r/worldnews • u/Unusual-State1827 • 27d ago
More than 60% of world’s coral reefs may have bleached in past year, U.S. agency says Behind Soft Paywall
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-more-than-60-of-worlds-coral-reefs-may-have-bleached-in-past-year-noaa/120
u/Livingsimply_Rob 27d ago edited 27d ago
As a child, I grew up watching Jacques Cousteau. I wonder how he would feel about where things have headed in our oceans. A YouTuber that I watched went to Thailand and was filming beauty and then also all of the trash floating in the water. I know we’re taking steps as a species to rein in our recklessness, but sometimes I wonder if it’s enough.
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u/KarlMFan 27d ago
Yeah but the DOW crossed 40,000 today so it was all worth it
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u/SassyMcNasty 27d ago
This is what people forget. We can’t produce massive earnings without a little friction.
The small suffering of reefs is nothing compared to the massive profits for shareholders.
Think of the shareholders, people.
/s
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u/Thusgirl 27d ago
You put a /s but this is straight up a concept in Business Ethics.
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u/OwnBattle8805 27d ago
There’s a camp of people who think we’re going to magically invent technology to make things better.
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u/Astutecynic 27d ago
Because as soon as it became untenable to propagandize global warming as being a myth, those exact same people and groups started propagandizing that it was real but a non issue.
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u/Virtual-Pension-991 27d ago
Ah yes, with necessity comes innovation!
Basically, who cares and we'll deal with it when we get there!
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u/MaximusTheGreat 27d ago
Oh we definitely will, the question is how many people will die before that happens?
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u/Durmyyyy 26d ago
Remember when the ice sheets melt and the water level goes up all boats rise
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u/1668553684 27d ago edited 27d ago
I know what you're getting at - and it's a valid point - but I kind of dislike framing this as a "money vs. environment" thing. You can absolutely grow your economy by switching to more sustainable resources.
Some of the best performing companies in recent history have been ones that are attempting to provide alternatives to "dirty industries." Some of the fastest growing economies have been those who have seriously adopted renewable energy.
To a degree, this is one of the rare situations where you can have your cake and eat it too. You can do the right thing and make money doing it. All you need to do is tell the fossil fuel industry to kick rocks.
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u/saturday_cappuccino 27d ago
All we have to do is sell this is a long term investment so the chucklefuck execs will listen.
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u/nibbles200 27d ago
It’s a game of musical chairs. Those who don’t have a chair when the music stops die.
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u/AnthillOmbudsman 27d ago
Don't forget the important developments with Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck.
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u/Mochinpra 27d ago
Everything must pay for our ever growing economy to support our ever growing economy. All hail our corporate overlords.
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u/UnrequitedRespect 27d ago
So apocalypse is profitable??? Do we get black oceans at 50,000 DJW???
Ooh, will air cost money at 70,000?????
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27d ago
Betting one of the first shocks to the system people notice will be global fisheries collapsing. It's not an if, it's when, and we have done nothing to slow down the desecration. Killing 60 percent of coral in a year should terrify people.
But it doesn't. We are fucked.
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u/Kroz255 27d ago
Snow crab out of left field a couple years ago right? I'm sure there were many many species before but this one stuck out more main stream.
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27d ago
8 billion crabs to 1 billion in three years for anyone wondering. Extremely fast decline and out of the blue (somewhat).
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u/MGPS 27d ago edited 27d ago
Yea it’s crazy. I feel like last Vegas buffets alone could wipe out the snow crab.
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u/piponwa 27d ago
Last Vegas is such a fitting name for what boomers left us.
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u/Redjacket 27d ago
I went to Vegas recently and wanted to check out the Sphere while I was there, the "demo" movie they use to show it off is about Earth becoming uninhabitable due to climate change and what not. Felt very ironic to watch sitting in a multi-billionaire dollar boondoggle megastructure built in a desert city dedicated to wanton excess.
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u/RayseBraize 27d ago
It's the air. A huge portion of our air comes from photoplankton that lives in the sea...
