Genetic Rescue Efforts Could Help Coral Shrug Off Warmer Oceans

The Washington Post reports that research published last week in the journal Science indicates that coral reefs may be less vulnerable to ocean temperature changes than has been widely believed, especially given human intervention. A slice: Some corals already have the genes needed to adapt to higher ocean temperatures, and researchers expect those genes will naturally migrate and mix with corals under stress over time ... And that process could potentially be sped up artificially. ... Giving coral evolution a boost isn't an entirely new concept. Some scientists have already suggested genetically modifying corals through artificial breeding, or doing the same for the tiny microbes that live inside corals and are essential to reef growth.

Comments

Re: Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

The jury is more out on those matters than the progressive activists would like to have people believe.

The 98 percent consensus for example arrived at that number by collecting a big sample of published papers and citing any paper that referenced climate change as the author supporting the most extreme predictions of climate change.

This included papers that argued against climate change.

The issue with climate change is that its too political to be scientific at this point. People aren't being rational on the issue. People get angry and get invested in their tribal entanglements. And because of that they can't with integrity claim to be forming opinions based on science... especially when a great many of the supporters have made zero effort to actually research the issue. Most of them didn't get past those little cartoons with the squiggly sun rays. And then they enter discussions can claim "science"... because of the squiggly sun ray cartoon they saw.

It goes back to something Richard Feynman said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

So much of it is cargo cult science. Remember that polar bear article we saw about how they are eating dolphins now... evidence? One researcher saw one dolphin getting eaten by a polar bear... the dophin in question appears to have just died and then been scavanged by the polar bear. Which is something polar bears have been eating since always. If a dead human washed up on the ice the polar bears would eat that too. Its free calories.

But these things are in the news without irony all the time. And because of that the reports have to be read with great skepticism because there is clearly a political agenda on the issue.

My opinions on climate change? I don't know. I know only that the people telling me to trust them have a track record of being wrong and don't seem to have the requisite scientific humility and integrity to be able to self correct their own errors. And for me at least, that would suggest that they're not very good scientists in the first place regardless of the issue.

I'd really prefer if a different crop of people were working on this... not people that ascribed whatever my ideology happens to be but rather people that examined the issue indifferent to the political advantage of any of the factions.

Until that happens, any report on this subject has to be taken with a grain of salt. Price of making Al Gore and Bill Nye the spokespeople of the thing.

Re: Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

The atmospheric studies used to make this argument are based on the planet Venus where CO2 is not a trace gas but is actually one of the dominant gases in the Venusian atmosphere. On earth, CO2 is a trace gas.

Its impact on climate heat trapping is unlikely to be relevant beyond its relative atmospheric concentrations which are tiny.

As to CO2 being a green house gas... Every gas is a green house gas in that every gas absorbs certain spectrums of light.

CO2's distinct absorption specturm is also very small. Nearly all of the spectrum that CO2 absorbs is already absorbed by water vapor and there is far more water vapor in the air than there is CO2.

Thus you're talking about a trace gas with a sliver of the EM spectrum.

The argument that a relatively small change in the percentage of the atmosphere that is made up of CO2 will lead to run away global warming is asinine.

And to further back up my position, the climate models that keep being heralded as proving the theory keep failing to predict anything accurately requiring them to be retroactively altered and past mistakes white washed.

Listening to the climate change lobby reminds me of listening to the old Soviet Politburo in that "the future is always the same... it is the past that keeps changing". That is a bit of dark humor from the Cold War. That is, the future prediction always remains the same... but you have to keep changing what you said in the past and white washing out of the bogus predictions.

Behold the bright communist future... never mind that we said we'd already be living in paradise by now 30 years ago. Keep working comrades for the brave new world.

And your point is "beware climate change, the world is going to go through these changes... never mind that we said New York City would already be under water by 2015."

This whole AGW argument has been going on long enough that your far out predictions are catching up with present time. And without exception they're all wrong.

I mean... you've been wrong about EVERYTHING. And yet you presume to claim you can predict a future you've thus far utterly failed to predict with any accuracy... even in gross terms. I'm not asking you to predict what temperature it will be on any given day. But you can't even get your graphs straight.

A little humility would go a long way from you people. You don't have the track record to justify this arrogance.