Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by takyon on Wednesday April 25 2018, @02:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the going,-going,... dept.

Gazette Day reports:

In the year 2016, there was a heatwave that affected many parts of the world. The extreme temperatures were especially felt in and around the continent of Australia. As a result of the heatwave, the waters around the Great Barrier Reef warmed considerably. Scientists were worried that with the oceans already warming due to global climate change, the additional heat stress might cause considerable damage to the Great Barrier Reef.

After the heatwave subsided, a team of scientists conducted tests to find out how the heatwave damaged the reef. Extensive aerial surveys were conducted. These surveys concluded that a great deal of the reef had bleaching that had killed off many parts of the reef. [...] The surveys found that 90 percent of the corals in the reef suffered at least some type of bleaching. The worst damage was on the northernmost third of the reef. In this section, much of the damage was caused by the initial rise in temperature.

The other damage occurred later. The coral reefs depend on a symbiotic relationship with a certain type of algae. Over the course of a few months after the heating event, the algae separated from the reef causing additional reef death.

During the heating event in 2016, one-third of the coral reefs in the world were bleached and damaged in some way. The reefs do have the ability to come back from this [heat-induced damage] as long as the damaging events are not too frequent.

Global warming transforms coral reef assemblages (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0041-2) (DX)


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:32PM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:32PM (#671656) Journal

    probably a very large absolute number while also being a very small relative number on a planetary scale

    That bit got me thinking, just a little. Maybe we need to work on that. Or, maybe I do, but I'll drag you along.

    How do we measure biomass, anyway? Lets say by the ton. In ages past, I suppose that there were times when a ton of biomass had a great deal of value, in the grand scheme of things. Like, soon after the asteroid impacted the Gulf of Mexico, and most of life on earth died off. Or, a little later, during the ice ages. Life was rare, and relatively precious. At other times in earth's history, biomass was bountiful, easy to come by, and relatively cheap.

    Mankind's history begins in a very rich period of earth's history. Life everywhere. A human couldn't get out of bed without stumbling over SOMETHING alive. Fleas, roaches, rats, nuisance cats and dogs, monkeys, viruses - life everywhere. Grasses, trees, ferns, herbs, you name it. Plants and animals, edible and inedible, everywhere you could look.

    In recent decades, we've done an awful lot to poison the earth. Forget about "global warming" and "climate change". Let's just concentrate on our various methods of killing life. Strip mining, slash and burn agriculture, clear cutting forests, nuclear tests, chemical plants poisoning the earth (think Love Canal), even rerouting rivers to dry up lakes and seas (Russia's Aral Sea). Let's not forget the dead zones in the ocean, caused by sewerage, garbage disposal, and agricultural runoff. Then, there is all the over harvesting of the seas.

    With or without global warming, we've managed to kill off significant amounts of the biomass on the earth. In view of all of that - what IS the current value of a ton of biomass? It's certainly much higher than mankind's earliest days. There is less overall biomass, and far more people to share that biomass amongst.

    Part of that problem is overpopulation, of course. But, damn! We are so very careless, in so many ways. It's not like there's another rich, bio-diverse world just down the road that we can move to. We continue to poison the earth, forgetting that this is the only home we have.

    200 years ago, harvesting a shipload of coral to create ornaments would have meant nothing. For that matter, shiploads of ivory were routinely harvested for sale in Asia, Europe, and even the US. Today, I think ivory is outlawed just about everywhere.

    So - what is the value of a ton of coral, today?

    Mmmmm - stumbled over this image a few weeks ago - check it out: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-09-Part-of-Nature.html [recombinantrecords.net] (takes quite a long while to load on my slow-ass internet - but it's worth scrolling through)

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Flamebait=1, Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Total=4
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:41PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 25 2018, @03:41PM (#671659)

    Hmm I was thinking about biomass on a planetary scale, like the oxygen level on the other side of the planet where I live will not collapse because the reef died, or if all that "reef stuff" died and decayed it wouldn't release enough CO2 or methane to affect the entire planet.

    Value on a human scale given by humans is probably a different topic. Value in the sense of nobody in Chicago is going to run out of O2 because the algae on the reef in Aus died is more what I was thinking of where it just doesn't matter.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 25 2018, @04:14PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 25 2018, @04:14PM (#671675) Journal

      Ohhh-kay. Except, oxygen isn't exactly bio. Oxygen is a chemical, or more accurately, an element, which readily combines with itself to create a chemicl - O2. And, it just as readily reacts with several other chemicals, like iron, carbon, aluminum, hydrogen, etc. Biology as we know it is largely dependent on oxygen, but the oxygen isn't biological in nature. As I understand the term "biomass", oxygen isn't really part of that mass, except when it has reacted with other chemicals to produce the various hydrocarbons, of which biology is composed.

      But, to address the point you are making: I really don't know if, or how, the collapse of the reefs may or may not snowball into some dire consequences that do affect you and I. The doomsayers want very badly to convince us that the snowball affect is going to wipe us off the face of the earth, and very soon. A lot of other people insist that it will have no effect. Me? I dunno. What I do know is, we aren't very good stewards of the earth that we have inherited.