Future of Diving in 25 years or less

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Natural causes, weren't too many people around in those days I don't think. Nature also rebuilt it, without much support from humans either. Most likely, this will happen again at some point, and there won't be anything man can do to prevent it, or fix it afterwards.
I am trying to come to grips with this logic.

1. Yes, nature did bebuild it, over many, many millions of years and without almost any of the species alive before then around to see it happen.

2. Yes, if something of that magnitude and that nature were to happen again, there is little humans could do to stop it. That is not what is happening, though, and what is happening is something we CAN handle if we choose to.

Your response is like saying we should not send our army to stop an enemy invasion because if an asteroid were to hit us, there is nothing we can do about it, and we'll all be dead anyway.
 
This is why I prefer to make phone calls rather than text or email when the subject matter is complex. Too much gets lost in the attempt to be concise, and occasionally sarcastic. I follow your analogy, but it is not what I’m implying at all. So, I’ll take another shot at it.

Yes, man can and has made some messes on our planet. But as often as not, the attempts to clean it up do as much or more damage as the original incident. Exxon Valdez would be a good example. There are a number of people and organizations that think all the advancements man has come up with to make our lives better (another subjective term), have only served to destroy the earth. Their solution would be to eliminate most of the stuff that does make our lives more comfortable. They also seem to have an “at any cost” approach. Therein lies the problem

Recognizing when we’ve developed something that has some adverse consequence and then attempting to come up with a reasonable mitigation is a good thing. I drive full size pickups, have for most of my adult life. I could drive a small car for a lot of my driving, but I like having more steel around me and am willing to pay the extra for fuel and repairs. As technologies advance, my full size trucks emit less and get better mileage. That’s a reasonable mitigation. There are those that have the attitude I shouldn’t be allowed to drive a full size truck because they only get 10-20 mpg; that’s not a reasonable approach IMO.

I firmly believe that nature does provide solutions for more of the problems than some people realize or might admit. For instance, there is a microbe in the sea that eats oil. They are well fed as more oil seeps into the ocean every day naturally than was dumped by the Valdez. Recently read an article about a “new” bacteria that is in fact eating some plastics. Volcanoes have been spewing immense volumes of gases and “stuff” into the atmosphere since the world began, but this biosphere deals with it. We’ve even seen this several times in our lives.

Recognizing that nature’s timeline is MUCH different than man’s is part of the problem, especially in this country. We really have a “now, can’t wait” attitude towards a lot of things. She moves in terms of thousands and tens of thousands of years, not 10-25 years. Geology, oceanography, and atmospheric sciences are improving at the pace of technology, but like medicine, they are still very much inexact. Doesn’t mean I don’t go to the doc and watch the weather. They are making what I consider educated guesses.

With regards to the reefs we visit, the same would apply. They are changing. We, man, have done some damage, but nowhere close to the damage nature has inflicted on herself. We are doing some things that should help, and probably some things that won’t, and possibly some that are doing a different kind of damage. But she works on her timeline, not ours, so those of us discussing this today won’t be here to see what they look like 100 or a thousand years from now. We also don’t know, but try to guess, at what they looked like 100 or a thousand years in the past.

My problem is with those, who often have a financial interest, that try to convince the world that there won’t be a blue sky or a blue ocean in 25 years. IMO, the only way that will happen is if nature decides to blow up and wipe the slate clean, not because of the actions, or inactions, of man. Sorry for the long post, but I don’t like to be misunderstood. And, this is simply my opinion, FWIW. YMMV.
 
I firmly believe that nature does provide solutions for more of the problems than some people realize or might admit. For instance, there is a microbe in the sea that eats oil. They are well fed as more oil seeps into the ocean every day naturally than was dumped by the Valdez.

Liked your whole post but there is one thing to remember. Yes there is a microbe that eats oil that naturally seeps into the ocean every day. When something like the Valdez or Deep Water Horizon accidents happen this can cause problems. High concentrations of food lead to increased reproductive behavior in these organisms.
Once the accidents are cleaned up so to speak many of these organisms will die. Once dead other organisms will the proceed to eat them using more and more oxygen down the food chain( or up depending how you look at it) and can create dead zones in the open ocean or along the coast which is another problem the world is constantly facing at the moment.
 
Yes, these would be relatively short term events. But the ocean doesn't sit still. Currents, winds, break these events up amazingly quickly. There was another tanker that broke up off the coast of Ireland not long after the Valdez. There was a big hubbub about the damage that was going to be inflicted on the coast. The slick never reached shore and was not even identifiable after a week or so later.
Some of these dead zones, such as the one in the Gulf, are a result of man removing/changing nature's method of cleaning the water coming from land, i.e. swamps. Florida has also seen some problems as a result of the Corps of Engineers thinking they can do better than nature. But these dead zones shift, shrink, grow, as natural elements work to mitigate them. As we find better methods to replace former practices, things improve.
There's a town in either ND or MI, can't remember which, that took a different path. Rebuilt the swamp downstream from their wastewater treatment plant, and are releasing cleaner water than what is taken in upstream. This was at less cost than a new plant to do the same thing.
The damage from the cleanup in Prince William Sound, along the shore, is still evident. Lichen, like coral, does take awhile to regrow.
 
The problem with this is humans are going to be around for quite awhile and will influence these situations. One day I do see nature over taking humans and life will be much more simpler without humans around. Nature will always be the most powerful force on earth.

As far as Florida I believe we need to just let Lake Okeechobee overflow and go back to its orginal state. By the way this is coming from someone who’s house would go bye bye if that happened. But for now they are working on the Comprehension Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) which will restore land around the lake into cleaning ponds to help removing nitrates and phosphorus before letting the water down the local rivers.
 
Agreed. But in the meanwhile, let's enjoy the version we have!
Make sure it's insured (for what flood insurance is worth). I've always heard jokes about people having bridges and swamp land in FL to sell. Then I started looking at properties in FL. There really IS a bunch of swamp land for sale in FL! LOL
 
Recognizing that nature’s timeline is MUCH different than man’s is part of the problem, especially in this country. We really have a “now, can’t wait” attitude towards a lot of things. She moves in terms of thousands and tens of thousands of years, not 10-25 years. Geology, oceanography, and atmospheric sciences are improving at the pace of technology, but like medicine, they are still very much inexact.

But she works on her timeline, not ours, so those of us discussing this today won’t be here to see what they look like 100 or a thousand years from now. We also don’t know, but try to guess, at what they looked like 100 or a thousand years in the past.

So what you are saying is that nature will eventually recover ocve we have totally screwed it over. We many not be around when it happens, but nature will recover. There may be no humans to enjoy it, but nature will recover with us. Got it.

Agreed. But in the meanwhile, let's enjoy the version we have!
That reminds me of the trip I took to Thailand a decade or so ago. We went to several reefs that used to be great, but now they were just rubble--the result of dynamite fishing. The dynamite fishers know they are destroying the reefs, and they know that without those reefs, there will be no fish to catch in the future. But the future is years away. Now is now. If they drop dynamite on the reef, they will eat now. The future will be a pure horror show, "but in the meanwhile, let's enjoy the version we have!"
 
George says it all:

Thank you for sharing this as it may enlighten some on here about the realities of life that a few of us have actually experienced and remembered.

There will always be gullible people who prefer propaganda media produced by charlatans over an inconvenient truth about natural processes the earth experiences.

George expressed my sentiments exactly except for the left leaning bits, shame he's no longer with us as he could put the PC crowd to shame with humor.
 
I thought some people might like to read a poem that seems right for the occasion. Sara Teasdale wrote it during WWI, but it seems apt now.

There will come Soft Rains

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.​
 

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