It’s obviously horrible, but it also means that it will allow other creatures to grow to fill that space. It’s like a forest fire. Sure the devastation is bad but there’s also renewal afterwards. It’s not like it will remain barren forever.
It’s not that simple. As the article mentions, if weather continues to warm and these events become more common, we could end up with seasonal die outs of intertidal species. It’s not immediately evident from that statement, but that would completely transform the biodiversity of the coastline.
Currently it’s one of vast abundance, but this transformation would very likely reduce that abundance and its diversity due to a foundation of the food chain disappearing regularly.
It’s nice to think something would just replace these species, but they’ve already reduced dramatically over the last 100 years and nothing has begun to shoehorn its way into the system.
It seems the worse this gets, the less overall abundance and diversity this coastline can support.
The world has always changed. We only have moderately good climatic records from dendrochronology for the past 1000 years or so. A meteor impact or supervolcanic eruption could disturb the climate far more rapidly than a few tens of decades burning fossil fuels. Life will go on. It always has.
If the waters heat up are you saying that no creatures will ever survive? That’s anti-science.
There are creatures around the world that thrive in warmer waters. The space will be reclaimed by other creatures that can survive in that environment. To think otherwise goes against basic science.
The difference is that the local ecosystem has evolved for forest fires; this is a massively destabilizing event where we can't predict what the "renewal" will look like and what species will go extinct in the meantime, or how polluted the water will end up being "normally" without the mussel population to keep things in check.
And I don't think the article is implying that the oceans will be barren forever, but that things are changing rapidly, unpredictably, and to an extreme degree that we have no precedent for.
I fear that much of the poison we leave behind, and the extinction of so much biodiversity, will make such regeneration much slower than it would otherwise need to be.
My greatest fear -- I've seen individual animals loose the will to live. What if a biotope loses the will? What if life decides not to come back?
How fast do these creatures reproduce? Are they going to generate billions in between now and the next hot season? How many more will die this hot season? Will even more die next hot season?
It’s not “hot season”. It was a historically abnormal heat wave. I lived in Vancouver. You don’t normally see temperatures like that.
It doesn’t have to reproduce right away, that’s just unrealistic. But the larger amounts of free space will mean a land grab by the survivors. That’s how it works in nature.
If the climate changes and the water heats up then the ecosystem will be replaced by those animals that would survive in warmer water. That’s science.
steve_adams_86|4 years ago
Currently it’s one of vast abundance, but this transformation would very likely reduce that abundance and its diversity due to a foundation of the food chain disappearing regularly.
It’s nice to think something would just replace these species, but they’ve already reduced dramatically over the last 100 years and nothing has begun to shoehorn its way into the system.
It seems the worse this gets, the less overall abundance and diversity this coastline can support.
morpheos137|4 years ago
plank_time|4 years ago
There are creatures around the world that thrive in warmer waters. The space will be reclaimed by other creatures that can survive in that environment. To think otherwise goes against basic science.
SamoyedFurFluff|4 years ago
magneticnorth|4 years ago
And I don't think the article is implying that the oceans will be barren forever, but that things are changing rapidly, unpredictably, and to an extreme degree that we have no precedent for.
ji0|4 years ago
mellavora|4 years ago
My greatest fear -- I've seen individual animals loose the will to live. What if a biotope loses the will? What if life decides not to come back?
dyeje|4 years ago
plank_time|4 years ago
It doesn’t have to reproduce right away, that’s just unrealistic. But the larger amounts of free space will mean a land grab by the survivors. That’s how it works in nature.
If the climate changes and the water heats up then the ecosystem will be replaced by those animals that would survive in warmer water. That’s science.