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Comment by Mister_X | Hacker News Reader

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, because right now the West coast from San Francisco North to at least Fort Bragg, has been suffering a kelp die off of great proportions.

No one is quite sure whats going on, but apparently due to climate change, or at least warmer ocean water from further South that we've had for the last 5 or more years, has caused the kelp to die off at a rapid rate, to the point of denuding whole sections of ocean bottom.

The whole sea urchin industry has been devastated, and those folks received Federal Disaster funds last year to make it through this year, but things are still bleak.

It's as big a catastrophe as the Australian coral die off, yet it's not getting much press here in the USA.

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Per various articles I could find on the West Coast Kelp Die Off, it appears that multiple years of warm El Nino waters, a massive starfish wasting disease, and urchin boom resulted in a 3-pronged assault on kelp populations. Now that the El Nino waters have cooled, and the starfish population is returning to normal, 2 of the 3 stress factors are being reduced. The last--the urchin population--is being controlled through a combination of the regrowing starfish population and man-made efforts like urchin vacuums.

See https://www.kqed.org/science/1357320/scientists-and-fisherme....

So I have studied this issue extensively. I personally know Jon Holcomb, the vacuum inventor. First, to dispel any myths. There is zero funding for this effort. It also takes a solid month of effort to clear a football field sized area. Compare that speed to the breeding cycle of the invasive urchin species boom and you have a very ineffective method of population control. Although his efforts were innovative. Jon will echo my comments. I live in the coastal community area between Fort Bragg and SF. I have been diving for nine years now, and I can attest to the fact that the ocean is literally barren here. We are talking no sea life except these urchin and rocks. Most if not all urchin divers have sold their boats, and laid off their crew. They have no retirement, little savings and live under or just at the poverty line. The effects spread from the South to the North. The starfish population "boom" in Oregon isn't returning to normal, they have yet to survive the maelstrom that creeps their way. It is serious devastation out here.

I'm not saying that the kelp weren't devastated by those 3 things, I'm saying that the resulting devastation is not permanent.

Funding especially is an addressable issue; Patagonia, for example, donates to kelp restoration activities in SoCal and would presumably donate to similar efforts in NorCal if asked.

Hey I agree. Even the ice age wasn't permanent.

Sure, nothing is permanent - but the question is can the recovery happen in enough time that it doesn't have a devastating effect on the ecology and on the humans that live around there in human-time?

Say we push too far and endanger our species - we're doomed, but the planet will recover just fine. It has plenty times before over billions of years.

"The ecology" is fine, it's just different now.

Wow, thanks for your input. How much different was it 10 years ago?

Ten years ago it was like a reef. You could find fish 5 ft/1.5m from the shore. The kelp beds were literal forests underwater. Now it's like a bomb went off. Plains of empty shells. Just death all around.

Are those urchins edible/tasty? What you might need is urchin-eating tourism, then you’ll get your funding for cleaning them up.

I'm confused. (I literally mean it, I'm not advocating anything). If the urchins were dying off, I can understand why that would devastate the urchin divers, but why would a boom in urchins put them out of business? Why aren't the urchin divers doing the vacuuming and making more money than ever from a bumper crop of urchins?

There two species involved. From the linked article:

"Compared to red urchins ... [purple urchins are] smaller, less meaty and not worth fishing for. And they're voracious eaters of kelp."

https://www.kqed.org/science/1357320/scientists-and-fisherme...

After vacuuming up a bunch of purple urchins, would it be possible to alter their DNA to be more like that of red urchins? Then release those genetically modified urchins back into the ocean to pass their “red-shifted” traits into the greater purple urchin population.

I realize there are plenty of ethical issues surrounding an attempt at genetically modifying an entire species. Perhaps doing so would be irresponsible? It’s not my area of expertise.

Probably not, but a gene drive to get rid of purple urchins might be possible. Definitely irresponsible however.

I go scuba diving in the Monterey peninsula area and the effects have been similar there. Without the predatory sea stars (starfish) to keep them in check, purple sea urchins have scoured many areas clear of any other life. I haven't seen a sun star in years.

We're just getting out of a La Nina according to the climate prediction center (April was the first ENSO neutral month) and El Nino is on track to return later this year with a 50% and growing likelihood by winter 2018.

