Many in Samoa claim the warning system in place failed because an alert was only received after the tsunami hit.  The official line has been that when the earthquake is close to land, the technology is such that there is simply not time for adequate warnings.  

Brisbane-based engineer, now publisher, John McRobert, disputes this assessment claiming major earthquakes have precursor seismic shocks hundreds of kilometres below the Earth’s surface, and the transmigration of the energy, and the path to the surface can be accurately predicted:

“IN the early 1960s, a visionary Chief Engineer of the Queensland Co-ordinator General’s Department, John Kindler, called all of his engineering staff to a meeting (there were about 40 of us). He gave a dissertation about how development close to the frontal dunes at the Gold Coast was of concern, and of the (even then) huge economic risk of major storm assault on the coastline. He asked for two volunteers to spend a few years at the Dutch Delft Hydraulic Laboratories, the world’s leaders in handling storm erosion. Two volunteers stepped forward and from that the Beach Protection Authority was established to perform some excellent work in protecting our coastline from storm damage. The group was eventually absorbed into the Harbours and Marine Department.

In those days, Australia was considered to be a stable geologic platform with no volcanic activity, very few local earthquakes, and the word ‘tsunami’ wasn’t even in the lexicon.

The action was around the ‘Ring of fire’ in the Pacific, and in 1962, the failure of earth scientists to warn inhabitants of the New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands of a damaging volcanic eruption demanded action, and this resulted in a remarkable collaboration between Dr Claude Blot, a French volcanologist, and John Grover, an Australian earth scientist, who found and proved answers to long lead-time, accurate, early warning of volcanic eruptions and great earthquakes. They showed that these major events had precursor seismic shocks hundreds of kilometres below the Earth’s surface, and the transmigration of the energy, and the path to the surface could be accurately predicted. Some of the most dramatic examples of this is told in John Grover’s book, Volcanic Eruptions and Great Earthquakes (here I have to declare that this book was published by my company).

The Grover/Blot team was broken up for political reasons – it was deemed more politically acceptable to let the events happen without warning, than to make a prediction which could be wrong and which could therefore create unnecessary panic.

John Grover died a few years ago, but his work is being continued by a seismologist based in Canberra, Dr Dong Choi. After the Sumatran tsunami, I asked Dr Choi if it could have been predicted. The answer sent prickles up the back of the neck when he said ‘The data fits’.

But mainstream academia refused to review the John Grover book, and here we have seen another fast and furious catastrophe in the Samoan region. It had no warning. How would the Gold Coast cope?

We are spending billions chasing a will’o'the’wisp gas called carbon dioxide which is essential to life on Earth, and which is driven by climate, not by puny man-made emissions, and ignoring real research as to how to predict and manage natural cataclysm.

Where are our priorities?

John McRobert
Brisbane, Australia “

These are the conclusions from Willis Eschenbach who lives in Honiara, Solomon Islands.  He explains why:

“Much has been written of late regarding the impending demise of the world’s coral atolls due to sea level rise. Recently, here in the Solomon Islands, the sea level rise has been blamed for salt water intrusion into the subsurface “lens” of fresh water under some atolls. Beneath the surface of most atolls, there is a lens shaped body of fresh water which floats on the seawater underneath. The claim is that the rising sea levels are contaminating the fresh-water lens with seawater.

These claims of blame ignore several facts. The first and most important fact, discovered by none other than Charles Darwin, is that coral atolls essentially “float” on the surface of the sea. When the sea rises, the atoll rises with it, and when the sea falls, they fall as well. Atolls exist in a delicate balance between new sand and coral rubble being added from the reef, and sand and rubble being eroded by wind and wave back into the sea.

When the sea falls, more sand tumbles from the high part, and more of the atoll is exposed to wind erosion. The atoll falls along with the sea level. When the sea level rises, wind erosion decreases. The coral grows up along with the sea level rise. The flow of sand and rubble onto the atoll continues, and the atoll rises. Since atolls go up and down with the sea level, the idea that they will be buried by sea level rises is totally unfounded. They have gone through sea level rises much larger and much faster than the current one.

Given that established scientific fact, why is there water incursion into the fresh water lenses? Several factors affect this. First and foremost, the fresh water lens is a limited supply. As island populations increase, more and more water is drawn from the lens. The inevitable end of this is the intrusion of sea water into the lens. This affects both wells and plants, which both draw from the same lens. It also leads to unfounded claims that sea level rise is to blame. It is not. Seawater is coming in because fresh water is going out.

The second reason for salt water intrusion into the lens is a reduction in the amount of sand and rubble coming onto the atoll from the reef. When the balance between sand added and sand lost is disturbed, the atoll shrinks. This has two main causes — coral mining and killing the wrong fish. The use of coral for construction in many atolls is quite common. At times this is done in a way that damages the reef as well as taking the coral. This is the visible part of the loss of reef, the part we can see.

