Those of you who watched the ABC’s presentation of The Great Global Warming Swindle might not have been convinced by the arguments challenging the conventional wisdom that carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming. However, it should be apparent that scientists and politicians such as Al Gore, who have been telling us that the science is unquestionable on this issue, have been stretching the truth. It seems that there are some good reasons to believe that we may have been swindled.
Closer to home, there is a swindle by scientists, politicians and most green organisations regarding the health of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). We are told that the reef is a third of the way to ecological extinction, is being smothered by sediments, is polluted by nutrients and pesticides, and is being cooked by global warming. Some scientists and organisations give the reef only a couple of decades before it is finished.
In the light of all this dismal news comes a new study by Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) which indicates that the corals are more tolerant to rising waters temperatures than first thought by most people.
Under conditions of extremely high water temperature, corals expel the symbiotic algae called zooxanthelae that reside within the polyp making them appear bleached white. Some coral die from this bleaching and there have recently been some major mass bleaching events in the Great Barrier Reef and around the world, particularly in 1998 and 2002. The AIMS work shows that the corals can adapt to rising water temperatures by using strains of zooxanthelae that make them tolerant to higher temperatures.
In biological circles, it is common to compare coral reefs to canaries, i.e. beautiful and delicate organisms that are easily killed. The analogy is pushed further by claiming that, just as canaries were used to detect gas in coal mines, coral reefs are the canaries of the world and their death is a first indication of our apocalyptic greenhouse future. The bleaching events of 1998 and 2002 were our warning. Heed them now or retribution will be visited upon us.
In fact a more appropriate creature with which to compare corals would be cockroaches – at least for their ability to survive. If our future brings us total self-annihilation by nuclear war, pollution or global warming, my bet is that both cockroaches and corals will survive.
Their track-record is impressive. Corals have survived 300 million years of massively varying climate both much warmer and much cooler than today, far higher CO2 levels than we see today, and enormous sea level changes. Corals saw the dinosaurs come and go, and cruised through mass extinction events that left so many other organisms as no more than a part of the fossil record.
Corals are particularly well adapted to temperature changes and in general, the warmer the better. It seems odd that coral scientists are worrying about global warming because this is one group of organisms that like it hot. Corals are most abundant in the tropics and you certainly do not find fewer corals closer to the equator. Quite the opposite, the further you get away from the heat, the worse the corals. A cooling climate is a far greater threat.
The scientific evidence about the effect of rising water temperatures on corals is very encouraging. In the GBR, growth rates of corals have been shown to be increasing over the last 100 years, at a time when water temperatures have risen. This is not surprising as the highest growth rates for corals are found in warmer waters. Further, all the species of corals we have in the GBR are also found in the islands, such as PNG, to our north where the water temperatures are considerably hotter than in the GBR. Despite the bleaching events of 1998 and 2002, most of the corals of the GBR did not bleach and of those that did, most have fully recovered.
Of course, some corals on the Queensland coast are regularly stressed from heat, viz. the remarkable corals of Moreton Bay near Brisbane which are stressed by lack of heat in winter. A couple of degrees of global warming would make them grow much better.
Even the GBR has seen massive changes in its comparatively short life. Eighteen thousand years ago, the GBR did not exist as water levels were about 100m lower than today. At that time, the Australian coast was about 100km from its present position, and the small hills upon which the reefs were to form dotted a broad and flat coastal plain that would become the GBR lagoon. When the sea level started to rise at the end of the ice age, the coast eroded at a phenomenal rate. The Aboriginal people living on these coastal plains lost land at a rate of about 50m each year as they witnessed the birth of one of the natural wonders of the world.
The reef was born in conditions that most biologists would regard as horrific for corals and far worse than what most of the present GBR would see: rising temperatures, high water turbidity due to the erosion, high nutrient concentrations due to erosion and the closer proximity of river mouths, rising CO2 concentrations, and rapidly rising sea levels (10mm per year). These are all factors presently regarded as threats to the GBR.
A few millennia later, Aboriginal people were to witness the greatest loss of coral ever seen by humans in Australia, for about 5,000 years ago, whilet civilisations were being born around the world, the sea level of eastern Australia started to fall. The coral reefs that had grown rapidly upwards to the low tide level were now exposed to the air and sun during spring tides. They died and formed the extensive dead areas called reef flat that make up a large proportion of many reefs in the GBR. It is ironic that if we see a modest sea level rise of one metre due to global warming, these dead areas of reef will explode into life, potentially doubling the coral cover. Sea level rise will be bad for Bangladesh and Venice but it will be good for the GBR.
Other threats are also overstated. Studies have shown that the quantity of sediment in rivers’ plumes that wash out into the lagoons is much less than sediment that is resuspended from the seabed every time the south-easterly trade winds blow. Pollution due to nutrients is also probably restricted to a few reefs close to a couple of river mouths as the rest of the lagoon receives relatively small nutrient loads from rivers compared to other sources, and the water is rapidly flushed to the Coral Sea.
Fishing pressure is very limited. The coast adjacent to the GBR contains about half a million people compared with 50 million for the similarly sized Caribbean reefs. Most Queenslanders never visit the reef and do not use it as a significant food source unlike most other reefs around the world. The northern 1,000 kilometres of the reef has a population that can be counted in 100’s. It has been barely touched by mankind.
With the exception of Antarctica, I challenge anyone to name an ecosystem better preserved than the GBR. The sheer lack of people pressure on this huge system, and its distance from the coast has saved the GBR from the fate that has befallen the Caribbean and other areas. It did not suffer the equivalent of land clearing for agriculture, cities, dams and roads. It does not have problems with infestations of noxious weeds and feral animals such as cats and cane toads, or the mass species extinctions of the Australian land.
Apart from a reduction in turtles and dugongs, it is doubtful that Captain Cook would notice any difference to the GBR if he sailed up this coast again. Pity we cannot say the same about the land that he visited. Whereas the coral reef that he struck near Cooktown is alive and healthy, the land around Botany Bay would be unrecognisable.
So why have we been swindled into believing this almost pristine system is just about to roll over and die when it shows so few signs of stress. There are many reasons and processes that have caused this and some of them are the same as why we should all be more than a little sceptical about the hypothesis that CO2 is causing global warming.
The first reason is that there is some very bad science around. Second, a mainly biological oriented scientific community seems to take little heed of the geological history of corals. Third, we have many organisations and scientists that rely for funding on there being a problem with the GBR. Most grant applications on the GBR will mention at some stage that a motivation for the work is the threat to which it is exposed. I confess that I do this in all my applications – it’s the way the game works.