"catastrophe as the Australian coral die off,"

I went deep sea fishing in Florida a few months back. It took forever to get to a place where there were actual fish. I asked the captain why, basically, he knows where there are large shipping container wrecks and that is where all the sea life is.

Thing is, building coral and sea life is super simple [same with killing it]. You literally can just lay down wire grids and get things moving [1].

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-26/scientists-discover-ga...

"Thing is, building coral and sea life is super simple [same with killing it]."

That is just simply not true. While it might be helpful to lay down structures for sea life, ocean acidification [1], algal blooms [2], and climate change are all contributing to mass death of sea life, and fast enough where we will see many species go extinct in our lifetime (bluefin tuna will be there soon [3]).

Even related to your own fishing story, check out the fish sizes and diversity in the 1950s compared to now. [4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algal_bloom

[3] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/07/060724-blue...

[4] https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/b...

Woah, I was really surprised by the different sizes of the fish.

Important to note is that the biggest fish caught in the 50s and 60s seem to all be goliath groupers (also known as jewfish) and are now critically endangered and illegal to keep. I imagine they still catch some on these charter boats, but they are required to release them once they do.

The unfortunate thing is that no matter whether something is illegal or not, it can still be a victim of bycatch when fishing for legal species, and bycatch mortality is quite high. Bycatch is actually higher than actual catch by weight for some fisheries+methods.[1] It's not just what you eat, but where it came from.

[1] http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/t4890e/t4890e03.htm

Edit: A couple of extra spaces removed

And of course the word 'illegal' in the open sea, when you have huge nurse ships in international waters (that will not touch any port in the country) means nothing.

> building coral and sea life is super simple

No. First you need an unpolluted area of ocean with the right conditions. And even then, thinking like yours can create more problems than it solves. Just look how the Osborne artificial reef actually led to an environmental disaster and massive cleanup effort.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/22/florida-retr...

That story just keeps on giving.

> The tires, which were dumped before recycling was possible, will be trucked across the state to Florida’s west coast and burned for energy at a Wheelebrator Technologies renewable waste plant near Tampa, owned by private equity firm Energy Capital Partners.

We could recycle the tires, but fuck it, let’s burn them instead so this is an unmitigated disaster.

I believe there are "green" ways to burn tires if the conditions are properly controlled and emissions captured. I saw a YT vid about a cement plant in CA that burned them in a furnace for heat to dry the concrete powder.

Also, "recycling " tires isn't necessarily green because it takes enormous amounts of energy to shred them. While burning them releases energy.

I read about this thing in Florida a long time ago and got upset about it. When I was reminded about it that all rushed back.

Objectively, tires that have been underwater for decades probably are not a great raw ingredient for making bouncy surfaces for playgrounds or quiet asphalt.

But incinerating them even with emissions controls really only recovers a little bit of the embodied energy, and still makes me feel all table-flippy.

> renewable waste plant

I'm still trying to figure out what they mean by that. The plant is generating renewable waste? Or it's fed by a 'renewable' source of waste? I don't think tires are a renewable resource.

You got it, a renewable source of energy because people constantly generate waste. It's a term invented by a trash company to greenwash regular waste: http://www.wm.com/sustainability/renewable-energy.jsp

The kelp forests near South Australia have all died off as well: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/07/australi...

Different species of brown macro-algae, but same in Spain in the lasts 15 years. Most submerged forests of Laminaria vanished.

It only takes a few degrees of temperature more and it seems that the young spores can't settle anymore. Brown algae have evolved to stand cold waters.

To exploit wild seaweed as a resource to feed millions of cows would create a plethora of new problems. Nobody would agree to abonate their meadow or orchard with a product with a high content of salt for example.

Not sure about the situation on the West Coast, but based on a recent 60 Minutes episode there seems to be a burgeoning commercial kelp farming market on the East Coast.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seaweed-farming-and-its-surpris...

Exactly what I was thinking about too.

The episode even talked about how the increase acidification is really good for growing kelp.

>It's as big a catastrophe as the Australian coral die off

Not really. Kelp grows at 3+ inches a day. Coral <1 inch per year.

The rate of growth is immaterial if the die-off is because of a permanent change, which there is every reason to believe is the case (based on every model of climate change, and it will only get worse).

Also, the rest of the trophic web that the kelp forms the basis for is hosed. Since they are one of the most productive ecosystems, it's kind of a big deal.

