Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists • Hacker News Board

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#11

Post by codecamper » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 2:35 PM UTC

blondie9x wrote: post #5

It's sad how many apps are being written lately by "innovators" and "entrepreneurs" to try and monetize already existing free services that function perfectly. Where are the real innovators and scientists who will tackle the biggest threat humanity has ever faced? Is it only Musk and Cook and Bezos amongst us? We need to stop writing apps to monetize what is already provided to consumers as free services and focus on…

There is some innovation that can be done. But 1.0 is ready to ship!

We want to solve this problem using the waterfall method, but let's just do it with scrum / MVP / agile / GTD.

Ship those panels now. Get the Army and national reserve to install them. Anyone that has been unemployed too long, can start installing panels.

Innovation could come around offshore panel farms, v2g, battery improvements.

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#12

Post by scarmig » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 2:42 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #4

At this point I welcome catastrophe. Nobody listens anyway so a clear message from nature is the only way.

Yeah, the deaths of millions of poor farmers in developing countries will totally get the West to start caring about the problem!

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#13

Post by silliconeheart » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 2:43 PM UTC

Where I live, in the summer seasons, fireflies would would scatter the night sky, and in such plentiful numbers that I had never thought I would stop seeing them in just a couple of years. Only in a matter of 12 years, the fireflies have vanished from my area. Last 1-2 years I have not seen a single one.

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#14

Post by scarmig » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 2:46 PM UTC

blondie9x wrote: post #5

It's sad how many apps are being written lately by "innovators" and "entrepreneurs" to try and monetize already existing free services that function perfectly. Where are the real innovators and scientists who will tackle the biggest threat humanity has ever faced? Is it only Musk and Cook and Bezos amongst us? We need to stop writing apps to monetize what is already provided to consumers as free services and focus on…

I can't tell what you mean by your reference to Musk, but if you're criticizing him for this in particular, you're pretty off base. He's (successfully) innovating in a broken system, and what he's doing will benefit any future evolutions of our current system.

Or is it that there aren't enough Musks? If so, sure, but there are plenty of really smart, really hardworking engineers helping implement his vision.

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#15

Post by jgalt212 » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 2:47 PM UTC

Shouldn't reefs just migrate north in the northern hemisphere, and southwards in the southern hemisphere?

I know this process can be quite slow, but on a long enough time frame it's conceivable there may be no net loss and possibly even a gain global reef acreage?

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#16

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 2:49 PM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #15

Shouldn't reefs just migrate north in the northern hemisphere, and southwards in the southern hemisphere? I know this process can be quite slow, but on a long enough time frame it's conceivable there may be no net loss and possibly even a gain global reef acreage?

Yes this has happened repeatedly thru geological history. I live in Iowa, and its limestone rock is all coral. We're 100's of miles from any ocean today.

But coral is built to respond gradually over decades. It's never going to be able to migrate in time at this rate.

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#17

Post by adventured » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 2:50 PM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #9

blondie9x wrote: post #5

It's sad how many apps are being written lately by "innovators" and "entrepreneurs" to try and monetize already existing free services that function perfectly. Where are the real innovators and scientists who will tackle the biggest threat humanity has ever faced? Is it only Musk and Cook and Bezos amongst us? We need to stop writing apps to monetize what is already provided to consumers as free services and focus on…

So you're asking people to stop wanting money? The people who want to solve life threatening problems will do so and the people who want to make "trivial" apps to make lots of money will do so. Asking us to just do the former is pointless. Also what about people who aren't entrepreneurs and work at industries like finance, law, and first country problems? Shouldn't they be held under the same scrutiny? What's so spec…

You make an extremely good point.

I had not considered that every time a person complains about duplication of apps, or developers that make trivial apps for money (instead of 'changing the world'), the same standard should be applied to the tens of millions of service and industrial jobs that are mostly clones of each other and could be considered trivial by the same standard.

For example: we really need to do something about all of these people working at Costco, trying to make their car and rent payments. It's ridiculous, the duplication of labor going on, where people aren't doing anything original.

That would be considered a cruel, borderline malevolent statement. And following through on it would result in a hundred million people being unemployed. Somehow the standard changes when a person is mostly seeking to earn a living off of an app however.

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#18

Post by scarmig » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 2:51 PM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #15

Shouldn't reefs just migrate north in the northern hemisphere, and southwards in the southern hemisphere? I know this process can be quite slow, but on a long enough time frame it's conceivable there may be no net loss and possibly even a gain global reef acreage?

A temperature delta over a millennium is very different than that same delta over a century.

Coral reef ecosystems take centuries to establish themselves and mature. They can't simply grow legs and walk a couple miles north every year.

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#19

Post by guscost » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 2:51 PM UTC

When discussing environmental stuff, often activists will say that I "deny climate change". I understand what they mean (that I don't believe the risk of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is grave enough to demand government intervention) but I still have to point out that we live on a rocky planet in space, where everything including the climate constantly changes.

You might be alarmed by a very specific change like this one, and you might want to do everything possible to stop it. That's completely understandable and I wish you success in your advocacy. But the way I see it, change is perhaps the only constant feature of our world, and change absolutely is going to mean death of a bunch of coral sometimes. Go far enough with the rhetoric and it sounds like an argument that the climate shouldn't change, which is futile.

I hope the mainstream environmentalism will someday "grow up" to a point where people understand that change is inevitable, and that as long as we exist we actively participate in the change. Then rather than setting arbitrary "natural" criteria and bemoaning corruption like depressed Platonists, and rather than starting witch hunts after people, we can focus on how that change should be planned for and what actually can or should be done to manage it.

Re: Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists

#20

Post by gedy » Sun, Apr 10, 2016, 2:52 PM UTC

blondie9x wrote: post #6

appleflaxen wrote: post #3

There is a whole lot of climate change evidence coming out that is terrifying. At what point does this become so scary that something happens to increase the taxes on fossil fuels so that consumption will go down? Falling renewable prices are not enough, and use-based taxes are the single best way to let individuals make their own decisions about what/how much to use. Carbon credits are a good market-based solution t…

So true. Washington is too tainted by vested interests that seek to procrastinate shift. Time has literally run out. From here we are already in catch up mode. It seems like a revolution is necessary to stop them from acting against humanity's long term existence for their short term financial gain.

Washington could be taken over by the Green party, ban fossil fuels, etc - and we'd still be in trouble due to China, et al with their increasing CO2 output.

Reminds me a bit of banning plastic bags in California to help the ocean. That's lovely, but given Asia dumps something like 150 times the amount plastics into the ocean, so is basically meaningless.