Coral Reefs In Grave Danger, Say Climate Simulations

sciencehabit writes "Nearly every coral reef could be dying by 2100 if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, according to a new review of major climate models from around the world. The only way to maintain the current chemical environment in which reefs now live, the study suggests, would be to deeply cut emissions as soon as possible. It may even become necessary to actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, say with massive tree-planting efforts or machines."

Comments

Re:Who cares?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So what if all the Coral Reefs die,

Most of the sea life in the ocean will die. The reefs are a critical component of the food chain for fish of all sizes, including plenty that don't directly live on the reef itself.

RT (WHOLE) FA

[scanman1]

"There is a very wide coral response to omega—some are able to internally control the [relevant] chemistry," says Rau, who has collaborated with Caldeira in the past but did not participate in this research. Those tougher coral species could replace more vulnerable ones "rather than a wholesale loss" of coral. "

I guess his views were not in line with the study, so his results were not included.

Re:RT (WHOLE) FA

[Gadget_Guy]

If you want to RT (WHOLE) FA then why did you stop quoting him before the end of the paragraph where he said:

"[But] an important point made by [Caldeira] is that corals have had many millions of years of opportunity to extend their range into low omega waters. With rare exception they have failed. What are the chances that they will adapt to lowering omega in the next 100 years?"

QT (WHOLE) FQ! Did the last note of warning and agreement with the study not fit with your message of excluding the dissenting scientist? What is more likely: that the part about them working together previously was some hidden way of saying that Rau was censored or that he was giving full disclosure of a prior relationship? Conspiracy theory or standard (and best) practice?

Re:RT (WHOLE) FA

[tp1024]

Lack of necessity.

Sardines had hundreds of millions of years to extent their range into freshwater, yet they didn't. It was only when a swarm of sardines got trapped in what is today Lake Taal, which used to be just another part of the Pacific Ocean. It became a lake only in the 1750ies, when a volcanic eruption cut it off from the ocean and rain turned saltwater into freshwater in a matter of decades.

Those decades were sufficient to do what hundreds of millions of years had not managed to do, because it had never been necessary. In 100,000 years, all evidence of happened in lake taal will have been erazed by the same geologic processes that gave rise to all of that in the first place.

The assumed stagnation and lethargy of the evolution of species is an artifact of processes that conserve their traces now accessible to us. Unless a species is pervasive and somehow amenable to be conserved over geologic time spans within the environment they live in, it will irrecoverably be lost to history.

Our biosphere survived several ICE AGES. Looking out of the window I see landscape that was covered with hundreds of meters of ice a (geologically) very short time ago and has undergone numerous radical climate changes, yet, failed completely to become a dead wasteland for any appreciable time once the ice retreated.

Re:RT (WHOLE) FA

[tp1024]

The last iceage covered all of Northern Europe, Britain, parts of Germany, parts of Poland in massive, greenland-like glaciers and changed the climate massively all the way down to Africa. The alps too, were covered glaciers running all the way down into the surrounding areas, which were what you would call a tundra.

That was 20.000 years ago not millions of years.

Nature adapts - quickly. Much more quickly than anybody is giving her credit for.

Re:RT (WHOLE) FA

[bill_mcgonigle]

"[But] an important point made by [Caldeira] is that corals have had many millions of years of opportunity to extend their range into low omega waters. With rare exception they have failed. What are the chances that they will adapt to lowering omega in the next 100 years?"

Wait ... I've been to a few islands where they say that the basic limestone structure of the island is built from ancient coral reefs that formed the limestone over millions of years.

We also know that atmospheric CO2 has been up at least as high as 3500 ppm during the same period.

One of these has to be wrong if 450ppm is going to kill all the coral (or the theory is crap).

Re:RT (WHOLE) FA

[riverat1]

By the definition cryologists use an ice age is any time there are significant ice caps on Earth, like say Antarctica and Greenland. When the ice advances on the continents it's called a glacial and when it retreats an interglacial. /pedant

But then in the popular usage a glaciation is often called an ice age so it's hard to fault you for putting it that way.

A wake up call

[Gadget_Guy]

This should make the so-called skeptics pay attention as it represents a very real danger to people. Those broken up bits of dead coral can really cut your face when you bury your head in the sand.

Re:A wake up call

[Anonymous Coward]

95% of "sceptics" are not sceptics at all, they are deniers. It doesn't matter what evidence is presented, they will not accept it even if they can't refute it.