Why does a scientist and environmentalist such as myself worry about a little exaggeration about the reef. Surely it’s better to be safe than sorry. To a certain extent it is, however, the scientist in me worries about the credibility of science and scientists. We cannot afford to cry wolf too often or our credibility will fall to that of used car salesmen and estate agents – if it is not there already. The environmentalist in me worries about the misdirection of scarce resources if we concentrate on “saving” a system such as the GBR. Better we concentrate on weeds and overpopulation and other genuine problems.
So I’m thinking of asking Martin Durkin to come over to Australia and do another show called The Great Great Barrier Reef Swindle. I’d have to make sure he got all his graphs right and did not talk to anybody who thought smoking didn’t cause cancer, but I reckon he could put a very compelling case that the GBR is in great shape and that there is little to fear, especially relative to other environmental issues, such as overpopulation and https://sildenafilhealth.com invasive species.
Peter Ridd is a Reader in Physics at James Cook University specialising in Marine Physics. He is also a scientific adviser to the Australian Environment Foundation.
This article was first published by On Line Opinion and is republished here with permission from the author.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Working for the Australiam put Peter offside for starters hey
The fact that one can find old fence posts under more than a metre of silt on the Burdekin delta is testimony that cane fields actually collect silt rather than deliver it to the reef. These much maligned farming systems operate like a huge brush-like filter that slows the movement of flood waters and increases sediment deposits.
Yes, Cane fields are ploughed to expose bare soil but this is only done every third or fourth year as part of the ratoon system. And even then the ploughing is done in the dry season when floods are very rare and even then, are usually of lesser volume than wet season flows.
By the time the wet season returns the flood plains have turned into a giant filter, collecting silt like 10,000 hectares of whale baleen.
And the bleached coral? So where is all the talk about the unambiguous cooling effect due to the increased albedo of white coral? Funny how these things only get mentioned when they are negative, don’t you think?
Meanwhile, much of the GBR science community are so tainted with the stench of corruption that no reasonable person could rely on any research conducted under the official sponsors. They have created a bogus problem and are in the delightful position of being able to claim any so-called “improvement” on that bogus problem as a successful outcome of their efforts.
Bring on the Doco Peter.
“Other threats are also overstated. Studies have shown that the quantity of sediment in rivers’ plumes that wash out into the lagoons is much less than sediment that is resuspended from the seabed every time the south-easterly trade winds blow.”
Well how did it get there – maybe after 150 years of flogging the Burdekin catchment with poor land management and inappropriate land clearing.
As for the usual ruse about coral surviving through geological time, well it very will may have. But if the Queensland tourism industry can cope with a few decades while the reef rebuilds itself fair enough.
As for grandad raving above stench of corruption above in his usual bar stool rant – how can research like http://www.aims.gov.au/news/pages/media-release-20070711.html
actually get approved and undertaken in such a corrupt environment. Mott you’re just full of it. The thing that’s corrupt are your intellectual processes.
If Ridd is supporting a shonk like Durkin his opinion is worth zip. Is that the Physics dept’s view of science integrity? If he’s an AEF advisor you might as well not bother even asking. So will graph doctoring be the approved method of doing business in the new Swindle?
Actually I take that back – yes it’s a brilliant idea – invite Durkin to do a doco by all means. I reckon the PR backlash would be so good it would be worth Greenpeace backing the movie.
” If Ridd is supporting a shonk like Durkin his opinion is worth zip.”
Ditto for Gore supporters Luke?
Probably knock 20% off but not 200%.
And Jim, that is how the IPCC works out its probabilities … we are all good blokes, don’t smoke, or have breast implants, so we can add 20% to our levels of certainty for our warming forecasts?
Any evidence for the lack of smoking and breast implants amongst the good IPCC blokes Jen?
You know what those bloody Europeans are like….
Funny how the discussion about rising temperatures in waters surrounding the GBR all ignore the effect of the Pacific decadal oscillation.
And right now the PDO warm water body is in the west of the pacific, including the east coast of Australia, warming water temperatures by about 1.2 degrees celsius.
Perfectly natural phenomenon.And the reef has handled this efect quite nicely in the past thank you.
It is ?
The GBR is another global warming icon that is ‘doomed’ if we don’t go back to stone age living, just like polar bears that are becoming ‘extinct’ by increasing in number. Even if we could reduce man-made CO2 emissions to zero now, it would take up to 200 years for the atmosphere to return to ‘normal.’
The GBR is just another scare, like the gulf stream, hurricane intensity, Tuvalu, yada yada yada…..
No climate scientist uses coral bleaching as evidence for or against AGW in a detection attribution framework. If you bothered to read the IPCC FAR (or any of the past ones) you would see that coral reefs are mentioned NOWHERE in the D/A chapter. The behaviour of coral reefs is a complex biological/physical impact of climate change. In the AGW debate it is at best circumstantial evidence that is (probably) pointing in the same direction. It is a red herring to the central AGW debate, but feel free to vent spleen.
A very reasonable article appeared in the Age today
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/lets-really-do-something-about-climate-change/2007/07/18/1184559863758.html?page=fullpage#
” …just like polar bears that are becoming ‘extinct’ by increasing in number” – Paul
The polar bear threads are almost as funny as the whaling threads!!!
Paul, yes the polar bear population has increased since the 70’s BUT this is ONLY due to the hunting ban. They used to be hunted in a very hard way…. the trend is however negative for most subpopulations of polar bears.
Paul
polar bears were becoming extinct, due to over hunting. That has been fixed, but now the ice they depend on is disappearing. Why do you make such blatant misrepresentations of the situation? It’s not that hard to understand.
Its really funny how non-core climate impacts are being used here to undermine the statistical likelihood that CO2 is causing global warming- while on another thread the statistically insignificant single event of a cold JuLy is also being used to undermine the same. This is true to form for climate change sceptics- lets call it the Durkin approach, cherry pick what you need and bugger consistency.
Jennifer
“And Jim, that is how the IPCC works out its probabilities … we are all good blokes, don’t smoke, or have breast implants, so we can add 20% to our levels of certainty for our warming forecasts?”
could you point out the basis for this claim?
Getting pretty sick of the framing “The GBR is another global warming icon that is ‘doomed’ if we don’t go back to stone age living” – says who?
SJT….Luke is the basis of the claim….and he had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek…….
‘Space’ it is ok for believers (like Gore!?) to use anything as evidence for AGW ( I do not mean the scientists, although some of them do it as well…on both sides), but when it is pointed out that much of the ‘evidence’ and potential damage is rubbish….you don’t like it?
Perhaps if the scare stories, based on models which are not predictive tools were genuine/probable threats (even the IPCC agrees {although it doesn t stop them making them anyway!} Wunsch made the point beautifully on lateline after TGGWS), were not so exaggerated, then ‘sceptics’would stop having so much to talk about.
As a sceptic, I was very impressed with what Wunch had to say…far more so than any of the dross that was thrown in on the TGGWS chat session. I actually found myself agreeing with most of what he was saying…….but it is the rubbish that we keep being fed from the media and many scientists ( who know that the way to get their funding for most research is to involve AGW), that forces we ‘sceptics’ to challenge the bullshit.