What goes unremarked is the loss of the reef sand, which is essential for the continued existence of the atoll. The cause for the loss of sand is the indiscriminate, wholesale killing of parrotfish and other reef-grazing fish. A single parrotfish, for example, creates about half a tonne of coral sand per year. Parrotfish and other beaked reef fish create the sand by grinding up the reef with their massive jaws, digesting the food, and excreting the ground coral.

In addition to making all that fine white sand that makes up the lovely island beaches, beaked grazing fish also increase overall coral health, growth, and production. This happens in the same way that pruning makes a tree send up lots of new shoots, and in the same way that lions keep a herd of zebras healthy and productive. The constant grazing by the beaked fish keeps the corals in full production mode.

Unfortunately, these fish sleep at night, and are easily wiped out by night divers. Their populations have plummeted in many areas in recent years. Result? Much less sand.

The third reason for salt water intrusion into the lens is the tidal cycle. We are currently in the high part of the 18 year tidal cycle. The maximum high tide in Honiara in 2008 was about 10 cm higher than the maximum tide in 1996, and the highs will now decrease until about 2014. People often mistake an unusually high tide for a rise in sea level, which it is not. There has been no increase in the recorded rate of sea level rise. In fact, the global sea level rise has flattened out in the last couple years.

What can be done to turn the situation around for the atolls? There are a number of essential practical steps that atoll residents can take to preserve and build up your atoll, and protect the fresh water lens:

1. Stop having so many kids. An atoll has a limited supply of water. It cannot support an unlimited population. Enough said.

2. Catch every drop that falls. On the ground, build small dams in any watercourses to encourage the water to soak in to the lens rather than run off to the ocean. Put water tanks under every roof. Dig “recharge wells”, which return filtered surface water to the lens in times of heavy rain. Catch the water off of the runways. In Majuro, they have put gutters on both sides of the airplane runway to catch all of the rainwater falling on the runway. It is collected and pumped into tanks. On other atolls, they let the rainwater just run off of the airstrip back into the ocean …

3. Conserve, conserve, conserve. Use seawater in place of fresh whenever possible. Use as little water as you can.

4. Make the killing of parrotfish and other beaked reef grazing fish tabu. Stop fishing them entirely. Make them protected species. The parrotfish should be the national bird of every atoll nation. I’m serious. If you call it the national bird, tourists will ask why a fish is the national bird, and you can explain to them how the parrotfish is the source of the beautiful beaches they are walking on, so they shouldn’t spear beaked reef fish or eat them. Stop killing the fish that make the very ground under your feet. The parrotfish and the other beaked reef-grazing fish are constantly building up your atoll. Every year they are providing tonnes and tonnes of fine white sand to keep your atoll afloat in turbulent times. You should be honoring and protecting them, not killing them. This is the single most important thing you can do.

5. Be very cautious regarding the use of coral as a building material. An atoll is not solid ground. It is is not a constant “thing” in the way a rock island is a thing. An atoll is an eddy, an ever-changing body constantly replenished by a (hopefully) unending river of coral sand and rubble. It is a process, wherein on one side healthy reef plus beaked coral-grazing fish plus storms provide a continuous stream of coral sand and rubble. This sand and rubble are constantly being added to the atoll, making it larger. At the same time, coral sand and rubble are constantly being eaten away, and blown away, and eroded away from the atoll. The shape of the atoll changes from season to season and from year to year. It builds up on this corner, and the sea washes away that corner.

And of course, if anything upsets that balance of sand added and sand lost, if the supply of coral sand and rubble per year starts dropping (say from reef damage or coral mining or killing parrotfish) or if the total sand and rubble loss goes up (say by heavy rains or strong winds or a change in currents) the atoll will be affected.

So if coral is necessary for building, take it sparingly, in spots. Take dead or dying coral in preference to live coral. Mine the deeps and not the shallows. Use hand tools. Leave enough healthy reef around to reseed the area with new coral. A healthy reef is the factory that annually produces the tonnes and tonnes of building material that is absolutely necessary to keep your atoll afloat. You mess with it at your peril.

6. Reduce sand loss from the atoll in as many ways as possible. This can be done with plants to stop wind erosion. Don’t introduce plants for the purpose. Encourage and transplant the plants that already grow locally. Reducing water erosion also occurs with the small dams mentioned above, which will trap sand eroded by rainfall. Don’t overlook human erosion. Every step a person takes on an atoll pushes sand downhill, closer to returning to the sea. Lay leaf mats where this is evident, wherever the path is wearing away. People wear a path, and soon it is lower than the surrounding ground. When it rains, it becomes a small watercourse. Invisibly, the water washes your precious sand into the ocean. Invisibly, the wind blows the ground out from under your feet. Protect your island. Stop it from being washed and blown away.

7. Monitor and build up the health of the reef. You and you alone are responsible for the well-being of the amazing underwater fish-tended coral factory that year after year keeps your atoll from disappearing. Coral reseeding programs done by schools have been very successful. Get the kids involved in watching the reef. Educate the people that they are the guardians of the reef. Talk to the fishermen.

