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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

#31

Post by javajosh »

swayvil wrote: post #23
javajosh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like a crew of a spaceship dismantling their life-support system to create disposable junk.

Funny how improving self-awareness and self-control is always at the bottom of the list of solutions. It's always a new machine, product or pill. (But I think that public access to hallucinogens is a step in the right direction, actually)

One must deal with humans as they are, not as we'd wish them to be. The correct solution is that externalities associated with consumption should be priced in by fiat. The government has the (uneviable) task of protecting the environment because it is a perfect example of a common good. Of course, such authority must be given to the government by the people; it is already happening to a very small extent; as climate change becomes more real to people's everyday lives, I expect to see more movement in this direction. Of course, by then it will probably be too late, but we can hope that it will not be.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#32

Post by theultdev »

adamc wrote: post #10
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?

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.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#33

Post by glenstein »

IdSayThatllDoIt wrote: post #26
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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event We live on a planet saturated in one of the most corrosive pollutants (to life that evolved before it). If an anaerobic intelligent life had evolved before the world was conquered by cyanobacteria, in a society with a profit motive for manufacturing sugar, would they have farmed the very thing that would wipe them out?

Right, and said slightly differently: this is the context against which we have to judge whether there was any natural experiment we can refer to. There's no reason to think that the history of life on earth thus far has presented a sufficiently comparable case, to reassure us that what's happening is a re-run of a familiar event we've already seen, where everything works out well.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#34

Post by cassepipe »

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 ecosystem ?

Also I think you are wawing off climate change too quickly. Isn't it possible that we were lucky enough that the coral just adapted quickly to environmental change ?

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#35

Post by momoschili »

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 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, with drastic increases and decreases in all 3 populations that are much greater variance than from the mid 60s to early 00s.

While I agree with you that it's possible that this coral death is overhyped, your own conclusions don't seem to be evidence-based themselves.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#36

Post by [deleted] »

ryukafalz wrote: post #16
delecti wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda agree with the GP that this seems weird. Yes, ocean temps are rising very quickly, but this experiment only took 5 years, and was presumably a only a tiny fraction of how many wild coral there are. Ocean warming has taken place over several decades, and with millions of times as large of a natural population. It just seems weird that, if this kinda of adaptation is possible (and they showed it is), it wouldn'…

I wonder if the fact that mature corals are stationary makes it harder for them to adapt. If the surviving corals are too far apart, it could be that they're unable to reproduce sexually. Coral larvae seem to be mobile until they find a structure to settle on, but if the larvae never have a chance to form... (Corals can also reproduce asexually via fragmentation, but that won't help with genetic diversity in the wild…

[deleted]

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#37

Post by themaninthedark »

glenstein wrote: post #28
delecti wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda agree with the GP that this seems weird. Yes, ocean temps are rising very quickly, but this experiment only took 5 years, and was presumably a only a tiny fraction of how many wild coral there are. Ocean warming has taken place over several decades, and with millions of times as large of a natural population. It just seems weird that, if this kinda of adaptation is possible (and they showed it is), it wouldn'…

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.

I think the prevailing theory of evolution is punctuated equilibrium(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium)

Which holds that rather than a slow gradual change, species under go a rapid change and then are stable after that change.

If that hold true, then the driver would be that you have low impact changes going on all the time that do not take hold but once a beneficial change is introduced it spreads rapidly.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#38

Post by cassepipe »

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...

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

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#39

Post by swayvil »

javajosh wrote: post #31
swayvil wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how improving self-awareness and self-control is always at the bottom of the list of solutions. It's always a new machine, product or pill. (But I think that public access to hallucinogens is a step in the right direction, actually)

One must deal with humans as they are, not as we'd wish them to be. The correct solution is that externalities associated with consumption should be priced in by fiat. The government has the (uneviable) task of protecting the environment because it is a perfect example of a common good. Of course, such authority must be given to the government by the people; it is already happening to a very small extent; as climate…

The technologies of education and advertising have proven to be quite good at changing people.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#40

Post by peterlk »

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 water and blocks UV from the corals

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