Dr Gary Sharp, Scientific Director of the Center for Climate/Ocean Resource Study in Monterey Bay, California, makes a few good points regarding global warming and coral bleaching with particular reference to the Florida Keys in a recent article published by Tech Central Station titled, ‘Coral Bleaching: What (or Who) Dunnit?’:
1. Cold winters, not global warming, wiped out large areas of cold-sensitive corals in the Florida Keys in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
2. Coral reefs currently exists along a 6-7 degree temperature gradient so all the corals aren’t likely to die from a projected 2 degree celsius warming.
3. Sea surface temperatures are unlikely to increase by 2 degree celsius because the ocean responses to “excessive heating” through Deep Convection when the sea surface temperture exceeds about 27.5C.
Read the full article here:
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
There is a similar debate going on about sea level changes around coral reefs, that Ian Plimer has interesting comments on, analogous to Gary Sharp’s
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19417715-7583,00.html
Anyhow, some change and local damage is normal in almost any ecosystem: the question to address is are the changes and damage observed recently outside the normal range of alteration, and are other causes excluded.
Most of these stories seem to be based on an unreal baseline in which no change or damage ever occurs in nature, and we know thats not true from the geological record.
The point I’ve just made, of course, don’t mean that damage to coral by “AGW” is not occuring, just that you can’t use the mere existence of damage to easily infer the case and effects involved.
oops! Cause and effect,
Speaking of cause and effect. If you accept that the CO2 levels are rising is there any evidence that the increase is due to human activity?
I know nothing about it but am skeptical when on a hot summer day some one comments that here’s global warming. Round our way I don’t think the summers are particularly hot compared with what I experienced as a child. The winters do seem milder, the frosts less but hey it could be part of a one hundred year cycles for all I know.
Just come back from the mouth fo the Snowy where there are huge sand dunes metres above the present tide line which are apparently left over from a time when the sea level was a lot higher. So rising sea levels is hardly a new thing.
Also there is a half dozen places over a 30 km stretch where the Snowy has entered the sea. The first recorded entry was at Pt Ricardo probably 30 kms from where it now enters the sea at Marlo. It moved dramatically in 1880 and again in 1940 and 1961 and again in 1990 and several points in between. It will be interesting to see if it moves in the near future. Until a few weeks ago it was closed. A bulldozer was brought in to open it I am told.
Speaking of cause and effect. If you accept that the CO2 levels are rising is there any evidence that the increase is due to human activity?
Is this a robocomment from an astroturf organization? Sheesh.