8. Expand the atoll. Modern coastal engineering has shown that it is quite possible to “grow” an atoll. The key is to slow down the water as it passes by. The slower the water, the more sand builds up. Slowing the water is accomplished by building low underwater walls perpendicular to the beach. These run out until the ends are a few metres underwater. Normally this is done with a geotextile fabric tubes which are pumped full of concrete. In the atolls the similar effect can be obtained with “gabbions”, wire cages filled with blocks of dead coral. Wire all of the wire cages securely together in a triangular shape, stake them down with rebar, wait for the sand to fill in. It might be possible to do it with old tires, fastened together, with chunks of coral piled on top of them. It will likely take a few years to fill in. Here’s a before and after picture of the system in use on a beach (not an atoll), taken three years apart. Note the low height and triangular shape of the wall extending out from the beach and continuing underwater (made of 3 concrete-filled geotextile fabric tubes). This  triangular shape does not attempt to stop the water currents. It just slows them down and directs them toward the beach to deposit their load of sand. Eventually, the entire area fills in with sand.

Of course to do that, you absolutely have to have a constant source of sand … like for example a healthy reef … with lots of parrotfish. That’s why I said above that the single most important thing is to protect the fish and the reef. If you have beaked fish and a healthy reef, you’ll have plenty of sand and rubble forever. If you don’t, you’re in trouble.

Coral atolls have proven over thousands of years that, if left alone, they can go up and down with any sea level rise. And if we follow some simple conservation practices, they can continue to do so and to support atoll residents. But they cannot survive an unlimited population increase, or unrestricted fishing, or overpumping the water lens, or unrestrained coral mining.

Willis Eschenbach
Honiara, Solomon Islands

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Further Reading:

On sea level rise in Honiara: Pacific Country Report Sea Level & Climate: Their Present State Solomon Islands June 2006, http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60031/IDO60031.2006.pdf

On global sea level rise levelling off: University of Colorado at Boulder Sea Level Change,  http://sealevel.colorado.edu

On Darwin’s discovery: Darwin, C., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, 1887

“No other work of mine was begun in so deductive a spirit as this; for the whole theory was thought out on the west coast of S. America before I had seen a true coral reef. I had therefore only to verify and extend my views by a careful examination of living reefs. But it should be observed that I had during the two previous years been incessantly attending to the effects on the shores of S. America of the intermittent elevation of the land, together with the denudation and deposition of sediment. This necessarily led me to reflect much on the effects of subsidence, and it was easy to replace in imagination the continued deposition of sediment by the upward growth of coral. To do this was to form my theory of the formation of barrier-reefs and atolls.” (Darwin, 1887, p. 98, 99)

On the results of coral mining and changing the reef: Xue, C. (1996) Coastal Erosion And Management Of Amatuku Island, Funafuti Atoll, Tuvalu, 1996, South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC), http://conf.sopac.org/virlib/TR/TR0234.pdf

On the same topic: Xue, C., Malologa, F. (1995) Coastal sedimentation and coastal management of Fongafale, Funafuti, Tuvalu, SOPAC Technical Report 221

On parrotfish creating sand: http://www.seacortez.com/fish/scaridae.html

On the cause of erosion in Tuvalu: Tuvalu Not Experiencing Increased Sea Level Rise, Willis Eschenbach, Energy & Environment, Volume 15, Number 3, 1 July 2004 , pp. 527-543

On expanding island beaches: Holmberg Technologies, http://www.erosion.com/

On the dangers of overpopulation: Just look around you …

Photograph via Walter Starck.

“RESEARCHERS in Australia say the growth of coral on the country’s iconic Great Barrier Reef has fallen since 1990 to its lowest rate in 400 years”, variations of this message have been repeated around the world with global warming, and the associated acidification of oceans, claimed to be the cause. [1]  

That was at the beginning of this year, in January, and the media frenzy was based on a paper by Glenn De’ath, Janice Lough and Katrina Fabricius published in the peer-reviewed journal ‘Science’. [2]

Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre has recently had an opportunity to download all the data used to construct the key illustrations that suggested catastrophe. 

Mr McIntyre concludes that looking at just yearly averages (above graph) there has been a general trend of increasing coral calcification rates at the Great Barrier Reef since the late 1500s. 

In recent years there have been fewer measurements of coral at the Great Barrier Reef and the apparent downward spike in 2004-05 may be an artifact of the data – lack of data. [3]

Mr McIntyre writes:

“To see the impact of unsmoothed data, I did a simple plot of the average calcification by year over the data set. I understand that the coral data spans a considerable length and that various sorts of adjustments might be justified, but it’s never a bad idea to plot an average. Here are two plots, showing a simple average, first from 1572-2005 and then in the 20th century. Based only on the first plot, one could NOT say that even the 2004-2005 results were “unprecedented in at least 400 years” – values in 1852 were lower. So I can confirm that the values before adjustment are unprecedented since at least 1852.

