Oxygen loss already happens, see news about dead fish.
Issue here is that becomes more common and underwater oxygen loss is approaching an “unsafe space” with impacts likely irreversible within human lifetimes, some of which could persist for centuries.
The cost of not addressing it is more distributed: at some point you can't go outside anymore since the UV index is so high, sunscreen can't block high-intensity UV-B and UV-C, plants get damaged to the point of catastrophic crop failures... you can live in denial about climate change in developed countries (for a limited time anyway) but ozone affects everyone.
The closest we've come is depopulation events, e.g. 200M by bubonic plague, 85M in WWII, 55M in the Great Leap Forward. The Four Horsemen. But since we seem to be already trending toward depopulation I'd rather just wait.
If you want to go older and more localised you could look at forestry and fisheries laws. Sometimes we self-regulate and form a stable state, other times we over-extract until collapse
When the costs are low and require no change in personal behaviour, nor even belief in the problem. Billions of people had no idea about changes to aerosol propellants or refrigerants and they were not required to know or agree in order to solve the problem.
Ozone hole? Not sure how much of that was cyclical vs in human control.
I wouldn’t underestimate human ingenuity when there is a clear problem. Things like this, it’s still hypothetical. Climate scientists can raise the alarm or whatever but have no credibility, certainly not when the proposed solution is some kind of global authoritarian communism, and it always is.
I’m upset that we don’t put more into carbon capture and other technological solutions now and waste all our time on some proxy political battle, but that’s where we are. When things get really bad we will build a solution.
CFCs are responsible for the ozone hole. There are no known significant natural sources of CFCs. The ozone hole was caused by humans and its course correction was due to the political will to phase out CFCs.
> Climate scientists can raise the alarm or whatever but have no credibility
Next post would be what: Human hubris as measured by UN Hubris Measuring Commitee now threatens to collapse the entire solar system into a purple hole?
Can we please snap out of it and use something like if not common sense but at least a Fermi approach? Or did he die in vain?
This will be dismissed by climate deniers as fear mongering. It should invoke fear, which should lead to doing our damndest to mitigate the issue with great haste.
Instead of immediately making this an us vs them with theoretical climate deniers how about we focus on talking about how to improve science communication so that the article isn't something simultaneously dense and vague enough to be easily dismissed.
I'll pick on the US, because blaming India and China will incite their little public defenders to bury the thread.
The Gulf of Mexico is currently downstream of the US's crop production which dumps nitrogen and phosphorous into it, which is bad and causes problems like the article attempts to illustrate.
As you should. The current administration is partially owned by the fossil fuels industry and is literally paying to destroy existing and planned renewable energy sources.
The agricultural runoff problem is an ecological crime scene. We could solve it if we weren't so corrupt.
It's been a known issue since the 1980s. LUMCON/Rabalais, Farm Bill in 1995, 1997 Hypoxia task force, 2001 Action plan, 2008 Action plan, 2011 Stoner Memo...
The point is being deranged about the current admin doesn't help the scenario. Every team (political group) fucked up royally, continues to fuck up, and only cares about how much money businesses are putting into their second home or their kid's trust fund.
Are there actual measurements that even show this deoxygenation?
For example, I clicked on the random link in that paper (referenced as a proof of river oxygen decline) — the article was not even based on some actual data log but fucking deep learning model (which may or may not work)
Yes, the organization I work for studies this phenomenon extensively. We measure pH, temperature, oxygen, flow, and many other factors related to climate change. Hypoxia (and acidification) are emerging concerns.
And since it's HN, we'll have a few genius contrarians in the comments saying we can just manually pump oxygen into the ocean to offset it. They might even say the free market will come up with a way to fund it! I look forward to their insight.
The feedback loop between warming and deoxygenation is particularly concerning for deep-water systems that have been stable for millennia. If we hit the thresholds mentioned where the ocean's 'internal clock' is disrupted, it might permanently alter nutrient cycling beyond what current atmospheric models predict. I'm curious if any researchers here have insight into whether localized aeration tech could mitigate this in crucial spawning grounds, or if the scale is simply too vast.
Oxygen loss already happens, see news about dead fish.
Issue here is that becomes more common and underwater oxygen loss is approaching an “unsafe space” with impacts likely irreversible within human lifetimes, some of which could persist for centuries.
Coastal “dead zones”, impact of fish food etc.
Have we ever as a species successfully changed our behavior on a scale needed to address something like climate change and underwater oxygen loss?
What would be the closest “we’ve got to change or perish” moment we’ve successfully navigated?
We did a reasonable job with ozone depletion, but that has much lower costs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion
The cost of not addressing it is more distributed: at some point you can't go outside anymore since the UV index is so high, sunscreen can't block high-intensity UV-B and UV-C, plants get damaged to the point of catastrophic crop failures... you can live in denial about climate change in developed countries (for a limited time anyway) but ozone affects everyone.
