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Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

phys.org

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Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#121

Post by itishappy »

slibhb wrote: post #109
joshtbradley wrote: post #106

I find it tragic that it’s easier for scientists to perform miracles than it is for humanity to care for the planet. I understand the issue is complex, fraught with incentive, and has disparity between the developed and undeveloped world. But if the outcome is a clear collective benefit, why don’t we do it? More practically. What will it take to create a world where humanity can align to help ourselves?

Scientists "performing miracles" is humanity caring for the planet. Ask yourself why you (apparently) prefer degrowth to this.

Scientists performing miracles is caring for the planet in the same way doctors providing saline is caring for blood loss. It's important, it helps, and I'm glad we're doing it, but sometimes you gotta address the bleeding first.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#122

Post by xracy »

slibhb wrote: post #109
joshtbradley wrote: post #106

I find it tragic that it’s easier for scientists to perform miracles than it is for humanity to care for the planet. I understand the issue is complex, fraught with incentive, and has disparity between the developed and undeveloped world. But if the outcome is a clear collective benefit, why don’t we do it? More practically. What will it take to create a world where humanity can align to help ourselves?

Scientists "performing miracles" is humanity caring for the planet. Ask yourself why you (apparently) prefer degrowth to this.

Feels like a convenient way for you to give up your own responsibility to the planet to justify not changing your impact.

I'm not saying this is you alone. We all do this, but this comment is particularly egregious for it.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#123

Post by xracy »

candiddevmike wrote: post #61
MarkMarine wrote: post #9

I’ve been scuba diving for 20 years and I’ve seen the devastation first hand. Once healthy eco systems, teeming with life, just completely wiped out. It’s heartbreaking. Corals grow so slowly, this might improve things 100-200 years from now, which is not nothing, but no one should delude themselves into thinking this is a solution. The fish that depend on these reefs will not be able to wait 100 generations for us t…

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

This feels pretty combative, and unhelpful. Which leads me to think it's bad faith.

What active contributions are you making to the wellbeing of our reefs?

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#124

Post by joshtbradley »

slibhb wrote: post #109
joshtbradley wrote: post #106

I find it tragic that it’s easier for scientists to perform miracles than it is for humanity to care for the planet. I understand the issue is complex, fraught with incentive, and has disparity between the developed and undeveloped world. But if the outcome is a clear collective benefit, why don’t we do it? More practically. What will it take to create a world where humanity can align to help ourselves?

Scientists "performing miracles" is humanity caring for the planet. Ask yourself why you (apparently) prefer degrowth to this.

I'm not arguing for degrowth, nor am I discrediting the work of science. I'm observing humanity has failed to have a constructive conversation around climate change, leading to the necessity of solutions like this.

I have no idea what the solution is, I've already admitted it's complex. But it's frightening that the conversation immediately devolves into assumptions about one's stance, and immediate disagreement with that stance. Even on a website like HN. That's a big problem, no?

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#126

Post by itishappy »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #114
MarkMarine wrote: post #9

I’ve been scuba diving for 20 years and I’ve seen the devastation first hand. Once healthy eco systems, teeming with life, just completely wiped out. It’s heartbreaking. Corals grow so slowly, this might improve things 100-200 years from now, which is not nothing, but no one should delude themselves into thinking this is a solution. The fish that depend on these reefs will not be able to wait 100 generations for us t…

You've witnessed actually dead coral or just "bleached" coral? Bleached coral isn't dead. It has just expelled its symbiotic algae. When the water cools it gets its algae back. All corals are broadcast spawners. The polyp will start growing where ever conditions are right. It may not be the same place it was growing before but the coral doesn't go extinct.

> Bleached coral isn't dead. It has just expelled its symbiotic algae. When the water cools it gets its algae back.

Zooxanthellae provide 90% of a coral's energy. Bleached coral has a few weeks where recovery is indeed possible, but if stresses last longer than that the coral dies.

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/coral-recovery-...

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#127

Post by pvaldes »

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?

That depends on the scale of the changes. Life can make a planet habitable, but our sun will eventually die, and the systems that ecosystems raised to control the changes in its favor will be unable to fix that. Only we could do something about it.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#128

Post by glenstein »

pvaldes wrote: post #127
verisimi wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That depends on the scale of the changes. Life can make a planet habitable, but our sun will eventually die, and the systems that ecosystems raised to control the changes in its favor will be unable to fix that. Only we could do something about it.

It's the cosmic scale equivalent to Mike Tyson's saying about everyone has a plan. Life finds a way, until your sun explodes.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#129

Post by glenstein »

ceejayoz wrote: post #19
nyc_data_geek1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think it isn't happening in the wild? Evolution does not happen on the timescales of human lifetimes.

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

Yes, but. E. coli is E. coli and coral is coral. It may not be the case that coral can, on its own, evolve in the ways necessary to save itself from heated oceans in the time that E. Coli could.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#130

Post by pvaldes »

Sorry to pop the party but we need perspective. "Scientists breed successfully corals" is not a big deal, marine aquarium keepers reproduce many easy species for decades and have developed the technology to help with that. The problem is that this is a titanic task. There are >350 species of hard corals with zooxanthelae and they have very long life cycles.

The second part of the title is more problematic. The real meat in the article is that the results, the increase in heat tolerance, were minor. Even the authors say that will be unable to cope with the changes coming. Is interesting and relevant to know that the larvae could grow, but we don't even know if this changes are permanent or will have consequences later on a species able to live for 3000 ears. And sadly half of the coral reefs in the planet present in 1950 were lost in just a generation of humans.

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