[HN Gopher] As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain f...
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As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future
Author : myshpa
Score : 55 points
Date : 2023-08-03 21:31 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Looks like we are the paper clip optimising narrow AI we've all
| been afraid of after all...
|
| We don't make paper clips though, we've optimised to make money
| and turn everything into it.
|
| So ashamed to be part of of it,
| throwanem wrote:
| Many science fiction authors have made surprisingly incisive
| contemporary critiques in the forms of allegory and metaphor.
| Bostrom is unusual mainly in that he doesn't seem to know when
| he is doing it.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| We've optimized so hard we can make money out of negative
| money.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I think a (dis)info campaign touting the toxins and pollutants in
| fish could be a major environmental win. Humans have destroyed
| huge amounts of ocean life, and with fish populations already
| devastated, climate change is going to push many species over the
| brink to extinct.
|
| I feel like - even if requires pseudoscientific explanations or
| bald-faced lies - it would be a net good for the world if people
| thought there is a chance eating fish could kill them. Alarmism
| over heavy metal accumulation happening at increasing rates, fish
| absorbing pesticides and poisoning people, stuff like that. Idk
| if it's happening, but I feel like it would be good for the
| environment if people believed that.
|
| (disclaimer: i don't enjoy the flavor of fish anyways, so my
| cost-benefit of this is different than most peoples.)
| myshpa wrote:
| No disinformation campaigns are necessary.
|
| Fish do indeed often contain heavy metals (mercury, lead,
| cadmium, arsenic, copper), PCBs, dioxins, and furans, as well
| as microplastics.
|
| Young dolphins are dying because the mother's milk may be
| poisonous for the same reason.
|
| https://phys.org/news/2018-12-toxins-mother-young-european-d...
|
| Banned toxins passed from mother to young in European dolphins
|
| https://www.poisoningchildren.com/blog/2014/02/05/bioaccumul...
|
| Bioaccumulation and Dead Baby Dolphins
|
| "Because female dolphins off-load most of their toxic exposure
| to their first-born calf, their levels after sexual maturity
| are lower than males; but a very high percentage of first-borns
| die"
|
| "It is not astonishing that native women in the Arctic Circle,
| who eat high levels of marine mammals, pass these chemicals on
| to their babies with dire effects"
|
| "Childbirth and breastfeeding are some of the few ways the body
| can rid itself of persistent chemicals. It is usually still
| best to breastfeed, but children who are breastfed continue to
| inherit the mother's exposures, as shown in a study of
| testicular cancer in Denmark and Finland"
|
| Btw, human and cow milk has similar problems.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Ah, so just needs an awareness campaign! Even more of a clear
| moral win then if it doesn't require deception.
|
| (also, yikes and tragic)
| skeaker wrote:
| At that point it would be better to supply the demand for fish
| with fish farms where they are bred to be eaten rather than
| pulling fish from the ocean. You could (truthfully) advertise
| as environmentally friendly, you would probably turn a profit,
| you actually would have fewer toxins than ocean fish, and ocean
| fish would be proportionally fished less. Much more
| straightforward of a process than conspiring/bribing countless
| people to spread disinformation and giving credit to conspiracy
| theorists.
| myshpa wrote:
| Still few problems with this.
|
| - intensive fish farming can lead to environmental issues,
| such as water pollution from fish waste, excessive use of
| antibiotics and chemicals, and the depletion of wild fish
| stocks used for fish feed
|
| - some farmed fish species require a substantial amount of
| wild-caught fish to produce a relatively small amount of
| farmed fish
|
| - the conversion of natural habitats like mangroves and
| wetlands into fish farms can lead to habitat destruction and
| loss of critical ecosystems that support various species
|
| - in densely packed fish farms, diseases spread rapidly among
| fish populations, leading to mass mortality events. The use
| of antibiotics to control diseases can also contribute to
| antibiotic resistance, posing risks to human health
|
| - introducing non-native or genetically modified fish into
| local ecosystems can disrupt the balance of the ecosystem and
| lead to unintended consequences
|
| We have to switch to plant based diets.
|
| It seems to me that nothing else will stop the environmental
| destruction, in this case overfishing, which alone threatens
| us with empty oceans in 2040's.
|
| And it would solve the problem with warming oceans too.
|
| Rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, together with a switch to a
| plant-based diet, would free up a land area the size of
| Africa. When reforested, this area would store so much carbon
| that we'd be able to store our entire 1.5C carbon budget in
| those forests and initiate a new "little ice age."
| breakyerself wrote:
| I tried to get newspapers to report on it and they kept telling
| me they already covered ocean acidification.
| Apofis wrote:
| Aside from Ocean Acidification, uncontrollable Algae Blooms, and
| Melting Sea Ice, we now have Ocean Deoxygenation on our plates.
| We also have unprecedented droughts on land as well. Humans
| really will be the next mass extinction event on this planet. So
| incredibly selfish.
| throwanem wrote:
| "Will be?" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Acidification is the unavailability to carry hydrogen
| molecules.
|
| The primary hydrogen carrier in water is oxygen.
|
| Are deoxygenation & acidification different problem, or
| different slants on the same problem?
| nashashmi wrote:
| > The oxygen drop is driven by a few factors. First, the laws of
| physics dictate that warmer water can hold less dissolved gas
| than cooler water (this is why a warm soda is less fizzy than a
| cold one).
|
| > Melting ice adds fresh, less-dense water that resists downward
| mixing in key regions, and the high rate of atmospheric warming
| at the poles, as compared to the equator, also dampens winds that
| drive ocean currents.
|
| > Finally, bacteria living in the water, which feed off
| phytoplankton and other organic gunk as it falls to the seafloor,
| consume oxygen. This effect can be massive along coastlines,
| where fertilizer runoff feeds algae blooms, which in turn feed
| oxygen-gobbling bacteria
| thriftwy wrote:
| How is that solar shade coming along?[10]
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Weird this was syndicated onto BBC also
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36236444
| saagarjha wrote:
| Good. They should tough it out and grow a pair--of lungs, that
| is. Living in an aquatic environment has made all the fish grow
| soft. Time to evolve like the rest of us did.
|
| (More seriously, warm ocean dead spots affect more than just
| fish: I suspect we'll see a further decline in marine mammals
| too, for example.)
| jfghi wrote:
| Free market solves it /s
| peteradio wrote:
| One day man will evolve fishy limbs then we can eat them
| instead. Yawn.. wake me up when I should become concerned.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Why should I have to pay for fish habitat? Bunch of moochers /s
| swsdsailor wrote:
| I am very interested in using tech to help the ocean. Does anyone
| have ideas for technical solutions to this?
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(page generated 2023-08-03 23:00 UTC)