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Page 109 is a summary specifically relating to estuaries and semi-enclosed seas. There are multiple other summaries relating to other ocean types preceding it.

From the executive summary at the beginning:

The loss of oxygen in the ocean can broadly be put down to two overlying causes – eutrophication as a result of nutrient run-off from land and deposition of nitrogen from the burning of fossil fuels, and the heating of ocean waters as a result of climate change, primarily causing a change in ventilation with the overlying atmosphere so that they hold less soluble oxygen, and compounded by reduced ocean mixing and changes in currents and wind patterns. Ocean deoxygenation is but the latest consequence of our activities on the ocean to be recognized. Ocean warming, ocean deoxygenation, and ocean acidification are major ‘stressors’ on marine systems and typically co-occur because they share a common cause.

Then from Section 2.1, Global Evidence of ocean deoxygenation:

+ Open-ocean deoxygenation is resulting mainly from a warming ocean, increased stratification and changing circulation which interact with eutrophication-induced hypoxia (oxygen concentration below ~60 to 120 µmol O2 kg-1) and biological activity in shelf regions.

+ Oxygen loss is closely related to ocean warming and acidification caused by CO2 increase driven by CO2 emissions as well as biogeochemical consequences related to anthropogenic fertilization of the ocean; hence a combined effort investigating the different stressors will be most beneficial to understand future ocean changes.

Yes! That's the problem! Read the BBC article again: Do they mention that the 700 ocean sites are specifically related to estuaries and semi-enclosed seas? They don't? Hm.

I'm responding to something presented in the BBC article, something they mention context-free, because they want to(?) imply that the problem is related to open ocean temp changes, when... it's not. It's a problem of eutrophication.

It's still a man-made problem, maybe its exacerbated by additional forces, but its dishonest to paint it as if warming has caused these 700 dead zones. Warming did not. Eutrophication did. Most people who read this:

> While nutrient run-off has been known for decades, researchers say that climate change is making the lack of oxygen worse.

> Around 700 ocean sites are now suffering from low oxygen, compared with 45 in the 1960s.

Will think that climate change caused the 700 ocean sites, up from 45, and not run-off. It's how they are couching it. It is bad and we should scrutinize that.

But the whole report, and the whole article mentions both eutrophication and climate heating as joint contributors.

To take the part you criticise, the preceding sentence is "While nutrient run-off has been known for decades, researchers say that climate crisis is making the lack of oxygen worse.", and the following sentence "The threat to oceans from nutrient run-off of chemicals such as nitrogen and phosphorus from farms and industry has long been known to impact the levels of oxygen in the sea waters and still remains the primary factor, especially closer to coasts."

Are they painting that as warming? Not by my reading. Does every single sentence have to correlate to the title when most do? Hm. No.

Then the article goes out into the wider oceans and talks of deoxygenation there, and the lack of mixing. Suitably dumbed down for their target audience. Could they have spelt it out better whilst meeting the needs of their non-scientific audience? Probably - it's sloppily worded, which can be said about just about every science article in every mainstream publication.

But the core point remains - the report, and the article point to a joint cause, and from my fast skim of summary sections of a 500+ page PDF a majority of the problem stems from heating.

I think they are though. If someone says in succession:

"While X has been a known issue, we now know about Y making things worse"

"What was [a little bad] in the 1960's is now [really super bad]"

The implicit finger is pointed at Y, I think. I sincerely think that's the takeaway most audiences would get from a setup like this.

Maybe I'm being too hard on the article. But the really damning thing (700 dead zones) seems way too context-free for me.

Well if you read it in isolation, perhaps so. in context, the three sentences taken together, the last closing with "and still remains the primary factor, especially closer to coasts." seems to point to the correct main cause.

Sure it's sloppily written, but so is nearly every article on astronomy or medicine etc. But I'd generally like more science in my science reporting than I'm ever going to get.

And as it's a longer one, I wonder how much time they get to boil down a 500 page report to 1 page pop-science piece.

