A World Without Coral Reefs | Hacker News Reader

A World Without Coral Reefs

nytimes.com

116 pointsraymondh42 comments

It's worth noting that a world without coral reefs is hardly unprecedented. Approximately 14,000 years ago, every coral reef in the world would have been destroyed by Meltwater Pulse 1A[1], an event which caused sea levels to rise by 20 metres in just a few hundred years. Although this must have caused the demise of the complex reef ecosystems, coral itself survived, presumably as isolated individuals and very small clusters. Afterwards, sea levels continued to rise rapidly, and the large reefs that we have today could not become established until about 7,000 years ago, when the sea levels finally stabilised. The corresponding ecosystems have evolved only since then.

For this reason, I am mostly unconvinced that the (admittedly horrible) disruption which we are causing today will irrevocably knock things back to a precambrian state. When you look at history of our planet over evolutionary timescales, you see all kinds of disruptive events -- rapidly rising or falling seas; bolide impacts as powerful as tens of millions of nuclear bombs -- which the planet has managed to shrug off with apparent ease. With one exception, most of the harm we are causing seems to be along these lines. So even if the great reefs die off, then my expectation would be that coral itself would continue to survive in niches. 10,000 years from now -- long after we've wised up or died off -- there could very well be great reefs again, and our disruption would be relegated to a small blip in the overall evolutionary record. The planet's losses will ultimately be minimal; the real losers will be our children, who will inherit a less beautiful and wondrous world than the one we know. I've swum through coral reefs, and it's painful to think that the next few dozen generations won't be able to experience that kind of beauty. But from the planet's perspective -- looking at evolutionary timescales -- this may not be a particularly big deal.

The one real and substantial caveat to my nonchalance is ocean acidification. It is truly global compared to other forms of ocean pollution, acts as a disruptor to individual cells rather than to the (more resilient than we give them credit for) ecosystem relationships, and is making an excursion that may be unprecedented in the past 300 million years. In contrast to things like changes in sea levels and temperatures -- which actually happen all the time when you take the long view -- evolutionary timescales give no assurance that ocean acidification will be a survivable event. It is something that merits a much higher level of attention than it's getting.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltwater_pulse_1A

I really recommend reading the thread at http://coris.noaa.gov/exchanges/coralfuture/coral_future.pdf - this is a discussion by working scientists, and although it's from 2001, the predictions of the demise of coral reefs were already very current then. It's a good introduction to the huge complexity of reasoning about these systems, which involve more feedback loops than a non-expert can even imagine. What I take away from that discussion is that there is no serious researcher in the field who doesn't see the coral reefs disappearing at a huge rate, but there is no consensus about the dominant mechanism; I think (although I am not an expert) that the arguments of those who see pollution and overfishing as the main cause are more persuasive.

For example, a very large fraction of coral reefs around Sri Lanka disappeared in the 1990s, and this apparently had more to do with the fact that people blasted them and hauled them away to be used as limestone in the construction industry, than with any subtle changes in the pH of seawater. In the (very plausible) opinion of some of the scientists from that discussion, most coral reefs will die off long before the pH changes really become significant. It would be great if someone who is a researcher in this field could give us some more recent results and data.

"It would be great if someone who is a researcher in this field could give us some more recent results and data."

There you go: Reef winners and losers in a warmer world: http://www-public.jcu.edu.au/news/JCU_099903

Is it completely ridiculous to imagine that ocean acidification could be countered? I'm imagining something like having cargo ships sprinkle sodium hydroxide in their wakes. Could any such plan be workable?

It appears pH is only one part of the problem.

Yes, I understand that. But there's something to be said for tackling the easiest problem first. If a relatively straightforward geoengineering solution is available, I think we should go ahead and apply it, and then turn our attentions to the more politically and economically difficult problems of overfishing and pollution.

There are so many second, third, and fourth order effects to any change that you make of any meaningful scale. Humans just don't understand the reef well enough.