Let's turn the question around. Why do you categorise everyone who accepts the evidence as accurate as "unquestioning believers"?

Re:A wake up call

[Anonymous Coward]

At absolute worst, the global warming "true believers" are putting their faith in scientific consensus; why is this some great intellectual crime? Am I a "true believer" for believing in the theory of gravity without extensive experimentation to prove it to myself? Am I a "true believer" in relativity because I haven't built my own atomic clocks and launched them into orbit to verify it? Why is it that in every other aspect of life I can accept prevailing (almost universal) scientific consensus and no one will bat an eye, and yet to accept same in regard to global warming is some sort of heinous act?

Re:A wake up call

[Gadget_Guy]

My claimed "so-called skeptics" are those who are actually denialists but who insist on being labelled skeptics because it sounds more reasonable, considered and open-minded.

They are the people who distrust scientists completely and put all their faith in right wing pundits who say that it is actually getting cooler (who do this by comparing the temperature to the El Nino year of 1998 - which was completely unrepresentative of the average of the time).

Despite wanting to appear open-minded, they will never ever concede that there is a chance that scientists are correct. That is not merely being skeptical. If they argue a point and are shown to be wrong (when it becomes obvious that they haven't read the studies that they are skeptical about), they will never use that experience to change their thinking, but will instead seamlessly move on to the next bit of "evidence" that they found on some conservative blog as if nothing happened.

They will not subject the anti-AGW claims to the same skepticism to which they hold the claims of science. They will question the financial motives of scientists without a shred of evidence that they are "on the take", and yet will dismiss with contempt any suggestion that big business funds the think tanks that churn out the FUD against the science. This is despite those same think tanks of having a documented history of being paid by business to discredit scientists (think back to the smoking-cancer link debate).

I am not claiming that all people who call themselves skeptics are like this, but the real ones are quite rare to find.

Re:A wake up call

[Anonymous Coward]

So, just to clarify: you put an equal amount of skepticism (which is to say, happily rejecting 99+% of peer-reviewed literature) on modern theories in physics, including relativities both special and general, all of quantum physics, etc... right? Or otherwise, you haven't addressed my point in the slightest.

Re:A wake up call

[Xeno man]

Because no one is raising a rally to battle gravity. The government doesn't want to build a dome around the planet to prevent meteorites from hitting Earth and thus increasing gravity or prevent atmosphere from escaping thus lowering gravity. No one wants to create a gravity tax and raise the costs of goods to combat local gravity fluctuation. No one is creating more expensive utilities like water and power and sell it because it's gravity friendly.

Global warming is not simply accepted because it affects everyone now in the wallet. If there was total acceptance, we would all be buying more expensive solar power instead of coal or nuclear, we would be paying carbon taxes on every product we buy every day and companies would be trading even more carbon credits then currently available. Making ends meet is more important to the common man than relativity.

Re:A wake up call

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I think what probably rubs people the wrong way is when those who spearhead the AGW movement either don't practice what they preach, or outright fabricate their "facts." Al Gore tells us that we all need to reduce our carbon footprint, yet he has a larger carbon footprint than dare I say 99% of the world's population. Further, he deliberately fabricated data in order to sell his "inconvenient truth" movie. As if that isn't enough, he sells carbon credits, aka "indulgences" to himself.

When you ask his supporters why he should be able to consume a lot while telling the rest of us not to, they insist that it's because he's an important person to get the word across (as if he's more important than anybody else on the planet no less.) That falls apart though when you think about the fact that his message is about as known as it can get, furthermore, most of his consumption comes from luxuries.

Re:A wake up call

[St.Creed]

You are making assumptions. Yes, fossil fuels are necessary right now. But we can improve the wastage levels a lot. Cars do not have to guzzle gallons of fuel to transport people if you have better public transportation and enforce green standards on cars. The Japanese car factories proved that it was possible to build much better cars than were the norm (and Chrysler, GM and Ford nearly or actually died on that one). The same goes for many areas of the way we live. The US especially seems to glorify in insane airconditioning, huge wastage of food and resources, very bad insulation on housing, and on and on.

Even without draconic measures in place, many standard building practices in the US would be utterly unacceptable in most EU countries. That could improve tomorrow, leading to a better quality of buildings and reduced CO2 consumption.

The whole dichotomy between "reducing CO2" and "better living conditions" is fake. You can have both, in a lot of cases. We should save the fossil fuels for those cases where we cannot and not spend it willy-nilly.

