'Unprecedented' Bleaching Damages Two-Thirds Of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Unprecedented coral bleaching in consecutive years has damaged two-thirds of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, aerial surveys have shown. The bleaching — or loss of algae — affects a 1,500km (900 miles) area of the reef, according to scientists. The latest damage is concentrated in the middle section, whereas last year's bleaching hit mainly the north. Experts fear the proximity of the two events will give damaged coral little chance to recover.

Comments

I'm honestly blown away...

[ckatko]

...by the amount of willful blindness in Australia's government.

I mean, I thought for sure, once serious, real, things started dying on the planet, people would start caring. But I'm proven wrong every year.

Re:I'm honestly blown away...

[dwywit]

And every time someone mentions agricultural runoff (specifically from sugarcane), the lobbyists hit up the national party, and we're all reminded that natural resources and agriculture are untouchables.

No, it can't be the farmers, they're all "generational custodians" who couldn't possibly do anything harmful to the environment.

Apologies to those farmers who actually give a crap.

Re:I'm honestly blown away...

[Xest]

Um, Australia is the biggest coal exporter in the world by quite a margin, so there certainly is something it could do - i.e. stop exporting coal.

Australia has over a 3rd of the global coal market. It wont stop of course though, because money. If only they'd start utilising that desert for renewables, or start using their massive uranium reserves by pushing research into cleaner nuclear, or offering some of that uninhabitable territory for underground nuclear waste disposal instead.

Bit of a wasted opportunity really, but hey, change is hard.

But make no mistake, Australia could single handedly collapse the supply of coal, pushing it's prices up to be unaffordable and forcing a move to renewables, nuclear, and gas, which all avoid to a large degree the warming problem.

Australia is literally selling out it's national heritage and it can only blame itself.

Re:I'm honestly blown away...

[Namarrgon]

There's plenty they could have done, and plenty they still could do. They could have started reducing emissions decades ago when the scientific evidence first became clear, and they could have invested in a world-leading solar industry instead of still more open-pit coal mines. They could also have given the Reef Marine Park Authority the funding and authority it needed to *effectively* deal with declining water quality, instead of the lip service it gets now, and at least reduced the huge additional stress on the Reef from agricultural run-off.

Instead, they've repealed our price on carbon, declared that "coal is good for humanity", green-lit even more coal mines, and approved a massive expansion & dredging operation for a coal export port right in the middle of the Reef's coastline (overruling the GBRMPA and even changing the law to allow themselves to ignore expert advice). And to cap it all off, last year they censored any mention of the Reef from a UNESCO report on World Heritage Tourism Sites at Risk (on the ironic grounds that it might affect tourism) - just as the 2016 bleaching event was killing off an unprecedented 67% of the coral in the Reef's northern third.

Even this extensive damage may have recovered somewhat, given 10-15 years of benign conditions, but a fourth bleaching event the very next year has crushed any hopes of that - the question now is whether we'll lose most of the middle third as well. But hey, at least the government has made sure we'll have coal for our tourists, if not coral.

Re:I'll bet

[Maritz]

The only surprise is that you concede any damage is real in the first place.

Re:don't worry, this is fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump is so fucking stupid, that he is a millionaire set for life who swindled himself into a presidency while you are... well...

I wonder when people will stop perpetuating the idea that Trump is stupid and start treating him for what he really is, a very shrewd manipulator.
At least accepting him for what he really is without underestimating him by undervaluing his intelligence, would put us on a more actionable path
in regards to him as an issue.

The stupidity of the people insulting Trump yet expecting him to listen to them after they are done throwing shit at him,
stinks of even more arrogance than the mentioned famous English king.

If you haven't seen it...

[tezbobobo]

...then you're already too late.

An excuse for every season

[Opportunist]

"We gotta do something or the corals will be dead!"
"The corals are fine, look, they're thriving."

"The corals are gone, everything's dead!"
"Well, then we can as well continue when it's too late to change anything anyway"

Re:I'll bet

[Anonymous Coward]

> Climate deniers [...] complex [...]

See? There's the problem. Climate deniers and complex don't mix.

Re:I'll bet

[thegarbz]

Oh I didn't realise that the Great Barrier Reef was in Indonesia. Thanks for correcting that.

Now a metaphorical causality question. If another man's face hurts due to a sinus infection and I show you this through a peer review study, does that mean we get a free pass at punching you in the face?

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that an entire body of scientists think that you are.

Re:I'll bet

[MightyMartian]

The problem with the "small increase in temperature" line is that it doesn't take into account the actual sheer amount of energy required to raise mean surface and lower atmospheric temperatures even a fraction of degree. Climate pseudo-skeptics and the idiots that follow them don't acknowledge, because it kills their entire line of reasoning, that upping global mean temperature even a quarter of a degree means the atmosphere is trapping vastly greater amounts of solar radiation.

And of course, for ocean-life there's a double-whammy, in that not only are ocean temperatures increased, but the oceans begin to absorb more CO2, altering pH levels. In the short term, the oceans can act, both due to their capacity to absorb heat and CO2, to mitigate rising temperatures, but it's only short term, and the costs to marine ecosystems is huge.

At any rate, even the deniers are beginning to end the denialist game. Now it's all about "Oh sure, the Earth is warming, but what can we do, and what about those funny little brown people, why does Al Gore hate them so much?" They've entered the whole "eat drink and be merry for tomorrow will shall die stage", simply because they want to eke a few more years or decades of profits out of fossil fuels before the game is up.

Re:I'll bet

[MightyMartian]

All that counts is an objection was made. For the denier, it is irrelevant if the objection is sensible, rational, or even has anything to do with the topic at hand. So long as they raise their hand and making some vaguely intelligible sound, apparently a whole field of scientific inquiry comes crashing down.