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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

Does this article have a point? It talks about several attempts to save the seas, some of which it claims were ill-conceived but seems to lack a central thesis.

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I think the point is that viral "dying oceans" memes and stories may be undermining conservation efforts.

They are too emotionally powerful and pull our collective focus away from the science.

It frames the problems we face as impossibly bad and tragic, which makes some people give up, while others want drastic experiments that can cause more harm than good.

I think this is characteristic of the time we are in. People, being connected by the internet, have a new level of awareness about the world around us.

We don’t yet (collectively) know what to do with this knowledge. It is a reorienting time. Memes are one way people are trying to orient, they are probes being sent out to encounter reality.

But I agree with what you’re hinting at, we will step out of this place with concrete meaningful steps. And science is a very good way to find meaning.

It’s not really awareness though, it is tragedy porn. People like feeling “woke” and everyone is very willing to sell that to them. Just write stories about how something people are doing is ruining something people are worried about. It doesn’t have to be particularly true.

This cheap “awareness” doesn’t help solve problems, it creates conflict between people who like the tragedy stories and people who don’t like them, neither group really having much understanding or ability to think critically about the issues at hand and then... The only thing that gets talked about is the conflict and the taking of sides.

Personally, I think “creates awareness” vs “creates conflict” is a false dichotomy. It can be both.

But... isn’t your comment doing just the thing you are saying is destructive? Are you woke to something here, which is animating you, and it’s not exactly based in evidence?

It's undoubtedly tragic, so, what's your evidence that it's not impossibly bad?

That's a big question, and one that's difficult to orient and frame productively. This resource might interest you though:

http://www.oceanhealthindex.org/news/Ocean_Isn't_Dying

I read that page through, and didn't find it particularly compelling. Do you have anything that isn't 5 years old, and that doesn't try to talk around the issue by redefining terms?

What I mean is that when I think of when I would say "the ocean is dying," I'm referring to things like declining fish populations, coral reefs dying off, and the oceans themselves getting warmer and more acidic.

These things are undoubtedly happening. We have measured them, and we are causing it. Your link seems to say something like "the ocean isn't dying, because we still can do something about it." I'm not particularly concerned with this "ocean health index" they mention. I am not concerned with what we "can" do; I'm only concerned with what we are and will be doing. And, at this rate, what we are doing is not enough.

If you don't find the OHI (https://www.conservation.org/projects/ocean-health-index) credible, I'm not sure there's much more I could write that would convince you. Sorry :/

The point is that the oceans are large, there are different concerns, and conditions vary across location and species.

If you want to answer a question like "how healthy are our oceans?" you need to first work out what that might mean, and then measure that systematically like the project I linked you to.

Why do we need to attach a number to it for it to be a valid concern? The ocean is undoubtedly changing in ways that, if allowed to continue, will cause massive ecosystem damage, leading to secondary effects on land, such as increased warming and higher CO2 levels. Why is that not enough to convince anyone who matters to do anything?

There are lots of things being done, but much more could be done - and for that we need to convince governments, which takes data.

In particular we need to convince governing bodies that action is in their direct and immediate economic interest, which again takes data.

There is plenty of data. We've known this day was coming since the 1970's. Economic interests be damned, we need to do something now to avoid the collapse of civilization.

It is an excerpt from a book: Neptune's Laboratory by Antony Adler. (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674972018)

> “If we are not careful, fear may hamper conservation efforts or fuel hubristic interventions.”

But the rest of the article doesn't support that. It talks mostly about failed conservation efforts, which weren't stopped by fear but because they were ineffective.

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