Visually, this graph looks to me like calcification has been increasing over time, with a downspike in 2004-5…” 

Mr McIntyre goes on to comment that there is a very high correlation (0.48) between calcification and the number of measurements available in a year. The unsmoothed data gives a very different impression … Unsmoothed, years up to 2003 were not particularly low; it’s only two years – 2004 and 2005 – that have anomalously low values.

Glenn De’ath et. al. commented on ocean acidification in the same paper in ‘Science’ but provide no data.    Wei et al have recently published on the pH history of Arlington Reef, which is part of the Great Barrier Reef, and they conclude that there was a ten-year pH minimum centered at about 1935 and a shorter more variable minimum very recently. Apart from these two non-CO2-related exceptions, the majority of the data fall within a band that exhibits no long-term trend in acidification – according to Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso writing for C02 Science. [4,5]  

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Notes and Links

1. Global Warming Unlikely Reason for Slow Coral Growth, by Jennifer Marohasy, January 4th, 2009
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/01/global-warming-unlikely-reason-for-slow-coral-growth/ 

2. G. De’ath, J.M. Lough and K. Fabricius (2009) Declining Coral Calcification on the Great Barrier Reef. Science. Volumne 323, pages 116-119

3. “Unprecedented” in the past 153 Years, by Steve McIntyre on June 3rd, 2009
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6189
 
4. The Ocean Acidification Fiction, Volume 12, Number 22: 3 June 2009
http://co2science.org/articles/V12/N22/EDIT.php

5. Wei, G., McCulloch, M.T., Mortimer, G., Deng, W. and Xie, L. 2009. Evidence for ocean acidification in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 73: 2332-2346.

Click on the above graph for a better/larger view of calcification rates for the Great Barrier Reef shown simply as yearly averages.

Rather it is the consequence of a volcanic eruption.

A volcanic eruption allows molten rock, ash, and poisonous gases to escape from the earth’s mantle sometimes resulting in the formation of a mountain or island.

The volcano off the coast of Tonga began erupting last Monday and apparently by Wednesday it had formed a small island.

The great majority of oceanic islands in the Pacific were formed by this type of volcanic activity.
While the volcanoes are active, the islands rise relative to the global averaged sea-level. When volcanic activity stops, the islands will cool and eventually start to sink.

So there are islands rising and sinking all the time.

In fact the problems at Tuvalu, where Al Gore has claimed seawater inundation from rising sea waters, may have more to do with natural subsidence.

UPDATE, April 1, 2009

According to this NASA newsletter the eruptions did not result in a new island, but rather a larger Hunga Ha’apai.   http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=37657&src=eoa-iotd 

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Notes

Crikey! The Islands Are Still There: An Inconvenient Truth (Part 3). http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2006/09/crikey-the-islands-are-still-there-an-inconvenient-truth-part-3/

If you are curious you will probably enjoy and learn much from a new 81-page report by Craig D. Idso on global warming and coral reefs [1].

The report doesn’t come to any quick conclusions, but rather, in plain English, explains how corals grow, how they can change and adapt following “coral bleaching” and why it is important to consider real-world observations rather than theoretical predictions.

Dr Idso is clearly no believer in Gaia or Medea, but rather an empiricist with a knack for explaining the complex in plain English.  

His new reports conclusions include comment that:

As living entities, corals are not only acted upon by the various elements of their environment, they also react or respond to them. And when changes in environmental factors pose a challenge to their continued existence, they sometimes take major defensive or adaptive actions.  

A particularly ingenious way by which almost any adaptive response to any type of environmental stress may be enhanced in the face of the occurrence of that stress would be to replace the zooxanthellae expelled by the coral host during a stress-induced bleaching episode by one or more varieties of zooxanthellae that are more tolerant of the stress that caused the bleaching.

Rising sea levels may actually have a positive effect on reefs, permitting increased coral growth in areas that have already reached the upward limit imposed by current sea levels.

The rising CO2 content of the atmosphere may induce changes in ocean chemistry (pH) that could slightly reduce coral calcification rates; but potential positive effects of hydrospheric CO2 enrichment may more than compensate for this modest negative phenomenon.

Theoretical predictions indicate that coral calcification rates should decline as a result of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations by as much as 40% by 2100. However, real-world observations indicate that elevated CO2 and elevated temperatures are having just the opposite effect.

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1. CO2, Global Warming and Coral Reefs – Prospects for the Future, 2009.  Science and Public Policy Institute  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/co2_coral_warming.html

Craig D. Idso received his B.S. in Geography from Arizona State University, his M.S. in Agronomy from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, and his Ph.D. in Geography from Arizona State University.  Dr. Idso has published scientific articles on issues related to data quality, the growing season, the seasonal cycle of atmospheric CO2, world food supplies, coral reefs, and urban CO2 concentrations, the latter of which he investigated via a National Science Foundation grant as a faculty researcher in the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University.  In addition, he has lectured in Meteorology at Arizona State University, and in Physical Geography at Mesa and Chandler-Gilbert Community Colleges.

