Wouldn't it be better to just stop doing the thing that's making the existing reefs die?
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
169 points (97.7% liked)
News
23649 readers
2053 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
In that regard only, even complete course correction at this stage won't effect change quick enough. There must be some supplemental action like this.
NOOO!!!!! SUPERCORAL IS THE ONLY SOLUTION!!!!
Buy spores now!
Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be one or the other.
Why don't we just 3d print fake, plastic corals and put them into the sea? It will look about the same right?
/s
You think I would be working in a place like this if I could afford a real coral?
Yes, but it seems creating an environment to survive humanity is easier than changing humanity.
Don’t worry, humanity can’t outlive itself, and in a short million years it will be like we never existed.
The human effect is just an elaborate version of “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.”
Agreed. Kill all humans.
Oh damn, Bender! I didn’t know you were on Lemmy.
Hey, sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?
Much better. You’re a lot easier to be around when you’re not ragingly sober.
Bite my shiny metal ass.
I have to say, I do wonder if reefs will just gradually shift to higher latitudes.
It may just be that the water temperature is increasing faster than the reefs can migrate. But if that's the case, we can work with that. There has been remarkable success growing reefs by putting starter structures on the seafloor and then seeding them with coral. If we start doing that in places we previously thought to be to cold for coral, that has potential to work...
But it’s more than just temperature. Add salinity to the equation. I can’t tell you how salinity of any particular place changes with a temperature change, but it does. Add current, add all the other chemicals that are dropped into the ocean….
How does every coral on the the Great Barrier Reef know to spawn one time a year? How does a turtle find its way back to the place they were born to lay eggs? There are nuances well beyond our understanding and will outlive us. Coral will come back, but perhaps not in its current form, and probably not in our lifetimes.
There's a lot we don't know about ocean ecosystems in general, that's very true. Saving the coral is a very hard problem. But to be honest, we're human, hard problems are our bread and butter. Often, we prefer them to easy problems.
We were doing fine until the SuperCoral™ evolved the ability to breath air back in 2047… must’ve been some of that salamander DNA that we used. 
Wild species are extremely good at adapting to evolving conditions. Their ability in this is many more times more powerful than any developments these searchers will produce.
On the other hand, researchers are very good at convincing themselves that they should have more money ... well, sometimes they are right.
Actively breeding is much faster than evolution, and the current rate of change is too fast for evolution to keep up. Eventually something new will fill the niche, but that doesn't help humanity.
Thanks for your reply. You are probably right and I was commenting in frustration about researchers not giving enough credit to nature's capabilities.
Wild species are extremely good at adapting to evolving conditions. Their ability in this is many more times more powerful than any developments these searchers will produce.
Evolution is famously slow though. And there is a deadline here, so to speak... Human technological advancement on the other hand is famously fast, and constantly accelerates.
In other words, even if this is an overly optimistic plan today, it wouldn't be overly optimistic in 5 years or so. And if it would be feasible in five years, then now is a great time to start working on it.
This reminds me of the human genome project, the effort to sequence the entire human genome. This was an international program started in 1984, sequencing really started in earnest in 1990, and by 1999, after fifteen years, they had only 10% of the genome sequenced. But just four years later they declared the project "complete" with 92% of the genome sequenced. Comparing those final four years to the previous nine years, you get a 1800% increase in speed.
i like your explanation and i even see one more way you are right about this (and i was wrong) : while it might be a long shot investing in this research, the cost of this is minimal compared to the benefit. So, it's worth the shot (even if the chances of success are ... hum ... unknowable for now)