Re:A wake up call

[amck]

Because, historically, those who have placed their faith in the "scientific consensus" of the day have almost always turned out to be spectacularly wrong?

No.
Evidence, please?
Can you show that people have been "almost always" wrong on every issue? On gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, on quantum mechanics, on the atom theory of nature, on evolution, on ...
You can point to individual anecodatal points, but "almost always" and "spectacularly wrong" on every issue is a very strong statement.

Also, "faith" has no place in science. I provisionally accept lots of things, based on the scientific consensus of my colleagues. Especially with the overwhelming amount of evidence to investigate. Contrary evidence trumps consensus, but in the case of climate change, it isn't there.

Re:A wake up call

[amck]

Why?

The trouble with string theory is the lack of ability to falsify (at this stage). A beautiful theory is worth exploring, and you cut the theorists some slack for a while to develop it and come up with experiments that could test it. By now, we're getting impatient.

Climate change is wholly different. There are hundreds of thousands of datasets empirically backing up the predictions made from hundred-year old science (the physics of greenhouse cases from Tyndall dates back to the 19th century).

Re:A wake up call

[Gadget_Guy]

You might like to look at my definition of a "so called skeptic" below, because refusing to look at the science just because you guess that it is wrong is denialism, not skepticism. Feel free to continue with your uninformed belief, but don't try to pretend to the rest of the world that you know more than the scientists who dedicate their life to actually studying what is going on.

Re:A wake up call

[professionalfurryele]

Okay, can you cite a peer reviewed publication which makes that prediction (a new ice age) with the certainty you claim? Time magazine is not a peer reviewed publication and if you get your science from the media then you will just get bad science. Back in the 70s, even though global temperatures had been reasonably stable (or possibly declining) most scientists were predicting global warming would dominate global dimming. As the evidence of the last 40 years came in most scientists (who were defying the current trend of global temperatures) because almost all scientists, at least the ones who do climate research.

Your bad science teacher and the fact that science journalists aren't worth a piss in the ocean doesn't mean the scientists had it wrong. Go read the peer reviewed literature, I promise you for ever paper you have implying we may be approaching another ice age I can find 3 going the other way.

Re:A wake up call

[oodaloop]

I was skeptical until I looked at the evidence. I'm now convinced of anthropogenic climate change. The people who think that dumping hundreds of thousands of different chemicals, many in large quantities, into our air, water, and soil WON'T cause significant change to our climate are simply being naive.

Re:A wake up call

[GameboyRMH]

This is why I fucking hate Al Gore. He practically gave birth to the denialist movement through his dishonesty and hypocrisy.

I don't apologize for that shitstain. He's an energy-wasting greedhead who doesn't give a rat's ass about the environment.

Re:A wake up call

[amck]

I mean, come on, how many atomic models have we already been through since the mid-1800s?

Many, but only one atom theory.

The atom theory is that matter is made up of atoms, finite quanta that cannot be infinitely subdivided.
Hence, you cannot have less than one atom of sodium, etc. The antithesis was that you could, that you could
infinitely divide the amount of a substance and still maintain that substance.

That atoms have subdivisions in themselves (protons, electrons, neutrons), does not negate the theory as originally stated.

Re:A wake up call

[kenorland]

It's not up to peope to self assess and choose a position they are comfortable with - if I were more comfortable with believing there is no link between lung cancer and smoking, would my position make me less likely to get lung cancer?

Let's stick with that example. You are implying that because smoking causes cancer, everybody must come to the conclusion that they don't want to smoke. But that is obviously not the case: lots of people smoke despite knowing about the substantial (and it is substantial) increase in risk. It's the same for many other risky activities: investing, emigrating, motorcycle riding, etc. Many people engage in those activities because they think the potential rewards justify the risk. You are free to disagree with them, but there is no objectively right choice about the level of risk people are willing to accept. (A second point is that a link at the population level does not imply that a link exists for any individual; I may have information that makes it rational for me to smoke even if it wouldn't be rational for you.)

So, continuing to emit CO2 without any kinds of imposed limits has some risks, and they are well documented. Many people have looked at those risks and said they can live with them, because they consider the alternatives of not taking those risks are far worse.

Your risk preferences may be different, but your preferences don't imply that there is a single, objectively correct policy vis-a-vis AGW.