Photograph taken at the Great Barrier Reef in April 2006 by Dave.

The USA’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a web page with recent data and maps, along with links to archived data of sea surface temperatures since 1982. The data is matched to grid cells of 1 degree Latitude and 1 degree longitude and from it I extracted the data applying to the GBR Marine Park and calculated the average across the park for each month.

The sea surface temperature (SST) clearly fluctuates throughout the year by about 5 degrees, typically with highest temperatures in January and lowest temperatures in August. It is also clear that The SST rises with the onset of El Nino events and falls with the onset of La Nina events.

Another method of examining temperature is via the anomaly, which is the variation from the long-term average for that month. The method is not ideal because occasional strong peaks or troughs can distort the average for a particular month and therefore the anomalies, but because global temperatures are usually expressed this way these monthly anomalies are shown in figure 2, along with the 12-month running average as above. The conventional period used for long-term averages is 30 years but because we only have 27 years of data the monthly averages are those for the entire interval.

More time is needed before reasons for the rise in the last few months of 2008 will become clear. At the present time (January 2009) the data might not be fully checked, the cloud cover over the reef may have changed, wind patterns may have altered, the discharge of heavy rainfall in rivers may be to blame and so on.
 
These graphs make it abundantly clear that the sea surface temperature along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are not increasing at an alarming rate. The people who say otherwise have no evidence whatsoever to support their claims. These sea temperatures might rise in future but the historical evidence suggests that this will most likely be due to the natural forces of El Nino events.

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John McLean lives in Melbourne, Australia.

This note is republished from Mr McLean’s website with permission.   The information at the website, as republished here, was updated on January 5 (today) and is relevant to yesterday’s related blog ‘Global Warming Unlikely Reason for Slow Coral Growth’ http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/01/global-warming-unlikely-reason-for-slow-coral-growth/

The photograph of Mr McLean was taken at the Australian Environment Foundation Annual Conference in September 2008, in Canberra, Australia, by Jennifer Marohasy.

These reports are repeating claims in an Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) media release made just last Friday to coincide with the publication of research findings in the journal Science [1].

The media release also claimed the research to be “the most comprehensive study to date on calcification rates of GBR corals”.

Having followed GBR issues for many years I was surprised to hear global warming associated with slow coral growth rates, indeed AIMS’s researchers Janice Lough and David Barnes have published detailed studies concluding that coral growth rates increase significantly with an increase in annual average sea surface temperature [2]. Furthermore growth rates actually decrease from north to south along the GBR as this corresponds with a cooling temperature gradient of 2-3 degrees C.

If there has been a slowing in growth rates of coral over the last nearly 20 years, as suggested by this new research, a most obvious question for me would be: Have GBR waters cooled?

This new research paper in Science presents evidence for a decline in coral growth rates since 1990, but no credible reason for the decline. While the study hints that the cause could be ocean acidification no direct evidence is provided to support this claim – not even a correlation. Indeed no data is presented to suggest the PH (a measure of acidity) of GBR waters has changed, and based on modelling of hypothetical changes in PH associated with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide there is a timing problem – the decline in calcification rates should apparently have started years earlier.

Confronted with a lack of evidence in support of this hypothesis – that ocean acidification has caused the drop in growth rates – the researchers suggest in the paper “synergistic effects of several forms of environmental stress” and implicate higher temperatures. But no data is presented in the paper to contradict the well established relationship between increasing temperature and increasing growth rates – though various confusing statements are made and it is suggested that global warming has increased the incidence of heat stress in turn reducing growth rates – while at the same time the researchers acknowledge higher growth rates in northern, warmer, GBR waters.

Marine Biologist Walter Starck has perhaps aptly described the research as part of “the proliferation of subprime research presenting low value findings as policy grade evidence” and has suggested this has “science headed in the same direction as Wall Street.”

Interestingly, Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, has decided the “massive decline in the reef’s growth” will require new laws.

None of this, however, gets us any closer to understanding why there has been an apparent dramatic decline in the growth rates of GBR corals over the last 20 years.

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Notes

[1] G. De’ath, J.M. Lough and K. Fabricius (2009) Declining Coral Calcification on the Great Barrier Reef. Science. Volumne 323, pages 116-119

[2] J.M. Lough and D. J. Barnes (1999) Environmental controls on growth of the massive coral Porites. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology. Volume 245, Issue 2, pages 225-243

Picture from Walter Starck’s collection.

There’s nothing wrong with expecting farmers to use ‘best practice’ in the management of their county, to minimise erosion and nutrient loss, that’s simply good farming and you’d be hard pressed to find a farmer who didn’t agree with that. However to promote the notion that there are significant numbers of farmers who aren’t concerned about the environment and are doing the wrong thing is handling the truth recklessly, even if it wasn’t a fact that they can’t afford to waste fertiliser, chemicals or soil.