Remember, whilst co2 is the most likely cause of recent warming (according to the science), in a complicated, chaotic system, that we do not fully understand, the certainty with which the media and many scientists and layman (like SJT) speak about AGW and its impacts, IMO makes the sceptic a neccesity!
Toby: that “rubbish” particularly in the form of CO2 can eventually drown you. Hang on to your “fixed” assets while you can.
Not in my life time Gavin……or my kids …..or theirs…..see what I mean…..sceptics are a neccessary evil!
Toby: when did you last ask all those kids about dodos with their head in the sand?
So you are telling me that you truly believe the seas are going to drown us? Get a grip….whats the rate of sea level rise? How much does the IPCC predict it will rise? How much has it risen in the last 100 years? 300 years? (clue not bloody much!)
Toby,
The (near) certainty, according to the most sophisticated ways we can look at it, is that CO2 is a powerful greenhouse gas. Thats what I have been saying here. I have also outlined how it is a statistical probably in the model framework, coupled with understanding of the physics. I haven’t made other claims and do not believe that changes in storm activity or biological systems is hard evidence of climate change. The hard evidence that exists is enough to decide CO2 pollution is incredibly risky, and that business as usual is a dangerous experiment. You don’t need to put other words into my mouth to make your point, I stand by by my honesty. If you get most of your information from the media and the web- you know your in trouble- do you need to point that out to US? You can’t be serious.
Wunsch, said nothing different to what I am saying here- only he didn’t try to convince you- which was why he was so believable. It wasn’t us that politicized the science.
Toby – CSIRO was into climate change long before it became fashionable. Dare I say they’ve been struggling for funds for years – hardly well healed. In last few years I’m sure. For example if states had not paid for state analyses CSIRO would not be able to afford to do them. How about you find out a few things before enagaging the gob. They can go off and chase smoke plumes in the Latrobe Valley for commercial funding, short term forecast cricket matches and such like so it’s not the only thing they can do. They should do the AGW research as it’s in the national interest. Unless of course you’re a nasty litte denialist that doesn’t want “information” clogging up decision making processes.
Space…what words did I put in your mouth? Did I say you said the GBR or hurricanes etc were evidence of AGW?! I merely tried to make the point that the ridiculous statements from many provided as evidence for AGW, ARE , as outlandish as many of the statements from sceptics.
Hansen has made loads of outlandishly catastrophic predictions…..and he is a pin up boy for you all….isnt he? So don t tell me who started to politicilize the debate. You could argue, (as I recall Luke has?), that in order to get public attention, it needed to be made ‘political’. But don t give me the crap that ‘sceptics’ are the ones who started it.
Perhaps if more scientists and advocates were actually like Wunsch, there wouldn t be any sceptics?
or heeled
Toby – a small change in sea level can change planning decisions when you do storm surge calculations. It’s a another few 100 metres that can be inundated. So it’s worth knowing.
An ice sheet disintegration scenario is something we don’t know near enough about. Again nobody is going to drown – but displacement will occur – simply areas will become progressively inundated and more subject to storm activity. From 4AR it’s long term stuff.
Interestingly Space, you don’t find the denialists here taking on the CO2 radiation physics – the argument remains in solar distractions, Al Gore and various correlation side shows. Very interesting behaviour for supposed “scientists”.
Sorry ‘God’ did I irritate you by opening my ‘gob’!
Agreed Luke, a small rise in sea level, will effect planning decisions. Gavin, however summed up my argument perfectly I thought…unless of course he was not serious, and had his tongue in his cheek?
“pin up boy” – barf. Toby this is science not Who magazine. Hansen has got street creds from previous work and deserves to have a seriosu hearing, but in his latest papers most scientists are saying “what’s your take on this” “Is this reasonable or .. ..”. Nobody just goes “ooo Hansen” swoon – “we’ll just believe anything”. Scrutiny never stops. Believing anything is what your contrarians are into – 20 different hypotheses with no evidence.
“It is the governments of the world who make up the IPCC, define its remit, and direction. The way in which this is done is defined in the IPCC Principles and Procedures, which have been agreed by governments” From an Article written by Paul Reiter
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we21.htm
Its quite clear the IPCC is a political body. This does not mean that they are wrong in what they are doing or saying……but it does mean that it is far from just science…..does it not?
Toby – for heavens sake – pick a WG1 chapter from the 4AR and read it – does it look like policy wallah stuff or science nerd stuff. Most people doze off after a few paras. Those paras have been sweated over and honed to be as precise as possible.
The IPCC of course is political and the diplomatic representatives act on their governments wishes. Delegations have “minders”. The scientists however take their task most seriously – the main problem is that science outcomes are diluted or dumbed down not sexed up. So if you’re into directions of misrepresentation you’re looking down not up. And you have seen a few dummy spits which is some indication of offended egos.
Reiter’s umbrage of course is quite interesting – have a read – goes back some way http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/controversies/lancetltrs.html
I think the guy is a very good scientist but you have to wonder if he has some issues. He should have stayed in the IPCC and fought to improve the process. Frankly I’m not convinced on his stand.
So we’ve gone from Reiter’s specific disagreement with his colleagues and their inability to reach a consensus to a general dummy spit with “the whole system is stuffed” retort.
Luke…Space said sceptics made the debate political. To use one of your expressions ROTFL. That was the purpose to my last couple of posts.
What a pathetically short memory Luke has. And conveniently so it would seem. He invites one to read 4AR to soak up all that hard core science but conveniently forgets that this was the piece of crap that was carefully drafted to fit the damned marketing brochure, with all its political conclusions in place, that came out six months earlier.
The Climate Clowns pull a stunt like publishing the conclusions before the actual work was completed and then try to pass it all off as a work of science.
Whenever I hear the words “emminent scientist” my flesh starts to crawl and I have this overwhelming desire to take a long cleansing shower.
Meanwhile, back at the Great Barrier Reef, would you pond scum kindly stop trying to distract us from the topic?
Will white coral reflect more heat than coloured coral and thereby slow the waters temperature rise?
And here is a good question for the intellectual giants at “Your ScumBC”. Did any of the coral reef surrounding the Carteret Islands off Bougainville die out as they sunk by about 1.5 metres over the past half century? NOT AT ALL.
According to Dr John Church http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4651876.stm total sea level rise over the past 140 years has only been 19.5cm. Our own ScumBC doesn’t appear to have reported these findings from one of our own scientists, it was left to a foreign broadcaster to do the job that our own boofheads are paid to do.
Even the IPCC has only claimed that sea level rise over this century will be between 9 and 88cm. And given that the Carteret corals, in a much warmer location, survived a 1.5 metre sinking, then we can safely conclude that the Great Barrier Reef will be able to survive a sea level rise that is double the IPCC’s worst case projection.
