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Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

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Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#81

Post by momoschili »

theultdev wrote: post #57
momoschili wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 creatin…

Explosive growth does not happen in a vacuum. Sometimes it's due to a pre-existing boom and bust cycle (eg lynx and hares, rabbits and wolves, etc). Sometimes it's due to the elimination of key species or ecological instability (eg hares in australia with no predators, boom of sea urchins in california, cuttlefish booming due to overfishing), or maybe it's something completely different altogether.

Given that there is no history of a pre-existing boom and bust cycle in the data, I think we can rule that out. So clearly something is happening that wasn't happening before. The question you want answered is one-dimensional and ill-posed in this situation to allow you to better understand the dynamics at work.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#82

Post by mike_hearn »

cassepipe wrote: post #34
mike_hearn wrote: post #24

Here's the latest data from AIMS, the Australian government agency that monitors the Great Barrier Reef [1]. There are three periods in these graphs: 1. 1985-2013. Climatologists report global warming during this period, but it had no impact on the corals. This fact is already a major problem for the claim that corals are hurt by global warming - if it were true, there should have been declines in this period. 2. 201…

While you bring forward interesting data, I believe your view is uncharitable of the motives behind people wanting to protect coral reefs also you don't account for your own hindsight. Maybe a more charitable interpretation is that nobody really understood why there was such a massive drop and climate change was the most likely explanation so they went about warning about it given how important they are to their ecos…

The incentives here are pretty straightforward and plenty of people within academic fields are willing to admit what kind of distortions they create. Look at any HN discussion on academic fraud and you'll find discussions from people who are or were scientists where they tell similar stories.

Climate change wasn't the most likely explanation for the big drop. To make that explanation work you have to hypothesize a lot of hidden variables and/or unknown processes, because CO2 emission is a slow steady process. If you want to posit some sort of cliff-edge response in the absence of evidence, fine, but at that point anyone can make up any explanation they like and it's just as compelling. There's no reason a-priori to believe that climate change kills corals given that they've survived hundreds of millions of years. There are probably natural cycles at work here which might be interesting to investigate, or there might even be some sort of human cause that's not climate related (chemicals being washed into the sea or whatever). AIMS is supposed to figure that out but they don't seem to be doing that, they just keep crying wolf. So it's reasonable to point out their incentives.

> Isn't it possible that we were lucky enough that the coral just adapted quickly to environmental change ?

Anything is possible in principle, but that doesn't help us much.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#83

Post by nradov »

peterlk wrote: post #40
mike_hearn wrote: post #24

Here's the latest data from AIMS, the Australian government agency that monitors the Great Barrier Reef [1]. There are three periods in these graphs: 1. 1985-2013. Climatologists report global warming during this period, but it had no impact on the corals. This fact is already a major problem for the claim that corals are hurt by global warming - if it were true, there should have been declines in this period. 2. 201…

I went to Thailand shortly after the covid lockdowns ended, and the corals were all coming back. I talked to a boat captain about it and his comment was: “yeah, there were no tourists to abuse them”. I can’t help but wonder what effect tourism (and lockdowns) has had on corals. For example, It is common among scuba divers to only use mineral sunscreens because standard off-the-shelf sunscreen floats on the top of the…

It appears that oxybenzone and octinoxate sunscreens may be directly toxic to corals. Blocking UV light doesn't seem to be the issue.

https://ocean.si.edu/ecosystems/coral-reefs/truth-about-cora...

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#84

Post by mike_hearn »

momoschili wrote: post #35
mike_hearn wrote: post #24

Here's the latest data from AIMS, the Australian government agency that monitors the Great Barrier Reef [1]. There are three periods in these graphs: 1. 1985-2013. Climatologists report global warming during this period, but it had no impact on the corals. This fact is already a major problem for the claim that corals are hurt by global warming - if it were true, there should have been declines in this period. 2. 201…

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…

The graphs date back to 1985. The font is small though, so it's easy to misread.

> it also seems inarguable the ecosystem has become highly unstable as well over the past 20 years

That's extremely arguable! Extrapolating from a tiny number of data points is how AIMS managed to screw up previously. There's really very little data on which to build predictions about long term trends. We have no idea how stable or unstable coral sizes are because it's just not been monitored for long enough to say. We're zoomed in to a tiny, tiny part of the coral's history, which is far longer than humanities own.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#85

Post by momoschili »

mike_hearn wrote: post #84
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…

The graphs date back to 1985. The font is small though, so it's easy to misread. > it also seems inarguable the ecosystem has become highly unstable as well over the past 20 years That's extremely arguable! Extrapolating from a tiny number of data points is how AIMS managed to screw up previously. There's really very little data on which to build predictions about long term trends. We have no idea how stable or unsta…

I agree, but I would assert that it is no more arguable than your own interpretations

Edit: Ah I see that it is 1985, that certainly is a significantly shorter cycle of data.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#86

Post by mike_hearn »

peterlk wrote: post #40
mike_hearn wrote: post #24

Here's the latest data from AIMS, the Australian government agency that monitors the Great Barrier Reef [1]. There are three periods in these graphs: 1. 1985-2013. Climatologists report global warming during this period, but it had no impact on the corals. This fact is already a major problem for the claim that corals are hurt by global warming - if it were true, there should have been declines in this period. 2. 201…

I went to Thailand shortly after the covid lockdowns ended, and the corals were all coming back. I talked to a boat captain about it and his comment was: “yeah, there were no tourists to abuse them”. I can’t help but wonder what effect tourism (and lockdowns) has had on corals. For example, It is common among scuba divers to only use mineral sunscreens because standard off-the-shelf sunscreen floats on the top of the…

It's possible that this sort of thing is connected, yes. The timing of a rebound in 2020 is interesting. But then again, if it's caused by tourism or sunscreen, the next interesting question is what changed around 2010?

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#87

Post by notamy »

cassepipe wrote: post #38
ceejayoz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Richard Lenski would disagree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_ex...

Can somebody explain to me why this is apparently being downvoted ? Is Richard Lenski very far from the consensus of his field ? Scientific dishonesty ?

I imagine it's because 73k generations of bacteria takes a lot less time than 73k generations of coral or other larger organisms.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#88

Post by [deleted] »

glenstein wrote: post #59
tejohnso wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#89

Post by nradov »

david38 wrote: post #76
candiddevmike wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you stopped scuba diving? Aren't you concerned that your scuba diving contributes to the destruction?

Why would it? I’m a scuba diver and I don’t pour hot water on corals. My primary function for diving is to protect the kelp forest where I usually dive by removing sea urchins, whose population has exploded, killing the kelp. This is done in conjunction with the department of fish and wildlife. Any scuba diver knows never to touch the coral, the ground, or anything like that. Fairly simple

Thanks for helping with the urchin removal.

It seems that the Sea Star Wasting Syndrome, which killed off most sea stars along the western North American coastline, might have been exacerbated by unusually warm water in 2014-2016 which stressed those animals. The death of those predators caused the purple sea urchin population to explode and they ate up most of the kelp. So it's all connected. (I'm sure your aware of this, just providing a little more context for others.)

https://www.nps.gov/im/swan/ssws.htm

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#90

Post by tupshin »

verisimi wrote: post #62
glenstein wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In nature, you don't necessarily have the needed genetic diversity or controlled conditions, in the right combinations, the way you can obtain them in the lab. And "several decades" is probably not enough time in evolutionary terms to adjust, if I had to guess.

Nature doesn't have the right conditions to deal with the changes in nature?

Why the disbelief? You are literally describing the process of species extinction due to failure to adapt. This should not be a new concept.
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