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Great Barrier Reef Has Worst Coral Die-Off Ever, Report Finds (usatoday.com)
Australia's Great Barrier Reef has suffered from its worst coral die-off ever recorded, according to a new study from the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies based at James Cook University. "Stress from the unusually warm ocean water heated by man-made climate change and the natural El Nino climate pattern caused the die-off," reports USA Today. At more than 1,400 miles long, Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef and the planet's biggest structure made by living organisms. In the northernmost section of the reef, which had been considered the most "pristine," some 67% of the coral died. The good news, scientists said, was that central and southern sections of the reef fared far better, with "only" 6% and 1% of the coral dead, respectively. Coral reefs result from the work of little polyps, creatures only a few millimeters long, budded on top of one another. Over centuries, the shells of these creatures combine to form the exotic shapes of coral reefs. Tiny differences in the anatomy of each polyp species affect the shape of their shells and produce the exotic shapes of each reef. The vibrant colors that draw thousands of tourists to the Great Barrier Reef each year come from algae that live in the corals tissue. When water temperatures become too high, coral becomes stressed and expels the algae, which leave the coral a bleached white color. Mass coral bleaching is a new phenomenon and was never observed before the 1980s as global warming ramped up. Besides their beauty, reefs shelter land from storms, and are also a habitat for myriads of species.
Some alternate sources:
Australia: http://www.news.com.au/technol...
BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
This is just some of that fake news the Republicans warned us about. Probably from that damned Barney Slanders.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
- Donald Trump
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/265895292191248385
Thank you Mr Coward. But while water quality does impact the health of the GBR in a few specific areas, it does not cause bleaching.
This is what AIMS has to say about recent bleaching events:
In 2016, record oceans temperatures have led to record widespread coral bleaching on Australian coral reefs. This bleaching is part of the ongoing third global bleaching event, declared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2015.
Between February and May, the Great Barrier Reef experienced record warm sea surface temperatures. Extensive field surveys and aerial surveys found bleaching was the most widespread and severe in the Far Northern management area, between Cape York and Port Douglas. Here, bleaching intensity was ‘Severe’ (more than 60% community bleaching). Bleaching intensity decreased along a southerly gradient. While most reefs exhibited some degree of bleaching, this bleaching varied in intensity (from less than 10% to over 90% community bleaching) and was patchy throughout most of the management area.
The impact from this bleaching event, the most widespread and severe ever recorded on the Great Barrier Reef, is still unfolding. Based on in-water monitoring surveys, overall coral mortality is (as of June 2016) at 22% for the entire Great Barrier Reef. Coral mortality is highest in the northern section. Post-bleaching reef monitoring surveys towards the end of the year will provide further clarity on the full extent of coral mortality.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
... what does the Trump administration have to say about it?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Just my anecdotal experiences of diving 10 times, reefs were always more grey than historical pictures of the area. I try to consider myself logical, but I've always had an unfulfilled feeling when diving, and then unnerved when I see this kind of evidence of the cause. Diving is like being let in as a guest to a powerfully beautiful host called nature. It feels like my co-partiers are tearing up the place, and it doesn't feel good. I hope that enough people go diving and experience this.
You had me at loose Dutch women. I don't care about the coral, but I'll sex them on the coral.
diving is a really, really expensive thing to go do. That's sorta the problem. The rust belters in America who just voted for Trump (or who didn't vote Hilary because they couldn't bring themselves to) really don't care about coral reefs. They care about next month's rent. Until you can fix their economy you're not going to get anyone to care. The environment doesn't really matter to somebody taking out their second payday loan...
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To be accurate, coral bleaching is caused by environmental stress, as it said in my first link - and polluted water or heavy sedimentation are possible sources of stress. Even excessive freshwater can cause bleaching (which contributed in 2008 and 2011).
However, those are not the cause of this event, as my second link made quite clear.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
How is that "more realistic" than the links quoted above? It's more realistic than the Outdide Magazine orbitiary it debunks, but it agrees with the articles above when it notes that this "is the most severe coral bleaching on record."
The current team don't have anyone for environment I think. Nearest swamp thing is probably "Michal Catazaro, energy lobbyist whose clients include American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, Hess, Devon Energy, and Encana Oil and Gas" in charge of "Energy Independence".