Onya bikes, plodders.
“Will white coral reflect more heat than coloured coral and thereby slow the waters temperature rise?”
What have you got against coloured coral? Are you some type of racist?
Man, what is it about polar bears and AGW fans?
And what is it about AGW fans and sheer ignorance?
Ann Novak
BUT this is ONLY due to the hunting ban. They used to be hunted in a very hard way…. the trend is however negative for most subpopulations of polar bears.
SJT
but now the ice they depend on is disappearing. Why do you make such blatant misrepresentations of the situation? It’s not that hard to understand.
What I don’t understand is where people get their information from. Left wing enviros who regularly lie to serve their political (ssshh) purposes?
Polar populations in Canada are stable or increasing in 10 out of 11 PB communities. The other community seems to affected by the bears migrating between Canada and Greenland where they are still hunted. But maybe Ann is concerned about the Mexican Polar Bears. (That information comes from the Canadian official who monitors Polar Bears for the Canadian govt).
And speaking of Canada… If the geniuses who wanted to speak up for endangered species actually got a few facts. The name Polar Bear doesn’t mean they ONLY live at the North Pole. And it doesn’t mean they eat ice to survive. In fact Polar Bears are found in Canada and Russia. So even if the Arctic melted the Bears would not become extinct – at least until Canada melted – then they would be in trouble.
By the way, in the past it was hot enough that the polar ice completely melted. Strangely enough Polar Bears didn’t become extinct.
So there you have it. Polar Bear extinction is just another pack of lies manufactured by the AGW movement. But hey, aren’t those bears really, really cool.
Toby: Do you live by the sea?
Peter Ridd in his GGBRS article said quite a bit about sea levels and living by the sea
1) “The scientific evidence about the effect of rising water temperatures on corals is very encouraging. In the GBR, growth rates of corals have been shown to be increasing over the last 100 years, at a time when water temperatures have risen” also “Sea level rise will be bad for Bangladesh and Venice but it will be good for the GBR”.
2) “the Australian coast was about 100km from its present position, and the small hills upon which the reefs were to form dotted a broad and flat coastal plain that would become the GBR lagoon. When the sea level started to rise at the end of the ice age, the coast eroded at a phenomenal rate”
3) “When the sea level started to rise at the end of the ice age, the coast eroded at a phenomenal rate. The Aboriginal people living on these coastal plains lost land at a rate of about 50m each year as they witnessed the birth of one of the natural wonders of the world”
That’s all we need about rates of change over a gently sloping landform. Thanks Peter!
Toby; I reckon we can use this to drown that sceptic Sid who asked me to prove the sea wasn’t rising. As it goes up and down like a yoyo measuring its average level and change over time is difficult.
Thinking about our marks in the sand from the McQueen thread overnight I recalled we need a pilot, a camera and a collection of islands or reefs in a shallow sea. What we are after is the continuous high tide mark over time on the horizontal surface.
There was a time I could do this every time I went on holiday over Bass Strait with a manual camera on my knee, however these days I would be taking a risk with a digital and automatic flash.
There are two small towns each with an airport a stone’s throw from the beach and an old railway in between that runs pretty much all the way along the shore. Everywhere the sea tucks in between the slightly sloping exposed strata there is a protective wall of rocks that needs to be made higher and higher.
Better still Toby, we can charter a plane then fly south to a severely exposed piece of rugged coast line, also wild islands then photograph the smooth sea under the bright sun with a full moon high in the sky. We should record the lines of swell and their wash back from the coast in the mildest weather.
More interesting on this horizontal view is what happens when the weather changes. Some years back now our pilot flew between the gum trees on a steep ridge to stay under the storm on the flight back from our southernmost tip however seeing the extent of the white stuff chewing the vertical is the best turnoff we can get about where we are heading any time soon on sea level. I recall too it’s been higher not so long ago.
Did anyone notice those coastline shots from the Tour de France on SBS yesterday?
Subsidence along cliffs is one thing but the rate of change with dunes and deltas is another. I bet Peter in his focus on reefs gives us this clue unintentionally.
Another gaffe from Gorebull Warming?
Eco-warrior Al Gore serves up endangered fish at daughter’s party:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=469277&in_page_id=1811
>The name Polar Bear doesn’t mean they ONLY live at the North Pole.
Nope, they are quite comfy living it up on the Sunshine Coast.
>And it doesn’t mean they eat ice to survive.
Nope, they also eat watermelon.
They only live in polar regions at the moment because they have been kicked out of areas further south by black bears who are racist towards their white fur. Ignorance is a shocking thing isn’t it?
POSTED FOR RUSSELL
I agree with most of what Peter has to say.
Many tropical Australian marine resources including the GBR are in fine condition relative to other parts of the world and do not appear to be threatened in the near term, primarily because of a lack of population in the north.
However, over here in the West I have recently visited Scott Reef out on the edge of the continental shelf, which was badly bleached during the 1998 El Nino event, and then had category 5 cyclone Fay pass right over it in 2004. Much of the shallow water coral communities were obliterated by those events, and there are also Indonesians visiting the reef every year -they don’t damage the corals, but do take large numbers of clams and trepang, sharks and other fishes. This is a reef that suffered a devastating combination of natural events.
Large areas of damage remain, but as Connell first observed, periodic catastrophes like bleaching and storm damage maintain diversity of coral species on reefs as without disturbance faster growing species tend to crowd out slower growing, less aggressive species (many corals are actively trying to damage their neighbours) and suitable substrate is at a premium. Storm damage produces new substrate that can be colonised by the slower growing species.
That process of course is dependent on the presence, within range, of a suitable stock of reproductively active corals that will provide the larvae to colonise those newly cleared areas. This process is already in train at Scott Reef where it is possible to see large numbers of juvenile corals (Stylophora, Pocillopora, Acropora, Porites and Faviids) already present on areas denuded by the combination of bleaching and cyclone.
Scott is a relatively isolated reef and if the area was entirely dependent on larvae brought southward by the Leeuwin current then it might take a very long time indeed for this reef to recover to its former state (I first visited it in 1986 and it was magnificent), or perhaps not at all. Fortunately the lagoon of the southern reef is very deep (45-60metres) and is covered with corals that are apparently providing most of the larvae for recolonisation of the shallower areas. This is unusual as at that depth in a lagoon there is typically very little coral, but here the water is exceptionally clear and so light penetration is good enough to support a high density and diversity of corals. These corals lie deep enough to be untroubled by cyclones and water that is too warm.