According to Townsville’s Dr Walter Starck (a coral reef specialist with more than 40 years of self funded Great Barrier Reef research behind him) there is no evidence the reef is in danger of anything. He told the North Queensland Register that in the 1990s the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority commissioned the “Williams Report” that reviewed all the research on water quality and it concluded the reef was in ‘pristine condition’ and since then farming practices have improved. “The Great Barrier Reef is under water, remote and mostly inaccessible, so politicians can claim anything they like, but they’ve never been able to produce any evidence of agriculture damaging the reef, it’s all theoretical,” he said. The precautionary theory reigns – ‘there may not be a problem at the moment but if we don’t do something the reef will die,’ its called ‘political cheap shots’ the greatest publicity for the least cost.

Dr Starck points out the nutrient and sediment levels in water coming out of rainforests contain much higher levels of soil and nitrates than from farming land, so farmers should be being paid for their water purification activities.

That was shown last year when water from the Proserpine Dam used to irrigate sugarcane in the Kelsey Creek area contained more nutrients than the water leaving the cane blocks. The cane and its trash blanket were acting as a filter.

Dr Starck said the time of the year the readings are taken can markedly skew the figures. For instance, water sampled from streams at the end of the dry season, when they are not flowing, can contain quite high nutrient levels, however once the wet season breaks the dilution rate is so great that at the river mouth they are barely detectable.

One of the reasons the scare campaign about the reef needing to be saved is able to be promulgated is because of the technological advances in detecting things like nitrates or herbicides. Traces down to parts per billion can now be found but to kill a weed with diuron for instance, you need to spray 1.8kg of active ingredient over each hectare. By the time any of it got into a creek it would be at such a low concentration it wouldn’t be able to kill a fern, let alone by the time it got into the ocean.

On October 8, Premier Anna Bligh released the 2007 Water Quality Report for the Great Barrier Reef. She pointed out the Reef area covers 348,000 square kilometres (34.8 million hectares) and said: “Over the last 150 years the catchments of the Great Barrier Reef have been extensively developed for agriculture, grazing, tourism, mining and urban settlement, which has led to a significant increase in the quantity of sediments, nutrients and pesticides being pumped into the Reef.”  Maybe a better choice of words would have been – finding their way into the GBR lagoon, rather than ‘pumped into the reef.” But her speech writers obviously wanted her to get the greatest bang for her buck and considered “pumped” would shock people into supporting her with votes so she could be there to SAVE the REEF.

Premier Bligh said the 2007 Water Quality Report for the Great Barrier Reef clearly showed the situation was still not good enough and river monitoring in priority catchments show an estimated:
* 6.6 million tonnes of sediment discharged in the reef lagoon – four times higher than estimated pre-European settlement levels;
* 16,600 tonnes of nitrogen – five times higher than estimated pre-European settlement levels; and
* 4180 tonnes of phosphorous – four times higher than estimated pre-European settlement levels.

We’ll assume those figures apply to the amount reaching the ocean each year and provided they are not exaggerated, they are alarming – until you work out what that means on a per hectare basis:
* 6.6 million tonnes of sediment over 34.8 million hectares equals 19kg of soil/ha – you could carry more than that with a bucket in each hand.
* 16,600 tonnes of nitrogen is 460 grams/N/hectare; and
* 4180 tonnes of phosphate is 120 grams/P/ha or 19 handfuls of 12pc phosphate fertiliser over each 10,000 square metres of water surface area – imagine how diluted that would be within the water column.

According to Professor Starck if it wasn’t for the sediment and nutrients being washed into the reef lagoon each wet season, the sea grass and marine plants would be a lot less healthy than they are.

Obviously the Premier has either been duped by the Green movement, is scrambling for their preferences or she didn’t bother to do her sums, as she immediately discussed the matter with the Prime Minister and met with Environment Minister Peter Garrett and said: “We have agreed to update the Plan and give it more grunt.”

That resulted in last weeks joint Commonwealth/State Reef Water Quality Summit at Parliament House where she brought together “the best minds from environmental and scientific fields to study the latest data and discuss what urgent action we need to take to prevent the demise of the Reef, which will help determine funding priorities and action areas for our Government.”

Unusually for a Labor Government, primary producer organisations were invited to the talk fest but they came away disappointed.

Canegrowers reaction being: “Today’s reef summit bought to the fore a State Government which was out of step with the Federal Government, industry, research agencies and stakeholder groups involved in managing the health of the iconic Great Barrier Reef. The State Government has promised another high level committee and the imposition of a regulatory framework, but did not make any commitment to resources,” said CEO Ian Ballantyne. “The farming community has worn the Government’s wrath for the failure of the 10 year Reef Plan – a plan that did not include industry from its inception and one that provided good intentions but no resources or implementation.