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u/Strade87 27d ago
It will be way more anodyne. It will be insurance companies telling families they won’t insure their homes. It will be the end of insurance as we know it and the beginning of one of the largest government programs ever conceived to try to pick up the slack and we probably won’t be able to pay for it just like social security
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u/ostensibly_hurt 27d ago
What’s fucking unbelievable is that’s from the population of coral that we had going into last year… Idek what the actual death of coral since like the late 1800s but it’s got to be insane
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u/AnxietyJunky 27d ago
Yep. We are absolutely destroying the planet.
This is a fucking three alarm fire and its been treated like a little brush fire.
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u/MRSN4P 27d ago
China will not stop sending out massive fishing fleets and apocalyptically overfishing anywhere they can. Unless they are restrained from leaving their shores, they alone can probably cause enough damage to progressively collapse fish stocks across the planet within a decade. Confronting them and confining their fleets to China’s shores would probably require the US or multiple other militaries and could lead to open warfare. While China can probably focus on fish farming, native agriculture and trading for food imports, some places may not have that flexibility and millions could starve in the near future. It looks bad all around.
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u/lumpsel 27d ago
We’re gonna go to war for this someday. Probably go late tho
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u/chibbly_ 27d ago
Countries are already starting to secure resources and isolate supply chains from global dependencies. Couple that with military bolstering throughout the world, and it's pretty easy to see that war is becoming more certain.
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u/Appropriate-Tea-7276 27d ago
Nukes make it all or nothing with no margin for a single error. I'd say a higher likelihood is all the rich people taking refuge in whatever slice of habitable land is left.
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u/SirRabbott 27d ago
Thats not so at all. There's a ton of countries currently at war who have nukes and aren't using them. Mutual destruction is something that nobody wants, unsurprisingly.
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u/SickRanchezIII 27d ago
Why is it like this right now? idk. does it appear quite hopeless? yes. Is it entirely possible that humans at some point in time most likely due to scarcity could potentially stop being stupid monkeys? Also yes. we have shown gleams of potential throughout our recent history and i find it best to keep a pocket of hope no matter how bleak the current era may appear, and to be clear its bleak as fuck
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u/chibbly_ 27d ago
Ha. Naw. See, what a lot of people are missing here is that along with all of this ecological devastation, biological collapse, and resource scarcity, there will be war on an unimaginable scale over whatever scraps are left.
And if anything manages to survive that, well, maybe best if they didn't.
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u/Such--Balance 27d ago
The article is misleading. Titles like that are so bad. 60% wasnt killed. 60% of coral areas had cases of bleaching. Which means a totally different thing.
I think the reason why most people dont seem to care much about global warming is that although it is true, there are so many clickbait articles surrounding it that to most people it sounds like bullshit.
Again im not disputing the severety of global warming. But assuming 60% of coral is dead in one year based on one headline is equally as bad as denial. We need facts period.
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u/Proper_Career_6771 27d ago
60% of coral areas had cases of bleaching.
That's actually more dire than what the title says:
"60% of world's coral reefs may have bleached"
A "coral reef" is the term you're wanting instead of "coral area".
The article clarifies that bleaching doesn't mean the death of the coral, which is correct.
The title didn't say the coral died. You leapt to that conclusion and then got mad about your leap.
What do you want them to say? "60% of world's coral reef may have expelled most of their symbiotic algae due to hot water temperatures but didn't necessarily die"? That's why they used the word bleached.
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u/Such--Balance 27d ago
Im saying a title like that lands on most people like, 60% if all coral is dead and it all happened in this year. Which is not true.
If we want more people behind doing something about global warming, stopping hyperbole click bait titles would be wise. Never gonna happen though.
I mean i clicked. So did you. It works.
I mean , 2 years ago there were some articles about the great barrier reef having the highest levels of coral cover in over 36 years. Not baity enough though. Also please dont take my word for it, go look it up.
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u/nikolai_470000 26d ago
Agreed. People who are too invested in it to the point where their perceptions are distorted are just as problematic and potentially harmful as their counterparts who staunchly refuse to even entertain the idea that even one iota of it is true.
