Forgive my ramble as I am exhausted and perhaps a bit grumpy, but reading articles like this really get me worked up.
“good new/bad news”
Good news is the reef could be saved if humans dramatically modified their activities today. Bad news politicians aren’t going to lift a finger, and the average person really doesn’t understand what is happening, so yeah basically there is no good news.
There is an upsetting trend of similar articles out there. “The coral reefs may be able to last longer then we expected”, says a biologist or a climatologist. What he or she means is they may make it 60 years versus 50 years. What the media says, “SWEET, good news positive story we can share for once!”
The average american, sad to say, will quickly come to a conclusion or become bored with an article like that and walk away with a false conclusion. Scientists need to be brief and to the point with the media and the public. And the stress on the article should be more about how this time it is different and we need to make change immediately.
Climate change is not as much of a debated topic among intelligent people as many uneducated politicians and media anchors make it seem.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:2, topic:5667”]
Scientists need to be brief and to the point with the media and the public. And the stress on the article should be more about how this time it is different and we need to make change immediately.
Climate change is not as much of a debated topic among intelligent people as many uneducated politicians and media anchors make it seem. [/quote]
Couldn’t agree more. Scientists are horrible at relaying their findings to the masses.
The problem is nobody cares. The vast majority of people are poor and only care about their next paycheck, the middle class fights to pay its over reached bills and the wealthy are just enjoying too much life. Nobody is going to stop buying gas, or other things that cause catastrophic pollution.
As for politicians, they are focusing hard on CREATING jobs, which means MORE gears turning in factories and smoke stacks throwing out pollution…
[quote=“TimH07, post:4, topic:5667”]
As for politicians, they are focusing hard on CREATING jobs, which means MORE gears turning in factories and smoke stacks throwing out pollution…[/quote]
They have done there job well(according to their bosses who profit from pollution) if they have you convinced the only way to create more jobs is to create more pollution.
C’mon Jon… you know what I mean, obviously they don’t shoot for more pollution. But you know how it works, I hope, more jobs normally means more products for the consumers. Products require packaging, packaging is discarded and ends up in dumps. To create products you need energy, even plug in electric cars are plugged into an outlet run by mostly coal electric plants. The people commuting to work requires energy. The more money people make they more they can consume, which equals more pollution.
Even if America jumps into non pollution head first, which it wont… hello Kyoto treaty… there are still 160 other countries who don’t give a crap.
Inevitable is inevitable, enjoy your tank… >:::
A small excerpt from the article:
"“The hopeful news is that if we can get serious about controlling greenhouse gas emissions and controlling climate change, we have a good chance of saving reefs. But it has to be combined with management of local issues as well.”
Coral reefs are crucial nurseries for fish and other marine life. Their demise could collapse global fisheries that support the food web, including humans. Mass coral die-off also could render extinct yet-to-be-discovered biological substances that hold cures for human diseases."
It might be sad to say but I believe by the time we (the human race) do get serious about this we will be too late and many species will have gone extinct. Coral reefs hold some of the most promising cures for diseases and there is just a complete lack of concern about destroying them. It is just sad.
Notice the part when they drilled the coral there was an absence of growth for 2500 years. That may be what’s happening now. It pretty bad. But it could be a normal cycle. The pollution just makes it happen faster. Look at the population 50 years ago compared to now. Our population increase is a snowball effect. If action isn’t taken the world will be so populated we won’t have enough resources. We all need to stop being greedy. A few movies out there show ways the world can end or a lot of disasters that really could happen its scary.
Globally extinct and locally extinct are two different things. Corals may have disappeared from different areas because of temperatures in the past, but I do not believe they have ever disappeared completely due to ocean acidification.
What is happening is by no stretch of the imagination “normal”.
At least the depression has lowered our net CO2 emissions.
The problem is we don’t know what normal is. We do cause pollution for sure and that’s not good. But 2500 years is a long time. Science paints a picture but only half a picture. What happened when the continents were made. It’s a long time ago. There was crazy weather before there was pollution too.
Define pollution; the Earths’s climate is clearly not constant. However, there is no denying the physics behind certain molecular elements and their constituent compounds altering the atmosphere. Nature is dynamic and combustion of hydrocarbons is exacerbating natural cycles.
Pollution is excessive co co2 Cfc hcfc and now probably hfc. All the chemicals we use and all the things we burn.
Science uses the excuse “It has happened before, so this is normal.” Most of the events of drastic climate change can be attributed to something like a MAJOR volcanic eruption. So now that we have the same effects without one, we are in BIG trouble when we do. They need to give the entire picture with this information, like events that happened in the world during these periods. Was there a volcano exploding? a typhoon? tsunami? Any of these could have a devastating effect on a reef. So to say that what is happening now is “normal” is just absurd.
If you walk into your backyard and see one dead deer they are completely extinct from your yard. A month later you see 5 deer, they have come back again after being extinct for over a month! Let’s have a toast to spontaneous generation. Animals can come back from anything so it doesn’t matter what we do or who we are killing.
Two core samples from two parts of the planet does not mean there were no corals anywhere on the planet and they completely came back. They do not state in the article where they think corals came back from or that right now we are not just muddying the waters in one part of the world, but messing up the entire planet at once.