The Queensland Farmers Federation: “Premier Anna Bligh’s plan to impose new laws on farmers in the State’s Reef catchments threatens to undermine the Federal Government’s $200 million Reef Rescue Plan to accelerate uptake of best farming practice and will likely result in worse water quality outcomes on the Reef,” said chief executive John Cherry. “The Premier’s plan to outlaw so-called ‘bad’ practice would create an environment of acrimony and uncertainty which will make it very difficult to get farmers to engage with the voluntary best practice programs set to be ramped up with Reef Rescue Plan. 

Growcom was in two minds: the organisation welcomed the “funding to tackle Reef issues” particularly the Federal Government announcement of an initial allocation of $23 million to natural resource management (NRM) and industry groups under the Reef Rescue Plan. However Growcom chief advocate Mark Panitz added “The Premier has largely singled out farmers as responsible for damage to the Great Barrier Reef in what we believe is a smokescreen for the Queensland Government’s own lack of action and commitment to funding real solutions under the Reef water quality plan launched in 2003.

“The government is now calling for regulation despite there being no scientific justification for such a position. Even in the Government’s own recently released scientific consensus statement, a close reading reveals an emphasis on improving information for growers and incentives to change practice rather than regulation.’” 

So where from here? Premier Bligh is obviously wanting to create an image of herself as the Captain at the Helm, in total control of the ship, to appeal to unthinking and uninformed voters.

Meanwhile to achieve positive outcomes, primary industry organisations have linked with the Federal Government and regional natural resource management (NRM) groups to develop a new Reef Rescue program.

It will have clear actions and targets to increase the use of good practice activities in reef catchments. Like the Rural Water Use Efficiency program which was delivered under contractual arrangements with the Department of Natural Resources and Water that achieved significant advances over recent years.

Mr Panitz saying “A partnership with the Queensland Government on reef and water quality could significantly add to the Reef Rescue program and would be much more productive than divisive statements in the media and a sledge hammer regulatory approach without consultation.”

It is now up to the Premier to decide whether to use the whip or the carrot to achieve her aims. Either way there will be more taxpayers’ money available to primary producers to fund a proportion of the cost of on-farm improvement.

Ian Morgan
Mackay, North Queensland

This post is a longer version of an article first published in The North Queensland Register  and is republished here with permission.

 Enjoyingthe blue waters of the Great Barrier Reef off Cairns in April 2006.  Photograph taken by Jennifer Marohasy.

THE oceans have remained alkaline during the Phanerozoic (last 540 million years) except for a very brief and poorly understood  time 55 million years ago.

Rainwater (pH 5.6) reacts with the most common minerals on Earth (feldspars) to produce clays, this is an acid consuming reaction, alkali and alkaline earths are leached into the oceans (which is why we have saline oceans), silica is redeposited as cements in sediments, the reaction consumes acid and is accelerated by temperature (see below).

In the oceans, there is a buffering reaction between the sea floor basalts and sea water (see below). Sea water has a local and regional variation in pH  (pH 7.8 to 8.3). It should be noted that pH is a log scale and that if we are to create acid oceans, then there is not enough CO2 in fossil fuels to create oceanic acidity because most of the planet’s CO2 is locked up in rocks. 

When we run out of rocks on Earth or plate tectonics ceases, then we will have acid oceans.

In the Precambrian, it is these reactions that rapidly responded to huge changes in climate (-40 deg C to +50 deg C), large sea level changes (+ 600m to -640m) and rapid climate shifts over a few thousand years from ’snowball’ or ’slushball’ Earth to very hot conditions  (e.g. Neoproterozoic cap carbonates that formed in water at ~50 deg C lie directly on glacial rocks). During these times, there were rapid changes in oceanic pH and CO2 was removed from the oceans as carbonate. It is from this time onwards (750 Ma) that life started to extract huge amounts of CO2 from the oceans, life has expanded and diversified and this process continues (which is why we have low CO2 today.

The history of CO2 and temperature shows that there is no correlation.

Ask your local warmer:

1. Why was CO2 15 times higher than now in the Ordovician-Silurian glaciation?

2. Why were both methane and CO2 higher than now in the Permian glaciation?

3. Why was CO2 5 times higher than now in the Cretaceous-Jurassic glaciation? 

The process of removing CO2 from the atmosphere via the oceans has led to carbonate deposition (i.e. CO2 sequestration).

The atmosphere once had at least 25 times the current CO2 content, we are living at a time when CO2 is the lowest it has been for billions of years, we continue to remove CO2 via carbonate sedimentation from the oceans and the oceans continue to be buffered by water-rock reactions (as shown by Walker et al. 1981). 

The literature on this subject is large yet the warmers chose to ignore this literature. 

These feldspar and silicate buffering reactions are well understood, there is a huge amount of thermodynamic data on these reactions and they just happened to be omitted from argument by the warmers.

When ocean pH changes, the carbon species responds and in more acid oceans CO2 as a dissolved gas becomes more abundant.

