[mikekij]

"pH will drop to pH7.95 by 2045, and most marine life in our oceans dissolve."

As someone who considers themselves an environmentalist, I find this sort of language to have a net-negative impact on our collective cause. The paper fails to provide comprehensive evidence for the idea that a pH change of 0.08 will result in all carbonate-based marine life dissolving.

When 2045 comes, and the coral still exists, our populace will be further trained to ignore the warnings of climate scientists.

[el_nahual]

As a counterpoint to the idea that "alarmism" is counterproductive:

There are many of us who believe, by looking at the trends of arctic methane release, that runaway warming is now inescapable. (As a sidenote, arctic methane was for a long time were not even considered in IPCC reports, and many deposits are still not being considered today).

20 years ago there was a vocal minority that was saying "we must have drastic change NOW. If we de not act now we will be doomed." The IPCC and many departments thought that such drastic, alarmist language, would be counterproductive.

And nothing really changed and we are now, perhaps, doomed. Perhaps those alarmists were right.

It is of course impossible to prove the counterfactual of "what would have happened if we had been more alarmists 20 years ago?". But what we do know is that the tempered course of action we did take was almost certainly not enough.

* It goes without saying, but 20 years ago was 2002. Post google, post ipod. Basically the current age, not like, the 1970s or something, even though it may feel that way.

[cmckn]

The linked PDF is not so much a "paper" as it is a mid-tier web article, IMO.

Another claim seems plausible, but is kind of hilariously hand-waved:

> 90% of our oxygen comes from the oceans and more than 90% of our carbon dioxide ends up in the oceans. This figure [which figure?] is usually reported as 50%, but 90% is more accurate.

[OtomotO]

Make science more approachable, they said... now it's not sciency enough!

[lapetitejort]

When the oceans finally boil away, we can firmly lay the blame on scientists for being a few percentage points off of their predictions.

[OtomotO]

"You said they would boil in 2040... it's 2039 now! I thought we had more time! You tricked us all. YOU DOOMED US ALL!"

[Supermancho]

> When 2045 comes, and the coral still exists,

It won't exist in the ocean. This language is accurate, based on what we know, and appropriately conclusive.

I opened the article hoping it highlighted the most immediate problem (ocean acidification) and I was not disappointed. The plastic, yeah it's bad, but it's not going to kill off most sea life.

[300bps]

pH will drop to pH7.95 by 2045, and most marine life in our oceans dissolve.

Coral dissolving I can understand. But the article seems to be saying “most marine life” which gives me images of sharks and tuna dissolving.

I see three options:

1. The article misspoke

2. The article is wrong

3. The article is using some statistic I’m unaware of to be technically correct

Any help to assist me in understanding what he meant appreciated!

[d3m0t3p]

it might be that: if you count the mass of marine life, most of it is from the tiny animals. Just like there is more insects than humans. Therefore, most of the marine life is dead if you kill most of the plankton. And because it's the "root of the food chain", most of everything dies

[geoalchimista]

It isn't remotely true. Corals have persisted through the geological past when atmospheric CO2 was many times today's level. It could be true that _some_ coral species would go extinct, but corals as a class are likely to persist.

[Supermancho]

> Corals have persisted through the geological past when atmospheric CO2 was many times today's level.

We're heading toward something similar to the Miocene, both in CO2, temperature, and ph. You might want to look into the "Middle Miocene disruption", which refers to a wave of extinctions of terrestrial and aquatic life forms that occurred following the Miocene Climatic Optimum. There's a big oceanic fossil gap in the Miocene, because of this peak-temperature which seemed to tilt ecosystems too far. We do know the hard-coral scleractinians (same as modern corals^1) didn't appear because of this change, but likely because they were one of the few types that can survive it. Unfortunately, if the trend continues, the hardiest of the ancient species all die^2. 7.2 doesn't sound like 7.95? The ocean isn't uniformly affected^3 and will likely kick off another "disruption" of the existing ecosystems causing a collapse. ie You don't need to set fire to all the trees for the forest to burn down.

^1 https://bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-... ^2 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1419621112 ^3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

[marcosdumay]

Funny thing that ocean acidification is mostly about carbon dioxide too. The choice of title is basically as bad as that phrase.

[the_third_wave]

> When 2045 comes, and the coral still exists, our populace will be further trained to ignore the warnings of climate scientists.

When 2045 comes there will be no more "climate scientists" warning the general public because decades of "climate"-related scare mongering combined with "green" marketing (i.e. greenwashing) will have made the public insensitive to whatever they have to say, be it based in reality or in ideology. Instead of "climate" there will be some new looming disaster caused by human activity - nanotechnology, genetic engineering, nitrogen release due to farming (look at what is happening in the Netherlands [1] for a preview of what is to come) - which will also be co-opted by ideologues and marketeers for their nefarious purposes upon which the cycle will repeat. A very incomplete litany of apocalyptic predictions helps to shed a light on this phenomenon:

- food shortage due to overpopulation

- nuclear winter

- Paul Ehrlich's famine predictions

- the Silent Spring which would have killed off all birds

- a new glaciation triggered by particulate matter in the atmosphere

- the ozone layer scare

- acid rain which would kill all life in lakes and bleach trees

- another glaciation, now confirmed by satellite data and climate records showing no end to the 30-year cooling trend for the northern hemisphere

- the current "climate crisis" with its many individual scares like:

* the arctic would be ice free by 2014 (Gore) or 2016 (US Navy)

* ...which would cause a methane catastrophe due to the release of gas hydrates (which turned out to be caused by isostatic rebound, i.e. the ground rising after the ice pack retreated at the end of the last glaciation some 8000 years ago)

* north-western Europe would become "Siberian" by 2024 (did not happen)

* snowfall would be a thing of the past (record snowfall in the last few years)

* sea level rise would drown island nations (did and does not happen)

* Greenland would melt (it is actually doing the opposite)

In all these cases there was and is a core of truth which formed the base of these apocalyptic scenarios but in all cases that core of truth was stretched beyond reason for ideological and marketing purposes. Overpopulation could lead to food shortages but the industrial revolution made for a massive increase in productivity which actually increased the food supply per capita. Pesticides were harmful for birds but the "Silent Spring" scenario was severely overblown for ideological purposes. Particulate matter in the atmosphere leads to an increase in cloud cover which increases the planet's albedo while decreasing the amount of water vapour (a potent green house gas) but the glaciation scenario was severely overblown. The ozone hole scare never materialised even though the "hole" in the ozone layer persists. Acid rain turned out to be far less of a problem than predicted (something which became clear when I studied this phenomenon myself during my years at a leading agricultural university where I studied forestry). The "climate crisis" which we supposedly now are going through also quite stubbornly fails to differ substantially from earlier warmer periods like that in the 1930's (the Dust Bowl years) with the arctic refusing to melt, snow falling abundantly, islands not drowning as promised, north-western Europe not succumbing to a Siberian climate etc.

The real cure for these problems lies in the rigorous application of the scientific method without the troubling addition of ideology, without emotionally driven goal-hunting in the data, without commercially driven hiding of findings, without the religious dogmatism of The Science™. As to how to implement such a scheme... I don't know... anyone?

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/dutch-farmers-block-food-distribution-...