'Our worst fears': Scientists warn of damage to Great Barrier Reef
Posted by teamsaxon@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 40 comments
Posted by teamsaxon@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 40 comments
D00mfl0w3r@reddit
Fuq... it's like a knife in my heart. I have been in love with Oz natural wonders since I was in kindergarten.
teamsaxon@reddit (OP)
☹️
TheDailyOculus@reddit
We're currently (not a long-term trend, but the global mean temperature for october) 17,5% away from 2.0 degrees of global warming - the threshold identified for complete death of all corals globally.
teamsaxon@reddit (OP)
Humanity is a disgraceful and pitiful species.
SavingsDimensions74@reddit
71% of the earths surface is water. Mostly oceans.
I’ve watched the demise of coral reefs these last twenty years. I watched them hurt bit by bit. Seen them recover and then stress again
But my marker in the sand is the Red Sea. It’s well adapted to high SSTs and because it’s narrow but deep, it’s been pretty much the only place not impacted by bleaching.
That changed this year.
It is hard to even explain how much we rely on our oceans. And we are killing them. This will take out a significant portion of humans that rely on the oceans for their existence.
Like everything, give a long enough timeframe, species can adapt.
They absolutely cannot adapter in the timeframes we’re looking at.
It’s hard to underestimate how grave the situation is
SubsistentTurtle@reddit
That’s what’s scary about it, a little bit hot and stressed conditions as the averages inch upward slowly, then one day the averages are high enough where a brief spike crosses that line and an entire area is completely wiped out. It’s terrifying.
PrettyTittyGangBang@reddit
I've experienced it, too. Year over year, there's decline but also "recovery" (replacement)... then one year you're looking at a desert you never imagined could be possible.
It's horrifying.
brik-6@reddit
Love how they keep mentioning agricultural run off instead of the plumes of black spewing out of factories all over the world
Nah its the farmers
_deebauchery@reddit
My mother revisited the same spot since her last time in 1989; it’s a empty colourless she’ll compared to what it was. She talked so passionately about her visit so often before, and now it’s like someone has died. Guess they have.
teamsaxon@reddit (OP)
That's absolutely horrific. Every day I mourn for all the beauty and natural places that are being lost, if not lost already. The evolution from untouched to dead by human hands is disgusting and makes me so bloody angry. These biomes have taken hundreds of millions of years to flourish and we have wiped them out in an instant.
Ok_Act_5321@reddit
All I want to see in my life is an apocalypse. Thats it.
Ghostwoods@reddit
Good news, friend!
Various_Weather2013@reddit
Crazy to think that I was buying the fight club idea of being the middle children of history, and that my life would be just be decades of pacing consumption until death. Unremarkable consumption.
But nope, we're getting apocalyptic consumption and we're at the end of civilization as we know it.
I wish the fight club hell reality was the one I got to live. The apocalypse is going to be much much worse than any of us realize. Just wait til these consumers start facing scarcity.
Mtn_Blue_Bird@reddit
Humanity took Durden's musings to heart "Maybe the solution is not self improvement but self destruction".
howareyoudoing92@reddit
https://youtu.be/HZMUGlFI_tg?si=uxhyRjrZJrnNqDbr. Here’s Tyler Durden’s dream
Ghostwoods@reddit
It's wild. A free seat to the Fall of Humanity.
TimeEstimate@reddit
Land-based run-off remains the greatest contributor to poor water quality in the inshore areas of the Great Barrier Reef and is a major contributor to the current poor state of many inshore marine ecosystems.
https://www2.gbrmpa.gov.au/land-based-run
arealnineinchnailer@reddit
i remember reading somewhere that with 1.5 C warming coral reefs are basically extinct, and we're well past worrying about a 1.5 C increase in warming.
FUDintheNUD@reddit
Yea it was in the last IPCC report. 75% gone at 1.5deg. 99% gone at 2 degrees.
PrettyTittyGangBang@reddit
as someone who works directly with marine ecosystems, it's an absurd way to phrase the problem, like there's a tax on coral the more heat there is in the ocean.
What really happens is ALL the coral die in any place even remotely exposed, and some deeper, colder, or otherwise protected reefs, are damaged but survive.
It's much more reasonable to think of it as a person with a fever. At 38.5C, that person is 75% of the way to being dead, but at 2C, they're 99% of the way there, if that fever lasts for any longer than a week.
There's always going to be a threshold at which life in the ocean collapses, wholesale, other than the smallest and shortest lived bacteria.
There are literal deadlines in all ecosystems, and all anyone will care about is how clear the water is all of a sudden.
kylerae@reddit
And keep in mind it is probably only at 99% because no scientist will ever say 100% because they can never have that much certainty.
teamsaxon@reddit (OP)
Fuck.