Royer, D. L., Berner, R. A. and Park, J. 2007: Climate sensitivity constrained by CO2 concentrations over the past 420 million years. Nature 446: 530-532.
Bice, K. L., Huber, B. T. and Norris, R. D. 2003: Extreme polar warmth during the Cretaceous greenhouse? Paradox of Turonian ∂18O record at Deep Sea Drilling Project Site 511. Palaeoceanography 18:1-11.
Veizer, J., Godderis, Y. and Francois, L. M. 2000: Evidence for decoupling of atmospheric CO2 and global climate during the Phanerozoic eon. Nature 408: 698-701.
Donnadieu, Y., Pierehumbert, R., Jacob, R. and Fluteau, F. 2006: Cretaceous climate decoupled from CO2 evolution. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 248: 426-437.
Hay, W. W., Wold, C. N., Soeding, E. and Floegel, S. 2001: Evolution of sediment fluxes and ocean salinity. In: Geologic modeling and simulation: sedimentary systems (Eds Merriam, D. F. and Davis, J. C.), Kluwer, 163-167.
Knauth, L. P. 2005: Temperature and salinity history of the Precambrian ocean: implications for the course of microbial evolution. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 219: 53-69.
Rogers, J. J. W. 1996: A history of the continents in the past three billion years. Journal of Geology 104: 91-107.
Velbel, M. A. 1993: Temperature dependence of silicate weathering in nature: How strong a negative feedback on long-term accumulation of atmospheric CO2 and global greenhouse warming? Geology 21:1059-1061
Kump, L. R., Brantley, S. L. and Arthur, M. A. 2000: Chemical weathering, atmospheric CO2 and climate. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 28: 611-667.
Gaillardet, J., Dupré, B., Louvat, P. and Allègre, C. J. 1999:  Global silicate weathering and CO2 consumption rates deduced from the chemistry of large rivers. Chemical Geology 159: 3-30.
Berner, R. A., Lasagna, A. C. and Garrels, R. M. 1983: The carbonate-silicate geochemical cycle and its effect on atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 100 million years. American Journal of Science 283: 641-683.
Raymo, M. E. and Ruddiman, W. F. 1992: Tectonic forcing of late Cenozoic climate. Nature 359: 117-122.
Walker, J. C. B., Hays, P. B. and Kasting, J. F. 1981: A negative feedback mechanism for the long term stabilization of the Earth’s surface temperature. Journal of Geophysical Research 86: 9776-9782.
Berner, R. A. 1980: Global CO2 degassing and the carbon cycle: comment on ‘Cretaceous ocean crust at DSDP sites 417 and 418: carbon uptake from weathering vs loss by magmatic activity.” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 54: 2889.
Schwartzman, D. W. and Volk, T. 1989: Biotic enhancement of weathering and the habitability of Earth. Nature 311: 45-47.
Berner, R. A. 1980: Global CO2 degassing and the carbon cycle: comment on ‘Cretaceous ocean crust at DSDP sites 417 and 418: carbon uptake from weathering vs loss by magmatic activity.” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 54: 2889.
                                                                         CO2 + H2O = H2CO3
                                                                                H2CO3 = H+ + HCO3-
                  2Ca2+ + 2HCO3- + KAl2AlSi3O10(OH)2 + 4H2O = 3Al3+ + K+ + 6SiO2 + 12H2O
                                                      2KAlSi3O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + 2K+ + 4SiO2
                                                    2NaAlSi3O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + 2K+ + 4SiO2
                                                    CaAl2Si2O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + Ca2+
                               KAl2AlSi3O10(OH)2 + 3Si(OH)4 + 10H+ = 3Al3+ + K+ + 6SiO2 + 12H2O
                                                                     CO2 + CaSiO3 = CaCO3 + SiO2
                                                                     CO2 + FeSiO3 = FeCO3 + SiO2
                                                                     CO2 + MgSiO3 = MgCO3 + SiO2

In the oceans, CO2 exists as dissolved gas (1%), HCO3- (93%) and CO32- (8%)

The shallows near Dobu Island off Papua and New Guinea have active underwater fumaroles pumping out virtually pure CO2. The sea grass is extraordinarily lush and healthy and there is very healthy coral reef a few metres away.

May 2008 in PNG at Dobu Island in the D’Entrecasteaux Group

May 2008 in PNG at Dobu Island in the D’Entrecasteaux Group

Both photos show bubbles of CO2 which continually flow. I collected samples of gas years ago for a vulcanologist and he reported back to me that it was “virtually pure CO2″.

Unfortunately the water had poor visibility the day I shot the pictures, but it is often clear.

Bob Halstead
www.halsteaddiving.com

And also…

Dear Jennifer,

I have recently updated my article about ocean acidification by reviewing two recent studies.
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/acid2.htm

I thought it may interest you.

Dr J Floor Anthoni
Director Seafriends Marine Conservation and Education Centre
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/