear and spread? Maybe tens of thousands of years? Evolution does tend to fill open niches, but not all that instantly.

Yes I am. That's how it happens and how it should happen. Coral systems live, spread, and die. That's what they do. These processes happen over thousands of years.

Unfortunately, there is no law of the universe that says that change will only occur at a survivable rate. Thousands of species are already going extinct every year, and we're still burning just as many fossil fuels as what got us into this mess. We don't have thousands of years to wait for animals to adapt, we have mere decades.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#52

Post by therealdrag0 »

moi2388 wrote: post #20
jmyeet wrote: post #8

So while I 100% agree we have man-made climate change, there are two principles to live by: 1. Not everything is climate change. This has come up a lot with Hurricanes Helene and Milton recently, saying they're "unprecedented" or similar superlatives. Consider the 1916 flood of Asheville [1], also caused by a hurricane. Also, hurricanes aren't more frequent [2] but there's an argument to be made for intensity. A movi…

Kind of. Climate change has occurred in the past, and climate and weather are chaotic systems. But we can still determine where the attractor lies, and that it’s moving. I still think we shouldn’t focus on climate change, since the majority of the population won’t understand, nor care. Instead focus on environment, which is what you’re living in right now. The benefit is that doing what’s good for the environment yea…

I agree. Should be campaigning against fossil fuels like against tobacco and lead in the water.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#54

Post by theultdev »

kibwen wrote: post #51
theultdev wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I am. That's how it happens and how it should happen. Coral systems live, spread, and die. That's what they do. These processes happen over thousands of years.

Unfortunately, there is no law of the universe that says that change will only occur at a survivable rate. Thousands of species are already going extinct every year, and we're still burning just as many fossil fuels as what got us into this mess. We don't have thousands of years to wait for animals to adapt, we have mere decades.

Correct, there's no law of the universe that says change will occur a survivable rate. Species have been going extinct long before humans. We should help those species who environments we damage and we should mitigate or nullify the damage in the first place, but we should not play God.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#55

Post by momoschili »

theultdev wrote: post #42
momoschili wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to looking simply at the explosive growth limited to the past 4-5 years, it seems reasonable to look at the entire plot as well. All 3 graphs in [1] date back to 1965, and look at that data it seems that the growth/population of corals was reasonably stable up until the late 00s. edit: only goes back to 1985, error on my part, but still relatively stable from 1985-late 00s It may be possible that this rec…

> It may be possible that this recent spike in growth indicates that there is a strong recovery, but looking at the data it also seems inarguable the ecosystem has become highly unstable as well over the past 20 years Could you expand on how the recent explosive growth is unstable and fits with the predictions that the coral is dying? And GPs post was evidence based, your interpretations were not, they were subjectiv…

Explosive growth is generally speaking not stable. I will defer to the dictionary definition of stable. I'm just using words how they are defined.

From an ecosystem perspective, simple "coral coverage" is not a good enough metric to indicate that the coral reef is healthy. We also need to understand the biodiversity, is one coral taking over because it is better adapted and creating a monoculture? It's not clear. I made a point to not jump to conclusions, simply stating that explosive growth does not indicate a healthy ecosystem.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#56

Post by cmpb »

glenstein wrote: post #22
ryukafalz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not quickly enough. Ecosystems can adapt if given enough time, but the recent rise in ocean temperatures has happened very quickly by evolutionary standards. There was a good episode of PBS Weathered on this recently if you want an idea of how quickly this has happened: https://youtu.be/YEH9nX5sudk?si=iCivRPwK8AI4sjKU

>Probably not quickly enough. Ecosystems can adapt if given enough time, but the recent rise in ocean temperatures has happened very quickly by evolutionary standards. Exactly, which I think is always the key point at issue that needs to be raised any time someone says "well earth has been this hot before." Never at this velocity, at least not without extinction events.

Yes, and in fact the extinction event associated with this high-velocity change is termed the "Holocene Extinction" [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#57

Post by theultdev »

momoschili wrote: post #55
theultdev wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It may be possible that this recent spike in growth indicates that there is a strong recovery, but looking at the data it also seems inarguable the ecosystem has become highly unstable as well over the past 20 years Could you expand on how the recent explosive growth is unstable and fits with the predictions that the coral is dying? And GPs post was evidence based, your interpretations were not, they were subjectiv…

Explosive growth is generally speaking not stable. I will defer to the dictionary definition of stable. I'm just using words how they are defined. From an ecosystem perspective, simple "coral coverage" is not a good enough metric to indicate that the coral reef is healthy. We also need to understand the biodiversity, is one coral taking over because it is better adapted and creating a monoculture? It's not clear. I m…

Thank you for the clarification. Some may interpret "not stable" meaning that it could be detrimental to it's life, not just the textbook velocity definition.

Could you answer the second part of my question:

> "How does explosive growth fit with the predictions that the coral is dying?"

To your statement:

> "We also need to understand the biodiversity, is one coral taking over because it is better adapted and creating a monoculture"

I'd say that we should not assume one way or another. It very may well be, or not. That data is probably out there and I'd be interested to know the answer. If the answer is yes, it's very healthy.

I'd also like to know what species these scientists are breeding. If it's only a select few species, is that healthier than the species that have adapted naturally and are growing fine?

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#58

Post by manvillej »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #45

I thought nitrogen pollution was now considered the main cause of harm to corals?

Nitrogen pollution compounds with heat stress, it makes the coral more susceptible to heat stress: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1915395117

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#59

Post by glenstein »

tejohnso wrote: post #7
keepamovin wrote: post #2

Not sure this is a good idea. What if the disappearance of corals at higher temps is part of a natural regulation system for Earth, where if they are artificially preserved, homeostasis will be perturbed? In general I am against these ecosystem engineering type projects: because the systems are so complex, we do not understand them, and we cannot test in isolation.

> I am against these ecosystem engineering type projects: because the systems are so complex, we do not understand them How about humans pumping tens of billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year? Are you against that ecosystem engineering type project? Because it's happening. And it's having severe consequences. And it seems it's not going to stop. So people are trying to look into ways to attempt to mit…

At its essence, status quo extremism is not the denial of dangers, SQE's are quite alert to them. Instead, it's about an axiomatic re-definition of danger as being about whether or not something is presently happening. If it is already happening, then by definition it's not dangerous.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#60

Post by verisimi »

ryukafalz wrote: post #6
andrewmutz wrote: post #3

Perhaps a dumb question, but wouldn't we expect the rise in ocean temperatures to be cause nature to be doing this selective breeding right now?

Probably not quickly enough. Ecosystems can adapt if given enough time, but the recent rise in ocean temperatures has happened very quickly by evolutionary standards. There was a good episode of PBS Weathered on this recently if you want an idea of how quickly this has happened: https://youtu.be/YEH9nX5sudk?si=iCivRPwK8AI4sjKU

But, most historical changes are quite dramatic and quick. And evolution is meant to happen quickly too, no?
Post reply on HN