Perhaps a dumb question, but wouldn't we expect the rise in ocean temperatures to be cause nature to be doing this selective breeding right now?
Probably not quickly enough. Ecosystems can adapt if given enough time, but the recent rise in ocean temperatures has happened very quickly by evolutionary standards.
There was a good episode of PBS Weathered on this recently if you want an idea of how quickly this has happened: https://youtu.be/YEH9nX5sudk?si=iCivRPwK8AI4sjKU
>Probably not quickly enough. Ecosystems can adapt if given enough time, but the recent rise in ocean temperatures has happened very quickly by evolutionary standards.
Exactly, which I think is always the key point at issue that needs to be raised any time someone says "well earth has been this hot before." Never at this velocity, at least not without extinction events.
Yes, and in fact the extinction event associated with this high-velocity change is termed the "Holocene Extinction" [1]
I kinda agree with the GP that this seems weird. Yes, ocean temps are rising very quickly, but this experiment only took 5 years, and was presumably a only a tiny fraction of how many wild coral there are. Ocean warming has taken place over several decades, and with millions of times as large of a natural population. It just seems weird that, if this kinda of adaptation is possible (and they showed it is), it wouldn't be happening in the wild. And that does seem to be true, it just seems weird.
In nature, you don't necessarily have the needed genetic diversity or controlled conditions, in the right combinations, the way you can obtain them in the lab. And "several decades" is probably not enough time in evolutionary terms to adjust, if I had to guess.
I think the prevailing theory of evolution is punctuated equilibrium(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium)
Which holds that rather than a slow gradual change, species under go a rapid change and then are stable after that change.
If that hold true, then the driver would be that you have low impact changes going on all the time that do not take hold but once a beneficial change is introduced it spreads rapidly.
I think the notion of its status as a "prevailing theory" is overstated, and is an idea that exists more in the minds of lay audiences than in the profession (see criticism section).
I agree with the criticisms that Gould, unfortunately, spent much of his career attempting to position himself as an intellectual revolutionary, overstating the primacy of PE and was in many important respects an intellectual fraud. Gifted as he was as a critic of intelligent design, I think he set back our understanding of evolution almost as much as he helped.
Nature doesn't have the right conditions to deal with the changes in nature?
I wonder if the fact that mature corals are stationary makes it harder for them to adapt. If the surviving corals are too far apart, it could be that they're unable to reproduce sexually. Coral larvae seem to be mobile until they find a structure to settle on, but if the larvae never have a chance to form...
(Corals can also reproduce asexually via fragmentation, but that won't help with genetic diversity in the wild I'd imagine. Researchers seem to take advantage of this for selective breeding though.)
It is happening in the world. It just looks more like Asian carp and zebra mussels and kudzu than a nice diverse ecosystem.
Something will live on coral reefs in a thousand years. We’ll have still lost something beautiful.
There are many coral reef systems doing quite well.
The great barrier reef living system is only about 6k-8k years old. Much of that was land not too long ago.
The sea level rose there about 20k years ago (coinciding with the Last Glacial Maximum) and slowed to a near halt 6k years ago allowing coral to grow there.
Decades isn't even a blink of the eye in evolutionary timescales. Coral don't just end up breeding more temperature resilient offspring, a bunch has to die first. The ones that don't die may carry on, but that might be 2% of the population. So sure, they might evolve and carry on but 98% might die at the same time.
What makes you think it isn't happening in the wild? Evolution does not happen on the timescales of human lifetimes.
Richard Lenski would disagree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_ex...
Can somebody explain to me why this is apparently being downvoted ? Is Richard Lenski very far from the consensus of his field ? Scientific dishonesty ?
I imagine it's because 73k generations of bacteria takes a lot less time than 73k generations of coral or other larger organisms.
Thanks for sharing
But, most historical changes are quite dramatic and quick. And evolution is meant to happen quickly too, no?
Nature doesn't do selective breeding.
"Survival of the fittest" means "whatever doesn't die, wins."
First you need things capable of not dying in x circumstances. After adversity kills everything else, you have the "winners."