We're already changing the applicable conditions. Not changing them is not an option at this point.

I understand there are always risks to sticking our fingers into something we don't understand well. But those risks have to be weighed against the risks of inaction, which seem in this situation to be quite substantial.

I suggested sodium hydroxide because adding sodium ions to the ocean is obviously benign. Seems to me the greatest risk from doing this is that the concentrated alkalinity will kill marine life before it disperses. I don't know whether that's a show-stopper.

I also haven't penciled out the numbers to see how much NaOH would be required, and how that compares to current world production. I have no idea whether this is practical. But I think we should be asking these kinds of questions.

I actually have some experience with this on a very small scale. To raise the pH of my 30 gallon reef tank, I add a tiny amount of a product that is mostly NaHCO and Na2CO3.

Still, it is complex and scary, and I have had better success by increasing flow and surface agitation for better oxygen exchange. Just like I would prefer to have less CO2 in our atmosphere.

A cargo shipload of sodium hydroxide dumped into the ocean would be like a drop in a swimming pool. Insignificant.

Not really. The core issue is that Co2 creates an acidic environment and lowers pH levels. It would be like trying to clear a room filled with poison gas by blowing bubbles filled with oxygen...

The most straight-forward way to counter ocean acidification is to reduce the amount of atmospheric CO2. If the atmospheric concentration shifts, the ocean will release the CO2 it's absorbed and its pH will go up.

Granted, that's a pretty tall order. Ideally, we would reduce the atmospheric CO2 from ~400ppm (where it's out now) to 200ppm (where it was before the whole industrial revolution began). At the very least, we probably want to reverse the current trend of +2.0ppm / year to (say) -2.0ppm / year, so hopefully we skim under whatever the wire is.

Some researches claim that the Little Ice Age was caused by the reforestation of the Americas after Europeans accidentally killed all of the Americans who were keeping the content pretty clear of trees. [1] It is estimated that reforesting the Americas sucked about 6ppm to 10ppm of CO2 out of the atmosphere.

So one way to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere is to grow a lot of trees (or other plant life). And then do that every year for about a century; it's not enough to simply reforest even the entire world once, because that would probably only suck (say) 20ppm of CO2 out of the atmosphere, a mere tenth of the target. So after you grow your primordial forest, you need to chop it all down, bury it (or do anything else with the wood that doesn't release its carbon back into the atmosphere), and then plant a new forest, and keep doing it over and over again for however long it takes to get the atmospheric CO2 levels to where you want them to be.

So it's possible to counter ocean acidification, and maybe not even that hard (hell, you're even creating a bit of a "wood rush", since you're going to have lumber coming out of your ears by the time you've regrown enough trees to cover the world ten times over), but I don't really see it happening.

ETA: Based on the figures for tree productivity [2] it looks like you'd need to add about 90 million square km (5% of the Earth's land area) of forests operating at peak productivity to go from +2ppm to -2ppm atmospheric CO2.

[1] http://phys.org/news/2011-10-team-european-ice-age-due.html [2] http://www.safnet.org/answer/kids_corner.cfm

Two points about the Little Ice Age:

1) There is no consensus as to whether it was global or just hemispheric and

2) At least in Europe, it was well underway by the 1200's, so the timing with that theory is off.

1) The temperature effect doesn't really matter. Trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere which raises the pH of the oceans.

2) You're confusing the end of the Medieval Warm Period with the beginning of the Little Ice Age. The Medieval Warm Period ended in approximately 1250 AD; the Little Ice Age began in approximately 1550 AD. While it is possible that the two events are related, there is no reason to assume they are.

As a result of doing that, you'd be transferring the CO2 from the oceans back into the atmosphere.

I'm still unsure about the appropriate process of dealing with all the CO2 released over the last ~200 years - it originally came from somewhere, I'd imagine likely the atmosphere - then over millions of years it was sequestered into the earth through coal and oil. And we've undone that sequestering in a very rapid manner, over approx 200 years, an instant in geological terms.