Personally, I'd like to see government investment in research in renewable energies, increased taxation of oil and coal, and investment in nuclear power plants. But I strongly object to multi-national carbon trading schemes or global emission limits, because I think they would be ineffective and subject to massive abuse.

Re:A wake up call

[amck]

Can you show that people have been "almost always" wrong on every issue?

Yeah, you can. It's not difficult. (see below) Of course, it doesn't matter as this is clearly a trap.

Yes. You failed to enumerate and list every issue

You can point to individual anecodatal points

This is why it's a trap. If the parent can't give a complete run-down from 500 BCE onward, you'll shout some nonsense about anecdotes. Let's see if I'm right.,,

Correct. I don't think it is possible to enumerate every issue, but your claim presumes otherwise.

On gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, on quantum mechanics, on the atom theory of nature, on evolution,

Quantum mechanics is a bit new -- including it in your absurd list is dishonest as it hasn't had time to fail spectacularly like history suggests it will. Gravity: obvious examples are obvious. If you're particularly thick, just google "history of gravity". Atomic theory: dramatically changed several times pre and post Einstein. The atom today is so dramatically different from the atom in, say, 1850 that I'd say the science of the time was "spectacularly wrong". Thermodynamics: phlogiston, caloric theory, need I go on?

Shoot, I took the bait! Did I spring the trap?

Science proceeds by falsification. In the example of gravity - the work of Copernicus / Kepler / Newton disproved the existing Heliocentric view.
Newtons theory was/is an extraordinarily effective theory: it matched observations and produced predictions that came true for the next
three hundred years. Yes, it was superceded by Einsteins work, but in practice Engineers and Scientists use Newtons theory to this day for
almost all work. Hence, no I wouldn't say Newton was "spectacularly wrong", especially given the evidence available.

, but "almost always" and "spectacularly wrong" on every issue is a very strong statement.

It's a strong statement, and you can object to "spectacularly" if you want to split hairs. Of course, that doesn't make the statement any less true. It's also an important part of what makes science work. See, you're operating under this superstitious delusion that science progresses toward "truth" through a process of refinement. It should be obvious to anyone with even a passive understanding of science, or even the history of science, that this simply isn't true, has never been true, and would be a complete disaster if science operated on that assumption!

Because you can (almost) never prove a theory true, it looks dangerously possible to be dismissive of any idea you don't like.
But this isn't the case. Consider anthropogenic climate change (ACC): while our existing theories of climate are provisional, the opposing idea that there is no ACC is wrong. There is no theory that explains the observations without ACC.

Also, "faith" has no place in science.

That depends on what you mean by "faith". Particle physics seemed to get on just fine with faith that the Higgs boson would be "found". While I understand there are some (less than ideal?) Higgs-free models on the ready, it seems that the consensus is that the Higgs will be found and that it would mean a big change for the field if they can't find it.

Ok, by "faith" I mean accepting /believing without evidence. (belief is another dangerous word: I don't think scientists and religious mean the same thing by it, and I try to avoid it). Particle physicists didn't have "faith" it would be found. They provisionally accepted the hypothesis in order to investigate and test it. Holding and testing hypotheses are not faith; the "belief" is provisional and explicitly not accepted yet.

I pro

Re:A wake up call

[BasilBrush]

So what's a "so-called skeptic"? Somebody who *says* they don't believe in AGW but who secretly does, just doesn't want to pay for the alleged "fixes"?

That you didn't include this category with your list implies that you don't believe it exists. I on the other hand reckon it accounts for most of the people expressing doubts. They're more commonly called "deniers".

Re:A wake up call

[amck]

I prefer the term "Anthropogenic Climate Change", because I think Global Warming gives a too-soft impression of whats happening.

Yes, the world is warming, on average, but what kills is not the average temperature rising by one or two degrees, its drought,
extreme events such as storms, ocean acidification, etc. The danger is that people think we're heading for a Mediterranean climate here in N Europe, etc. and that global warming might not be a bad thing for chilly Ireland, for example, when massive droughts and crop failures (across Europe and elsewhere) are starting to threaten global food supplies.

Its ironic that the denialists also prefer the term climate change, because it sounds milder, but thats just the scale of the education exercise ahead of us.

Re:Good Grief.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you can drown it out with your manly gunfire?

Let's stop watching the tea leaves of the models..

[emarkp]

And look at what's actually happening:

... a large scale, natural experiment in Papua New Guinea. There are several places at the eastern end of that country where carbon dioxide is continuously bubbling up through healthy looking coral reef, with fish swimming around and all that that implies.