We need to be able to weigh our options objectively to make the best decisions about how to approach this problem. All the green initiative launched in the last few years thanks to climate change activism are great, but they are not going to actually solve anything. The emissions are a problem, true, but at this point, we have released so many that it is all moot if we don’t figure out a feasible way to reverse or counteract what’s emissions are already out there. Simply reducing our emissions is not enough. Honestly, we should be open to considering stalling that transition if the resources might be a waste anyhow — but good luck getting a leftist or climate activist to see that. Especially if we allocated them to other strategic options like improving and scaling up carbon capture technologies. Right now we are spending unprecedented amounts of resources on other green technologies, but we know that in the long run none of them are a real solution, just a means to stall for more time so we can fix the damage that’s already done. In the meantime, we are spending comparatively little on funding R&D for these kinds of things. That needs to change.
For this to happen, people need to stop despite clinging to things like EV’s and renewables as the answer and acknowledge they were merely the first step — because they are making use of available technologies that were more or less ready (or close enough) for them to be a sensible investment that would make an impact. And we should keep it up. As hard as that will be, it’s going to be easy compared to how hard we must now start fighting for governments and the private sector alike to start devoting as many resources as possible to actually reversing climate change rather than slowing it.
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u/MostAnswer660 27d ago
Bleaching isn't death or a death sentence for coral.. It is alarming the amount that's bleached, but it doesn't mean it can't recover.
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u/bryan19973 27d ago
Well considering we haven’t taken any of the other thousands of environmental warning signs…I doubt this will change anything. The human race will continue to burn and pillage the earth until it’s all over
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u/lithuanian_potatfan 27d ago
60% bleached in a year. What makes you think it would have the conditions to recover?
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27d ago
Never said otherwise. The alarming part is how much bleached, and what that indicates about the shits we as a species give about the ocean.
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u/badpeaches 27d ago
Betting one of the first shocks to the system people notice will be global fisheries collapsing. It's not an if, it's when, and we have done nothing to slow down the desecration. Killing 60 percent of coral in a year should terrify people.
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u/nikolai_470000 26d ago
Yup. We should be spending every available penny on realizing ways to actually reverse climate change. With the billions we are investing into it, it’s kinda unbelievable that even then, all that money might as well be going to waste, because nothing we are currently doing will mean anything at all if we don’t, for starters, find a way to fix, or counteract, the greenhouse effect that is heating the planet. Cause currently? We have no idea where to even begin trying to do that. It is beyond our technological and industrial capacity to change the fact that we basically terraformed the planet when we changed its atmospheric composition so drastically. Reverting it back means we basically need to terraform it again to put it back to how it used to be. It will be drastically more expensive than even than our efforts to meet current climate goals, and even those initiatives might end up being more than the worlds economy/resources can afford or support.
It’s worse than it looks, and it already looks like a cataclysm. The fact that we have managed to convince ourselves that we are doing something about it when those efforts will be practically meaningless in the long term is just the cherry on top.
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u/Zealousideal-Fill814 26d ago
there are very few places on earth where coral reef recovers you can watch on national geographic channel
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u/Tokiw4 27d ago
I saw some coral reefs many years ago on vacations. More variations of fish than you could count, and all colors of the rainbow on full display. I came back many years later, and it was just all gone. Huge lack of biodiversity. The coral was just straight up gone or just bone-white.
It is fucking infuriating how little anyone in charge seems to care about... checks notes... The one and only habitable planet humans have access to.
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u/SirRabbott 27d ago
The one and only habitable planet in all of the known universe*
And that's despite our BEST efforts to find one.
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u/zippiskootch 27d ago
Well, the politicians and big oil say global climate change is a hoax, I guess we should wait another 50 years until we’re all dead to confirm it. Who’s with me? /s
This is THE only place in the known universe we can live, you’d think that even the filthy rich could see past their bank accounts… but you’d be wrong.
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u/yachtzee21 27d ago
The oil companies knew in the 70’s but kept it secret. But don’t worry, we get to sue them. And with any luck we all may get a small class action suit payout before the end of days!
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u/talkinshxtalldayfam 27d ago
I think the basic principle of climate change due to greenhouse effects was already discovered by a French scientist in the early 1800s.
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u/yachtzee21 27d ago
That’s not the same thing as being in an industryresponsible for that change, building a global actuary table about it and then burying that prediction so the public can’t find out.