On his opinion, the nearest I can find is this:
http://www.nationalcenter.org/Climate-Gate.html
"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
Benefiticial effects????? Really? Well it is making the coral WHITER, and I guess that is what Trump wants.
(List of Trump transition leaders):
Defense & National Security, led by Maj. Gen. Bert Mizusawa.
Immigration Reform & Building The Wall, led by Danielle Cutrona, counsel to Sen. Jeff Sessions.[46]
Energy Independence, led by Michael Catanzaro, an energy lobbyist whose clients include American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, Hess, Devon Energy, and Encana Oil and Gas.[46][47]
Tax Reform, led by Jim Carter, a lobbyist employed by Emerson.[46]
Regulatory Reform, led by Rob Gordon, who serves as staff director/senior policy adviser for the House Natural Resources Committee, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.[46]
Trade Reform, led by Rolf Lundberg, a lobbyist and former employee of the Chamber of Commerce.[46]
Education, led by Gerard Robinson of the American Enterprise Institute.[46]
Transportation & Infrastructure, led by Martin Whitmer, a lobbyist at Whitmer & Worrall whose client include the American Association of Railroads, National Asphalt Pavement Association and the Utilities Technology Council.[46]
Financial Services Reform, led by Brian Johnson, Chief Financial Institutions Counsel for the House Financial Services Committee
Healthcare Reform, led by Paula Stannard, former deputy general counsel and acting general counsel of HHS and currently a lawyer at Alston & Bird.[46]
Veterans Administration Reform, led by Bill Chatfield
Protecting Americans' Constitutional Rights, led by Ken Klukowski, senior counsel and director of strategic affairs for the First Liberty Institute.[46]
"But before we ban sunscreens, we must first determine if local ambient concentrations of sunscreens are positively correlated with coral bleaching events." Danovaro says banning sunscreen won't be necessary, and points out two simple things swimmers can do to reduce their impact on coral: Use sunscreens with physical filters, which reflect instead of absorb ultraviolet radiation; and use eco-friendly chemical sunscreens.
You're confusing the interpretations resulting from two different environmental pollutants. Particulates in the upper atmosphere directly block sunlight and reduce temperatures, as well as the decades long threat of global nuclear war inducing nuclear winter. CO2 is a greenhouse gas absorbing heat and reflecting it back to the surface raising temperatures. For some time both effects were active. Particulates are now under more control, and the true trend increase in global average temperatures is certain. Amounts vary by model but the validity of the model foundation is solid. Humans burning fossil fuels for energy are releasing geologically stored carbon at a faster rate than it can be reabsorbed by the environment, and that is producing more free CO2 in the atmosphere exacerbating the green house effect. Kids often get these things confused so it isn't your fault.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
"Ice Age Fallacy, is to allege that scientists showed concerns about global cooling which did not materialise, therefore there is no need to heed current scientific concerns about climate change.[58] In a 1998 article promoting the Oregon Petition, Fred Singer argued that expert concerns about global warming should be dismissed on the basis that what he called "the same hysterical fears" had supposedly been expressed earlier about global cooling.[59]"
"Illustrating this argument, for several years an image has been circulated of a Time magazine cover, supposedly dated 1977, showing a penguin above a cover story title "How to Survive the Coming Ice Age". In March 2013, The Mail on Sunday published an article by David Rose, showing this same cover image, to support his claim that there was as much concern in the 1970s about a "looming 'ice age'" as there was now about global warming.[60][61] After researching the authenticity of the magazine cover image, in July 2013, Bryan Walsh, a senior editor at Time, confirmed that the image was a hoax, modified from a 2007 cover story image for "The Global Warming Survival Guide".[58]"
i.e. you've been led to believe there was a scientific consensus on global cooling due to falling temperatures in the 50s,60s and 70s, and you were likely shown fake Time magazine covers to illustrate this, and thus you are supposed to ignore the scientific consensus on global warming.
But the temperatures didn't fall in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, so even a cursive check on the facts shows you how you've been misled.
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
Dead coral, skeletons, are white.
Bleaching is a simplification, and basically means the presence of large swaths of long-dead corals, usually corals that died together in a short period of time.
