Coral Bleaching - Climate Change - Hawaii

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Yesterday, all day, the home page for the Weather Channel featured the headline:

There Is No Debate About Climate Change.

Below the headline a map of the US linked feature articles for all 50 states describing how climate change is already affecting an aspect of life in each of them. Hawaii's story was about coral bleaching and what scientists are doing to try and preserve our reefs. It's a well written, detailed look at one of the changes taking place in our islands right now.

http://features.weather.com/us-climate-change/hawaii/

Percentage change in the level of glyphosate, an herbicide, in Americans’ urine since 1993 : +1,200. Harper's Index

[glinda]

quote:

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Originally posted by HereOnThePrimalEdge

There Is No Debate About Climate Change...

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Wait a minute! I hear, and from a "very reliable source" at that, wink wink, that climate change is a hoax foisted upon us by the Chinese Government.

Great find, thanks for the link. All the articles covering all the states appear to be well worth the read.

No #FakeNews! that!

[rainyjim]

Hopefully we can get some GMO coral that is resilient in the face of rising ocean temperatures.

[TomK]

Seriously, that's not a bad idea.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Hopefully we can get some GMO coral
...
Seriously, that's not a bad idea.

Yes, it's an excellent idea.
For the moment researchers are working with selective mating, using coral varieties they've identified as having some heat resistance. But the GMO approach is one of their emergency measures should water temperature changes become more rapid, or the selective mating technique not respond as quickly as necessary:

Van Oppen says they’re even “playing around a bit” with trying to intentionally splice in specific gene variants to make genetically modified (GM) corals designed to cope with heat or acid. “But,” she quickly adds, “that’s when you start to hear a lot of resistance.

Van Oppen predicts that resistance to these projects will fade as time passes and the plight of corals gets worse. “I presented these ideas to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority late last year,” says van Oppen. “They were quite excited about developing these technologies ‘just in case’.”
http://e360.yale.edu/features/as_ocean_w...per_corals

[Chas]

Yes, we’re so smart, let’s change nature rather than changing our behavior.

That’s always worked well in the past...

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

we're so smart, let’s change nature

Mammoth, dodo, Tasmanian tiger, passenger pigeon...
Maybe instead of changing nature by eliminating a part of it, we could save and preserve it for a change.

Percentage change in the level of glyphosate, an herbicide, in Americans’ urine since 1993 : +1,200. Harper's Index

[TomK]

Scientists working in various areas have little or no influence on governments who do little to change our behavior. Given that, mitigating the effects of climate change by finding a way to regrow coral reefs, an important resource for Hawaii, seems a good interim idea to me.