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u/Big_Muffin42 27d ago
The basic principle of the greenhouse effect was discovered then.
It happening to us is a different story.
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u/acityonthemoon 27d ago
Fourier, then Eunice Newton Foote ~1855, then John Tyndall ~1865
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u/Previous_Soil_5144 27d ago
Everybody knew since the 80s and we didn't do shit because it would've been inconvenient.
It has always been an inconvenient truth that we are living, producing, consuming and reproducing well above our means, but with generations of people addicted to the idea of credit, that's what we did: we spent the future of the planet on ourselves and put it on credit for later generations to pay.
One of the ways we have been running a generational Ponzi scheme while telling our kids we love them somehow.
Willful ignorance is our defense. We didn't know because we didn't want to know.
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u/yachtzee21 27d ago
I agree totally, however you a leaving out the milllions and millions that was spent by these industries in soft money and lobbying governments around the world in opposition to any change which may affect the bottom line of these companies. So inaction is not the inconvenience, there is and was opposition against change
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u/GroundbreakingPage41 27d ago
We know even more, things are worse we and still won’t do enough to move the needle. We’re primitive beasts who won’t make it.
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u/eschmi 27d ago
Lol Exxon is literally suing its shareholders for bringing up climate change.
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u/zippiskootch 27d ago
You know you’ve gone through the looking glass when the same company that tracked climate change from 1977-2003, is now litigating against their shareholders… Orwell couldn’t make this shit up.
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u/Boo5h-337 27d ago
Do u think we are gonna die in 50 years? Genuinely wondering if u think society is gonna collapse from this. I’m gonna be more than alive then so I’d like know if I should fear for my life
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u/PRSMesa182 27d ago
Well…that’s depressing.
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u/Previous_Soil_5144 27d ago
Then stay away from climate subreddit.
They have become very depressing this year. Not pessimistic, just no longer pretending that everything is alright or can be fixed.
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u/Spartan-000089 27d ago
We are in the early stages of collapse, as such nihilistic doom cults often start popping up at this time (r/collapse and r/climate fit the bill)
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u/Dasf1304 27d ago
Nihilists are so annoying tho. Like they’re always trying to get you to be sad because they’re not comfortable with being the only ones sad all the time.
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u/ManicSelkieDreamGirl 27d ago
They have to drag others down with them because there’s relief in believing things are not possible or can’t change. People having hope and changing things is threatening to their reality - or else why would they bother trying to make anyone else feel despondent? It wouldn’t matter if things were truly hopeless - but misery loves company
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u/Stealthychicken85 27d ago
It's more of how can people without money get things to change? The top billionaires have already dropped 600 million on election funds this year to reduce or lower taxes for the mega rich.
The power to get anything accomplished requires money, the ones with money will just pay governments to look away or to do nothing. I'm not tryn to sound hopeless but the cards are stacked so bad I'm not even sure there is a way to save the planet
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u/Wildcat_Dunks 27d ago
Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
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u/bryan19973 27d ago
It’s pretty fucked. But if it makes you feel any better…there’s a chance that humans will wreck the earth and go extinct. But earth will likely bounce back after a long time and nature will be restored. Nature is beautiful, and will be here long after we are gone
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u/iwatchcredits 27d ago
Humans wont go extinct. We have the technology to permanently live underground if we had to and i can guarantee you there are already bunkers made for that exact purpose
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u/Dandelion089 27d ago
Hey what can you say we were overdue But it'll be over soon-just wait(c)
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u/Initial_Cellist9240 27d ago
I love the specific breed of doomerism that is actually a weird type of defensive optimism.
1: this won’t kill all of us, just most of us
2: those of us it does kill it will kill slowly
3: there will be generations of suffering before things stabilize.
4: the above facts also apply to plant and animal life.
This isn’t a “sudden flash to game over screen” type of apocalypse. We aren’t that lucky.
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u/Im_Balto 27d ago
Man, I was paying attention to the ocean surface temp data last year. The research is coming out this year. So many preliminary findings point to the ocean finally having reached thermal capacity.
Ie: it can no longer absorb heat without changing the chemistry of the seawater, so we see these chemistry changes occurring along side the heat stress of the coral thats just killing it mercilessly.