It's like the forests of trees hundreds of years old that have been clearcut - all we have to do is leave them alone for a few thousand years and they will repopulate to something approximately like what they were before we started messing with them.
Bleaching intensity decreased along a southerly gradient. While most reefs exhibited some degree of bleaching, this bleaching varied in intensity (from less than 10% to over 90% community bleaching) and was patchy throughout most of the management area.
Did that bleaching gradient correlate with a similar temperature gradient? Sea temperatures have risen less than a degree centigrade since the 1800s; if coral reefs are *that* sensitive to temperature changes, they're probably screwed either way - humanity might be speeding it up, but the world's still on a warming trend absent human impact too. It's sad, but organisms that cannot adapt to changing environments die.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Disclaimer: I'm a physicist at James Cook University, where this study was published. My mother used to work at AIMS 20 years ago, my sister works for CSIRO in marine research, and my cousin-in-law is currently the Coral Reef ARC's COO.
These are results published by the Australian Research Council Centre for Coral Reef Studies. Prof. Terry Hughes, who runs this centre at JCU, has basically surrounding himself with like-minded people. The self-citation rate for articles published by the centre is remarkably high, and I quite frankly don't trust Prof. Hughes to do unbiased research, or to critically analyse his own work. There is a pretty strong monoculture of reef research, and I believe it's a pretty serious problem. One of my physics lecturers wrote a rebuttal letter to Prof Hughes that was leaked to the press, and was disciplined for it (one more strike and he's fired). I would really like to see a little more diversity in the people that study this topic.
That said, I have no reason to doubt the truth of this study. The die-off is real, and is unprecedented in modern times, and elementary physics tells us that increased temperatures due to climate change can only make it worse, not better. My mum's old boss from AIMS, Charlie Veron said in a seminar 10 years ago that the reef is probably doomed, and that even if we manage to stop all CO2 today, there's enough inertia that very little of the reef will survive.
Some of the areas of the GBR that are experiencing widespread bleaching are literally hundreds of miles offshore, and a lot of those shorelines are not urban. It's not runoff, it's not industrial pollution, it's a global phenomenon that's making this happen.
In an age where a person can't even speak his mind without even the least semblance of privacy what does this matter?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Probably the "best" way to fix it is making the alive corals something profitable, like artificially raising the price of something that lives off it tremendously via marketing, de beers style.
16ms later monsanto would come up with a heat resistant coral and profit off it.
Besides their beauty, reefs shelter land from storms, and are also a habitat for myriads of species.
Coral reefs are not just beautiful, though; they constitute only perhaps a few % of the oceans' environment, but they support something like 25% or more of all life in the sea, so we really do need to protect them.
You're partly right - the answer really varies as different reefs are affected in different ways, but fundamentally global warming can exacerbate effects such as El Nino/La Nina, so that your 3c increase may become 5c for a time. The issue is that these ecosystems are fragile and it only takes small changes to do immense damage. It's not that nature can't adapt to temperature fluctuations and such, it's that it can't adapt at the rate of change we're forcing on it. In terms of global warming in general consider the Polar Bear, normally climate would change over thousands of years and Polar Bears would become more brown, have less insular fur and move south and become more like grizzlies, but we're forcing change to their environment in decades, that's just not long enough for enough generations to be selected for brown fur - you just aren't going to go from white fur to brown fur (and possibly lose some insulating features) and adapt in that kind of compressed time frame, which is why they're at risk.
For what it's worth there are reefs that don't seem particularly affected at all by the temperature change, the Great Barrier Reef seems to be one of the most especially fragile ones, and coupled with it's immense size this makes it stand out. See my other post elsewhere on this topic where I point out that the Red Sea reefs are currently at their most vibrant they've been in a long, long time regardless of temperature change, simply because of the reduction in tourism to Egypt. In contrast, much of the Great Barrier Reef is already protected from humans, yet is still suffering. This should really highlight how different reefs are affected in different ways, that they can recover, but recovery needs different things in different reefs - lack of human presence is doing wonders in Egypt's Red Sea, but it's doing nothing for the Great Barrier Reef, my suspicion being that the Great Barrier Reef suffers far more greatly from the changes in a body as large as the Pacific than the far better protected Red Sea does where humans are by far the largest problem.
