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Half of Great Barrier Reef coral 'dead or dying' due to global warming & 93% bleached
- Thread starter Lime
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Octavianus
Banned
But but but.... global warming is a myth right guys?
plagiarize
Banned
They just don't want to believe it.
I mean, I'm not super excited about believing in it myself. However, facts are facts and I can't personally throw them out just to let myself not have to think about something upsetting.
For every one scientist & scientific article claiming (human-caused) climate change isn't real (studies often funded by parties who want the denial to continue or using methods that are lacking), there's, like, a thousand that say it is from unbiased sources. The scientific consensus is OVERWHELMINGLY in support of climate change that is caused by humans. This narrative that there are a lot of scientist/science against it is total & utter BS that isn't substantiated by any proof.
You don't even have to look at temperatures. There is evidence of climate change all over Earth if you know the signs to look for. Glaciers are melting faster than ever, ocean levels are rising, corals are in ways that are an indication oceans are warmer & warming, desertification is increasing in some previously dry areas that are even drier now etc. None of these would be happening and none of it would be happening/changing so quickly unless climate change was happening. And there's nothing else changing so drastically that could cause the climate change except the amount of greenhouse gases we spread into the atmosphere (Earth's position in relation to the sun isn't changing in a way that the climate would warm this quickly, sun's activity hasn't changed in a way that would explain this decades long warming etc.).
Fenderputty
Banned
Gracias!
That is a horrible article and has absolutely nothing to do with a varied vegan/vegetarian diet, just so you know.
plagiarize
Banned
I'm a meat eater, but that study is a bunch of absolute biased nonsense.
'In order to get as many calories as a slice of bacon from lettuce...'
You should stop reading right there. Basically no one goes 'well I'm going to stop eating a kilogram of beef a week, and instead eat 6.8 kilograms of broccoli'.
Fenderputty
Banned
I caught that.
This isn't always true. My friend does something this on his Zone diet.
Let's say you are right! Just for the fun of it.
Give me a valid argument for not trying to stop it and fight against it.
"Oh I didn't do it, so it is not my problem" mentality is just as worse as refuting evidence and visual proof!
Or do you believe that it isn't happening and it is all a conspiracy?
pr0cs
Member
and what you posted proves how that it is related to man's influence?
What about 200-300 years ago, do we have data on the reefs then? What was the percentage of bleaching a 1000 years ago?
It is convenient to blame it on human intervention. There clearly is not enough data and statistics to be certain of it. I mean, if we had some sort of disaster there then it would be easy to agree with you. Right now, there is only speculation.
Why do you think this is relevant?
The point of that excerpt is that bleaching has repeatedly corresponded to higher ocean temperatures. And since the temperature of the oceans is increasing very quickly, bleaching is happening more.
Sunster
Member
their argument is that regulations will hurt business' (huge corporations) and economic growth (bonus' of said corporation's ceo's)
pr0cs
Member
Because if you don't have statistics from the past, enough to see a trend, that making statements about the warming trends are just that.. statements.. with no basis on factual data.
If we had data from hundreds or thousands of years ago we could look at trends and see "well the temperatures of the water moves in cycles and the bleaching is expected" or "never in history has this level of bleaching been seen" and thus make the inference that it is due to our intervention.
I am not against trying to reduce our carbon footprint on the earth, but to make blanket statements "it's due to global warming and man" with no real data to back it up, well that is grandstanding at it's best.
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
What a depressing future we're headed into.
It makes me not want to have offspring, because their world is going to be even worse than the one I'll be leaving.
It makes me not want to have offspring, because their world is going to be even worse than the one I'll be leaving.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
Same here. I do want kids but I am also aware that we're fucked in approximately 50 years.
"No real data". Dude.
200-300 years ago the world was cooler than average.
And yes, we have seen more bleaching than this... During the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago, which was caused by a massive amount of carbon being released.
Seriously bro, just stop.
Even your logic doesnt make sense, setting aside your bullshit grasp of what data we have and don't for a minute, do you even understand how coral reefs work? How bleaching events work?