This will incline species to develop tolerance over time, usually several generations. Human caused climate change is happening on a timescale that isn't very supportive of that process.
Are you willing to wait a few thousand years for a new coral to appear and spread? Maybe tens of thousands of years?
Evolution does tend to fill open niches, but not all that instantly.
Yes I am. That's how it happens and how it should happen.
Coral systems live, spread, and die. That's what they do.
These processes happen over thousands of years.
Then the consequence will be vastly reduced fish populations for thousands of years, which may affect human populations.
Unfortunately, there is no law of the universe that says that change will only occur at a survivable rate. Thousands of species are already going extinct every year, and we're still burning just as many fossil fuels as what got us into this mess. We don't have thousands of years to wait for animals to adapt, we have mere decades.
Correct, there's no law of the universe that says change will occur a survivable rate. Species have been going extinct long before humans. We should help those species who environments we damage and we should mitigate or nullify the damage in the first place, but we should not play God.
The pace of climate change is far faster than natural evolutionary processes can keep up with.
It's rising way too fast https://xkcd.com/1732/
I’ve been scuba diving for 20 years and I’ve seen the devastation first hand. Once healthy eco systems, teeming with life, just completely wiped out. It’s heartbreaking.
Corals grow so slowly, this might improve things 100-200 years from now, which is not nothing, but no one should delude themselves into thinking this is a solution. The fish that depend on these reefs will not be able to wait 100 generations for us to engineer a solution. That biodiversity will be lost and will take millions of years to recover.
A great doc about this: https://youtu.be/aGGBGcjdjXA?si=fnYuvjTDqAkRE3Ad
It must be heartbreaking to witness that devastation firsthand
Examining and quantifying the genes that give heat tolerance in the same species will allow polyp replacement - driven evolutionarily. That way they will occupy the same 'burrows' and can reform the reef more rapidly without the need for the slow growing coral skeleton?
Have you stopped scuba diving? Aren't you concerned that your scuba diving contributes to the destruction?
This is a valid concern as Thailand barrier reefs made great recovering during the covid period (hinting that tourism could have had major effects)
I am aware of only three ways that diving could affect coral.
1) Boat's anchor doing physical damage, which is why popular dive spots have mooring buoys.
2) Many popular sun screen lotions are really bad for coral.
3) Physically touching the coral can do damage, even if gently.
Are there any other factors of which I am unaware?
To my mind, I'd add the heat effects of the various forms of transportation involved, both in direct contribution and the CO2 increase as a result of their use.
Not the GP, but I've moved from bi-weekly diving in South Florida and the Keys in the mid to late 90's, to once every couple of years for this reason, among others.
Even then, you could see the difference in the John Pennekamp State Park reefs from when I first snorkeled them in the 1970's.
Why would it? I’m a scuba diver and I don’t pour hot water on corals.
My primary function for diving is to protect the kelp forest where I usually dive by removing sea urchins, whose population has exploded, killing the kelp. This is done in conjunction with the department of fish and wildlife.
Any scuba diver knows never to touch the coral, the ground, or anything like that. Fairly simple
In the Florida Keys, shooting invasive Lionfish is also a way that divers can contribute to reef health.
My understanding is that there are lots of existing corals well adapted to high heat/low pH, mostly from shallow atolls.
... But, if you transplant them they get outcompeted immediately. Corals are constantly engaged in a WW1-style trench warfare for space, so spending metabolic energy on something other than eradicating one's neighbor is not a great strategy.
(I work in a tangential area)
I thought nitrogen pollution was now considered the main cause of harm to corals?
Nitrogen pollution compounds with heat stress, it makes the coral more susceptible to heat stress: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1915395117
Nitrogen pollution and warming ocean temperatures a deadly combination
I think it's not the only one
According to what?
God forbid we stop consuming everything in sight like a fat kid in a candy shop.
Try to promote walkable, mixed-use development that supports a car-optional lifestyle.
More like a crew of a spaceship dismantling their life-support system to create disposable junk.
Funny how improving self-awareness and self-control is always at the bottom of the list of solutions. It's always a new machine, product or pill.
