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Comment by grahar64 | Hacker News Reader

There must have been so much unseen behavior when there were millions more whales in the ocean. Here's hoping that we can see more

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Given the current trajectory of whale populations, 'we' probably won't be seeing that. Maybe in many generations of humans.

Well, the population growth probably isn't linear, so maybe?

Warming will kill off most of the systems these animals depend on within 30 years.

And will give way to many which thrive or evolve to thrive in hotter climates?

It's gonna take a minute (on a geological timescale) for the ecosystems to be able to reliably sustain megafauna again.

Given that we support megafauna today, could you explain why? Legitimately asking, since I don't see a reason they couldn't adapt just as well.

Because evolution is slow and the climate change is going fast.

Evolution of small things like algae and the krill which feed on it and feed the whale is quite fast. Single celled organisms reproduce on the scale of 20 minutes and hold immense amounts of genetic diversity in their populations to facilitate the success of a better adapted line almost immediately. Additionally, they are adept at horizontal gene transfer from other well-adapted organisms.

This would be great news if the whale literally only required krill to survive, but complex megafauna have complex needs, so the ability of krill and other small creatures to evolve is largely irrelevant in a discussion regarding the ability of megafauna to survive. This is especially true if you read TFA and see that the whales already adapt to eat different things as necessary.

Humpbacks have a highly specialized feeding mechanism. They only prey on krill and small fish.

The food chain really is sun -> algae -> krill (and sometimes small fish) -> humpback whale

In recent years we’ve learned that humpbacks are generalist feeders with a wide variety of feeding strategies adapted to different kinds of prey.

Humpbacks will switch between Krill (their staple in many regions) and small schooling fish (herring, sand lance, anchovies, etc.).

But they don’t eat large fish, squid regularly, or anything like seals - so they’re not “generalists” in the broad, anything-goes sense.

They’re still constrained by their baleen filter-feeding system, which limits them to tiny prey

That's just one view of the stack and isn't a systems view. Other things support and interact with those other things.

Algae are the bottom of the ocean food chain. Everything interacts with it. But algae's happy to grow in a bowl of water left in the sun.

Lots of things eat krill and small fish. They're near the bottom of the foodchain too. In addition to algae, krill are opportunistic omnivores who often consume detritus. But their primary diet is algae. Small fish tend to be pretty similar.

It's not that other things don't interact with algae or krill or small fish, it's that those groups are the foundation bedrock of the ocean ecology. And single celled organisms like algae are tough as nails in aggregate. Couldn't kill them all if we tried. Pool owners will be familiar with the struggle.

But it's not a bottom up interaction. If whales are killed off from climate change, then those other things can get out of control. Too much algae, and then you have hypoxic environments.

A perfect example of this is when sea otters were nearly hunted to extinction which caused sea urchins to flourish which caused the death of coral and coastal environments which started to affect the larger things that depended on those environments.

My point is that any change to the careful balance can have non-linear effects.

I think we're coming at this from different directions. The OP I responded to originally said: "Warming will kill off most of the systems these animals depend on within 30 years." which isn't what you're talking about. A top-down extinction looks like whaling in the 1800s and we already had that. Now they're on the mend.

Right, this is my point. Looking at krill is looking at one PIECE of the stack. Other things support and interact with that stack. The stack is the whale. The point is that it doesn’t matter if this one single piece of the stack can evolve, it’s not nearly enough.

My point is, for instance, that they need appropriate temperatures in the water. Again, nothing survives PURELY based on caloric intake. It does not matter much at all if krill evolve.

>but complex megafauna have complex needs

Like what? Emotional support dolphin?

Evolution has been found to be happening 2-4 times faster than the rate earlier thought: https://news-archive.exeter.ac.uk/2022/may/articles/fuelofev...

We would need 1000x faster, so that doesn’t really change anything.

It could easily become this fast or even faster, if we would just stop worrying so much about "playing god" and focus instead on getting good at this job. We don't have much time for this either, as AI is on the trajectory to take over that mantle in the next decade or three, whether we like it or not.

But seriously, we may not have much choice. Natural evolution stopped being able to adapt to environmental changes after it created us; genetic engineering is essentially the only way to make biology adaptable enough again.