My point in providing this example is to illustrate that many areas currently colonised by corals are exposed to large scale catastrophic events which although random can be expected to occur in decadal frequencies. The long term survival of reefs in these areas is often dependent on the presence of reefs within range that are not damaged by an event and can therefore provide sufficient larvae to recolonise the damaged area. In our times, the natural events that coral reefs have successfully survived now have human influences operating on a regional scale added to produce a cumulative effect that may prove to be too much for some reefs. There is no evidence in my view that most of the GBR faces this threat, but some of its reefs do, and there are plenty of other parts of the world where there are substantial human impacts upon reefs. For the reefs on the NW shelf of Australia the fate of reefs in Indonesia may be a critical factor in their long term survival as continuing loss of reefs there reduce the supply of larvae that replenish stocks reduced or lost during severe natural cyclic events like El Ninos and cyclones.
Scott Reef has survived various bleaching and cyclone events to date, but with the added cumulative pressures of human impacts on the reefs supplying larvae and the potential impact of a reduction in water quality in the southern lagoon, Scott Reef may succumb at some future point. It’s the mix of cumulative pressures that include human influences that are problematic and although corals as a group are tough, they are not immune to anthropogenic impacts on water quality for example.
Lastly, as I am sure Peter would agree, successfully negotiating one major extinction event is no guarantee of making it through another.
Thanks
Russell
I see Biggs is giving up on the science after Proc Royal A and joing the other denialist dopes needing a physics course in the cess pit.
As it turns out for filth peddlers
“The restaurant where the Gore party was held says that the fish were not endangered or illegally caught.
Rather, the restaurant later confirmed, they had come from one of the world’s few well-managed, sustainable populations of toothfish, and caught and documented in compliance with Marine Stewardship Council regulations.”
I see El Presidente of the new Australian League of Secessionist Catchments, aka, Mottsa has had another brain disturbance overnight.
You have to smile at the short memory stuff – the final 4AR draft was leaked at the time the SPM was released and there’s been little complaint. Did you check yourself Ian. No – was all posted here in the blog – but gramps actually forgot. Aren’t those facts so annoying.
Another sign of memory loss is the spelling – if you emphasise eminent you need to get the spelling right. Perhaps he meant imminent? Why he wants to have a shower though is a mystery – maybe he’s soiled himself?
Sea level rise – who’s talking about sea level rise?
In terms of lowering water temperature with your newly discovered albedo – errr don’t you think it might be tad late if it’s already bleached. A duh ! Try giving someone who has died from heat stroke an ice cream.
But just so you don’t feel the need to help the coral researchers with a bit of pro bono research, they seem to have clued on to coral surface temperatures.
Limnol. Oceanogr., 51(1), 2006, 30–37
q 2006, by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, Inc.
Effects of irradiance, flow, and colony pigmentation on the temperature
microenvironment around corals: Implications for coral bleaching?
Katharina E. Fabricius1
Australian Institute of Marine Science, PMB No. 3, Townsville, Queensland 4810, Australia
Abstract
Experiments were conducted to determine the effects of colony pigmentation, irradiance, and flow on the temperature
microenvironment that corals experience in shallow water. The warming of colony surfaces increased with
increasing colony pigmentation (darker surfaces) and at high irradiance but was alleviated by higher water flow.
Dark colonies were up to 1.58C warmer than ambient seawater at high irradiance and slow flow. In contrast, very
light colonies were similar in temperature to ambient water at all levels of flow and irradiance. The darkness of
corals progressively increased along a gradient of decreasing water clarity from oligotrophic offshore reefs toward
turbid high-nutrient reefs near the coast. The surface temperature of these darkly pigmented turbid-water corals was
significantly greater than that of the paler corals in the clear-water environments at comparable seawater temperatures,
light, and current conditions. The surface warming of darkly pigmented colonies in coastal environments is
sufficiently high to exceed their bleaching threshold during warm, calm, and clear seawater conditions. {ENDS}
Gee seems to be more of an issue close inshore.
And those darned researchers are even checking 3D reflectance models for submerged corals.
http://www.crisp.nus.edu.sg/~acrs2001/pdf/204PARIN.pdf
Another call for Paul to keep it clean. We expect this from others here, but I thought you were supposed to be here to rise above that type of smear and provide some substance amongst the dross.
The GBR dates from some time back in the Eocene. There was an oil well on Heron Island that went through 5,000′ of coral limestone. Then the ice ages started three million years ago and the reef got killed off every 41,000 years initially, and then every 100,000 years for the last 1.0 million years. So for the last 1.0 million years, 90% of the time the GBR was a vegetation-covered range of hills.
Corals grow happily in the Indo-Pacific warm pool, which is hotter than the GBR waters, and as hot as oceanic water can get due to the exponential increase in evaporation with temperature.
There was an add in the weekend papers for a climate change officer for the GBR authority, paying $100,000 a year odd. I thought of applying for it myself. It would be a good bludge for a year before they fired me.
The Commisar for Climate Change is waxing lyrical!
I was wondering if Luke would ‘fess up to any connection between a 5-letter entity and becoming a fan of Emile Mercier?
GMF is right. Polar Bears are nothing more than a blond, salt bleached, population of Brown Bears. When and where ice is abundant they do better than their brown brothers. The two populations are known to interbreed.
Gosh, Luke picked up a spelling error. Quick, get the camera, he finally has an erection. Make sure you catch him in silhouette, lift the chin a bit Bennito.
Nice try with the “granddad” line but my kids are all still at school. And thanks for the Regional States plug. Latest research by one of Lukes former political masters, AJ Brown at Griffith Uni, polled 500 NSW residents of whom about 75% wanted to scrap States altogether. The strongest proponents of this reform were public sector employees like Luke. Better get the purge started there Lukey.
And all this as a prelude to an ordinary cut and paste that tells us nothing new. Bleaching has only ever been an inshore problem with minimal threat to most of the reef.
And there goes Gavin with another personal wank of marginal relevance. If we are talking sea level change anywhere near Tasmania you can’t go past John Daly’s blog where a picture beats a thousand Gavinwanks. http://www.john-daly.com/
” Increasing numbers of pregnant polar bears are coming to land to give birth instead of staying on the thinning Arctic sea ice, a trend that signals a bleak future for their population there, a U.S. Geological Survey study has found.”
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/13/MNGJJQVNVM1.DTL
Toby,
I have to confess that I have zero idea what you are taking about in your posts. The last 100 climate seminars I went to and the last thousand collaborations I had with colleagues had no politics in them whatsoever- unless you count logic and mathematics as politics. I have witnessed plenty of debate in that time but none that went anywhere near politics.
But maybe, Oh I see… your still taking about the crap that gets argued in blogs by people who have literally no expertise and no actual relevance to the issue. Or maybe the lobbying/spin game that is forced on us by policy makers who can’t properly digest information that is remotely complex.
The science gets done- its gets passed to policy. If people accepted it at face value and didn’t immediately launch into conspiracy theories (cause face it- you don’t have the expertise to evaluate the science) then that would be the end of the scientists job. But no.. since the science does not accord to your politics you attack it- and in the process turn scientists into advocates- thats the way it worked- not the other way around.