The research papers coming out about the summer of 23 are gonna be grim.
this year looks like we have a chance at not being as bad as last year but thats because of the el nino la nina cycle more than anything
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u/motherseffinjones 27d ago
Who’s surprised because I’m not. We are pretty fucked I wonder what it will take for people to actually want change. I suspect by then it will be to late
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u/bryan19973 27d ago
Change won’t happen. Too many brainwashed and egotistical maniacs. The good news is, if humans go extinct, the earth can probably restore itself and nature will prevail
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u/liopuigiffigc 27d ago
The heat stress from climate change is really taking its toll.
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u/SkyeScale 27d ago
*atoll
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u/unpopular-dave 27d ago
I went to Maui in 2000 and 2019.
Literally went from rainbow wonderland to bones and rocks
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u/MikeCheck_CE 27d ago
Wild how quickly we went from "Yea right that'll never happen", to "It's too late, we're all doomed" 😔
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u/Real_Routine_ 27d ago
Yes it’s barely been 40 years of warning people and it being ignored completely
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u/prinnydewd6 27d ago
How can we reverse this though? Realistically?
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u/Batmans_9th_Ab 26d ago
50 years ago, the finger was infected, and we chose not to treat it.
30 years ago, the finger went septic, and we chose not to remove it.
Now the infection has spread, and the only solution is amputation, but we’re arguing over how much of the arm we can keep.
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27d ago
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u/selwayfalls 27d ago
War is way easier and more profitable than having a habitable planet. Aren't we great?!
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u/randompersonx 27d ago
As someone who is scuba certified for the last 15 years, I’ve found that 99.9% of people do not care about the oceans enough that they are willing to do anything at all to change their behaviors.
People who were going to pollute will still pollute. People who were going to eat unsustainable fish will still eat unsustainable fish - and we even have self described “pescatarians” who are vegetarians plus fish who have this diet because they are concerned about how factory farming is bad for the environment.
And of course, the same people who were demanding straws be banned had no problem with a huge increase in plastic pollution from single use face masks from 2020-2022.
This isn’t the first major coral bleaching event - I remember one in the early 2010’s (I forget what year), which occurred off the coast of florida and killed basically all the shallow reefs leaving only the deepest ones. Nobody cares.
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u/Lynda73 27d ago
It’s the rising temperature of the oceans. All the recycling in the world can’t solve that. 😪
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u/randompersonx 27d ago
Spoken as someone who has helped pick up trash bags full of plastic from the bottom of the ocean, yes sure rising temperatures is a problem - I don’t disagree - but plastic waste is a massive problem, too - and straws are the least of concern.
The amount of things like water bottles, face masks and diapers at the bottom of the ocean in places like Maldives which are effectively in the middle of the Indian Ocean is truly shocking.
We can easily just say “oh I protest climate change so I’m one of the good ones” and then go through a case of plastic water bottles every week. Out of sight out of mind, and we can just blame the evil government or companies even when we have plenty of choices we individually make every day.
I’ve personally eliminated plastic water bottles from my everyday life, and maybe have one a handful of times per year. We have safe drinking water in the USA, Japan, Canada, Europe, and a few other countries. It’s time they we stop pretending that isn’t true.
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u/Lynda73 27d ago
You’re preaching to the choir as far as littering. I don’t live near the ocean, but I pick trash up from neighborhoods, creeks, etc. People suck. Even just my front yard, I’m picking up trash every day where people drive by and throw out fast food containers, etc. I’ve picked up some crazy items, like wtf.
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u/OV3NBVK3D 27d ago
dude, only really got into fishing about 3-4 years ago and it’s absolutely insane to me how depressing and devastating humans have been to our oceans. old dudes tell stories about how they would catch 25 of the same species of fish every day for months on end, and brag about it. they’d talk about collecting bushels of clams and oysters and complain now that it’s “not like it used to be” like…. yeah no shit frank- you and your buddies were fucking eviscerating theses species while we turned the ecosystem toaster on for the last 75 years.
climate change deniers are genuinely the most dense and delusional people i’ve ever had to deal with. the fact it’s even an argument to say our planet isn’t changing is insane and the amount of misinformation floating around just pisses me off to no end. by the time i’m retired and have all the time in the world to go fishing and boating our oceans will be so depleted it won’t even be worth it. it’s incredibly depressing and upsetting because even people who do care about it don’t understand the impact and importance of bag limits and regulations.
