HANDY is a 4-variable thought-experiment model for interaction of humans and nature.
Corals are usually pigmented. Some take on shades of brown. Others are more vibrant, stained with bright blue, green, or red hues, like the ones on the front of travel brochures selling all-inclusive packages to Fijian resorts.
Think of them like indispensable solar panels: Craig Anderson, enjoying a natural masterpiece. When the surrounding water temperature exceeds a certain threshold, the zooxanthellae start producing a bunch of toxic oxidizing radicals.
Corals already live in water temperatures near their upper thermal limits, so any time water temps creep above that limit, bleaching ensues.
But if deprived of their main food supply for long, death is likely. The bleached corals Takabayashi noticed in along with many other reefs surrounding Hawaii, Florida, Kiribati, Guam, and the Marshall Islands--were some of the first victims of what would later be deemed by NOAA scientists to be the longest global bleaching event on record.
That event started in the fall ofwhen an expanse of warm water nicknamed "The Blob" began wreaking havoc on marine life in the Pacific Ocean, including coral reefs. The above-average water temps continued throughout and then cooled for a couple months.
Last year set the record for warmest global water temps sinceand looks to be even warmer. These record-setting sea-surface temps did serious harm to reefs. Kiribati, an island chain home to many empty, world-class surf breaks, lost over 80 percent of its living coral. Hodgson, who has been studying coral reefs since the s, remembers the bleaching event like it was yesterday.
May 10, · Terms of debate: Destroying vs altering nature, the fragile vs the resilient Earth But nature is always in flux including any flux that results from human action. There is no immutable nature to "destroy" or to "restore." Or we can choose to adopt a healthier lifestyle that will extend our lives (as a society and as a species. Understanding War’s Enduring Nature Alongside its Changing Character. Christopher Mewett. society, and the future. of human society—something that the Future of War team seems to have just as backwards as the technologists and Revolution in Military Affairs advocates who preceded them. leslutinsduphoenix.com Tue, 04 Sep + leslutinsduphoenix.com?p=41 Thomas.
Here, under magnification, the strange face of a vital creature becomes visible. This is a grim outlook for any island economy that depends on living coral. Reef systems serve many purposes beyond stoking out barrel-crazed surfers believe it or not.
They prevent erosion and shield coastal towns from giant swells by mitigating wave energy. As Bruce Shaw, a scientist from Columbia University, put it: If we regulate and monitor things like pollution and reckless fishing practices, corals have the ability to bounce back after being diseased and bleached.
If fossil fuel burning continues unabated, climate scientists say, things will get ugly. Oceans will continue to warm, which will bring on rising sea levels and coastal erosion.
Oceans will also continue to acidify, which will prevent corals from soaking up the calcium they need to create and rebuild their calcium carbonate skeleton. If climate change keeps at its furious pace, corals will perish.
And what of the reefs below some of our favorite waves? If corals go extinct, will famous reefbreak waves like P-Pass or Teahupoo or Cloudbreak face the same demise as the reefs underneath them erode? No matter how far into the future that may be, it still leaves us with the dilemma of what we can do right now to save them.
The island houses the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, where Gates is working on a solution that could save coral reefs from the chokehold of climate change.
I met Gates on a particularly hot afternoon in June, on the small floating dock at the entrance of the island.
Gates--a year-old English woman with a pixie cut, a hearty laugh, and a black belt in karate--is the director of HIMB and also serves as the president of the International Society for Reef Studies. Her most recent project involves breeding "super coral" that can withstand the elements of the warmer, more acidic oceans of the future.
We hopped in her golf cart to get a closer look at her lab on the other side of the island.Making North America educator materials are available on PBS LearningMedia. Explore our collection of Earth science video resources, background essays, lesson plans and more.
Interested in. Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies. This is really good. But I also think there’s a reason our base cultural values are used as a tiebreaker – they’re designed to minimize the average actual distaste the average person has with the status quo (You can’t have a cultural norm if too many people object to it too strongly, it ends up changing).
human) distaste for the fact of finitude, American society is gradually learning to expect disability in old age and to accept that serious illness and death are inevitable. Medical ethics, human rights and law. Circumcision is more than a medical or health issue.
Bodily integrity is recognized as a fundamental human right, basic to the autonomy of the individual and guaranteed by law. Altering gait by way of stimulation of the plantar surface of the foot – Study suggests that when feet numbed by shoe wearing receive stimulation the brain and body work better, resulting in better balance and stability and fewer falls for the elderly..
Thoughts On A Proper Child’s Shoe – A web article by Dr. Mark Cucuzzella MD FAAFP, which begins, “As a family physician, I firmly.