Well if you know nothing, are not prepared to do any work, present arguments that you don’t understand enough to even recognise that they are flawed and refuse to answer questions that take you out of the small space that is your comfort zone- then I would have to suspect that you are politically motivated in your actions. In fact, the only thing keeping you guys alive at all is politics- and you know it. Its certainly not science cause you don’t do any- people are still championing Daly LOL (who last time I checked fixed air-conditioners for a living, noble pursuit and all but I don’t think I’ll quote him on climatology).
I mean, what the hell are you guys trying to achieve- to expose the swindle- to revolutionize science- to force accountability? Collectively the sceptics have achieved absolutely nothing except to affect procrastination on an issue that should have been moved upon decades ago- they have contributed zip to science. Take a tip- you have to do WORK to have people consider your ideas and you have to do MORE WORK to achieve results. In reality all you are doing is conducting a useless flame-war, which is about at gutsy as shouting abuse at someone from a passing car. I join this blog from time to time simply for my own amusement. If any of you are serious about proving your ‘non-political’ cred, why don’t you write up your theories and have them published?? Until then all you have is a fist full of conspiracy theories.
Thats fine, Space, get me the same funding as all your mates and I’ll operate as a full-time “science auditor”. What? There is no such role as a “science auditor”? Do you mean all these guys get access to a huge bucket of funds and it is not even audited? And you actually pass your work around amongst your mates and sign off on each other’s bullshit?
Well, my little matey, I was trained as an accountant and that included some mandatory units of auditing. And there are former partners of major international firms who have done lengthy stretches in jail, not for committing fraud but, rather, for failing to detect the fraud of others.
And it must be said that just about every piece of so-called “science” I see these days sets all the standard warning bells ringing loudly. There is, after all, only a few variations on the standard forms of deception and every spiv is under the belief that they have only just developed them.
So until you bring your so-called “profession” into line with community standards you can take your hackneyed cliches and give them some time and place utility in an appropriate orifice.
Hold on, Ann, Polar Bears give birth in mid-winter don’t they. I could have sworn I have seen footage of a mother bear emerging from her hibernation hole with two new cubs at heal.
And if that is the case then there would be no problem with melting ice in winter. Please enlighten us?
Hey Ian,
Don’t try to be a smarty now!
But polar and brown bears are going into hibernation early winter/late autumn and sea ice is forming later in the fall and melting earlier in the spring , so probably they can’t find so many suitable places to build their dens on.
“In recent years, Arctic pack ice has formed progressively later, melted earlier and lost much of its older and thicker multi-year component,” said researcher Anthony Fischbach. “Together, these changes have resulted in pack ice that is a less stable platform on which to give birth and raise new cubs. Previous research had already shown that unstable ice can result in failures of on-ice denning attempts. Less ice that is suitable for denning apparently has led to an increased frequency of pregnant polar bears in this region choosing to den on land.”
” And if that is the case then there would be no problem with melting ice in winter” – Ian
Pleeaase Ian, no problems you say, but remember the polar bears are mainly hunting seals from the ice edge and if the ice is melting during the winter , the polar bears will starve…
Ian,
That post was hilarious! LOL! I love this blog!
It also made no sense- you want ME to get you money? I’m not sure who you think I am but I just don’t wield that amount of power, sorry. So…let me get this right, there is buckets of money up for grabs but you can’t get your hands on it…. why? Because of some ongoing conspiracy?
Hmmm… sounds more like you just aren’t qualified, have no actual initiative to change that situation and don’t actually plan on doing anything that might expose you to professional scrutiny- lest we find the cupboard alarmingly bare. Carping on a blog really doesn’t achieve much. Talk about hypocrisy.
On the science auditing rubbish- you obviously have embarrassingly little idea how science (as a process of incremental ongoing scepticism and review) works- save for your deeply cherished paranoia. Science auditing!- Man, I’m still laughing… yeah- I’m sure the whole science would benefit from having a group of accountants appraise our work- the IPCC reviews being corrupt and all. Gold mate, Gold!
If people in business were not so full of their own self importance, they would probably realise that their professional standards and levels of achievement are piss weak in comparison to all pure science, and indeed arts. That doesn’t stop them proposing that we shoehorn everything in society into some crap business model under the pathetically small minded assumption it would ‘improve’ things’.
So I should be in jail should I? Again, pure Gold! The scientists that propose a link between tobacco and lung cancer didn’t go to jail- it was businesses that tried to squirm their way out of responsibility and procrastinated for years. Ditto James Hardy, Ditto Exxon. Anytime one of you ‘sceptics’ has the guts to take this to court- go ahead, it will all end up there in the end anyways, and most of you will magically disappear when that happens (and you know it). At least I publish my work and its in the public domain- I stand by it and can’t hide from it. My previous points hold- do some WORK- and stop finding excuses. Stake your reputation on it. You got Nada.
Don’t forget to check under the bed before you go to sleep tonight, I hear Mike Mann has gone missing and he has his hockey stick with him.
Post Daly era: “Melting glaciers biggest threat to sea level” Mercury, July 20 (Hobart)
http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,22104326-923,00.html
More stories in marine science for Tasmanians only Ian.
http://www.csiro.au/news/ps2q2.html
http://fcms.its.utas.edu.au/scieng/iasos/newsdetail.asp?lNewsEventId=1068
Mate: you are right out of your depth in all this stuff
“Already the Port Arthur benchmark is showing a rise in sea-levels of at least 13 cm since 1841, with an average annual rate of 0.8-1.0 mm/year (Pugh, Coleman & Hunter 2002).”
http://soer.justice.tas.gov.au/2003/casestudy/4/index.php
“But is development along our sandy shores sustainable?”
http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/tas/content/2003/s1130277.htm
IMHO only a fool will ignore the answers
Hear what other scientists are saying about Peter Ridd’s thesis. Click here to join the debate:
http://www.climateshifts.org/?p=45#more-45
13cm over 170 years, Gavin? Gosh, better double dose the valium.
Space, I was one of a small group of an anti-smoking activists who sued a TV station for broadcasting tobacco adverts during the Football Grand Final. We all had “open briefs” put out on us to any legal firm that could make a defamation case stick to us, basically a blank cheque to take us down. We also B.U.G.A.U.P’d every Winfield Billboard from Hornsby to Central.
So don’t give me any of this crap about climate sceptics being the same as the tobacco lobby, you ignorant moron. You know jack $hit.
Time to get serious. What are Dr Ridd’s key messages? They are (with my response underneath):
1. “corals are more tolerant to rising waters temperatures than first thought by most people..” This is a reference to a paper published last week by the Australian Institute of Marine sciences. I have read the paper, though it seems that Peter has not.