(But I think that public access to hallucinogens is a step in the right direction, actually)
I think you fall in the typical trap of thinking that social issues are easier to solve than technical ones. This is not the case.
"Why take vaccines ? Can't we just be well-behaved, wear a mask, air spaces correctly or put air filters everywhere ?" The answer is no.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biolo...
One must deal with humans as they are, not as we'd wish them to be. The correct solution is that externalities associated with consumption should be priced in by fiat. The government has the (uneviable) task of protecting the environment because it is a perfect example of a common good. Of course, such authority must be given to the government by the people; it is already happening to a very small extent; as climate change becomes more real to people's everyday lives, I expect to see more movement in this direction. Of course, by then it will probably be too late, but we can hope that it will not be.
The technologies of education and advertising have proven to be quite good at changing people.
Yeah, this. Perfect example, our crazy car-based transportation network was popularized by a deliberate domestic propaganda campaign, we went from vilifying "speed demons" to vilifying "jaywalkers" because "they" told us to:
"The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM
"Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the Invention of the Motor Age Street", Peter D. Norton https://www.jstor.org/stable/40061474
If we can convince people that it's their own fault for getting hit by cars, we can do anything.
I mean its easy to say this, but asking people to live worse lives is basically impossible.
This is a common misconception.
The choice isn't between a mildly worse life -or- a better life.
The choice is between a mildly worse life -or- a horrible life as the planetary life-support system reconfigures itself into a radical new climate regime.
And really, living in harmony with Nature is fun and fulfilling, so the choice is between a mildly inconvenient transitional period to a hip, swinging, easy living, eco-friendly life -or- a horrible life as the planetary life-support system reconfigures itself into a radical new climate regime.
So while I 100% agree we have man-made climate change, there are two principles to live by:
1. Not everything is climate change. This has come up a lot with Hurricanes Helene and Milton recently, saying they're "unprecedented" or similar superlatives. Consider the 1916 flood of Asheville [1], also caused by a hurricane. Also, hurricanes aren't more frequent [2] but there's an argument to be made for intensity. A moving statistical distribution takes a lot of data points to quantify, however; and
2. We really have no idea of how the EArth will respond to climate change. This comes up when people talk about "runaway climate change" a la Venus. My argument is that if that was going to happen, it would've happened at some point in the last 4 billion years. That's a really long time.
So in relation to coral and the seas, the argument is made that warming is a lot more rapid than what naturally occurs. It turns out that's not true either. Consider abrupt climate change in the last Ice AGe (~100K years) [3]:
> One of the most surprising findings was that the shifts from cold stadials to the warm interstadial intervals occurred in a matter of decades, with air temperatures over Greenland rapidly warming 8 to 15°C (Huber et al. 2006)
That's a massive change and it's happened many times in the last 100,000 years. So what's happened over 4 billion years?
This is likely associated with sea changes too so what happened to all the coral? Did it die and regrow? Did it adapt?
I understand the motivation here but fearmongering (even if justified) just doesn't work to educate people and ultimately change policy [4]. Psychologically, catastrophic predictions will tend to get ignored because hey, there's nothing you can do.
[1]: https://www.frenchbroadrafting.com/blog/remembering-the-floo...
[2]: https://www.npr.org/2024/10/09/nx-s1-5146477/how-climate-cha...
[3]: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-cli...
[4]: https://heartland.org/opinion/climate-change-fearmongering-i...
>> One of the most surprising findings was that the shifts from cold stadials to the warm interstadial intervals occurred in a matter of decades, with air temperatures over Greenland rapidly warming 8 to 15°C (Huber et al. 2006)
My understanding is that this was local to a region and not global, and constituted extinction or near extinction-level events for plant and animal populations that suffered through them. And even though those changes were fast, my understanding is that our present change is (1) even faster, (2) is not a back-and-forth oscillation controlled at the bounds by natural dynamics but a one-directional trend upward (3) from human activity stacked on top of the dynamics of natural systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event We live on a planet saturated in one of the most corrosive pollutants (to life that evolved before it). If an anaerobic intelligent life had evolved before the world was conquered by cyanobacteria, in a society with a profit motive for manufacturing sugar, would they have farmed the very thing that would wipe them out?