Climate change isn't an inherent problem in itself, man-made or natural, you're right, it happens. The problem is the rate of climate change that's occuring right now, that's the real issue here, nature just doesn't have sufficient time to adapt right now which is why we're seeing events like this and why this period is often being called a mass extinction event period.
I'll trust the scientists in the article before trusting a random loser on slashdot like you.
He's not a random loser! He's a reasonably predictable and orderly loser. Facts still matter, sir, even in Trumplandia.
Coral die-offs aren't about temperature (mostly), they're not about the greenhouse effect at all, they're a different consequence of having too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. You can read the wiki on it here if you like, but the long and short is that a lot of marine life is very sensitive to the condition of the water, and the drop in ocean pH since the start of the industrial revolution has become an issue.
Yes, because all seas everywhere rise by the same temperature. Science. Learn some.
people thought we were slipping into another Ice Age
Spot the idiot!
The whole global cooling has been hashed over ad nauseam here and many other places. If you're still banging that drum, the only reason can be willful, mindful ignorance. That basically means you're an idiot.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'm totally sick of the hyperbolic propaganda. Stop lying.
then why do you keep posting it?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Let's see how much career changing bravado you have after taking on a mortgage and a couple of kids.
Getting career advice from a bean-bag sitting, overpriced latte-sipping millennial is like getting sex advice from the Vatican.
Asia's enormous and growing carbon footprint has nothing at all to do with it:
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
You don't have to be liberal to accept the science of climate change. You just don't have to be a pathetic intellectual coward who won't face reality.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
When your electricity rate goes from 0.07 to 0.18kWh in less then 10 years, and people have problems keeping the lights on? \
The cost of energy in constant dollars has been going down, not up.
Here's a graph of energy costs. Electrical costs have dropped from about $0.026/kWh (equal to $0.21/kWh in today's dollars) in 1960 to $12.67/kWh today.
http://www.eia.gov/outlooks/st...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Trump Admits 'Some Connectivity' Between Climate Change and Human Activity
Now let's subtract 30% of that due to the dollar being depressed against every other western country.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. The dollar was 1 Euro in 2000; it's 0.94 Euro today. https://www.google.com/finance... The dollar was106 Japanese yen in 2000; it's 113 yen today. https://www.google.com/finance... And the dollar has actually risen against the pound: https://www.google.com/finance...
I don't see how that can be described as as being "depressed".
...You apparently have no idea how small houses are here.
Since in an earlier post you said "Good thing I'm not American", I have no idea where "here" is.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The planet is not coming back to old normal and we got to do what we have to do to mitigate the effects right?
Perhaps it has, but that doesn't change the fact that people were, at one time, promoting that theory.
So? You can find "people" pushing any theory. There ar still people pushing the flat earth theory. That doesn't mean it has any credibility.
The fact that "global cooling" has changed to "global warming" in 30-40 years (the blink of an eye on a geological time scale) demonstrates that the authors and scientists who were studying the issue back then were not infallible.
What are you talking about. Global cooling was a niche theory not widely accepted by the scientific community that caused a brief flurry of excitement in the popular press. It would have vanished except that people intent on misunderstanding it kep bringing it up.
And yes, I think you have the intent. The information is out there in a wide variety of sources, e.g. wikipedia. You can educate yourself or you can make bizarre claims like the cooling changed to warming.
Get it straight: thre was no cooling.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Actually, it does. This is something non-scientists really really don't understand, because they're all familiar with all the hero scientist stories and not so much with the actual process of science. I love the hero scientist stories, too, but the final, and the most important part of science is that you have to explain your results to other scientists, and get them to understand it and understand and credit the evidence.
Wrong.
The only thing that matters is being able to reproduce the proof independently. If the results proving a theory are unable to be duplicated independently it's nothing more than an unproven hypothesis.
Exactly. That is how you get scientific consensus, when other scientists can duplicate your reasoning and follow your results, and compare your results to results from others (often, from others in different fields).
This is what we call scientific consensus.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Corals can relate to DC Democrats.
Table-ized A.I.
@#&$ moderators can't take a joke.
Table-ized A.I.