The message to Peter is that there is a big difference between a newspaper article and a peer-reviewed publication in a scientific journal. Peter links us from his text to the Australian and … Voilà … that is what the headlines say.
The more diligent of us of course went to the paper and discovered that it didn’t say what the headline (or Piers Ackerman) said it said. In fact, when we profiled it at my blog (www.climateshifts.org), Dr. Madeleine van Oppen, the lead author, felt compelled to put a correction on the record and said “The article in today’s Australian is a miss-representation of our work.” Pretty final don’t you think?
Yes, Peter, you will need to go to the original sources next time. That is what other scientists do.
2. ‘Corals are cockroaches’
When I first read this statement, I thought, oh dear, Peter’s lack of training in basic biology has let him down again!” No – I wont be snide, I did actually understand what he was trying to say – and I actually agree with him. Corals are like cockroaches in that they’re extremely difficult to make go extinct. Corals are able to reproduce on their own (asexually) and have some of the largest biogeographical ranges of any organism. This means that they can hang out for long periods as a single individual and still grow and ‘reproduce’ without needing another individual. Their large ranges mean that they are likely to have somewhere, even in a catastrophe, to find shelter and survive. Not that it makes them invincible but it probably increases the odds against their extinction.
What is the point here?
Dr Ridd is telling us that we don’t have to worry about the extinction of corals. I also think we don’t have to worry about the extinction of corals.
But this isn’t the issue.
The issue is that corals may survive in geological time but may dwindle during the bad times so that they become very, very rare. That means they won’t be building the reefs that house the thousands of species. Those thousands of species underpin a $5 billion economic nest egg given to us each year from Great Barrier Reef associated fishing and tourism.
Corals can survive catastrophes and have as demonstrated in the geological record. But what Peter doesn’t tell you is that corals are not common during these catastrophes and that it takes thousands if not millions of years the corals to rebuild the coral reefs off to a catastrophe. Trying telling our friends in the tourism industry that they will have to do without corals for 10 let alone 1,000 years!
3. “Corals like it hot”
And so do we. But if you push the temperatures up are too high for us (beyond our coping range) we have big problems. The extraordinary heat wave in Paris in 2003, when over 14,000 people died, is a case in point.
Corals have certainly adapted to the temperature of the local environment. At each of these locations, I will bleach and potentially die when they go beyond the local thermal threshold. Off Sydney, corals will bleach when the water hits 26°C. Off Gladstone, on the southern Great Barrier Reef, I will begin to bleach at 29°C. Off Townsville, they will bleach at 30°C.
Raise the temperature by a further 2°C at each of those locations, however, and the corals will die. Yes, each has adapted (over hundreds if not thousands of years) to the local temperature. But the issue here is not adaptation. It is the rate at which corals can adapt relative than the rate of temperature change.
What Dr Ridd doesn’t tell us is that the current rates of temperature change are at least a hundred times greater than the Ice Age transitions (the period in which the Earth went from being told with lots of on ice to warm like it is today). Yes, at least hundred times as fast. Go get the Vostok Ice core data and calculate it for yourself. Its on the web – see the live links at http://www.climateshifts.org
Given that fact, it is perhaps no wonder that mass mortalities of corals are on the rise. In 1998, there was a 16% decrease in the number of corals survey by the multinational Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN). Peter Ridd states that we didn’t lose many corals from the Great Barrier Reef in 1998 or 2002.
Another furphy. Let’s have a look at the actual numbers.
The official figure from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority was that around about 5% of the corals on the Great Barrier Reef died (“severely damaged”) in each event (1998, 2002). Doesn’t sound like much until you consider the size of the Great Barrier Reef? If one does the calculation, there are probably at least 40,000 km² of corals dominated communities on the Great Barrier Reef. If you use this number as a minimal estimate (and it probably is) then the loss of 5% of 40,000 km² of corals, represents a loss of 2000 km² of coral communities! If you can live with that happening every 3-4 years, Peter, then you’re a better man than I!
But you are right, it is not like what happened in the Western Indian Ocean, on the reefs of the Okinawa, or in Palau or off Scott reef in Western Australia, where between 50 and 90% of the corals disappeared from reefs by the end of 1998. The problem is that the best science (published in peer-reviewed journals) indicates that the frequency of bleaching events is likely to increase in the coming decades. Do we have any credible data to say that we should NOT heed these projections? To my knowledge and expertise, no.
4. ‘Climate change is happened before and has been worse’.
This is a common line from some who focus on long time scales – namely the geological record, which has a time scale that goes well beyond that of the ecological (today). Some (only only a few like Bob Carter and Peter Ridd actually) say that “it’s has all happened before, so why are we worried that it happening today”.
There is a small but critical detail missing from this type of interpretation and conclusion. And that is that the sudden retreat of the glaze or the flooding of coastal Australia at the end of the last Ice Age occurred at rates that were at least a hundred times smaller than the current rate of climate change and what we’ll be seeing in the future.
That is, an early Australian would have to have lived to 5000 years old (not 50) to see the sorts of changes that we are likely to see in the next 50 years. It basically says that early Australians probably only had the vaguest notions that the climate was changing if they had any notions at all. Change was nothing like recent decades or that that is projected.
5. ‘We have been swindled’
At this point, Peter, after trundling through half-facts and half-truths comes to his final section. Here, he lists why he thinks we have been swindled. The first reason given is that “some very bad science is involved”. I have already tackled this above – I think it is a bit rich from a fellow who has not published his objections in a peer-reviewed science journal and has blundered with the facts and science above. Scientists constantly criticize scientific ideas through the vehicle of anonymous peer-review. That is all part of scientific progress. Why hasn’t Peter used this vehicle before? There are plenty of places for opinion articles (I have used that peer-reviewed avenue many times before).
Secondly, Peter indicates that the examination of the issues for the Great Barrier Reef is dominated by the biological science community which should (but doesn’t according to Dr Ridd) make reference more to the geological history of corals. It is interesting that Dr Ridd has glossed over the work on two of the most prolific authors on the Reef, John Pandolfi (University of Queensland) and John (Charlie) Veron (ex-AIMS now University of Queensland) who have produced a vast literature and trained generations of scientists with the methodology which is constantly calling on our understanding of the geological time frame in which corals and coral reefs have evolved. This sounds like the confusion that Dr Ridd had with thinking that we are worried most about the extinction of corals when we are not.
Oh, and John and Charlie don’t agree with Dr Ridd’s perspective even though they consult the geological record.
The last point that Dr Ridd makes is the old argument that scientists are feathering their nests and that they have to mention the “CC” word to get funded. This is a tired old conspiracy theory — the peer review system works in a way that would make conspiracy very extremely difficult. Try running a committee to obtain consensus out of 10 let alone 100 scientists! Granting success works on originality, tractability and having the goods (a solid track record in the peer-reviewed literature). In fact, if you had the track record, and had solidly based evidence that climate change was a myth, then you would probably become one of the most well funded scientists of all time!