There are different types of kelp, not all of which are as sensitive to water temperature. For example, SoCal's kelp forests were not as devasted as NorCal's kelp forest. The biggest concern for SoCal's kelp forests are controlling the urchin population. Moreover, kelp populations are easily restored through cuttings--an entire forest can be repopulated in less than a decade because kelp grow so quickly.

Kelp die-off is a problem, but it's a temporary and addressable problem.

According to the article, it's difficult to produce that large of an amount of seaweed. Probably not going to happen in the next 5 years.

"No one is quite sure whats going on, but apparently due to climate change"

Look... statements like that, don't help any serious arguments for climate change.

To practical-skeptics, you might as well have written "IDK BUT WE BETTER FAVOR SOME COMPANIES WITH TAXES TO BE SAFE" which is a real annoyance of mine.

Esp considering other commenters pretty much ruled out your assumption.

AGW skeptics, like evolution and spheroid Earth skeptics are their own audience, no one else is really bothering to tailor their speech to them. We’ve entered the casually dismissive phase of the relationship. The ROI for dealing with people who are in denial is rarely positive after all.

I was watching the marvelous new edition of the Comos series, and it was really annoying the time spend rebuffing theories like "evolution does not exist" or "no prove of global warning". Please give more of the good stuff.

"AGW skeptics" just want a sincere conversation based on science. Like one would say, what about the effects of water vapor on climate change? And pointing out, you can't come to a conclusion and when it is disproven, cherry pick facts to fix your conclusion. It just doesn't work this way. So is it a sincere conversation or what? There's no point to engage with people who aren't honest about the science. Name calling, shaming, or framing them as "in denial" just confirms their observation the conversion isn't sincere.

> Like one would say, what about the effects of water vapor on climate change?

Is that a skeptics' thing? The answer is, water vapour is yet another positive feedback. https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/vapor_warming.htm...

"AGW skeptics" just want a sincere conversation based on science.

Twenty years ago, maybe. Today it’s like your racist uncle who always wants a “reasonable discussion about immigration” that would make a National Front member blush. You can’t blame the rest of us for figuring out the game and refusing to play.

As reasonable as that seems, the reality is stark: keeping the debate officially open is a bet that you'll be able to win arguments, and telling your opponents it's over is a bet that they won't be able to scrape together any political power. Don't slam on the brakes until you've crossed that finish line, wherever that is.

The failure of climate-control laws to get passed should send a clear signal that debate is actually the only place where "climate change is happening" can win.

Only if a debate is had in good faith, does it have any hope of being something other than a waste of time. There’s a reason that scientists don’t debate flat earthers and young esrthers. Sometimes the debate acts only to legitimize a viewpoint which is beyond fringe, or provide cherry picking fodder for morons.

The sad truth of climate change is that debate is beside the point, it’s pure power dynamics. Massively rich and powerful entrenched interests simply don’t care about debate or consensus, they just want to keep profiting until the bitter end. They’re not really related to the keyboard warriors online who for ideological or psychological reasons want to endlesssly “debate” the issue.

No one knows what’s going on, so climate change is the default blame?

But actually, California Fish and Wildlife DO know what’s going on:

“Environmental stressors included impacts from a toxic algae bloom off the Sonoma coast in 2011, a widespread sea star disease in 2013 that was followed by an explosion in the sea urchin population, and the warm water conditions that have persisted offshore since 2014. In 2014 and 2015, coastal water temperatures along the West Coast rocketed upwards due to a combination of oceanographic features: the “Warm Blob” in 2014, combined with a strong El Niño that began in 2015.”

https://cdfwmarine.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/perfect-storm-de...

Climate change seems like a religion. “We don’t know why x is happening, so we’ll just say it’s God’s will.” That’s about the most anti-science attitude possible and it’s being embraced by people who purport to care about science. But, in the case of California kelp, we actually do know what is happening and it has nothing to do with long term climatic events — the warm water was due to cyclical ocean activity: La Niña and that combined with a sea star disease and toxic algae caused this problem. And notice, the problem didn’t exist in 2010. So global warming for hundreds of years, but it had little impact on kelp until just magically in 2015 — that was the tipping point for kelp? This is the sort of nonsense that makes me detest the global warming crowd. Clearly global warming isn’t the cause of the California kelp issue, yet, predictably, that issue gets added into the propaganda machine.