Right, and said slightly differently: this is the context against which we have to judge whether there was any natural experiment we can refer to. There's no reason to think that the history of life on earth thus far has presented a sufficiently comparable case, to reassure us that what's happening is a re-run of a familiar event we've already seen, where everything works out well.
Yes that is nicely concise, but in addition I was trying to say that the line of reasoning that life has persisted through cataclysmic environmental changes and therefore worrying about them is fearmongering is a facile argument as the persistence of lichens and prototaxites etc has no bearing on the survival of humans. The nature of a cataclysm is very relative, as the oxygenation of the atmosphere and oceans would be meaningless to geochemical anaerobic bacteria that live miles below us.
We only have coal because trees grew and fell on each other for like 60 million years before anything figured out how to decompose lignin.
Kind of. Climate change has occurred in the past, and climate and weather are chaotic systems. But we can still determine where the attractor lies, and that it’s moving.
I still think we shouldn’t focus on climate change, since the majority of the population won’t understand, nor care.
Instead focus on environment, which is what you’re living in right now. The benefit is that doing what’s good for the environment year on year would also accomplish what’s good for climate
I agree. Should be campaigning against fossil fuels like against tobacco and lead in the water.
> This is likely associated with sea changes too so what happened to all the coral? Did it die and regrow? Did it adapt?
Well, before you pat yourself and feel safe, you'd better answer those questions instead of just asking them and deciding the answer will go on a direction you like.
Coral is a weird kind of organism, we can't expect it to adapt like insects. It changing can be quite bad.
But yeah, we won't have runaway warming. I don't know what the people that invented that risk were thinking.
>Also, hurricanes aren't more frequent [2] but there's an argument to be made for intensity.
I checked your source here, and the emphasis of the article is almost completely the inverse of how you presented it. The article is emphatic at the urgency of understanding how much more forceful the storms are, while noting there is not a larger total number of storms. In the article, that latter point is an aside to the urgency of understanding storms are becoming more intense.
It actually explicitly says that storms of greater intensity are indeed becoming more frequent. Your portrayal, however, is to reference the central point in passing while emphasizing a side point and implying something completely at odds with the article. And this isn't just tomayto-tomahto, one point is critical to understanding the intensity of storms and the other isn't.
Here's the latest data from AIMS, the Australian government agency that monitors the Great Barrier Reef [1]. There are three periods in these graphs:
1. 1985-2013. Climatologists report global warming during this period, but it had no impact on the corals. This fact is already a major problem for the claim that corals are hurt by global warming - if it were true, there should have been declines in this period.
2. 2010-2017. A big drop. This triggered lots of stories about how humanity is killing the corals. In 2019 they were saying the outlook had moved from "poor" to "very poor". [2]
3. 2020-2024. Robust growth to the highest levels ever seen, more than a third larger than the prior stable period.
This time series is incompatible with the idea of a link between CO2 and coral health. Whatever caused this set of changes is unlikely to be human driven, given that the huge growth spurt caught self-proclaimed coral experts completely off guard and they still lack any explanation for what drives these changes. But we can safely say that corals are already heat tolerant. They exist in a wide range of temperatures across the world, which vary by far wider ranges than climate change is predicted to generate, and they have existed throughout history in which natural climate change has created vastly greater differences than seen in the last 100 years.
Unfortunately AIMS don't seem interested in a true understanding of the corals. They are only interested in coral doom. Doom = a call to action = money and social status, whereas corals doing fine reduces them to mere observation of natural cycles, which doesn't have much potential for career growth. From the peak of "the Great Barrier Reef is going from poor to very poor" now they are reduced to saying "recent increases in hard coral cover can be quickly undone" and "The high coral cover reported this year is good news but does not mean all is fine". Their reports give the strong impression that they really wish the corals would do badly, but nature is feeling uncooperative right now. Their next best strategy is apparently to just ignore it and pretend scientists have to save the day anyway.
[1] https://www.aims.gov.au/monitoring-great-barrier-reef/gbr-co...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/30/great-ba...