I'd say the hammer stroke hasn't even started ringing yet, and we haven't even begun to see the changes that we've unleashed - and who knows what they might be? So many unknown unknowns there... and we're attempting to throw our best minds at it, yet we're also still very much continuing with our current trajectory.

This TED talk is relevant and very interesting/disheartening: "Jeremy Jackson: How we wrecked the ocean", http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_jackson.html

It was enough to make me stop eating fish.

There must be some way hackers can help do something about things like this. Maybe a Kiva for environmental issues or something?

Surely some of the brainpower we're burning on social media and cute mobile apps could be redirected this way.

This is a marketing piece masquerading as advocacy. What's the difference? An advocate won't personally profit from the course of action they are recommending. A marketer will. I say this because this man's conclusion is, basically, "The coral reefs are disappearing. Fund my research more."

This does, of course, put research scientists into a bit of a bind. Presumably, since they are the ones looking at these systems in detail, they are the "early warning system" for any catastrophic change. When they see catastrophe, what should a research scientist do? Write an op-ed piece in the Times asking for more research funding? I don't think so.

I think the correct move is to complete the fucking research. "Completion" means to come up with some really solid conclusions, and if the system is on course to do something nasty, to have a list of actionable steps to change it. Then, you advocate that list of actionable steps, citing your research as the basis for it. Presumably, you will NOT personally profit from those steps (except, perhaps, as a consultant).

Now, I can hear the objectivist/egoist hacker contingent's hackles raise - why shouldn't a research scientist profit from their research? Was not that their blood and tears and insight? Actually, I think that should be open for them - but they should call it marketing, not advocacy, and it should be clearly a matter of personal enrichment. The thing that an objectivist should focus on is the hypocrisy of a "call to action" masquerading as altruistic concern over the environment, when it is really a quite selfish concern for securing one's own funding source. It's not that I'm against securing one's own funding source, but to do it under the guise of advocacy is flat out wrong.

Cite? I've never heard of anyone becoming rich because their research was funded.

They don't. Salaries are typically dictated by the funding agency or the university. Research funding often goes toward purchasing equipment and materials, but the bulk of it goes toward paying graduate student stipends and postdoc and technician salaries.

Typically, the only way a researcher can get "rich" off of their research is if they write a book or go on a speaking tour.

or get the nobel prize, or start a company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Shaw

But, those are fringe cases, of course

Ballpark on a typical researchers salary?

Last I checked (about 3 years ago), the median salary for a full professor in the US was $70k/yr. Obviously, there are regional and institutional differences, but I highly doubt that any professor at Harvard is making in excess of $300k.

Mind you, also, that the average age that one reaches "full professor" is something like 45 or 50. If you want to go down that track, you're looking at a salary in the range of $23k until your mid-to-late 20s as a grad student, followed by a salary of no more than $45k as a post-doc until sometime in your mid 30s. If you are lucky enough to snag a tenure track position by your mid 30s, then you'll probably make around $50k for the next 7 years, at which point you might get a tenured position (which can eventually, through promotions, lead to "full professor"), or you might be sent packing at age 45 with essentially no future on your chosen career path. This is not a hypothetical. I watched this very thing happen to two Ph.D. advisors.

So, no...despite what you might have been told, no one chooses a research career to get rich. (Consequently, I left academia to pursue software engineering and easily increased my expected lifetime earnings by at least 4x.)

These numbers are too conservative. The median salary numbers are biased downward by professors in nontechnical fields. Many professors at Harvard, especially in medicine and law, make more than $300K, but most are probably $100-200K. You can get salary numbers for the UC system here.[1]

On the other hand, you are right that the chances of getting through are very slim, maybe 1 in 20 of those dedicated to try. Professional athletics is a safer career move. :)

[1] http://ucpay.globl.org/

That's actually a very cool, very useful tool. Thanks!