We don't need 1000's of years of data to know that rises in ocean temperatures cause bleaching events. We don't need 1000's of years of data to investigate if any other causes of bleaching events may be the major culprit. We don't need 1000's of years of data to know the basic science of how the greenhouse effect works or that the ocean absorbs certain gasses that can raise its temperature which, again, is a major cause of bleaching events in coral.
Hell, even the douchebag in your video admits to the science of the latter point. He's just an opportunistic contrarian going against the grain for money.
Please explain how we're fucked in 50 years?
Andodalf
Banned
Love this.
Did you arrive at this conclusion all on your own? Those are standard talking points by climate change deniers. Verbatim.
"How do you know? Were you there?"
Im sure he went through all this research before he came to that enlightened conclusion...
By the time it comes to such an obvious disaster that even the deniers can't deny it, it will be far far too late. Already there is some evidence that it already is too late.
He got me wondering if he was the guy I was arguing last Climate Change thread I was in(he wasnt, but he was there)
Seems this has been his go to argument for several threads now:
In spite of people in each one very nicely answering a question that a quick google search could of answered. So like I suspected earlier, willful ignorance. Though it is interesting he wants to play the role of learned expert when a couple months ago he didn't even know basic science underlying the issue....But now he's got it all figured out and an energy schill at his disposal to tell you all about it. Which I guess makes sense because he works for the industry and apparently has a vested interest in not addressing climate change:
So yeah, willful ignorance and greed.
The Guardian is doing a bunch of articles on it:
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...-great-barrier-reefs-coral-bleaching-disaster
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/17/great-barrier-reef-worst-destruction
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ing-clear-and-incontrovertible-say-scientists
https://youtu.be/TB9I6UUoo_4
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...-great-barrier-reefs-coral-bleaching-disaster
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/17/great-barrier-reef-worst-destruction
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ing-clear-and-incontrovertible-say-scientists
https://youtu.be/TB9I6UUoo_4
Good on them for keeping this going and not just doing a one off and forgetting about it.
Sunster
Member
they will still deny that humans caused it until the end of days. protect the blessed job creators at all costs.
I feel like the people who are in their twenties right now and their children had a bad luck in being born just in time to witness a real fucking bleak future. Would have been perfect to be born in like the 60's or something. When the shit finally hits the fan I would be pretty much dead anyway of old age after living a nice life. God damnit.
TheLostBigBoss
Banned
Na, I'm in my early 20's and I see good and bad things about the future. I think people are too pessimistic about environmental issues and our inability to deal with them. COP 21 is just the start, renewable energy only gets cheaper and world wide policy will only ramp up as time goes on. In a decade from now EV's are going to be as cheap as a normal 18 grand car, renewables are already overtaking fossil fuels in new global capacity for two years in a row, I doubt this is going to change going forward.
The future is going to be different, no fact about it, but just because it's going to be different doesn't mean that we can't adapt and live comfortable lives.
Dear Beelzebub you are so fucking clueless. -_-; We can be almost certain that man has quite significant effects on climate because NOTHING ELSE EXPLAINS IT. These scientists whose work you so easily dismiss as "not real results" have spend DECADES trying to find alternative explanations but NOTHING explains it as well as the increase in greenhouse gases does and that is mainly driven by supermassive human-caused emissions. It's not the sun. Our position to the sun has not changed so drastically that we'd be going through this kind of climate change. Sun itself isn't suddenly more active. Nothing else is currently producing so much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that exceeds human influence. Continents haven't suddenly moved so much that it would have large scale effects of this scope & pace. There's simply nothing that explains it like the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases does.