In addition to looking simply at the explosive growth limited to the past 4-5 years, it seems reasonable to look at the entire plot as well. All 3 graphs in [1] date back to 1965, and look at that data it seems that the growth/population of corals was reasonably stable up until the late 00s.
It may be possible that this recent spike in growth indicates that there is a strong recovery, but looking at the data it also seems inarguable the ecosystem has become highly unstable as well over the past 20 years, with drastic increases and decreases in all 3 populations that are much greater variance than from the mid 60s to early 00s.
While I agree with you that it's possible that this coral death is overhyped, your own conclusions don't seem to be evidence-based themselves.
The graphs date back to 1985. The font is small though, so it's easy to misread.
> it also seems inarguable the ecosystem has become highly unstable as well over the past 20 years
That's extremely arguable! Extrapolating from a tiny number of data points is how AIMS managed to screw up previously. There's really very little data on which to build predictions about long term trends. We have no idea how stable or unstable coral sizes are because it's just not been monitored for long enough to say. We're zoomed in to a tiny, tiny part of the coral's history, which is far longer than humanities own.
I agree, but I would assert that it is no more arguable than your own interpretations
Edit: Ah I see that it is 1985, that certainly is a significantly shorter cycle of data.
> It may be possible that this recent spike in growth indicates that there is a strong recovery, but looking at the data it also seems inarguable the ecosystem has become highly unstable as well over the past 20 years
Could you expand on how the recent explosive growth is unstable and fits with the predictions that the coral is dying?
And GPs post was evidence based, your interpretations were not, they were subjective and a bit handwaving, which is why I would like clarfication on your above view.
Explosive growth is generally speaking not stable. I will defer to the dictionary definition of stable. I'm just using words how they are defined.
From an ecosystem perspective, simple "coral coverage" is not a good enough metric to indicate that the coral reef is healthy. We also need to understand the biodiversity, is one coral taking over because it is better adapted and creating a monoculture? It's not clear. I made a point to not jump to conclusions, simply stating that explosive growth does not indicate a healthy ecosystem.
Thank you for the clarification. Some may interpret "not stable" meaning that it could be detrimental to it's life, not just the textbook velocity definition.
Could you answer the second part of my question:
> "How does explosive growth fit with the predictions that the coral is dying?"
To your statement:
> "We also need to understand the biodiversity, is one coral taking over because it is better adapted and creating a monoculture"
I'd say that we should not assume one way or another. It very may well be, or not. That data is probably out there and I'd be interested to know the answer. If the answer is yes, it's very healthy.
I'd also like to know what species these scientists are breeding. If it's only a select few species, is that healthier than the species that have adapted naturally and are growing fine?
Explosive growth does not happen in a vacuum. Sometimes it's due to a pre-existing boom and bust cycle (eg lynx and hares, rabbits and wolves, etc). Sometimes it's due to the elimination of key species or ecological instability (eg hares in australia with no predators, boom of sea urchins in california, cuttlefish booming due to overfishing), or maybe it's something completely different altogether.
Given that there is no history of a pre-existing boom and bust cycle in the data, I think we can rule that out. So clearly something is happening that wasn't happening before. The question you want answered is one-dimensional and ill-posed in this situation to allow you to better understand the dynamics at work.
I went to Thailand shortly after the covid lockdowns ended, and the corals were all coming back. I talked to a boat captain about it and his comment was: “yeah, there were no tourists to abuse them”.
I can’t help but wonder what effect tourism (and lockdowns) has had on corals. For example, It is common among scuba divers to only use mineral sunscreens because standard off-the-shelf sunscreen floats on the top of the water and blocks UV from the corals
It's possible that this sort of thing is connected, yes. The timing of a rebound in 2020 is interesting. But then again, if it's caused by tourism or sunscreen, the next interesting question is what changed around 2010?
It appears that oxybenzone and octinoxate sunscreens may be directly toxic to corals. Blocking UV light doesn't seem to be the issue.
https://ocean.si.edu/ecosystems/coral-reefs/truth-about-cora...
