[HN Gopher] Climate change is not just about Carbon Dioxide
___________________________________________________________________
Climate change is not just about Carbon Dioxide
Author : sirteno
Score : 18 points
Date : 2022-07-11 21:41 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (papers.ssrn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (papers.ssrn.com)
| miltondts wrote:
| Does anyone have references for these claims? Particularly:
|
| > pH will drop to pH7.95 by 2045, and most marine life in our
| oceans dissolve.
| pjerem wrote:
| OtomotO wrote:
| [deleted]
| mikekij wrote:
| "pH will drop to pH7.95 by 2045, and most marine life in our
| oceans dissolve."
|
| As someone who considers themselves an environmentalist, I find
| this sort of language to have a net-negative impact on our
| collective cause. The paper fails to provide comprehensive
| evidence for the idea that a pH change of 0.08 will result in all
| carbonate-based marine life dissolving.
|
| When 2045 comes, and the coral still exists, our populace will be
| further trained to ignore the warnings of climate scientists.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > When 2045 comes, and the coral still exists,
|
| It won't exist in the ocean. This language is accurate, based
| on what we know, and appropriately conclusive.
|
| I opened the article hoping it highlighted the most immediate
| problem (ocean acidification) and I was not disappointed. The
| plastic, yeah it's bad, but it's not going to kill off most sea
| life.
| 300bps wrote:
| _pH will drop to pH7.95 by 2045, and most marine life in our
| oceans dissolve._
|
| Coral dissolving I can understand. But the article seems to
| be saying "most marine life" which gives me images of sharks
| and tuna dissolving.
|
| I see three options:
|
| 1. The article misspoke
|
| 2. The article is wrong
|
| 3. The article is using some statistic I'm unaware of to be
| technically correct
|
| Any help to assist me in understanding what he meant
| appreciated!
| d3m0t3p wrote:
| it might be that: if you count the mass of marine life,
| most of it is from the tiny animals. Just like there is
| more insects than humans. Therefore, most of the marine
| life is dead if you kill most of the plankton. And because
| it's the "root of the food chain", most of everything dies
| cmckn wrote:
| The linked PDF is not so much a "paper" as it is a mid-tier web
| article, IMO.
|
| Another claim seems plausible, but is kind of hilariously hand-
| waved:
|
| > 90% of our oxygen comes from the oceans and more than 90% of
| our carbon dioxide ends up in the oceans. This figure [which
| figure?] is usually reported as 50%, but _90% is more
| accurate._
| OtomotO wrote:
| Make science more approachable, they said... now it's not
| sciency enough!
| lapetitejort wrote:
| When the oceans finally boil away, we can firmly lay the
| blame on scientists for being a few percentage points off
| of their predictions.
| OtomotO wrote:
| "You said they would boil in 2040... it's 2039 now! I
| thought we had more time! You tricked us all. YOU DOOMED
| US ALL!"
| [deleted]
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Funny thing that ocean acidification is mostly about carbon
| dioxide too. The choice of title is basically as bad as that
| phrase.
| el_nahual wrote:
| As a counterpoint to the idea that "alarmism" is
| counterproductive:
|
| There are many of us who believe, by looking at the trends of
| arctic methane release, that runaway warming is now
| inescapable. (As a sidenote, arctic methane was for a long time
| were not even considered in IPCC reports, and many deposits are
| _still_ not being considered _today_ ).
|
| 20 years ago there was a vocal minority that was saying "we
| must have drastic change NOW. If we de not act now we will be
| doomed." The IPCC and many departments thought that such
| drastic, alarmist language, would be counterproductive.
|
| And nothing really changed and we are now, perhaps, doomed.
| Perhaps those alarmists were right.
|
| It is of course impossible to prove the counterfactual of "what
| would have happened if we had been more alarmists 20 years
| ago?". But what we _do_ know is that the tempered course of
| action we did take was almost certainly not enough.
|
| * It goes without saying, but 20 years ago was _2002_. Post
| google, post ipod. Basically the current age, not like, the
| 1970s or something, even though it may feel that way.
| hammock wrote:
| Summary:
|
| The primary greenhouse gas is not CO2, its water vapour (>50% of
| all the atmospheric greenhouse gases)
|
| Marine plants keep water vapor from getting out of hand.
|
| Pollution that makes its way to the ocean, like toxic waste, oil
| and oil-based chemicals doesn't get "diluted" - it stays on the
| surface and emulsifies and can even be concentrated into
| microplastics.
|
| The marine life then consumes these toxins, leading to their
| demise and death.
|
| The decline of marine life leads to greater water vapor
| (greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere.
| d3m0t3p wrote:
| If the article seems mid-tier web article, it's because it's a
| summary of https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4099018.
|
| But even the "full" article seems weird.
|
| I'm not a native english speaker, but these sound wrong:
|
| > "This report will be followed by a detailed reported include
| the observed data from 13 sailing vessels and over 500 data
| points across the Atlantic Ocean."
|
| > "We are biologists and perhaps we think differently to other
| professions."
|
| You mean than ?
|
| > "marine plankton form the root[...]"
|
| forms ?
|
| > The legend of figure ?? (yea not numbered) says "Particles in
| 100ml of seawater from the middle of the Atlantic".
|
| It's not ideal to reproduce the experiment, because not everyone
| knows where the middle is !
|
| Their findings sounds alarming, especially this :
|
| >"peer reviewed literature shows we have lost more than 50% of
| all life in the oceans, but from own plankton sampling activity
| and other observations, we consider that losses closer to
| 90%[...]"
|
| I think people on the field usualy have better insight than
| academics but i cannot trust such a poorly written article.
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| The trouble with the climate change lobby (aside from the paid
| /lobbyists/ and entrenched profit motives) is that you can only
| cry wolf so many times and make so many wildly hyperbolic and/or
| hypocritical claims before well-intentioned people start to
| question the whole narrative.
|
| Don't get me wrong - I'd prefer not to find out what sort of
| negative impact climate change may have. I just think the current
| messaging isn't doing them any favors.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| So this is not meant as a criticism of climate change or an
| opposition or anything like that but honestly a lot of the
| climate change doomsayers seem very similar to me like
| religious apocalyptics in a lot of ways.
|
| There is a huge impending end of the world catastrophe coming
| soon because so many people are living their lives wrong, the
| only way to stop or change that is to make massive personal
| changes in your life and do everything within your influence to
| convince everyone you know to change their lives or else the
| end is nigh!
|
| I mean really that messaging is pretty much the same between
| fundamentalists of both the religious and climate variety. It
| often seems as well they are less interested in figuring out
| actual realistic solutions to these problems than feeling
| smugly superior because they are "one of the chosen".
|
| Just my 2c.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-11 23:01 UTC)