And yes...for the top-level number I was guestimating. Still, if the top paid professors are in Law and Medicine, consider that these areas are the top paying non-academic professions. In other words, those professors are still taking a major hit.

I feel you're a bit off base, and are just being negative. Roger Bradbury may be trying to get his research funded but he's also trying to make a difference. You're just trying to out him as some kind of greedy scientist. He's right, we're loosing our reefs. He's also trying to research possible ways to keep a resemblance of what they once were around for future enjoyment. There is nothing wrong with that, and quite frankly it reads at worst like a kickstarter page for science.

Fine, then make a difference. "Fund research more to study the problem more" is NOT a solution. Give me solutions. Don't say "Big hairy problem, no solutions, but fund me to keep looking at it."

If more people had my attitude then maybe we'd not only get to see the pile of shit (the disappearing reef problem) but also some shovels (real ways we can help fix the problem). I'm not interested in getting all into the details of the pile of shit, I just want a shovel, so give me one.

Edit: actually a kickstarter page for science is a great idea. Even better would be a kickstarter page for making chemicals that can be dropped into the ocean to safeguard reefs. Or a kickstarter page for lobbying government to tighten regulations on run-off or global warming. Or a kickstarter page for stimulating reef growth with low-level electric impulses (which is a real thing). What about a solar powered bouy that stimulates reef growth?

There's a ton of stuff to do other than "study it more".

How do you propose to solve it then? The point of the further study is to work out what solutions are going to be the most effective. Saying "give me solutions" will likely result in a second rate solution that is optimal for neither humans nor the reef.

I propose to solve the problem by putting pressure on researchers. Researchers are all about looking at things, and they get all excited about something, but their only response is to look more at those things. It's time to motivate researchers to encourage behavior other than looking more at stuff when you see a problem.

If you can't even begin to identify possible corrective actions, then you have no basis in which to claim there is a possible problem in the first place. Whatever the problem is, poverty, health, environmental destruction - if the problem cannot be addressed than why even bring it up?

Cancer is a good example. It's a problem, it doesn't have a good solution, but we talk about it anyway. Does this explode my theory? No. Because there is no cancer research that is trying to prove that cancer is a problem. We already know that. The only cancer research that goes on is the kind designed to stop cancer. Needless to say, I would not support any research into how cancer is bad, but would support research into how to stop cancer.

In the same way, I would not support research into looking further into how coral reef destruction is real and it's bad, but I would support research into how to slow, stop, and reverse coral reef destruction (without causing lots of other problems, of course).

Downvote me, I don't care.

Without exploring/understanding a problem space, how would you propose the formation of solutions occur?

Moreover, you're ignoring that to get corrective action against entrenched financial/economic incentives requires overwhelming proof of a problem and public sympathy.

>>if the problem cannot be addressed than why even bring it up?

Because an engineer (not a research scientist) somewhere, given the right model, and access to the right information, has a basis on which to start working on a solution.

>>Downvote me, I don't care.

You have a very serious misunderstanding about the scientific process and its interaction with other disciplines it seems. Or to put it more bluntly. Cancer is a punishment from God, not a "problem", no investigation warranted, case closed. So let's all get back to devising scientific methods for determining who's a witch, a real problem that can at least be addressed directly and is beneficial to society.

Act first. Think later. What could possibly go wrong?

Try reading.

OMG There's a comet hurtling toward the Earth. Let's spend more money to model the collision! Will insects survive or just single-celled life? Let's spend millions on computer simulations of the collision itself, answering important questions about geology and previous extinction level events. Let's figure out precisely how bad it will be.

OMG There's a comet hurtling toward the Earth. Let's spend some money developing a plan to mitigate the risk - move the comet out of the way, or destroy it, or in the worst case, prepare an "ark" so that humans can survive, or at least launch some of our most precious info into space (or on the moon) so that a future alien civilization will at least know we existed.

Obviously, the first case has no merit.

