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Scientists Declare End to Global Coral Reef Bleaching Event (phys.org)
Scientists in the U.S. have announced Monday that a mass bleaching of coral reefs worldwide has finally ended after three years. "About three-quarters of the world's delicate coral reefs were damaged or killed by hot water in what scientists say was the largest coral catastrophe," reports Phys.Org. From the report: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a global bleaching event in May 2014. It was worse than previous global bleaching events in 1998 and 2010. The forecast damage doesn't look widespread in the Indian Ocean, so the event loses its global scope. Bleaching will still be bad in the Caribbean and Pacific, but it'll be less severe than recent years, said NOAA coral reef watch coordinator C. Mark Eakin. Places like Australia's Great Barrier Reef, northwest Hawaii, Guam and parts of the Caribbean have been hit with back-to-back-to-back destruction, Eakin said. University of Victoria, British Columbia, coral reef scientist Julia Baum plans to travel to Christmas Island in the Pacific where the coral reefs have looked like ghost towns in recent years. While conditions are improving, it's too early to celebrate, said Eakin, adding that the world may be at a new normal where reefs are barely able to survive during good conditions.
Article doesn't explain how the scientists know this is an end to the destruction versus a temporary reprieve? Seems like a stupid title altogether.
That is probably because the scientists don't actually say such a thing at all. I think, if one were to search through to a more trustworthy source, it would say something like 'The coral bleaching event that has unfolded over the last 3 years seems to be less severe this year, and this may be a sign that it is coming to an end, if this trend continues.' - and then a lot of explanations about what observations and expectations they base this on. Science is almost never startling or sensational; and in the very rare cases when it is, it will get ignored for a long time as being speculative. Just the way of the world; so when you see an sensational headline about a scientific discovery on a pop-sci website, it can probably be safely ignored.
Last job I had, I worked with a number of physicists working in climatography and oceanography. Thats pretty much their take too. The politics *baffle* them. Conservative politiciians declariing that theres some sort of sneaky conspiriacy going on, meanwhile actual scientists are just following the evidence where it leads, regardless of what the policy wonks proclaimed. Hell at one point conservative newspaper types started announcing some bad spooky conspiracy theory that the bureau of meteorology was lying about temperatures. Well II sure as fuck never heard about this sinister plot to lie about weatherr (FOR SOME REASON) when I was writing the bloody code running some of those "lying"weather statiions. I'm kinda glad I'm not in that job anymore, its frusturating as hell watching right wing newspaper and blog commenters straight up lie about you and not being able to do a damn thing about it, without gettiing in the target sights of some very shady campaiigners
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Sure. But 100 million years ago, nobody gave a shit about temperatures being 5 degrees warmer. We didn't have to survive in that climate. And certainly not 7 billions of us.
Climate always changes. And life always finds a way to adapt. Not all life forms do, though. And if history is any indicator, being the apex predator during one of the big shifts in climate usually really, really sucked.
Hint: That would be us this time around.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.