In his conclusion, Dr Peter Ridd Peter states that he thinks it would be good to have the disgraced director Martin Durkin (producer of “The Great Climate Change Swindle”) come over to Australia and do make “The Great Barrier Reef Swindle”.
I suppose that choosing a producer who faked data, misquoted people and chose to use data selectively is the right man for your job, Peter.
But he isn’t my Sir David Attenborough!
Come and see more of this at http://www.climateshifts.org.
13cm over 170 years, Gavin?
Smart Q hey
Ian obviously missed reading about the expert’s equivalent coastal subsidence in meters per cm of sea level rise however folks we see the clever one avoids discussing rates of change again like what part of the 170 years of records becomes most significant. Any surveyor will know what I’m on about.
I had a mentor back in the 50’swho worked most of his adult life in our aircraft industry.
Les introduced me to the importance of measurements and models for turbulence. But there was something else to come to our attention and it was the local work on aircraft rates of climb etc.
Les spent a long time painting government busses in that factory after someone decided it was easier to import technology in ready made packages. Our infrastructure development today likewise depends a great deal on who is driving the ship.
I remain fiercely loyal to local enterprise, engineering and science. Measuring climate change here starts with a solid stick in the ground at the edge of the last big tide on a long beach.
Is that too simple?
Refering to post by http://www.climateshift.org (Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg)
The point numbers below refer to Prof HG’s original points however I should first add that I do not think, and certainly did not say that there is some cover up regarding the health of the GBR. There is simply a scientific disagreement.
1 “corals are more tolerant to rising waters temperatures than first thought by most people”
Prof HG claims I misrepresented the science in a paper by Dr Madeleine van Oppen and Jos Mieog. However the AIMS media release seems to agree with my analysis. I quote
“The potential for this hidden back-up type (algae) to step in and provide nutrition to coral during heat stress is far greater than currently thought,” Mr Mieog added.
This is also not the first time that evidence been gathered that indicate that corals can respond relatively quickly to temperature changes by taking on different strains of zooxanthelae.
2 Corals and Cockroaches
Prof HG misrepresents some of my comments regarding canaries and cockroaches. The point is that corals are not delicate organisms and that the analogy often used that corals are the world’s canary is misleading. It is however doubtless a very effect publicity tool to use this analogy.
3 Some like it hot.
My article was about the GBR not about other coral reefs systems around the world. As I said previously most of the GBR did not bleach and most that did has fully recovered. There is also little doubt that the growth rate of massive corals has increased in the last century. I think it highly unlikely that the hard cutoffs threshold for bleaching that Prof HG talks of are genuine. An organism that has seen so much climate change over the eons is unlikely to have a weakness like a not adaptive thermal threshold.
4 Climates have changed before.
Prof HG states correctly that previous changes in climate are far slower than what we may see if you believe the extreme IPCC predictions. However the rates of climate change we have seen over the last 200 years is certainly not outside the bounds of what is found in the geological record (and yet we still see bleaching). Absolute temperatures are also probably not outside the bounds of what the GBR has seen in the last 1000 years (viz Medieval Warm Period). The Holocene climatic optimum was also most likely significantly warmer than today. That means that the bleaching event we have seen have almost certainly occurred in the recent past and may be nothing unusual.
It is wrong to state that Aborigines probably did not even notice that things were changing when the coast retreated up to 100 km in a few thousand years and the sea level was rising by 10 mm per year. The change was profound enough for the memory to be etched into their culture through traditional stories. And there are Noah’s Ark flood stories in almost all cultures. The last deglaciation was a climate change of monumental proportions and a time when the GBR was being born. The change the GBR then experienced is far greater than what we have seen over the last 100 years.
It all boils down to whether the IPCC is correct with its extreme prediction of perhaps 6 degree climate change. A couple of degrees of warming will be neither here nor there to the corals. 6 degrees is a major problem. However I guarantee you that changes in the GBR will be the least of our concerns under that scenario. Worry more about the land ecosystems and shifting population. The GBR might be damaged under a 6 degree rise in 100 years, but the rest of the world will be annihilated.
5 Have we been swindled
There is much to respond to here but I will confine myself to the question that Prof HG asks of why I do not raise these issues in the literature, rather than in newspapers and weblogs. In fact I try to get my views in the scientific literature but sometimes it is very hard to get comments published. For example some time ago I attempted to get a comment on a paper by Pandolfi et al 2003 in Science which claimed that the GBR was about 1/3rd of the way the ecological extinction. I believe that paper has 4 fundamental errors and I tried on 3 occasions without success to get Science to publish a comment. After this failure I wrote a full paper outlining the problems with the methodology. I submitted this paper first to L and O and then to Corals Reefs and both rejected the paper without even accepting it into the review process. Fortunatley I have since found a journal to publish this work but it is unlikely to one that people on this group will read (Energy and Environment)
So I can assure you that being the heretic does not make publication easy and I do not regret using any outlet at my disposal to get the message across.
Finally, nothing that I have read in Prof HG’s article makes me change my mind that the GBR is probably the most intact and least impacted ecosystem on earth with the exception of Antarctica. Its present superlative condition means that it will cope with climate change, whether it be natural or otherwise, far better than the devastated ecosystems on the land. A moderate warming combined with sealevel rise will also cause an explosion of coral on reef flats so it seems to me more likely that we will see more coral in the future, at least on the GBR. I am also still convinced that there has been massive exaggeration about the supposed state of the GBR and that this ought to cease forthwith. But go for your life and try and save the massively impacted reefs around the world. I am with you completely on that one.
Peter Ridd
Physics,JCU
Pandolfi, J.M., Bradbury, R.H., Sala, E., Hughes, T.P., Bjorndal, K.A., Cooke, R.G., McArdle, D., McClenachan, L., Newman, M.J.H., Paredes, G., Warner, R.R., Jackson, J.B.C., 2003 . Global trajectories of the long-term decline of coral reef ecosystems. Science, 301: 955-958.
Reg… “they like it hot”
All the research I’ve seen shows diminished host biomass/tissue thickness during the hottest season. Like most organisms, they have an easier time adapting and adjusting to relatively static conditions, as opposed to unprecedented conditions.
Is there something particularly conceptually challenging for you regarding that?
A lot of what is said about global warmimg is total rubbish. A political football at the best. Natural variations in climate have, and always will occur. Nothing is ever said about the view in the 60’s that the climate was getting colder throughout the world. Quietly forgotten. And nothing is ever said about the huge reductions in carbon gases in LA since the 70’s. It’s all selective reporting, really damaging, and a massive attempt at getting people on a guilt trip
As a method for the future – utterly futile and totally worthless.
John Bethune Met Office, UK
Great