While you bring forward interesting data, I believe your view is uncharitable of the motives behind people wanting to protect coral reefs also you don't account for your own hindsight.
Maybe a more charitable interpretation is that nobody really understood why there was such a massive drop and climate change was the most likely explanation so they went about warning about it given how important they are to their ecosystem ?
Also I think you are wawing off climate change too quickly. Isn't it possible that we were lucky enough that the coral just adapted quickly to environmental change ?
The incentives here are pretty straightforward and plenty of people within academic fields are willing to admit what kind of distortions they create. Look at any HN discussion on academic fraud and you'll find discussions from people who are or were scientists where they tell similar stories.
Climate change wasn't the most likely explanation for the big drop. To make that explanation work you have to hypothesize a lot of hidden variables and/or unknown processes, because CO2 emission is a slow steady process. If you want to posit some sort of cliff-edge response in the absence of evidence, fine, but at that point anyone can make up any explanation they like and it's just as compelling. There's no reason a-priori to believe that climate change kills corals given that they've survived hundreds of millions of years. There are probably natural cycles at work here which might be interesting to investigate, or there might even be some sort of human cause that's not climate related (chemicals being washed into the sea or whatever). AIMS is supposed to figure that out but they don't seem to be doing that, they just keep crying wolf. So it's reasonable to point out their incentives.
> Isn't it possible that we were lucky enough that the coral just adapted quickly to environmental change ?
Anything is possible in principle, but that doesn't help us much.
It would be nice if people responded to you instead of downvoting silently. Thank you for the information.
It's also worth noting the Great Barrier Reef is fairly new (6-8k years old). It came to be from the sea rise of the Last Glacial Maximum 20k years ago.
Information is fine, overconfident denialist commentary earns a downvote. When you see a comment to the effect of "The self-proclaimed experts are wrong! I know the truth," you should heavily discount the conclusions it draws.
Just because the mechanism of resurgence is unknown does not mean that all previous science on the topic is invalidated.
It can simultaneously be true that ocean warming is devastating the Great Barrier Reef corals and that the GBR has the ability to rebound on its own. Here's a question the parent comment didn't address: Are we seeing the same species in this resurgence that we saw before mass bleaching, or is biodiversity reduced?
Your last sentence would have been a fine reply to the GP without any meta level commenting.
And GP's main point was that the data from the experts monitoring the reef did not line up with the climate change predictions of the reef.
He didn't say HE knew the truth, he's saying the truth from scientific reports are not matching the predictions.
If anything, he's pointing out the real "experts" data. The opposite of what you are accusing him of.
Not sure this is a good idea. What if the disappearance of corals at higher temps is part of a natural regulation system for Earth, where if they are artificially preserved, homeostasis will be perturbed?
In general I am against these ecosystem engineering type projects: because the systems are so complex, we do not understand them, and we cannot test in isolation.
> I am against these ecosystem engineering type projects: because the systems are so complex, we do not understand them
How about humans pumping tens of billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year? Are you against that ecosystem engineering type project? Because it's happening. And it's having severe consequences. And it seems it's not going to stop. So people are trying to look into ways to attempt to mitigate its effects and you end up with one engineering type project to mitigate another. Doing nothing isn't going to work. We know that. So a lot of people are willing to accept less than fully understood solutions.
At its essence, status quo extremism is not the denial of dangers, SQE's are quite alert to them. Instead, it's about an axiomatic re-definition of danger as being about whether or not something is presently happening. If it is already happening, then by definition it's not dangerous.
Of course there’s no engineered homeostasis to mess up on Earth. There might be a general tendency toward homeostasis: lots of, in some generalized sense “mass” and “momentum” in the system, and a tendency for species to die off by consuming all their resources and running out of places to put their byproducts. But that seems more likely to be something that humans fall afoul of, not coral, which seems more like an accidental victim and evidence that homeostasis has some pretty big gaps.
There is no natural regulation system for the earth, and the earth makes no attempt at homeostasis. It has been tipped over into states almost completely inhospitable for then-existing life more than once.
Multicellular lifeforms are the machinery that bacteria build to improve homeostasis.