Remember when scientists would discard theories when their predictions were wrong? Good times....

Nuclear Power, now, and put it in my backyard

[blindseer]

I find it very upsetting that there is an abundance of people that are concerned about the CO2 output but very few that take the time to investigate and lobby for solutions that won't drive us back into the stone age. The only solution that we have now, with no need for new technological advancements, is nuclear power. We have not built a new nuclear power plant here in the USA for something like four decades. Those that are still running are undoubtedly reaching the end of their safe and profitable lifespan.

Alternatives like wind, solar, and bio-mass take considerable amounts of land. This land is expensive and competes with other vital needs like food. I recall a solar power plant that could not produce enough electricity to pay it's property taxes. They were allowed a discounted rate on the tax but they still went out of business since they couldn't pay their other bills. Bio-mass is a direct competitor to food as any land that can grow a plant suitable for energy is also land that is suitable to grow food. There just is not enough land, water, and sun to both feed us and provide our power needs. There might be enough to both fill our tummies and our fuel tanks on our vehicles but the biggest producer of CO2 is not our vehicles, it's our coal fired power plants.

Wind might some day be competitive with coal and be profitable. The problem with wind, as well as geothermal and hydro, is that it is highly sensitive to location. Wind power can share land with things like food crops but it shares a weakness with solar power, it is highly sensitive to weather.

There's a part of me that thinks this scare over CO2 output is largely a hoax. There is a part of me that just doesn't care. What I do want to see is all this arguing to stop and people put some real solutions to work. I want them to STFU and build some nuclear power plants already. I can see a perfect spot for one from my front door. It has a rail nearby, a small river flowing by for cooling water, and a ready market in the city that I can see from my back door. My only concern is that a power plant so close might shade my house.

Re:Nuclear Power, now, and put it in my backyard

[dwywit]

I like your open-minded approach - no, that's not sarcasm, I mean it. Yes, electricity from nuclear fission is cleaner overall than most other so-called baseload sources. It's still scary when something goes wrong - it doesn't matter about new designs, assurances, technological advances (which ARE impressive) - human fears are a factor, and must be dealt with, whether based on solid evidence, or FUD from greenpeace.
 
I live off-grid using subsidised solar PV, and a petrol generator for backup when it's rainy. If I was really strict about appliance usage when the weather is less than ideal (e.g. turn off the kids' computers), we wouldn't need the generator very much at all. Let's put aside the environmental impact of manufacturing solar PV for the moment, and focus on whether it's possible to live off-grid with solar PV. Is it possible to continue a high-energy-consumption lifestyle with old-style incandescent light bulbs, air-conditioning, electric clothes dryers, electric dishwashers, electric coffee-makers, electric ovens and stovetops? No, it's not. Is it possible to minimise your consumption of fossil fuels and still enjoy life? Hells yeah. No aircon, occasional use of the clothes dryer run directly off the generator, wood-fired stove (also supplies hot water and heating), hand-wash dishes while listening to internet radio, 2-3 major appliances at any one time, e.g. 2 computers and a washing machine, or vacuum cleaner and washing machine, etc. It can work, if you want it to. Right now, I'm typing this on a laptop, on a sunday evening, listening to internet radio (B.B. King, if you're interested) via another laptop amplified through an old boombox, my daughter is watching some silly movie on Nickleodeon on a 55" LCD TV, sourced via a HD decoder from a satellite dish, my wife is playing minecraft on her laptop with an external 24" LCD screen, and my son is doing the facebook thing on his iPad - it's about 5:45pm, so house lights will be coming on soon - they're a mix of 24VDC halogen, and 240VAC CFL. All it takes is willpower, and (gratefully acknowledged) Govt subsidised PV - yes, I DO pay my taxes, BTW. Mind you, even if it the gear wasn't subsidised, it still would have been cheaper than getting the mains extended to my place.
 
Not the right solution for everyone, obviously, but saying it can't be done is simply not true.

Re:Nuclear Power, now, and put it in my backyard

[Zontar The Mindless]

No, it's merely that we don't wish to hand over perpetual control over our power supply to GE any more than we want to hand the entire future of agriculture over to Monsanto.

But you guys never stop to think about that angle, do you?

Or perhaps you'd prefer that it not occur to us...