Various_Weather2013@reddit
We're way past fucks, buddy.
FitBenefit4836@reddit
Surprised we're still talking about the reefs, seems like a foregone conclusion at this point. RIP
OrangeCrack@reddit
I mean, it's a fear. Mass starvation due to breadbasket failures and widespread chaos and rioting trumps this one for me. But ya, it's still bad.
Maj0r-DeCoverley@reddit
One of the saddest moments of my life was when I swam in a coral reef in the Caribbean. It was amazing, full of little fishes and funny rocks, and someone informed me "all the coral here died a few years ago". I was just a child, I assumed I was in a coral reef. While I was in a dead cemetery.
Years later I swam in a coral reef in Polynesia. Where all the "rocks" are alive, there are so many animals you can't even see things around you, etc... But even here the locals informed me the reef was dying, "not what it was 50 years ago".
Anyway. I think those are the moments where I understood we were already in "Blade Runner". "Stand on Zanzibar". Pick anything else you like. It made me understand the ecological horizon, and that never in my life I've seen healthy nature. I've seen sad and isolated remnants of it
teamsaxon@reddit (OP)
You just have to think you are lucky that you've seen it at all. I haven't been to the Great Barrier Reef yet and I am really sad about all the biodiversity that has been and continues to be lost.
MainStreetRoad@reddit
“Australia must commit to a federal emissions reduction target of at least 90 per cent below 2005 levels by 2035, stop approving new fossil fuel projects, and support the worldwide push for a global treaty to phase out all fossil fuels,” Mr Leck said.
Hmm…
Immediate-Meeting-65@reddit
Hey we might do it. You don't know for sure.
Butt_acorn@reddit
Oh, you’ll phase out fossil fuels, alright.
Muahahahahahahaha
CollapseBy2022@reddit
Capitalism? ❌
Accelerationism! ✔
Terrible_Horror@reddit
Sometimes I feel that doomers and accelerationists are the ones living in reality because in reality our world as it is today can’t function with oil and gas.
CollapseBy2022@reddit
I disagree. Today's economy can't function without cheap energy. But we can definitely have a functioning world without 95% of fossil fuels.
A LOT of our energy use is for production/transport of products, just to keep the economy running.
In reality, we're still just 'somewhat clever cavemen'. We need a cave (a home), some heat, food, water and ..... that's about it.
We could allocate the fossil fuels we need to stuff like (mostly vegan) agriculture, transport of that, and stuff like critical medicines (because smallpox and measles suck ass).
traveller-1-1@reddit
lol.
DecisionAvoidant@reddit
In 2005, Australia's emissions were totalled at 551.9M tons of carbon dioxide. A 90% reduction would mean reducing their output of emissions to just 55M tons of carbon dioxide.
In 2023, Australia's emissions totalled 1.15B tons of carbon dioxide.
This means in order to meet this goal, Australia would need to reduce their emissions by 95% in the next 10 years OR would need to reduce their emissions by ~25% each year from beginning to end (e.g. if they start at 1.15B, they need to cut 25% of emissions in 2025 alone).
SavingsDimensions74@reddit
Christ, and I thought I was an optimist!
regular_joe_can@reddit
I thought it was toast a while ago with all the mass bleaching events reported.
I guess people haven't given up on it yet. Or they just want something to write about.
-Planet-@reddit
Haven't the scientists realize that the folks with all the resources and money just don't give a shit?
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/teamsaxon:
A new study has concluded what we all know: corals are bleaching and dying at an unprecedented rate due to human induced climate change.
The collapse of the Great Barrier Reef will have knock on effects for the ecosystems that depend on them for survival. This study shows the impact of human activities (agricultural run off, pollution, and climate change causing high sea surface temperatures) over a 39 year period and it is not good. There have been renewed calls for the government to implement more ambitious climate policies but as we all know, these calls fall on deaf ears. With more gas and fossil fuel projects being approved every year, there will be no chance for reefs and their ecosystems to recover substantially from ever increasing heat events.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1guqmf0/our_worst_fears_scientists_warn_of_damage_to/lxvynrh/
teamsaxon@reddit (OP)
A new study has concluded what we all know: corals are bleaching and dying at an unprecedented rate due to human induced climate change.
The collapse of the Great Barrier Reef will have knock on effects for the ecosystems that depend on them for survival. This study shows the impact of human activities (agricultural run off, pollution, and climate change causing high sea surface temperatures) over a 39 year period and it is not good. There have been renewed calls for the government to implement more ambitious climate policies but as we all know, these calls fall on deaf ears. With more gas and fossil fuel projects being approved every year, there will be no chance for reefs and their ecosystems to recover substantially from ever increasing heat events.