Comment by harry8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by harry8 | Hacker News Reader

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Nowhere in this article or discussion is any mention of the extremely relevant farm runoff pollution. Particularly from cotton farms. Any progress there? I don't have the answer.

There are many aspects to reef conservation. Looking at one aspect in total isolation and claiming anything at all about it with respect the health of the reef is just idiotic.

There would have been very, very little reef tourism over the past two years. Any effect from that?

There will be others as well.

And right there is the risk of using "The reef is nearly dead because global warming" scare campaign lies to try and motivate people to do the right thing. It backfires and ends up encouraging people not to care because they've heard this chicken little stuff before.

Lying for the greater good and those who do it just need to be treated with something beyond contempt.

Context: I'm pretty worried about global warming and have been hearing the reef is nearly dead because global warming for decades now. I've become totally cynical about the reef being used as evidence of global warming for good reason - and it may well be under very deep threat because of global warming. Just stop with the damn lies.

The reefs off the American Florida Keys have apparently been deteriorating for some years now. A study was done by researchers at a Florida university on why, with the expectation that the primary cause would be global warming. It was not. The main cause was apparently nutrient-rich runoff from south Florida agriculture and fertilized lawns. (Nutrients lead to increased growth of algae and other non-coral things, things which are not good in large quantities for coral.) And the good news is that this kind of runoff is easier to fix than global warming.

My fear is that when everything can so easily (and semi-plausibly) be blamed on global warming, no one will look for other causes. ICO coral reefs, those might include runoff, but also over-fishing, over-touristing, dumping or leakage of sewage and trash and oil off boats, and even reportedly sun screen worn by those tourists. And studies like the one above will not get done, because everyone "knows" what the problem is, so the environment--the reefs, in this example--will get worse when they could get better.

AFAIK not a lot of cotton farming going on in reef catchment areas. There is lots of sugar cane and bananas however. Also lots of deforestation for grazing. Plus major resource export ports (LNG, coal). Regardless, runoff remains a major topic and there is some progress being made in the space [1].

Regards the article. If you look to the report itself[2] you'll see that this isn't a "she'll be right" triumph of science over scare campaigns. Climate change sits at the top of a growing list of concerns. The summary specifically mentions increased frequency of both marine heatwaves (that lead to bleaching) and major destructive weather events like cyclones. The other serious concern is crown-of-thorns starfish (a sea star that eats coral) ... and while the jury may still be out on the cause of their outbreaks (overfishing of predators? excess nutrients? changing environment?), the effect of this single species on the broader ecosystem is beyond frightening to witness.

It's extremely difficult to have a meaningful conversation about the threats to the reef without getting into the weeds. The "scare" campaigns may be light on detail, glossing over (or ignoring) much of the important nuance, but (for the most part) they aren't wrong.

[1] https://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/our-work/threats-to-the-reef/decli... [2] https://www.aims.gov.au/monitoring-great-barrier-reef/gbr-co...

The cotton industry in Australia has diverted and depleted waterways which normally replenish the surrounding regions, resulting in a dust-bowl effect which generates storms that regularly dump immense loads of nitrate-bearing dust into the oceans - materials that would normally be caught in a more lush/green/temperate environment where it was useful, were the water available...

Yep totally agree with your statement. My point was that there isn't a lot of cotton being grown in GBR catchments, so it wouldn't be one of the main industries directly effecting water quality on the reef.

But do you not see how the water issues are actually related? The catchments that do abut the GBR are not kept clean by regular water flow - meaning that when there is a major flood or storm, materials that would normally be absorbed by a green environment, are instead dumped - en masse during a flooding event - directly into our oceans. We've had a few major flooding events-worth of nutrient dumping in the last 20 years.

The cotton industry is buffering the problem - its not a direct cause - but it definitely contributes to the lack of local nutrient capture, which, when dumped, drastically effects our ocean water quality.

I think its important not to minimize the effect that altering Victoria/NSW's water table has on the waterway ecosystems.

This picture, straight from the horses mouth, shows you just how interdependent the waterways - and thus, the GBR - are:

https://cottonaustralia.com.au/assets/general/Landscapes-ima...

I'm sorry but I'm not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that the nutrients that get washed out via catchments in NSW end up on the GBR? I didn't realise this. Certainly water quality is a massive issue, and the current mess going on in the Murray-Darling is highly concerning in a general way. Also regards the nutrients, yes we have exactly the same issue with e.g. sugar, bananas, graziers up here.

The issue is that we've screwed with the water systems in the region so much, that when there is a flood event in areas that have had their natural water flows completely altered, nutrients that have built up in the system that would normally 'trickle-release' slowly are instead dumped en mass into our ocean. Don't forget that for 9 months of the year, the ocean water currents draw waters from the southern coast towards the north... reversing during summer (drought), but when the rainy season hits, and washes the stored nutrients out, the currents pull that artificially nutrient-rich waters directly onto the reef.

Its a mess of epic proportions, but unfortunately the cotton profits are too damned high.

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