Gloom & doom

[Bowmouth]

A thread dedicated to all the really bad things that are about to happen to our water world or are happening right now.

I'd like to start with this article on the BBC today:

BBC News, Manado, Indonesia

The world's most important coral region is in danger of being wiped out by the end of this century unless fast action is taken, says a new report.

The international conservation group WWF warns that 40% of reefs in the Coral Triangle have already been lost.

The area is shared between Indonesia and five other south-east Asian nations and is thought to contain 75% of the world's coral species.

It is likened to the Amazon rainforest in terms of its biodiversity.

Temperature change

It's 2099, and across south-east Asia, a hundred million people are on the march, looking for food.

"The productivity of ocean... is plummeting right now"
Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
WWF report author

The fish they once relied on is gone. Communities are breaking down; economies destroyed.

That is what we can expect, says the new WWF report, if the world's richest coral reef is destroyed.

And that, it says, could happen this century.

It's billed as a worst-case scenario, but the report's chief author, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, says it is not as bad as the future we're currently headed towards.

"Up until now we haven't realized how quickly this system is changing," says Professtor Hoegh-Guldberg.

"In the last 40 years in the Coral Triangle, we've lost 40% of coral reefs and mangroves - and that's probably an underestimate. We've fundamentally changed the way the planet works in terms of currents and this is only with a 0.7 degree change in terms of temperature.

"What's going to happen when we exceed two or four or six?"

Climate change consequences

Avoiding a worst-case scenario would need significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and better controls on fishing and coastal areas, says the report.

Corals in Honda Bay in Palawan island, western Philippines

The Coral Triangle covers 1% of the earth's surface but contains a third of all the world's coral, and three-quarters of its coral reef species.

If it goes, an entire eco-system goes with it - and that, says Prof Hoegh-Gudberg, has serious consequences for its ability to tackle climate change.

"Pollution, the inappropriate use of coastal areas, these are destroying the productivity of ocean which is plummeting right now. That is the system that traps CO2 - 40% of CO2 goes into the ocean.

"Now if we interrupt that, the problems on planet earth become even greater," says Prof Hoegh-Gudberg.

Indonesia is hosting the World Ocean Conference this week because, it says, oceans have been neglected so far in global discussions on climate change.

It wants the issue to have a bigger profile at UN climate talks later this year.

 

[mase]

Unfortunately, most of the worlds population doesn't care about the health of Ocean reefs or realize how their demise will effect the ecolgical balance of the rest of the Planet. Governments and elected officials, for the most part, don't seem to be giving it the attention it deserves, to caught up in trying to get reelected, rather than really accomplishing anything. It is going to take a monumental change in attitude to educate the masses and get our respective Governments to do anything constructive. Divers and those in the industry will have to play a major role in this effort. Hopefully the word will get out before we reach a tipping point.

 

[Bowmouth]

It is going to take a monumental change in attitude to educate the masses and get our respective Governments to do anything constructive. Divers and those in the industry will have to play a major role in this effort. Hopefully the word will get out before we reach a tipping point.

I am somewhat worried that we've mistreated our natural world already a bit too much and too long. A combined global effort to protect our natural environment by countries, populations and governments may slow the demise down but I doubt if things will even then get better any time soon.
I'm no expert on these things though and only expressing what I think may happen.

What worries and bothers me a lot is that if you really start looking online you'll find every single day new news articles about natural disasters, pollution, unsustainable fishing, destruction of habitat etc.
Even with all the attention these things seem to get, nothing much really seems to change or being done about it.

 

[mase]

IEven with all the attention these things seem to get, nothing much really seems to change or being done about it.

Absolutely. Hopefully we can change something, otherwise the consequences aren't going to be very enjoyable. The Earth has a way of regenerating.

 

[wedivebc]

You know I call BS on all this global warming paranoia. Of course the globe is warming. The last ice age ended a mere 10,000 years ago which is the blink of an eye in global historical terms. Where I live on Vancouver Isand can hardly be termed a tropical location yet there are large karst areas of limestone, which is evidence of ancient coral reefs. The planet changes on it's own regardless of man's influence. I do believe we should be ecologically responsible and do as little as possible to affect the planet I think the belief we are the sole cause of global climate change is absurd.

 

[mase]

I think the belief we are the sole cause of global climate change is absurd.

Not the sole cause but a significant contributor and one we can do something about.

 

[Bowmouth]

The planet changes on it's own regardless of man's influence.

Yes it does.
But now we (billions of) humans are accelerating the process. Things are changing fast and living creatures (including us) may not be able to keep up with the process of rapid change.
We can only guess what exactly will happen and when it happens and deal with it as good as we can.
I believe that eventually nature will sort itself out (including us!) because no matter what; we are part of the natural world.