> It is the agricultural and industrial runoff in what I suspect are very, very specific parts of the ocean.

I'm not sure why you think we should take your non-expert, evidenceless hot take on a BBC article more seriously than an actual study, but if you'd like to dig in more, here it is: https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/48892

I updated my comment with the part of the study that says the 700 danger zones are from eutrophication.

Honestly, sensational headlines like this are why so many people have a difficult time buying into climate change. If the media would present it as it actually is then I think more people would get on board.

No, it’s because those people have a deep mistrust of science and expertise, and using as much oil as possible is tied into some weird, macho, and at times oddly Christian identity, and suggesting that that’s harmful is threatening to them.

Anti-scientific thinking transcends political and gender identities in the USA. It can be traced at least as far back as Esalen institute stuff, and likely much farther.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-ame...

It's partially our governments fault for doing things like when the Atomic Energy Commission got caught being fraudulent about what killed 5000 sheep after the 1953 Upshot-Knothole nuclear weapons test series. When the top scientific institutions lose credibility, where we are today seems at least a little inevitable.

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/09/magazine/downwind-from-th...

That is the problem. Without actual proof of something, sensational headlines are mandatory.

Oh my god dude go home

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/

Baseless, uninformed skepticism is bad.

No the problem is that the evidence is boring and people have a hard time understanding how abstract numbers will affect their daily lives.

I agree, this is true. In this particular case though, there has been sensationalism for decades now - it tends to have the opposite of the intended effect.

Put another way, headlines that get clicks are prioritized over headlines that do not. Facts aren't important. Eyeballs are.

I'm getting tired of comments like these. Every single article about climate change or issues with the environment on HN always has someone swooping in to complain about sensationalism or something-or-other rather than talking about the actual article or the actions that can be taken. Then the rest of the HN post devolves into further nonsense because then the discussion becomes more about nitpicking rather than the actual content of the post at hand.

Instead of complaining about sensationalism or nonsense, why don't you skip instead to discussing the actual study at hand and suggest some actual actions we could do to solve the problem? Since you're apparently more of an expert than the journalist here.

This discussion was long excised from the front page yet my comments were multiply flagged (despite being absolutely benign given the scale of it), I got a warning from dang, etc. Somehow it was yielding significant traffic when it should have been seeing none.

I don't know where the brigade was drawn from, but this is simply incredible anti-intellectualism writ large. Seeing the pandering of this sort of behavior on HN is deeply disturbing. Seeing this guy's classic denialist post literally as the top moderated post on HN -- wow, I wouldn't trust this aggregate crowd on any topic.

It is one of those eye-opening moments that makes me seriously ask what I'm doing here. When we have to treat all "opinions" as if they carry weight, we are doomed.

You're mistaking anti-religious-authority behavior for "anti-intellectualism".

Climate change is a long-term issue we absolutely should deal with, but the consequences of not doing as much as ideal are, while large, still normalish-distribution-bad, not apocalypse-bad. Too much of the messaging around climate change to date has been apocalyptic. Realistically, anyone who wants to create a bubble of actually constructive discussion and action in this area in a public forum in 2019 should ban all apocalyptic terms/discussion on sight, to avoid triggering a huge number of people who are offended by bogus apocalyptic claims.

Climate change absolutely is apocalyptic-levels of bad, just not for the nations contributing the most to climate change yet. It seems to me that the people 'triggered' by 'bogus apocalyptic claims' are those that honestly, in my opinion, don't want to face the stark reality that many people are facing right now due to the way we treat our environment and would prefer to cover their ears and hope it goes away.

Banning that sort of discussion just means nations like Vanuatu get to continually be silenced.

Wow, somebody really hasn’t done their homework.

Hint: Most of Singapore is at an elevation of <15m; they’re roughly as exposed as Vanuatu. They also have a government with one of the best technocratic track records in the world. And they’re keeping an eye on climate change, but they aren’t panicking.

Point is dang, his boss, most of the people here viscerally hate the idea of collective action. Yet climate change is something that can only be tackled by good faith collective action.