Let’s say climate change isn’t the cause of Absolutely Every Natural Phenomenon.. but there are those that would make policy as if it were. A half degree rise in temperature — assuming that is actually true, isn’t going to cause a massive kelp die-off, considering Pacific ocean temperatures fluctuate by far more dramatic amounts routinely due to El Niño/La Niña. The ocean is far more resilient. Pollution is a far more dire danger. Chemical runoff, trash dumping — far more toxic to the ocean than anything else.

But, it easier just to spout “climate change” and the “woke” folks will just nod knowingly, actual causation or proof be damned. And we just continue along the socially acceptable path of blaming capitalism for all the world’s problems without actually doing much to solve anything.

Dude chill... you are essentially saying the same thing.

> … due to climate change, or at least warmer ocean water from further South that we've had for the last 5 or more years, has caused the kelp to die off at a rapid rate

TFW your climate change denialism goes so far off the deep end that you literally claim that warmer water in the most global of the oceans isn't related to global warming...

Climate change isn't the weather. It isn't one year or several years, it's a trend over decades or centuries or millennia.

Do you know what's normal? Abnormal weather. Exceptional circumstances happen all the time, weather conditions do not follow a bell curve.

I am not at all denying climate change, but you can never point to an event and shout about it. It's a long term statistical trend, not a few coincidental events. It's one variable out of many that cause every weather event.

Warmer water is absolutely not related to climate change when you're talking about small scale short term events.

> Warmer water is absolutely not related to climate change Warmer water is not absolutely related to climate change

I think you got your "not" in the wrong place. No, climate change isn't the only thing, however it can be, along with human caused acidification / pollution.

The fact is this systems are so complex and so integrated that we do not know "absolutely", but we have a good idea.

But hey, if it isn't absolute, lets carry on destroying our planet, we have a backup plan after all... oh wait

The problem with that argument is that articles are written about individual events, and aren’t trying to be comprehensive evaluations of global warming.

It’s neither informative nor helpful to dismiss such individual articles as being non-indicators of global warming because they don’t cover all the other evidence at the same time.

“Exceptional circumstances happen all the time”. Yeah it’s called an oxymoron.

If one billion events happen in a day, then some one-in-a-billion event is likely to happen every day.

Some of them, like a coin landing perfectly sideways will just go on Youtube. Some of them will end up in the news.

For the record, our ability to link individual weather events to climate change is not zero. In the last 3 years or so we have become pretty good at it.

https://www.nap.edu/catalog/21852/attribution-of-extreme-wea...

I think of it like rolling dice. Say you've got a pair of 6-sided game die. Rolling a 12 represents a massive weather event (eg so-called "century storms"), and gobal warming replaced some of each cube's faces (say, changing the 4's or 5's to a 6) then for a given roll, you can't say for sure whether global warming's to blame -- but when 12's start showing up more than 1/12th of the time, you also can't say "that's absolutely not related".

From the article you link: - Sea star disease: probably linked to increased sea temperatures, see https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2018.0007... - Warm blob: nobody seems quite sure to what extent climate change is involved here, see: https://phys.org/news/2015-04-wedge-seawater-blob-blamed-mar... but to be clear, this is literally an increase in ocean temperature

I'm not saying "hey this is definitely due to climate change", but ridiculing the suggestion that an event apparently linked to increased ocean temperatures might have something to do with climate change seems a little off.

Downvoted, and I want to explain why. It's not because I disagree (I do), nor for the tone (tho it's unpleasant), but because it presents what only looks like reasoned argument on the surface, while suffering from internal logical inconsistency. Your comment isn't legit dissent as a persecuted minority, it's nonsense.

You say "...it's not climate change, it's [X,Y and Z]." But you list things that are perfectly consistent w/ dire warnings from consensus scientific community that global warming is _definitely_ real and _probably_ anthropogenic (tho this latter is less important).

Then (paraphrasing), "things have been getting warmer for a long time so it's ridiculous that there was a tipping point in 2015".

And you detest people who don't follow this "logic".

Next we have a half-baked strawman arg about blaming capitalism...

You're right that pollution is a massive problem, but while true it's also (nearly) irrelevant to the question of ocean temp.

I strive to avoid feeding trolls, but posts like this that only look substantial on the surface are even more corrosive and imho worth calling out.

This is part of the opportunity cost of the current extreme political climate and economic situation. Though people would still not necessarily pay much attention.

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