Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

phys.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 155 posts

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#41

Post by digging »

theultdev wrote: post #29
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…

It would be nice if people responded to you instead of downvoting silently. Thank you for the information. It's also worth noting the Great Barrier Reef is fairly new (6-8k years old). It came to be from the sea rise of the Last Glacial Maximum 20k years ago.

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 Great Barrier Reef corals and that the GBR has the ability to rebound on its own. Here's a question the parent comment didn't address: Are we seeing the same species in this resurgence that we saw before mass bleaching, or is biodiversity reduced?

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#42

Post by theultdev »

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…

> 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

Could you expand on how the recent explosive growth is unstable and fits with the predictions that the coral is dying?

And GPs post was evidence based, your interpretations were not, they were subjective and a bit handwaving, which is why I would like clarfication on your above view.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#43

Post by cassepipe »

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)

I think you fall in the typical trap of thinking that social issues are easier to solve than technical ones. This is not the case.

"Why take vaccines ? Can't we just be well-behaved, wear a mask, air spaces correctly or put air filters everywhere ?" The answer is no.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biolo...

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#44

Post by theultdev »

digging wrote: post #41
theultdev wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice if people responded to you instead of downvoting silently. Thank you for the information. It's also worth noting the Great Barrier Reef is fairly new (6-8k years old). It came to be from the sea rise of the Last Glacial Maximum 20k years ago.

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 what you are accusing him of.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#47

Post by glenstein »

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…

>> One of the most surprising findings was that the shifts from cold stadials to the warm interstadial intervals occurred in a matter of decades, with air temperatures over Greenland rapidly warming 8 to 15°C (Huber et al. 2006)

My understanding is that this was local to a region and not global, and constituted extinction or near extinction-level events for plant and animal populations that suffered through them. And even though those changes were fast, my understanding is that our present change is (1) even faster, (2) is not a back-and-forth oscillation controlled at the bounds by natural dynamics but a one-directional trend upward (3) from human activity stacked on top of the dynamics of natural systems.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#49

Post by glenstein »

themaninthedark wrote: post #37
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.

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 sprea…

I think the notion of its status as a "prevailing theory" is overstated, and is an idea that exists more in the minds of lay audiences than in the profession (see criticism section).

I agree with the criticisms that Gould, unfortunately, spent much of his career attempting to position himself as an intellectual revolutionary, overstating the primacy of PE and was in many important respects an intellectual fraud. Gifted as he was as a critic of intelligent design, I think he set back our understanding of evolution almost as much as he helped.

Re: Scientists successfully breed corals to improve their heat tolerance

#50

Post by DoreenMichele »

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?

Nature doesn't do selective breeding.

"Survival of the fittest" means "whatever doesn't die, wins."

First you need things capable of not dying in x circumstances. After adversity kills everything else, you have the "winners."

This will incline species to develop tolerance over time, usually several generations. Human caused climate change is happening on a timescale that isn't very supportive of that process.

Post reply on HN