So here we are.

I'm not informed enough to make a reply comment, but thank you for adding clarity - it informed me.

If you read an article citing the conclusions of an international group with 15,000+ experts in their respective field, many member nations and their scientific establishment, etc, and you believe some random comment by some random guy on the internet adds "clarity", you need to really reconsider how you evaluate information.

This is how we ended up in the situations of enormous ignorance in the climate change and immunization realms, as if scientific rigour, consensus, statistical and foundational fact, etc, are all contentious the moment some random blowhard gives their opinion.

While I agree with you, it's not unreasonable to try to correct for expected press sensationalism.

> While I agree with you, it's not unreasonable to try to correct for expected press sensationalism.

I don't see why a random internet commentator's pet theory (with nothing in the article to support it) should be treated as necessarily better.

Neither do I. That’s why I didn’t suggest that.

Sure, if the root post analyzed the study, or even did the most cursory skim of it, and pointed out how the article differed from its conclusions, that would be valuable.

They didn't. They blanket dismissed it, gave their own theory, and expressed how tired they are from this cross they must bear.

https://www.unitgraphics.com/deox/IUCNDeoxreportBOOK15-11-20... (77MB)

There's the actual study. The BBC article is pretty accurate in its summary.

The article title is even not accurate with the contents. Why must the GP dig any deeper?

Because they dismiss the whole article because of the title and then try to dismiss the article with irrelevant topics.

The article is written by a single journalist, and clearly sensationalist. What does it matter he quotes 15000 experts if he intentionally distorts what they say?

That random comment by a random guy on the internet is adding clarity.

What did he distort? What is sensationalist?

This claim has been made multiple times, and the single example has been a misunderstanding of the English language (e.g. "running out").

"That random comment by a random guy on the internet is adding clarity."

That random comment that inserted non-fact, dismissed essentially the entire report...yeah, no, it added just noise. Oh look now the root comment instead of just blanket dismissing global warming entirely has now listed a small sub-summary dealing just with run-off. This is a classic denialist tactic, just moving the fence posts enough, pretending to actually be considering the science.

The expect he quoted on Global Warming reducing the oxygen on the water found it all causes a 2% change. How's 98% for running out? All the of problem discussed on the article comes from the widespread dispersion of local pollution.

The journalist is at the same time lying about a problem where there isn't any and hiding a huge problem that can be solved if people focus on it.

That "blowhard" has added more to this discussion than you have with this comment. Would you like to counter his position, or just call names?

He “added” a big pile of misinformation[1]. If I add three paragraphs of speculation about how deoxygenation is actually caused by vaccines am I also “adding to this discussion”?

[1] as documented by NeedBigTea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21736510

And you completely ignored the spooky part of the article:

Much of the [oxygen] loss is expected in the top 1,000m of the water column, which is richest in biodiversity.

You are focusing on eutrophication of shallow waters near land, but that isn’t the problem.

Incrementalism and delay won't solve the climate change emergency fast enough, which means we and the planet die. Is that what you want? We have the money and the ability (Bio CCS) to solve CO2 levels back to 280-300 ppm for about the total cost of the US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Warmer waters increase CO2 dissolution into the water.

That is very incorrect. While heat helps dissolve ionic compounds like salt, it has the opposite effect for CO2.

CO2 solubility typically decreases with increasing water temperature [0].

[0] https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gases-solubility-water-d_...

CO2 solubility in H2O is inversely proportional to temperature but proportional to pressure. Even at 500 atmospheres (~5 km / ~15,000 ft depth), it's still not proportional to temperature. Whether a high-pressure environment precipitates out supercritical CO2 as a "solidish" hydrate or affects solubility is beyond my current laziness to look for. I would guess supercritical CO2 has a density higher than the densest water, but that's only a guess. (Paging Thunderf00t, CodysLab or NileRed to make a video.)

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ja01861a033

EDIT: I didn't see any replies before commenting, so "eventual consistency" of independent commenters likely led to what looks like piling-on. Sorry, that's not the intention.