It’s obviously horrible, but it also means that it will allow other creatures to grow to fill that space. It’s like a forest fire. Sure the devastation is bad but there’s also renewal afterwards. It’s not like it will remain barren forever.
Currently it’s one of vast abundance, but this transformation would very likely reduce that abundance and its diversity due to a foundation of the food chain disappearing regularly.
It’s nice to think something would just replace these species, but they’ve already reduced dramatically over the last 100 years and nothing has begun to shoehorn its way into the system.
It seems the worse this gets, the less overall abundance and diversity this coastline can support.
The thing we're concerned about is that humans are apex predators and depend on a functioning food chain to survive. Filter feeders eat algae. Unconstrained algal growth is toxic to fish (salmon) that we eat. Oyster and mussel farms were devastated and some won't see a rebound for at least 3 years if we don't have another event like this. Bears eat salmon, and when they can't find it, they seek other food sources like humans.
This story is a single datum. We've got freak cold snaps on the east coast and Texas. Flooding in Europe. The world is rapidly becoming more hostile to human life.
But yeah, a hot, acidic ocean will still support life -- maybe nothing we can eat for a few hundred generations, but life goes on with or without us. Hotter climes will spread tropical bugs and diseases; life goes on.
But we're still looking for intelligent life that's survived the "hold my beer" great filter. Haven't found such extraterrestrials; jury's still out on terrestrials.
In the past the environment has changed very rapidly at time. All life eventually dies. That which endures longer is that which adapts.
A warmer more carbon rich atmosphere has some benefits:
Expanded arable regions, fewer droughts, more rainfall, more carbon for plants to grown (try turning all your carbon in the atmosphere into rock and let me know how life fares then.)
Carbon based life needs CO2. They have done experiments where a forest is subjected to increased CO2 ppm by plumbing and nozzels. It grew faster and more robustly. Life also needs warmth. During the Eocene epoch some 50 milion years ago the Arctic was sub-tropical and teaming with life.
There are creatures around the world that thrive in warmer waters. The space will be reclaimed by other creatures that can survive in that environment. To think otherwise goes against basic science.
We are seeing some warmer climate sharks moving further north, but that isn’t helpful to the foundation of our food chain. We do have invasive species of mollusks which have set up camp here permanently, but they seem to suffer and decrease in number just as the native species do. There are invasive crabs, but again, they aren’t about to patch the holes in this system.
Also, it’s important to note that our winter temperatures still hit 6 or 7 degrees Celsius. There are no warm climate creatures I know of who can move in during a hot summer and stick around for winter. That means our previously stable, temperate environment doesn’t appear to be able to be likely to host many creatures in any migratory range I know of.
I’m not a marine biologist, perhaps you know better. This ocean is a passion of mine though, these matters take up a lot of my energy and mental real estate. I want to believe it will thrive very much, but signs really aren’t positive lately.
Apart from this die out, there are a multitude of other dire situations as well. We’ve extirpated several species, caused numerous salmon population extinctions and collapses, the near extinction of a resident killer whale pod, caused the collapse of multiple species of rockfish - the list goes on.
• Science is a way of finding out about the world, not a list of facts.
• No, actually. Rather, these creatures will die and we might lose entire species, significantly reducing biodiversity.
> The space will be reclaimed by other creatures that can survive in that environment. To think otherwise goes against basic science.
On an evolutionary timescale, something will fill the niche (if the environment remains constant enough for long enough… not looking likely, if you extrapolate from today), but science most certainly hasn't found that this happens with animals over the course of decades.
And you know what they say about basic biology…
And I don't think the article is implying that the oceans will be barren forever, but that things are changing rapidly, unpredictably, and to an extreme degree that we have no precedent for.
My greatest fear -- I've seen individual animals loose the will to live. What if a biotope loses the will? What if life decides not to come back?
It doesn’t have to reproduce right away, that’s just unrealistic. But the larger amounts of free space will mean a land grab by the survivors. That’s how it works in nature.
If the climate changes and the water heats up then the ecosystem will be replaced by those animals that would survive in warmer water. That’s science.
(Meanwhile poor humans are trying to grow crops and raise animals. We may get very hungry, for decades)
You could look to the intertidal regions near the equator for more reasonable comparison. They are much less rich in life compared to the waters around Vancouver.
The point others and I are making is that life does not expand arbitrarily, or in a weaker form, the life that may expand will be a much less desirable environment for us humans than the present.
Even though you deny it, we can very simply create environments, right here on earth, where life as we know it will not be possible. Look into an operating steel smelter for example, just to remove any subtlety and ambiguity.
Sure, maybe ‘Science’ can replace all of our biosphere with extremophiles, but I for one do not desire to live in such a world. I like trees and birds and mammals and lizards and (you get the point).
It's july 18. It both is hot season and was an abnormal heat wave.
So the questions are valid.