Coral cannot survive in water above a certain temperature threshold. If water temperatures sustain the coral may never recover. If the northern reaches of the BGR (those that are the closest to the equator) end up with unsurvivable water temperatures the coral in those areas will die off permanently.
Maybe the Marxists are right, and you're wrong. Doesn't have anything to do with Marxism really, because there are three separate and unrelated questions at work here:
1) Is the global climate warming?
2) Is this due to human activity?
3) What steps should we take in response?
Clearly you don't like the answers to #3, but questions #1 and #2 are not dependent on #3.
So, to believe the post, if the coral is dying off because the water is getting too warm, it stands
to reason that coral will start flourishing in areas that formerly had cold waters, but now the
water is warming up enough to support coral growth.
Is to do something (pull yourself up by your bootstraps) that is literally impossible.
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We all die permanently, even species, though cockroaches have had a pretty good run.
There are deep water corals, and some of the shallow water corals on the GBR will migrate south to cooler waters as the climate changes, life will go on.
But, yeah, it's going to suck bigtime for a dozen to a hundred human generations if we don't get our shit together pronto.
@#&$ moderators can't take a joke.
Seriously. A pathetic lack of humor genes in some people. Wasting mod points on obvious jokes.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Apparently you don't. Because in Canada, 1CAD=0.72USD, and 1CAD=0.69EUR, 1CAD=0.59GBP You figure out that 30% depression works in yet?
Up and down. The Canadian dollar was $(US) 0.69 in 2000, it's $(US) 0.744 now-- no long term difference.
30% down if you pick the right points.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Am I mistaken? If not, it seems to me this article is ignoring the much larger natural variations in order to blame the die off on the much smaller increase which might be global-warming related.
Yes, you are mistaken, and no, "this article" is not "ignoring the much larger natural variations in order to blame the die off on the much smaller increase which might be global-warming related."
Many species, including coral polyps and especially their symbiotic zooxanthellæ, are robust to a degree of variability in the temperature of their local environment, as long as that variation occurs around relatively stable means for each respective species. However, they are much more sensitive to medium- to longer-term fluctuations of those means themselves, even if those fluctuations are small compared to the magnitude of short-term fluctuations aaround their physiologically-optimal temperature means.
If that doesn't make sense, let me put it this way: over shortish periods of time many species can tolerate a degree of fluctuation of temperature away from their preferred sweet spot - but beyond a short period, if those fluctuations begin to lean in one direction, altering the underlying mean, then the organism is in trouble. This physiological response to an excursion from a preferred mean is compounded by the fact that most organisms are less able to tolerate extreme warmer deviations from their mean than they are able to tolerate cooler deviations from the mean, of a similar magnitude. This is depicted by the well-known growth-response curves to temperature for organisms, which are in a great majority of cases skewed to the left (negatively skewed). A good illustration of this phenomenon is shown in the shapes of the curves in the meta-analyses of this paper:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0153343
The upshot is that most organisms living close to their optimal mean temperatures are more vulnerable to warming than they are to cooling.
So, yes, corals of the Great Barrier Reef are vulnerable to the several degrees* of underlying, human-caused increase in the mean temperature of their environment. To be precise, they're vulnerable to the toxic metabolites that their symbiotic zooxanthellæ produce when these algæ are warmed above their tolerable thermal maxima (and as figure 9 of the above-linked paper indicates, these are generally lower for autotrophs compared with heterotrophs, which has a whole range of implications for the ecological interactions of trophic webs).
Of course, none of this precludes the profound chemical effect of ocean acidification on the ability of coral polyps to precipitate calcium carbonate for the construction of their skeletons, or any of a number of other environmental stressors. These all synergise with respect to their impacts, and the result is that coral (as with many other species and ecosystems) are struggling to maintain their populations over the longer term.
*As others have indicated, the magnitude of the warming underpinning the bleaching event is greater than the aggregate 'greenhouse' gas-caused warming of all of the world's oceans. Conflating the two is a mistake.
Thanks for the info.
Good, that answers my question.
I wrote:
I don't know where you're getting your lack of information from, but it's certainly not from real science sources.
and the answer is, you get your information about science from youtube videos.
OK, got it.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com