Yesterday there was an article here about ozone vs aluminum from the spacex sattelites reentry (which soon there will be plenty of)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49062120
“Plasma Tunnels Reveal How Dying Satellites Fall to Earth” (ieee.org)
The closest we've come is depopulation events, e.g. 200M by bubonic plague, 85M in WWII, 55M in the Great Leap Forward. The Four Horsemen. But since we seem to be already trending toward depopulation I'd rather just wait.
Food?
I.E. avoiding population collapse due to lack of ecosystem carrying capacity? Eliminating famine? etc.
Nuclear weapons (so far)?
Banning CFCs perhaps?
If you want to go older and more localised you could look at forestry and fisheries laws. Sometimes we self-regulate and form a stable state, other times we over-extract until collapse
Ozone hole over Antarctica.
It is possible for us to work together and fix these things.
Edit:
Moving away from leaded gas might be another example.
(CFCs and leaded gas invented by the same dude, fun fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. Quite a legacy...)
We haven't fixed the ozone hole yet. It'll take another 40 years for it to return to the levels prior to 1980:
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/ozone-hole-...
When the costs are low and require no change in personal behaviour, nor even belief in the problem. Billions of people had no idea about changes to aerosol propellants or refrigerants and they were not required to know or agree in order to solve the problem.
Ozone hole? Not sure how much of that was cyclical vs in human control.
I wouldn’t underestimate human ingenuity when there is a clear problem. Things like this, it’s still hypothetical. Climate scientists can raise the alarm or whatever but have no credibility, certainly not when the proposed solution is some kind of global authoritarian communism, and it always is.
I’m upset that we don’t put more into carbon capture and other technological solutions now and waste all our time on some proxy political battle, but that’s where we are. When things get really bad we will build a solution.
CFCs are responsible for the ozone hole. There are no known significant natural sources of CFCs. The ozone hole was caused by humans and its course correction was due to the political will to phase out CFCs.
> Climate scientists can raise the alarm or whatever but have no credibility
Climate scientists have credibility.
As the link is university press release, here is study mentioned: https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ln...
"Irreversible on human timescales" is a nice succinct wording; I think I usually end up discussing that concept in a less clear / more roundabout way.
Next post would be what: Human hubris as measured by UN Hubris Measuring Commitee now threatens to collapse the entire solar system into a purple hole?
Can we please snap out of it and use something like if not common sense but at least a Fermi approach? Or did he die in vain?
This will be dismissed by climate deniers as fear mongering. It should invoke fear, which should lead to doing our damndest to mitigate the issue with great haste.
Instead of immediately making this an us vs them with theoretical climate deniers how about we focus on talking about how to improve science communication so that the article isn't something simultaneously dense and vague enough to be easily dismissed.
I'll pick on the US, because blaming India and China will incite their little public defenders to bury the thread.
The Gulf of Mexico is currently downstream of the US's crop production which dumps nitrogen and phosphorous into it, which is bad and causes problems like the article attempts to illustrate.
> I'll pick on the US
As you should. The current administration is partially owned by the fossil fuels industry and is literally paying to destroy existing and planned renewable energy sources.
The agricultural runoff problem is an ecological crime scene. We could solve it if we weren't so corrupt.
It's been a known issue since the 1980s. LUMCON/Rabalais, Farm Bill in 1995, 1997 Hypoxia task force, 2001 Action plan, 2008 Action plan, 2011 Stoner Memo...
The point is being deranged about the current admin doesn't help the scenario. Every team (political group) fucked up royally, continues to fuck up, and only cares about how much money businesses are putting into their second home or their kid's trust fund.
Ah another very timely video from SmartEveryDay explaining this eloquently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS6HEes8daw
This admin is detaching from democracy and encourages a fact-free world. We will need those to fix climate change.
Yeah, sure. Meanwhile pollutants and CO2 per person have been on a downward trend for decades. But two years of this admin has ruined in all?
There is no hope unless we decide to do things globally. And until you are willing to "compel" countries who don't play along, it's not happening.
So, no, shaming people or telling them to be afraid will not help.
dumping nutrients into ocean funnily helps ocean ecosystems to get more productive.
who could have thought, eh?
Are there actual measurements that even show this deoxygenation?
For example, I clicked on the random link in that paper (referenced as a proof of river oxygen decline) — the article was not even based on some actual data log but fucking deep learning model (which may or may not work)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01793-3
Yes, the organization I work for studies this phenomenon extensively. We measure pH, temperature, oxygen, flow, and many other factors related to climate change. Hypoxia (and acidification) are emerging concerns.
https://tula.org/news/hypoxia-emerges-as-a-new-threat-on-can...
And since it's HN, we'll have a few genius contrarians in the comments saying we can just manually pump oxygen into the ocean to offset it. They might even say the free market will come up with a way to fund it! I look forward to their insight.
Sorry, not going to be afraid.
Do you think climate change wipes us out before some other natural disaster?
The feedback loop between warming and deoxygenation is particularly concerning for deep-water systems that have been stable for millennia. If we hit the thresholds mentioned where the ocean's 'internal clock' is disrupted, it might permanently alter nutrient cycling beyond what current atmospheric models predict. I'm curious if any researchers here have insight into whether localized aeration tech could mitigate this in crucial spawning grounds, or if the scale is simply too vast.