Re:Nuclear Power, now, and put it in my backyard

[AlphaWolf_HK]

They're pretty much the same people who oppose wind turbines because they kill birds, and oppose solar panels because they use plastic. It's simultaneously these people who make the environmentalist movement less attractive to outsiders. Also, and this is some good irony for you, is that the people who tend to be anti-environmentalism also tend to favor nuclear power, which includes a lot of prominent republicans. They get shunned for that though, because it favors corporations who would profit from nuclear power.

You can't win with them no matter what you do, and they wonder why they have so many enemies.

Re:Nuclear Power, now, and put it in my backyard

[amorsen]

My push to the movement is very very small, but I can assure you that I am not a Luddite. Except when it comes to coal fired power plants and electronic voting.

Feel free to build as many nuclear or solar or wind power plants as you want. Solar will hopefully make electricity so cheap that we won't have to worry about wasting it. If rain forest has to be destroyed to make room for people, then so be it, the Earth is not a museum.

Just don't ruin it all so that the next generation has an impossible clean up task to do. We have enough trouble today with dealing with the land fills of the last generation; just a little more forethought then would have saved a lot of effort now. Forcing the next generation to extract coal from the air so they can stick it back into mines is really stupid.

Re:Who cares?

[poetmatt]

So with the entire planet having too much for the environment to absorb and yet CO2 is trending higher, where exactly are these locations supposed to be? There's nowhere left.

This isn't a "the next generation can deal with it".

Re:CO2 to kill reef? Not the coral disease?

[NoMaster]

it is not CO2 which is causing the coral to bleach and die. It is really a coral disease which is causing the issue ... The immediate problem is a coral disease - no matter what CO2 does, the reef will die.

I guess that's why your link says " disease is not considered a major threat to the Reef ."

this particular issue requires biologists and scientists to go do some really hard research ...

Although apparently simply reading their own links is too hard for some people...

Re:Who cares?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Alarmist much? The *current* coral reefs will die, but new ones will appear at locations where the CO2 level is currently too low for them.

They are dying much faster than they are growing. It takes decades to centuries to grow a new coral reef from scratch. In the meantime the oceans bioversity would be decimated past the point of no return for many species.

Re:Let's stop watching the tea leaves of the model

[Anonymous Coward]

And from the abstract of the actual paper referred to by the wuwt page :

"...Our empirical data from this unique field setting confirm model predictions that ocean acidification, together with temperature stress, will probably lead to severely reduced diversity, structural complexity and resilience of Indo-Pacific coral reefs within this century."

Remember when non-experts would actually listen to scientists rather than cherry pick what they wanted to hear? Good times...

Quick. Switch to hemp, save the planet.

[Jmc23]

Trap all that carbon in clothing, acid free art paper, hempcrete, hemp fiber composites, etc... :)

Re:Quick. Switch to hemp, save the planet.

[Jmc23]

Perhaps you're the ignorant one? Let's see, spend billions in research that will probably lead nowhere except patents and rampant capitilization, or let's use something that can be done immediately and save billions. Yup, given past stupidity, we can be sure which path the US will take.

BTW, hemp, i.e, cannabis for fiber, is NOT a heavy feeder, you don't even have to feed it! No food, no watering, no pesticides, no herbicides, dirt-poor soil, no chemicals to pollute the water supply to make paper, etc... If one was terribly worried about the nitrogen a simple permaculture setup with nitrogen rich fodder trees would take care of that. Now, cannabis for smoking and medicine, you have to feed and water that thing like there is no tomorrow. Don't let the propagandists confuse you by the differences, they have almost a century of practice.

meh

[rs79]

They overlooked the part in their model where more acidic seas dissolve existing carbonate faster. Nature recycles. How do you think coral survived 7000ppm CO2?

http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/ideas/climate/.images/Evo_large.gif

They've overlooked simple biomechanics before: "8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/new_model_doubled_co2_sub_2_degrees_warming/

See also: There are winners and losers among corals under the accumulating impacts of climate change, according to a new scientific study. In the world’s first large-scale investigation of how climate affects the composition of coral reefs, an international team of marine scientists concludes that the picture is far more complicated than previously thought - but that total reef losses due to climate change are unlikely. Ref: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(12)00255-2"

Re:meh

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you think coral survived 7000ppm CO2?

The first corals were soft bodied, which probably helped.

"8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise.