Unpopular opinion for obvious reasons, but probably the only realistic one apart from just witnessing one extinction after another. Pollution and climate change aint going anywhere until we elevate whole world to the level of say western Europe.

But since we humans are pretty arrogant with our wisdom and lack long term patience, I can see many ways where well-intended meddling can end up in catastrophe overall.

The next question is which traits to do you choose and the next question is which traits are better, because choices will imply ordering, and then you open a big can of worms that last time killed millions of people. So maybe there's other ways to avoid doom that didn't create doom last time we went down the path.

It’s game over for a very long time

Sure, in a few million years.

In human time scales, the species which thrive will tend to be the adaptive generalists. Evolution takes time.

And: on the 'r' side of the r/K reproductive strategy. Whales are literally the exemplar of K-selection, that is a very small number of high-quality offspring.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory>

Whale lifespans are long, populations and fecundity / brood sizes are small, sexual maturity relatively late, and childhood mortality relatively high. All of these make for slower rather than more rapid evolution.

Species such as krill (on which many whales feed) are far more likely to evolve rapidly in the face of increasing selection pressures. Whales might well find themselves boxed into an inescapable evolutionary corner.

Not at the pace of change we’ve chosen to accept, no.

Why put a number on it? Every number so far has been wrong. Can we agree on the negative impacts of humans on an environment conducive to humanity without putting obviously wrong timings on predictions? I bet your intention is to provoke urgency but to most people it just causes an eye roll because it's not true, whereas the underlying ideas are true.

cod fishing boats used to have to be wary of the catch being so big that it would tip the boat.

We have no real frame of reference for what we've already lost.

Of course we do, you just gave an example. In fact if we truly didn't, then there would be no problem.

I think their point is that discounting the time estimates is more a constant shifting of the window of what we expect more than them being de-facto incorrect. They’re more off by degree (e.g. an XX% reduction vs complete extinction) than being worthless. As the example points out a large reduction can be very similar to an annihilation it’s just that we are only used to what we know so we constantly shift what is normal.

You have sailed past the point. There were so, so many cod it was hard not to catch a bunch. That isn’t a metric, it’s an indicator that most likely meant vast unseen numbers. The tip of the iceberg is a metaphor for a reason, though it may become an anachronism within our lifetimes.

The argument is that we didn't notice, not that it's a predictor or whatever. And we noticed, so the argument is not good.

Very much agree. It's a pretty common mistake to bundle real information with obviously wrong details and lose credibility. Especially in the eyes of people looking for a reason to discredit the argument.

The disingenuous people who discredit climate change will do so no matter how serious people act. There is no point in changing behavior on their account.

The point is to convince people who are undecided. Using information that's known to be false or weakly supported is then short-sighted and counterproductive, because enough false predictions will turn up that those undecided will tune out entirely

>Using information that's known to be false or weakly supported

But where does such information originate from? Is laypeople just making it up?

It applies to anyone knowingly using false information to try to influence people

Weakening predictions until they become unfalsifiable seems like an odd approach to being taken seriously.

So make predictions about stuff that happens next year and be right about them. The problem is that strongly predicting what will happen in 30 years has always been wrong so far. My point is just focus on what you know. Anyone can say whatever about 30 years from now and ride that for the next 29.

>strongly predicting what will happen in 30 years has always been wrong so far

No it hasn't, this is climate change denialist nonsense. In fact no less a figure than ExxonMobil correctly predicted the trajectory of global CO2 levels and corresponding increase in warming as far back as the 1970s and their predictions remain accurate today.

I've been alive long enough that my hometown was supposed to be underwater several times already. Climate change is real and predictions have also been very wrong.

because whales can communicate into the thousands of kilometers range and nowadays, because of marine traffic, they are luck to get into the hundred meters

micro-plastics into the ocean don't have a good prognosis on numbers reduction

global warming has a huge effect on oceanic life

and so on. maybe the number is much worse

>Every number so far has been wrong

No it hasn't.

Imagine you killed off all of humanity save for a couple people in Muncie, IN. How long until the next Shakespeare or Einstein emerges? Better yet, a properly heterogeneous culture?

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