 

[Bowmouth]

There's currently quite a bit of research going on about the rate of melting ice and here's an interesting article about it.


Ice sheet melt threat reassessed
By Mark Kinver
Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Western Antarctica (Image: SPL)

The collapse of a major polar ice sheet will not raise global sea levels as much as previous projections suggest, a team of scientists has calculated.

Writing in Science, the researchers said that the demise of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) would result in a sea level rise of 3.3m (10 ft).

Previous estimates had forecast a rise in the region of five to six metres.

However, they added, the rise would still pose a serious threat to major coastal cities, such as New York.

"Sea level rise is considered to be the one of the most serious consequence of climate change," lead author Jonathan Bamber told the Science podcast.

"A sea level rise of just 1.5m would displace 17 million people in Bangladesh alone," he added.

"So it is of the utmost importance to understand the potential threats to coastlines and people living in coastal areas."

Threat reassessed

Professor Bamber, from the University of Bristol's Glaciology Centre, said that the WAIS posed "potentially one of the most serious threats".

The ebb and flow of sea level rise

The world has three ice sheets, Greenland, East Antarctica and West Antarctica, but it is the latter that is considered most vulnerable to climatic shifts.

"It has been hypothesised for more than 30 years now that the WAIS is inherently unstable," he explained.

"This instability means that the ice sheet could potentially rapidly collapse or rapidly put a lot of ice into the oceans."

When the idea first emerged in the late 1970s, it was estimated that global sea level would rise by five metres if the WAIS collapsed.

Current projections suggest that a complete collapse of WAIS would result in an increase of up to six metres.

But Professor Bamber said that no-one had revisited the calculation, despite new data sets becoming available, and scientists developing a better understanding of the dynamics in the vast ice sheets.

The original estimates were based on "very basic ice thickness data", he explained.

"Ice thickness data gives you information about the depth of the bedrock underneath the ice sheet.

"Over the past 30 years, we have acquired much more ice thickness data over the whole of Antarctica, particularly over West Antarctica.

"We also have much better surface topography. Those two data sets are critical in determining two things."

The first was knowing the volume of ice that could contribute to sea level rise, and the second was a better understanding of the proportion of WAIS that was potentially susceptible to this instability.

Instead of assuming that the entire WAIS would collapse, causing sea level to rise by up to six metres, Professor Bamber and colleagues used models based on glaciological theory to simulate how the 2.2 million-cubic-km ice sheet would respond.

"Our reassessment of West Antarctica's contribution to sea level rise if the ice sheet was to collapse is about 3.3 metres," he said.

"That is about half of the value that has been quoted up until now."

The team's study also calculated what regions were likely to experience the biggest increases in sea level.

"Sea level rise is not uniform across the world's oceans, partly as a result of disruptions to the Earth's gravity field," explained Professor Bamber.

"It turns out that the maximum increase in sea level rise is centred at a latitude of about 40 degrees along the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards of North America."

This would include cities such as San Francisco and New York.

These areas could expect increases of one-and-a-quarter times the global average, the team estimated.

In other words, if the global average was one metre, then places like New York could expect to see a rise of 1.25m.

Responding to Professor Bamber's paper in Science, British Antarctic Survey science leader Dr David Vaughan described the findings as "quite sound".

"But for me, the most crucial question is not solely about the total amount of ice in West Antarctica, because that might take several centuries to be lost to the ocean," he told BBC News.

"The crucial question is how much ice could be lost in 100-200 years; that's the sea level rise we have to understand and plan for.

"Even with this new assessment the loss of a fraction of WAIS over those timescales would have serious consequences and costs that we've only really just begun to understand."

 

[TimA]

We just caught a meter and a half wahoo dragging a lure we made ourselves using fishing twine we found on a beach in the Banyaks and some pink plastic wrapping rope found floating that we shreaded and tied to an old hook. We then ate the Wahoo raw and soaked the rest in salt water and dried it in the sun with a woven bamboo tray we bought in Thailand.

With the USA and China among others spewing so much caca into the atmosphere is it still safe to drink the rainwater we collect?

I have a new pair of flipflops...1 left green and 1 right red (same size) found on a beach in Simeulue. My son found a plastic hair comb. Do you think a toothbrush floating in the sea and scalded by the sun for months is sterile enough to use?
Maybe I have seen Waterworld and Mad Max movies too many times.

Dodent at Rupiah Tirta Rubiah Tirta Divers is (has been) growing corals for Aceh's part of the coral triangle and a grassroots Turtle Conservation is beginning in the Banyaks part of the Coral Triangle. Turtles of North Sumatra

 

[surinboy]

more gloom and doom....

'The World's Fish Will Die Out Within 50 Years' - Yahoo! News UK