If instead of relying on The Register you went to the NASA source for that, you'd find this quote:

Bounoua stressed that while the model's results showed a negative feedback, it is not a strong enough response to alter the global warming trend that is expected

See also: There are winners and losers among corals under the accumulating impacts of climate change

The issue there is that different corals play massively different roles in a reef and in the growth and survival of reef-associated organisms. You can't just replace coral A with coral B and expect everything to be fine. As the authors themselves put it: "many of these novel coral reef communities are likely to lack contemporary analogs, with unknown but potentially far-reaching consequences for the ecology and evolution of reef organisms". In other words, the coral reefs could change massively but we can't predict what the reef ecology will be like afterwards. Bearing in mind that reefs are some of the most biodiverse habitats and that they're critical for ocean life in general that's something to worry about. For all we know the new reef systems could be dominated by a coral which doesn't support the fish and shellfish which we can make use of.

Re:CO2 to kill reef? Not the coral disease?

[Gadget_Guy]

And yet your linked article says that the increase of disease is thought to be due to the water being warmer. Yes, this is going to really put a dampener on the Global Warming campaign. And where did you get the idea that scientists will stop studying the reef just because it is thought to involve climate change?

Science doesn't work that way. The different disciplines don't go take a holiday when another group makes a discovery.

Re:Good Grief.

[St.Creed]

Did you leave your brains at work when you left on friday? If you could just, for a second or two, try to get it in your skull that potentially species-destroying events are not safely ignored and do not go away by wishful thinking, then *maybe* you could accept that there are a lot of people concerned about it. Maybe a tad more than the 100 lunatics you seem to think make up the entire society of "people who think it's a bad thing".

Doesn't it bother you that the news is starting to look like the introduction to Sunshine or similarly apocalyptic movies? That there are very serious issues with our entire food chain? That there are very serious issues with the ability to sustain our current standards of living if we go on like this?

The whole problem is *not* that most people think we need to give away boatloads of money to appease our conscience. That is just your personal straw man. You can keep setting it up and burning it down again, but no one in their right mind will accept your verbal hysteria as an argument. Most people just want to hold on to the standards of living we have. And not see it getting much worse, and see what their children potentially have to live through. If we do not act *now* we will never act until it is too late. And then, draconian measures will have to be implemented.

The geo-engineering measures are opposed by a lot of people because outside of a very small group of techno-fetishists, it does not *solve* the underlying issues (at best it just mitigates them - but even that is questionable), has side-effects that are unknown and potentially as lethal as the current issues we have. Since we have a very well-understood way of dealing with the CO2 issues, which is to stop spewing CO2 in the air, there is no reason to go to unproven options. Reducing CO2 output has no known harmful side-effects, except that old and established industries that cannot change their operations, will go the way of the dinosaurs. Boohoo. That's not a communist plot, that's a consequence of the bed those industries made and now have to lie in.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, decimated means every tenth soldier executed to encourage the others. Only 10% die.

Re:Who cares?

[Zontar The Mindless]

I wouldn't exactly call it 'encourage[ment]'. It was used by the Romans to punish military units deemed cowardly or disobedient.

(Or maybe my sarcasm detector's not properly connected.)

Re:CO2 to kill reef? Not the coral disease?

[St.Creed]

One question: is it stupid to unite against a common enemy, if the enemy is real? Because you seem to imply that whatever the reality of AGW, as long as we have to do something together with "them darn fur'ners" it's bad.

So: if the temperatures do *not* plunge back, what new excuse will you make then? And suppose you do turn around then, how much worse will the measures have to be, thanks to people like you? Right now, the measures are actually not bad. They will kill off a few companies that are inefficient and need to dump waste everywhere in order to compete. They will drive the best companies to improve even more and out-compete the others. Capitalism at its best. But if we wait long enough, the measures that will be unavoidable then will kill much more than that.

Re:Who cares?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So....reduced by 10% then?

That's an anachronistic definition. Modern definition, as defined by the OED:

kill, destroy, or remove a large proportion of

Re:Trees absorb a negligble amount of CO2

[GameboyRMH]

Negligible compared to human CO2 output, yes, but it helps. Lots and lots of trees can help.

Re:Who cares?

[terec]

Most of the sea life in the ocean will die. The reefs are a critical component of the food chain for fish of all sizes, including plenty that don't directly live on the reef itself.

Citation? Or did you just pull that out of your ass? Coral reefs, in fact, only exist in very specialized locations. Losing them would be a shame, but it wouldn't kill "most" sea life. (Incidentally, ocean acidification has happened multiple times before in earth's history, so it's not a completely mystery what would happen.)