OMG there's comet hurtling toward Earth. We didn't study the problem enough so now the debris from our nukes is going to take out ten land-locked cities, instead of just coastal cities from the tsunami.

The frustration you're feeling is a side-effect of reality. Complex problems are complex.

And once again, by your proposed model to fund science. How are we even going to know there's a comet hurling towards earth ? Gazing out there for neat stuff in the cosmos isn't even a problem in the first place, so it's completely useless by your metric.

>>move the comet out of the way, or destroy it, or in the worst case, prepare an "ark" so that humans can survive"

Those are screenwriting scenarios

>>answering important questions about geology and previous extinction level events. Let's figure out precisely how bad it will be.

The answers to those questions have allowed governments to, in as far as is realistically possible, have scenarios and structures in place, for actual world-wide calamity events.

>>Try reading.

You make some highly unorthodox points. There's nothing wrong with that in itself; in fact, it's welcomed. But when people respond to those points and indicate they have no merit (like how research scientists are in it for their own enrichment), being rude and dismissive is not going to convince anyone you're right; quite the contrary.

Actually we can change orbit of comets/asteroids if we know few years ahead of time that they will impact with Earth - by bombarding object with few hundreds kilograms of "metal spheres" we cause small change in energy of object, causing it to deviate from its orbit quite a bit in the long run.

> If you can't even begin to identify possible corrective actions, then you have no basis in which to claim there is a possible problem in the first place.

Hey guys the house is on fire! Oh wait! I don't see any water around here .. or any other fire retardant materials .. I guess the house isn't on fire after all.

> Downvote me, I don't care.

Well, you should. You're being downvoted for very good reasons. Learn from it, or continue being an ineffective advocate of a flawed theory, the choice is yours.

> The only cancer research that goes on is the kind designed > to stop cancer.

That's ludicrous. If solutions were obvious then we would only need engineering. The problem is most of the time "you can't get there from here" - there are still huge swaths of poorly understood territory in fundamental cancer biology. For example how are the natural cell death mechanisms circumvented; how do some cancers hijack the transcription mechanism to promote certain cell growth; how do cancers promote growth of new blood vessels to support their expansion. Of course the goal of the research is to stop cancer, and some of these paths will help, but only some research is directly drug- or treatment-related because there are still too many things we don't know to be able to design effective, targeted treatment

Kickstarter for science: http://www.petridish.org/

How do you propose we know what actions to take without first studying the problem? If your car breaks down, you don't immediately start disassembling the car, you troubleshoot (study the problem, if you will), then apply a reasonable solution.

And here's where you run into politics.

Solutions will be hard - stop emitting CO2 and take better care of the oceans, apparently we get a big do not want on this, or additional measures such as climate engineering which will lead to somewhat unpredictable results because the system is not fully understood and may have unequal results on different regions of the world, creating people who profit and people who get disadvantages.

Both ways are not something scientists can just decree, because it affects everyone, and you run into international relations and cultural differences very soon.

If you want, have a look at some ideas for solutions that actually were published in scientific literature (slides from a lecture): http://www.iup.uni-heidelberg.de/institut/studium/lehre/lehr... And before you say it doesn't talk about the ocean - CO2 levels and ocean acidicity are linked very directly.

edit: Page 26 in the first file is a long set of reasons why climate engineering might be a bad idea.

So people should never be allowed to advocate societal changes in which they have a personal interest?

I think this is unnecessarily rigid. All we really need is full disclosure of the nature of the personal interest, which appears in this case to have been provided.

I don't know how the author is supposed to complete this research, or even continue it, without funding. To bar him from advocating for such funding risks the loss of important advocacy from those who are in the best position to know what is going on.

I guess you have half a point in that there is some risk of research scientists just collecting a salary and never producing much of value, even though they claim loudly that their research is important; such things have happened. But I think it's a chance we have to take. Anyway, the best protection against it is not to tell people like the OP to shut up, but to look closely at their work and decide on our own how valuable we think it is.

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