Hacker News Reader

The oceans are dying. Solving this problem should be a priority, but the effects are too complex and not immediately visible enough for people to care. I fear that by the time the effects will noticeably endanger humanity, not only will it be too late, people still might not understand the causation.

View on HN

Most likely the root cause is acidification of the ocean. Increasing the carbon dioxide in the ocean decreases the ph level of water, making it more acidic. While some animals and plants have evolved to handle highly acidic environments, most have not, and in general acid tends to be bad for living creatures. I know I'm oversimplifying things, but this seems reasonable. I assume if there were giant balls of plastic pollution in the whales belly this would be found in an autopsy and therefore plastic pollution is probably not the root cause.

Did you mean to reply to me? I did not ascribe a single cause. What you say makes sense, but I don't think it's safe to say that only a single cause is present. Although prioritizing the biggest problem first seems reasonable of course, my fear is that we don't prioritize any of it in time...

tell that to the china fishing fleets

Reply on news.ycombinator.com