Re:Good Grief.

[drinkypoo]

Their adamant stance against anything geo-engineering is evidence of what they're up to since such geo-engineering would short-circuit their plans to redistribute wealth

Libertarians aren't against geo-engineering. They're against government geo-engineering. There is a significant difference. They're not against people going forth and deliberately changing the climate, they are simply completely ignorant of history and for some reason expect corporations to take up the challenge of their own free will because if they don't they will eventually cease to exist. The problem again is that they ignore history, which is replete with examples of corporations and businessmen acting against their own long-term gains for the purpose of short-term profit.

Re:Who cares?

[samoanbiscuit]

Here's a tip, try searching for information at a deeper level than just googling. Maybe ecology monographs and journals on various clades of marine organisms? Did you ever consider that only endangered animals would have layman friendly SEO optimized articles written about their ecological importance, while more mundane species would have just as much if not more data about them, but mouldering away in a university library somewhere, rather than being talked about on the mainstream news sites?

Re:Who cares?

[samoanbiscuit]

I have a degree in biology from a uni in a tropical island country - there are so many non endangered yet critical species the mind boggles to drill down to specifics, the example I gave of monographs and journals was relayed from actual experience and not speculation; but if I must satisfy your laziness, then I shall provide as my example: the family of crustaceans generally known as krill. They are a cornerstone of the food web in sub-temperate and polar waters, with a diverse array of species feeding directly or indirectly from them, such as salmon, blue whales and penguins. They are also not nearly close to being endangered, yet if they did become endangered, the food security of several temperate and sub-arctic countries could be called into question.

-1, Lung cancer? Why your analogy fails totally

[Burz]

People in Country A don't get an increased risk for lung cancer because Country B has a lot of smokers.

Personally, I'd like to see government investment in research in renewable energies, increased taxation of oil and coal, and investment in nuclear power plants. But I strongly object to multi-national carbon trading schemes or global emission limits, because I think they would be ineffective and subject to massive abuse.

You mean like the Montreal Protocol? That 'ineffective' and abusive regime?

Cooperation on AGW has to be international for multiple reasons. Two of them are 1) Atmospheric conditions at this scale affect everyone, and 2) Cooperation has to bring competitiveness to heel on this issue, so that anyone taking an 'If they don't do it, we will' attitude to high-GHG modes of production will be made to feel the pressure.

Re:Good Grief.

[BergZ]

While we're on the topic of opinions that people hold about climate change: I have to admit I've never seen a survey of proponents of the scientific theory of Global Climate Change, but I seriously doubt that there is much support among so-called "warmists" for genocide.
I can only say for sure that I'm a supporter of the action plan put forward by the brilliant Dr. Sagan:
"For our own world the peril is more subtle. Since this series [Cosmos] was first broadcast the dangers of the increasing greenhouse effect have become much more clear. We burn fossil fuels like coal, and gas, and petroleum putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and thereby heating the earth. The hellish conditions on Venus are a reminder that this is serious business. Computer models that successfully explain the climates of other planets predict the deaths of forests, parched crop lands, the flooding of coastal cities, environmental refugees; wide spread disasters in the next century, unless we change our ways. What do we have to do? Four things:
(1) Much more efficient use of fossil fuels. Why not cars that get 70 miles-per-gallon instead of 25?
(2) Research and development on safe alternative energy sources, especially solar power.
(3) Reforestation on a grand scale.
and (4) Helping to bring the billion poorest people on the planet to self-sufficiency, which is the key step in curbing world population growth.
Every one of these steps makes sense apart from greenhouse warming! Now, no one has proposed that the trouble with Venus is that there once was Venusians who drove fuel inefficient cars, but our nearest neighbour nevertheless is a stark warning on the possible fate of an Earth-like world."
Carl Sagan, Cosmos (episode 4: Heaven and Hell (update - 10 years later))

Re:Good Grief.

[angel'o'sphere]

No gas reserves? You are totally wrong, wrong, wrong. We have OCEANS of gas.
The USA have natural gas reserves about the size of two years consumption. Thats why you are fracking.

The rest of your post is utter nonsense.

You are poor? Define poor? Since when? Since yesterday? So before we talked about AGW you where rich? Wow, what are you doing against AGW? Nothing! So how can it be that any energy politics whatsoever made you poor?

You just talk nonsense ... and have certainly no idea about the stuff you are talking.