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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

#131

Post by glenstein »

theultdev wrote: post #54
kibwen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That struck me as mostly reasonable until the 'playing god' bit which upended everything. For one, that term almost never means the same thing to any two people. For another, from the context up to this point you seem to have unrealistic assumptions that this is all part of a broader cosmic give and take that balances itself, or stands over us as an indecipherable mystery.

I think that temptation to stand in awe before a cosmic mystery is a common one and, in many cases a laudable one. In this case, that temptation is getting in the way of some very-knowable facts which are spelling out doom. "Not playing god" in this context seems to amount to standing by as an extinction event unfolds, and I don't think the desire to get lost in existential ditherings is an acceptable reason to stand by and let that happen.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#132

Post by glenstein »

blindriver wrote: post #113
adamc wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is very, very unlikely.

Based on what expertise?

I think the collective expertise of marine biologists all across the globe. But I also think a high school education about evolution would be sufficient to establish that things really do go extinct, and our natural history is not one of perfectly balanced exchanges compensating every loss.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#133

Post by glenstein »

ceejayoz wrote: post #93
notamy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's important that people understand that the mechanism of evolution has been conclusively demonstrated in a laboratory within a single researcher's lifespan.

Which offers no relief to the predicament of coral, which was the original context of this convo.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#134

Post by theultdev »

glenstein wrote: post #132
blindriver wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what expertise?

I think the collective expertise of marine biologists all across the globe. But I also think a high school education about evolution would be sufficient to establish that things really do go extinct, and our natural history is not one of perfectly balanced exchanges compensating every loss.

that's not at all a relevant response to the discussion.

but to play that game, you also learn about adaptation in high school

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#135

Post by adamc »

blindriver wrote: post #113
adamc wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is very, very unlikely.

Based on what expertise?

What expertise do I need? Lots of coral is dying. It isn't right next to healthy coral. How do you think the fish are going to migrate? And those other coral reefs aren't empty.

As for the effect of coral bleaching on fish, you can google it and I've definitely read about it before, seen ecologists talk about it, etc. The expectation is that it will reduce the number of fish significantly.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#136

Post by glenstein »

theultdev wrote: post #134
glenstein wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the collective expertise of marine biologists all across the globe. But I also think a high school education about evolution would be sufficient to establish that things really do go extinct, and our natural history is not one of perfectly balanced exchanges compensating every loss.

that's not at all a relevant response to the discussion. but to play that game, you also learn about adaptation in high school

I'm sure you think you can play that game, but that's precisely the problem.

The fundamental confusion here is the notion that, absent one's own personal expert credentials, we have no access to any expertise or authority of any kind that can be brought to bear on this question (funny that that requirement applies only one way).

The vital role of coral in supporting marine ecosystems is a general and well understood phenomenon. So much so that our ordinary access to expertise through science communication in the media, our summary of this understanding as reflected in high school education, and, if needed, in major reports from NGOs is sufficient to address the question and indeed is central to the purpose of those respective institutions. Those are access to pertinent expertise for this kind of question.

I promise you, that this consensus has not overlooked the possibility of everything being made right by adaptations later on as you seem to be implying, and I promise that no version of explanations of evolutionary adaptation has ever taught that adaptation guarantees, as a cosmic law, compensation for the destruction of ecosystems. The same resources noted above are sufficient to dismiss this as an ordinary biology 101 confusion.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#137

Post by digging »

theultdev wrote: post #44
digging wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information is fine, overconfident denialist commentary earns a downvote. When you see a comment to the effect of "The self-proclaimed experts are wrong! I know the truth," you should heavily discount the conclusions it draws. Just because the mechanism of resurgence is unknown does not mean that all previous science on the topic is invalidated. It can simultaneously be true that ocean warming is devastating the Grea…

Your last sentence would have been a fine reply to the GP without any meta level commenting. And GP's main point was that the data from the experts monitoring the reef did not line up with the climate change predictions of the reef. He didn't say HE knew the truth, he's saying the truth from scientific reports are not matching the predictions. If anything, he's pointing out the real "experts" data. The opposite of wh…

> Your last sentence would have been a fine reply to the GP without any meta level commenting.

I get that but I stand by all of it though.

> data from the experts monitoring the reef did not line up with the climate change predictions of the reef.

That's normal.

> He didn't say HE knew the truth,

Well, that was a paraphrase of the unwarranted confidence in each of these statements, which I find extremely dubious:

> 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

It's easy to imagine that warming would not have any effect up until reaching a certain tipping point, so this is overstated as evidence-against.

> This time series is incompatible with the idea of a link between CO2 and coral health.

Basically a restatement of the above. They're not incompatible.

> Whatever caused this set of changes is unlikely to be human driven

"Unlikely" is also an overstatement. These data can cast doubt but aren't strong enough to say that anthropogenic causes are unlikely, given how likely it frankly is due to the scale of changes in the ocean.

> But we can safely say that corals are already heat tolerant.

No, we can't say this. Some corals are heat-tolerant.

> they have existed throughout history in which natural climate change has created vastly greater differences than seen in the last 100 years.

This is... borderline misinformation. It ignores the rate of change, which is just not really a credible way to discuss climate change. Also, specifically, which changes has coral survived? I don't actually know how old coral is or which mass extinctions it has survived which is actually pretty important for making a comparison.

Etc. Not really worth going over every point, you get the idea.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#138

Post by Vecr »

carapace wrote: post #74
empath75 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no natural regulation system for the earth, and the earth makes no attempt at homeostasis. It has been tipped over into states almost completely inhospitable for then-existing life more than once.

Multicellular lifeforms are the machinery that microbes build to improve homeostasis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis

I think the theory is doubtful. Sounds too outcome oriented/group-selection-y.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#139

Post by [deleted] »

glenstein wrote: post #136
theultdev wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not at all a relevant response to the discussion. but to play that game, you also learn about adaptation in high school

I'm sure you think you can play that game, but that's precisely the problem. The fundamental confusion here is the notion that, absent one's own personal expert credentials, we have no access to any expertise or authority of any kind that can be brought to bear on this question (funny that that requirement applies only one way). The vital role of coral in supporting marine ecosystems is a general and well understood…

[deleted]

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#140

Post by blindriver »

glenstein wrote: post #136
theultdev wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not at all a relevant response to the discussion. but to play that game, you also learn about adaptation in high school

I'm sure you think you can play that game, but that's precisely the problem. The fundamental confusion here is the notion that, absent one's own personal expert credentials, we have no access to any expertise or authority of any kind that can be brought to bear on this question (funny that that requirement applies only one way). The vital role of coral in supporting marine ecosystems is a general and well understood…

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/central-pacific-coral-reef-sho...

I think you need to be more careful about what your unqualified promises are.

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