I am sorry the corals might all die, but it is probably not going to kill all life on earth
Rambling Note: I am sorry the corals might all die, but it is probably not going to kill all life on earth. Could the whole world be smart enough to afford to keep the corals? Not likely.
Reading “400-year-old corals reveal “tragic” temperature rise on reef” at https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/climate/great-barrier-reef-temperature-corals/
They say flat out, 1.5 C will likely mean 70-90% loss of corals world wide. And 2 C “disastrous consequences for coral ecosystem and hundreds of millions of people who currently depend on them”.
So beauty, tourism, jobs and some vague “coral ecosystem”. I presume “disastrous” means dead, gone, not possible to move, recreate, find alternate species, do something.
If it is that bad (next year dead), are the species all going to die? Or just the coral and some species that eat and live in coral and cannot live anywhere else? I can try to look it up and make my own guesses. But in my few remaining years, I am not likely to ever see a coral.
I know from covid and current wars and displaced people that “hundred of millions of people” means nothing at all to the world. Say 500 Million. At $1 Million each that is $500 trillion. It is not going to kill half a billion people
How long for half a billion people to find new jobs? Are all the fish in the sea going to die? and there is no way to add fish or create habitats? Is anyone collecting and farming coral to protect dying species?
Is is all tourism money? Hotels, air flights, boats, diving equipment, etc etc? What is at risk, who is going to lose money? Would the world survive without coral? And is it even possible to kill all species of coral? Would no hardy variety survive. When they survey is all life gone?
What about those old newsreels where they scuttle ships and dump stuff in the ocean to make habitats? Was that all fake? I do not know the names of all the things that live in the ocean but there were lots of fish and crabs and stuff. I am remembering some rocky looking coral and some colored corals, some really delicate fans and tree like things. I can remember kelp and stuff.
Maybe the world will be like that: “I remember there used to be huge areas in the ocean filled with fish and life of many sorts and this stuff called coral. We used to be able to buy it is in stores and jewelry made out of it. And there were shells of all kinds. There were even videos where people used to swim under the sea.”
If a human company went out and mined all the coral, would they be stopped? Who owns the coral? If coral is near an island does the island own it?
Now I asked “What replaces coral if it dies?” and got this article at https://reef-world.org/blog/no-coral-reefs
Half the coral has already died. Overfishing, pollution, “unsustainable tourism practices”, rising ocean temperatures, changing nutrient levels, changing mineral levels. Coastlines lose protection.
“25% of marine life would lose their habitat (their home, their breeding ground).
Fishing industries collapse, a billion workers affected.
It sounds so plaintive and hopeless.
There are a LOT of articles “What happens when all the coral dies?” “Death of coral reefs” “no more coral reefs” “Why are coral reefs dying?” “How does coral death affect humans?” “Lost half the coral reefs since 1950.”
My question 1: Do coral reefs keep the water clean? Yes many corals and sponges are filter feeders.
My question 2: Are coral reefs cleaning pollution dumped in the ocean? The pollution is hurting the coral and the coral filter feeders seem to be the vacuum cleaners for the oceans. Dump sewage in the ocean, what in the ocean cleans that up?
Land based pollution threatens corals – toxins, sediments, nutrients, wastewater, polluted runoff, fertilizers, cities probably add all kinds of human medicines and cleaners, paints, oils, car trash from wheels, asphalt.
We do not currently depend on salt water for drinking and city water now. But how far does the pollution have to go to kill the coral. It is not an “act of God” temperatures rise that is too big to understand or trace” what if killing all the corals was the fault of humans. And the consequence was no more fish and no more oxygen from the oceans?
My question 3: How much oxygen comes from the ocean? About half and that is mostly from algae and phytoplankton. And that amount is consumed mostly by marine life. So the photosynthetic life in the makes oxygen in the ocean which goes mainly to sustain marine life – fish, shell fish, and stuff we buy in the stores when we can afford “fish”. Someone else says 70% from the ocean”.
My question 4: If the algae and phytoplankton in a region of the ocean dies, how long before the fish die?
A few days or weeks. And when bacteria eat the dead fish and plants, that makes a “dead zone” where things do not recover very fast. It depends on temperatures.
My question 5: When phytoplankton bloom, how does that depend on water temperature?
I ran into a lot of discussion about “what if all the plants and or phytoplankton died. There is a lot of oxygen. Doug Hensley says “We would run out of food”. Esa Tyystjärvi says “We would run out of food”. Lots of stuff I can follow at https://www.quora.com/If-all-the-phytoplankton-die-how-long-would-it-take-until-we-suffocate
But the bottom line seems to be “if the phytoplankton and algae in the ocean die, they are the base of the food chain and fairly quickly with none of those to eat, no fish and bigger fish, no marine mammals.
Dead plants, the oxygen does not matter, we will not suffocate. But methane from decomposition might increase solar energy absorption. And no food for animals, no food for human, unless we get very creative. Land is not affected.
Plankton is near the surface. The surface would be hotter faster.
My question 6: Over the ocean if the air is hotter, how hot would the surface water get?
Land is getting hotter faster. “Sea Surface” can mean millimeters to 20 meters roughly. Sea surface temperatures drive cyclones and hurricanes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_surface_temperature
OK I am getting tired. I cannot do anything about it anyway. I am not a rabble rouser. I will die in a few years no matter what happens. But I can think of some disaster movie scenarios where the virus vaccines for cancer get into the oceans and turn off photosynthesis. Those plants die, the fish die, methane accelerates and in a few years lots of disruptions. Greenhouses everywhere, lots of nuclear energy, people survive but many die from riots and poverty word wide.
No. It won’t work fast enough or complete enough to kill all the humans.
I will try another time. But I do see the issues. Except the human species does not own the oceans, nor hold them in stewardship. It is not a crime to take as many fish out of the ocean as one can afford the boats and people. It is not a crime against humanity to dump trash in a river or the ocean if you can get away with it.
This is NOT a climate problem, this is “How do humans make decisions so every human and related species is counted and the wishes of rich people in a few countries do not bias the choices so badly that most people live in misery most of their then pointless lives (because it is always someone else making the life and death decisions for everyone, base on whims and momentary feelings of a few).
It is really that bad? I have been at this now for about 50 years. Mostly it is. I liked the pictures of corals, but if they are going to die off, I cannot do anything about it. All those choices leading to that were made long ago, and no government is willing to make any effort when it is so hard to just keep billions of people distracted.
I have never in my life seen corporate leaders do anything not in the paper-based accounting rules that were made when JP Morgan set the rules for how corporations should act in their own interests.
He put it in the fabric of how those corporate organism’s algorithms run. He wrote the game so corporations use less intelligence than a 1980’s video game. “Is our stock going up or down – too bad about anything else, not important, don’t bother.”
Could the whole world be smart enough to afford to keep the corals?
Filed as (I am sorry the corals might all die, but it is probably not going to kill all life on earth)
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