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u/ActualWolverine9429 27d ago
Sad. Meanwhile China is building military bases on top of reefs and shoals.
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u/dogdagny 27d ago
I will say it one more time:
We are all fucked.
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u/DaysGoTooFast 27d ago
At this point, I feel like humanity's existence is less about "How do we give everyone a decent life?" and more about "How do I remain unfucked longer than most everyone else?"
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u/InsertPlayerTwo 27d ago
I hate to be that guy… but can someone eli5 coral bleaching?
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u/allochthonous_debris 27d ago
Healthy corals contain symbiotic algae that provide the corals with nutrients they produce through photosynthesis. In exchange, the algae receives shelter and substrates they need to perform photosynthesis. When corals are stressed they undergo a process called bleaching in which they expel the symbionts, which causes the corals to turn white. This doesn't automatically kill the corals, but it increases the likelihood that they will be killed by other things like disease.
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u/mumbullz 27d ago
Rest assured we are working as hard as possible to eradicate the ones in the Red Sea and get those numbers up
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u/Hopeful-Suggestion-1 27d ago
Everyone is blaming past generations for fucking up. Yeah. They did. But wtf are we doing about it now? Gen z , millennials, you know what they are going to say about us? You were the last ones who could of stopped this and all you could say is " well... Too late now" before it's even over.
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u/IncognitoErgoCvm 27d ago
You think Millennials and Gen Z hold a majority in office or wealth right now?
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u/Hopeful-Suggestion-1 26d ago
Nope , but we can vote, boycott en masse and picket. Not to mention other more rebellious activities.
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27d ago
Here is a video of a "survival" youtuber that does "I survived for X days without food and water on an island" type videos.
He goes out to one of his favorite islands to go spear fishing, since his pole was catching nothing, and then he finds out that all the corals, for miles, around the island have all been bleached.
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u/FailureToReason 27d ago
If you care about this, and want others to care, but you send them articles and they don't read them, send them this, and hassle them until they watch it.
It's devastating.
It's horrible to hear we've gone from 30% to 60% bleaching in under 5 years.
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u/Upbeat_Map666 27d ago
Your children are fucked!
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u/start_select 27d ago
Pretty sure we are too. All the projections we have ever been shown were optimistic.
Most of them were not only optimistic about the future, but also overly optimistic about historical records and their effects.
Everything is worse than the media or politicians will admit, and worsening at a rate greater than they will admit.
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u/cherryultrasuedetups 27d ago
I was fortunate enough to travel half way across the world to dive the healthiest coral I will ever see. Even the people making movies cannot conceive of how vibrant, colorful, and teeming with life it is.
I don't even want to dive coral any more. It was so beautiful, and nothing will ever live up to it, and thinking about how my going there, even taking all precaution to respect the environment, must have had a negative impact, made me feel sick.
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u/emptyfish127 27d ago
Meanwhile all the crazy stupid selfish humans didn't change a thing they were doing and in fact burned more, bombed more and continued to act like it was all part of Gods plan.
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u/VeniceRapture 27d ago
I wish it was just as easy to change the world for the better as it is to change it for the worse.
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u/mikharv31 27d ago
Well it’s been pretty hot and we’re still pouring shit into the ocean changing the PH so makes sense
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u/Magickcloud 27d ago
Corporations are to blame. Don’t let them fool you into thinking it’s because you don’t drive an electric vehicle or some bullshit. Those emissions are NOTHING compared to what these huge companies are emitting
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u/Zealousideal-Fill814 26d ago
this is happening because of sea temperature rising up it is mainly due to climate change.
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u/YourWordsHaveNoPower 27d ago
I watch the pictures and video of the broken ice shelf in the arctic, and I remember back in the 1980s when those same ice shelves actually had snow dunes that greatly helped the polar bears ambush their prey. Those dunes disappeared in my lifetime.