Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => The Environment => Topic started by: acsinuk on 16/04/2021 18:51:54

Title: Will Kelp forests save the coral from climate change
Post by: acsinuk on 16/04/2021 18:51:54

A sky news report tonight, on climate change highlighted the importance of kelp to grow inside coral reefs to protect them.  So what is Australia and Florida doing to protect our coral reefs?

Title: Re: Will Kelp forests save the coral from climate change
Post by: alancalverd on 17/04/2021 10:35:21

What the UK is doing is abandoning the Common Fisheries Policy to protect a whole lot of cold water habitats including North Sea coral and kelp.

Title: Re: Will Kelp forests save the coral from climate change
Post by: Petrochemicals on 17/04/2021 11:22:09

Stop bottom trawling. In fact this is probably a major cause of climate change, ocean acidification.

Title: Re: Will Kelp forests save the coral from climate change
Post by: evan_au on 18/04/2021 11:36:05

Quote from: Petrochemicals

Stop bottom trawling. In fact this is probably a major cause of climate change, ocean acidification.

These two sentences have nothing to do with each other.
Don't try to conflate the two.

Bottom Trawling
I have no doubt that bottom trawling destroys a lot of seafloor habitats - they are effectively killing the source of their own income. So better controls on bottom trawling is a good idea.

Climate Change & Ocean Acidification
But Bottom Trawling has nothing to do with climate change and ocean acidification, which are mainly caused by Petrochemicals.
- Increased burning of Petrochemicals dumps more CO₂ into the atmosphere, which increases global temperatures
- This is despite the fact that much of this atmospheric CO₂ is absorbed by the oceans, creating carbonic acid, which is bad news for any marine animal with a shell, skeleton or scales (ie most of the sea creatures we care about).
- We are likely to be left with an ocean of jellyfish. I have tried eating jellyfish, and they are not very appetizing.