As to how these things are figured out, here's just one of the methods that we can use to get quite the accurate picture of several things related to climate/atmosphere that can range back hundreds of thousands of years:
http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/ice-cores/ice-core-basics/
Others can be used to make estimates of the climate & reasons in its change in the (tens, hundreds, thousands) of millions of years. Though they can't be used to date things by the second, we can still date them well enough to get an educated picture of how the atmosphere, climate & such have changed since the formation of Earth and figure out the reasons and see that an increase in greenhouse gases has lead to a warming climate many times in the history of Earth. Not always, because other reasons can affect climate strongly too (i.e. continents moving in the long term, some super volcanoes erupting, a meteorite, sun's activity etc.), but often enough to see a repeating pattern. And when it hasn't correlated with the climate warming, we can figure out reasons that have prevented it from happening.
Chuck Norris
Banned
You're talking about a Government that wanted to destroy a big portion of the reef to making coal shipping a bit quicker and easier
They don't give a fuck
plagiarize
Banned
I mean, sure, scientists have conclusively proven that CO2 traps heat, and sure, we have been releasing large amounts of this in the last century and the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing dramatically over the same time period, and sure loads of the things that scientists predicted would happen as a result of this 20 years ago have come to pass...
but there's no real data.
Global warming is happening. Factually. Warmer seas bleach coral. If you want to debate whether we're causing it or not, I'd love to know how you could argue that we aren't at the very least contributing to it. We produce huge amounts of CO2. It goes into the atmosphere. CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat...
Darren870
Member
It's funny when you go to a place, have such fond memories of it, see it and truly appreciate the world and nature around you.
Then you go back 5-10 years later and all the animals that were once there are now gone. The place is littered with garbage, people not giving two shits of the destruction around them, trees cut down, buildings put in, and just nothing that you once remembered exists anymore.
Then you have someone say we aren't destructive. Or this is the way things should be.
Some people need to get out a bit more and see things. See how things have changed and how our actions have consequences.
Not just talking about the reef either.
Then you go back 5-10 years later and all the animals that were once there are now gone. The place is littered with garbage, people not giving two shits of the destruction around them, trees cut down, buildings put in, and just nothing that you once remembered exists anymore.
Then you have someone say we aren't destructive. Or this is the way things should be.
Some people need to get out a bit more and see things. See how things have changed and how our actions have consequences.
Not just talking about the reef either.
Again, maybe Zizek is right, we are our garbage, destruction and consumption and we should embrace it rather than ignore it
jellies_two
Member
This
They are dinosaurs and plan to drag us all to hell
Listen to them on the news: growth jobs growth growth
It's all about growth.
They flew 1000 captains of industry and politicians to China last week to grovel there in order to make sure they could stay on the teat and keep digging out coal and sending them gas and other resources that go into the plastic crap chain of the world.
The previously loud Australian contingent of embarrassing global warming deniers has gone a bit quiet but only because they are off recalculating their personal net worth not because they plan apologies and to work for good or anything.
If you personally know a "man can't possibly effect the enormous infinite world" idiot, it's time to call them out and stop being friendly and trying to talk to them. We are all stuffed in a tiny and fragile globe and they are busy smashing up the life support system and the backup to the life support system too.
TheLostBigBoss
Banned
The opposite is equally true though. When my parents were kids/young adults the local major river was so polluted that being anywhere near it made you smell death, animals simply left. Thirty years later and my parents are seeing things creatures that they thought they wouldn't see again because we cleaned our shit up and a lot of nature is coming back. Seeing eagles come back every year for nesting isn't something that happened 20 years ago.
SCULLIBUNDO
Banned
Went last year and it's honestly one of the most amazing places on this earth.
It will affect business. Mainly tourism and the fishing industry.
And yet nothing will change; people will continue contaminating the planet.
This thread has inspired me to go snorkeling this weekend to see how our reef is holding up. As far as I know we (northern caribbean) have been largely unaffected so far, but maybe we're just operating on a 'new normal' after a lot of bleaching occurred back in 2005. (iirc)
The reef when I grew up was spectacular.
The reef when I grew up was spectacular.
TheLostBigBoss
Banned
Except we can get and do have data from 200-300 years as well as 1000+ years ago. Coral coring is exactly that, we can even cross-reference this data with tree and glacier cores to get a pretty clear picture of what was going on at the time.
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