Scientists Race To Save Miami Coral Doomed By Dredging 99
An anonymous reader writes "Miami scientists are scrambling to rescue a crop of coral at the bottom of one of the world's busiest shipping channels that they say could hold clues about climate change. 'The coral, which may hold clues about how sea life adapts to climate change, is growing in Government Cut. The channel, created more than a century ago, leads to PortMiami and is undergoing a $205 million dredging project — scheduled to begin Saturday — to deepen the sea floor by about 10 feet in time for a wave of new monster cargo ships cruising through an expanded Panama Canal starting in 2015. Endangered coral and larger coral have already been removed by a team hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the dredging work. But the remaining coral, deemed "corals of opportunity" in Corps lingo, can be retrieved with a permit. The problem, scientists say, is they only had 12 days between when the permits were issued last month and the start of dredging, not nearly enough time to save the unusual colonies thriving in Government Cut.'"
Re:Mass extinction waits for no-one (Score:2, Interesting)
But the average over the entire day has been significantly increased.
Please define "significantly". The amount of "significance" depends on natural variability. As already mentioned, any differences that can be honestly attributed to CO2 don't seem to be "significant" in that context. Further, you seemed to miss the point that coral evolved in conditions of MUCH higher CO2 concentrations, not just a little or even double or triple, but far more than even an order of magnitude. Whether they did it quickly or slowly has little bearing on the fact that they did it.
Much like how air temperatures may vary by 20-30 degrees F from night to day but a change in the average daily temperatures of just a couple of degrees has a major effect on growing seasons, insect viability, etc.
I know how it works. And that's correct: historically, and in general, a degree or two warmer on average has lengthened growing seasons, making them more productive. And higher CO2 concentrations generally helps plant growth (which is why some greenhouse operations add CO2 to their greenhouse air).
For a geek you suuuuuuck at math.
This would seem to be a rather large leap to conclusion, since no actual "math" has appeared here.
Re:Mass extinction waits for no-one (Score:3, Interesting)
> Also, in a period of 10,000 years starting 18,000 years ago sea levels rose 400 feet,
That's true, or close enough to true that its not worth quibbling over here.
> with commensurate changes in temperature, salinity and acidity.
That's completely unsupported by the evidence, something you just randomly tacked on hoping to get it by.
But despite that, what also happened is that coral diversity went into the shitter. It isn't a case of "somehow" its a case of things got really crappy for a long time and eventually recovered after thousands of years - that's in the fossil record. Now that the human population is several orders of magnitude greater than before, we are much more dependent on the ocean, small changes have a lot bigger impact on human civilisation.
The thing that soooo many of you deniers can't grasp is that it isn't about "saving the planet" -- the planet is going to be here in one form or another no matter what. It is about saving US. Even small disruptions in the food chain will have large impacts on our quality of life - do you want your kids to live in the modern equivalent of a bombay slum?
Re:"Clues about climate change"? (Score:4, Interesting)
Save the coral because the coral deserves to be saved.
No, it really doesn't. It deserves nothing.
You can argue that YOU (and other people) want it to survive. You can argue its bad for humans in some way.
What you can not argue is that change can be stopped. The universe IS change. Evolution by definition means the end of species. Humans exist BECAUSE another species ceased, our ancestors.
Species go extinct every day, new ones are created every single day. This is the way of things.
I'm not saying we should say fuck the environment, its in our best interest of the world to stay relatively close to how it is today for the foreseeable future, but people like you really need to stop pretending you can keep the planet exactly like it is forever. All that will happen if you try is your death at the hands of your own starvation.