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Great Barrier Reef Has Died Five Times In Last 30,000 Years, Study Says (newsweek.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the cause-and-effect dept.

schwit1 quotes a report from Newsweek: You may well have heard that Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef is dying as warmer and more acidic waters bleach the system's vibrant coral reefs. In fact, a heat wave killed nearly a third of the system's corals in 2016. Now, scientists writing in the journal Nature Geoscience have discovered the reef has bounced back from near-extinction five times in the last 30,000 years. The current stresses, however, are probably far more intense than those felt in the past.

Low sea levels 30,000 and 22,000 years ago killed coral by air exposure. The remaining reef shifted seaward and eventually bounced back. Rising sea levels -- like those we see today -- killed off the coral twice between 13,000 and 17,000 years ago. This time, coral inched close to land to survive. The reef system, the scientists think, migrated up to 60 inches a year in the face of a changing environment. The last of the five great die-offs occurred about 10,000 years ago, and was likely caused by a huge influx of sediment, a reduction in water quality and a general sea level rise. The reef system may be due for another die-off sometime in the next few thousand years "if it follows its past geological pattern," study author Jody Webster told AFP. "But whether human-induced climate change will hasten that death remains to be seen."

43 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WAY by SensitiveMale · · Score: 1, Insightful

    All of these chicken littles view these changes in nature as if they are happening in a vacuum.

    Nature is like a beanbag. Push here and it pops out there. One change spawns another change. Nothing is static and nature isn't in a vacuum.

  2. Re: Hasn't faced BeauHD by BeauHD++*+(329705) · · Score: 1

    By increasing The Economy - Donald TRUMP has ruined the enivronment.

    And who do you think YOU are? Don't tempt me to trace you back to a Russian IP. You have been warned.

  3. Re: Hasn't faced BeauHD by BeauHD++*+(329705) · · Score: 1

    93.90.32.134

    Game. Over.

  4. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by bug_hunter · · Score: 1

    So because you can do something to one part of nature and it has an affect on another part of nature... we shouldn't worry about the affects we're having on nature?

    --
    It's turtles all the way down.
  5. Corals have been around by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    for half a billion years.

    They have had worse.

    1. Re: Corals have been around by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And now they have environmentalists directing human brainpower at their survival.

      If they smelled like dogfart, looked like vomit, and consumed any resources that humans need, they'd get smoked.

      Human sentimentality is a strange new metric in evolutionary history.

    2. Re:Corals have been around by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They have had worse.

      Of course, and they will bounce back, even if it takes 5000 years, but that isn't the point. A large proportion of fisheries depend on coral reefs, so losing those species rich environments for a long time will hit humanity hard enough that we can feel it. Add to that the other consequences of climate change to food production, migration and so on, and things look not at all rosy. You may prefer to bury your head and pretend everything is going to be fine, but I bet you and those like you will howl the loudest when you find you have to live with the reality of it. And I hope people will point out to you, in no uncertain terms, that you own a big chunk of the responsibility for it.

    3. Re:Corals have been around by jwhyche · · Score: 2

      Of course, and they will bounce back, even if it takes 5000 years

      It's not a question of it recovering, or how long. Given time, despite everything mankind does to the planet, the Earth will eventually recover. New species will evolved to replace extinct ones. Environments poisoned will recover.

      No, the question is. Will be be around to see these recover?

      --
      I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
    4. Re:Corals have been around by Raenex · · Score: 1

      No, the question is. Will be be around to see these recover?

      Unless we kill ourselves with a bioweapons or nuclear war, more than likely, yes. As a species, we are supremely capable of adaptation. And despite all the hysteria around climate change, the most likely scenario is a few feet of sea rise over a century. If we wanted to, we could take steps now to prevent that, steps that wouldn't rely on re-engineering the world's economy.

      The article hints at it, but we as a species have been through much worse without our modern technology. Sea levels rose about 400 feet in the last 10,000 years after massive glaciers that covered the northern hemisphere retreated. Now that's climate change!

  6. Re: current stresses, however, are probably far mo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Interestingly nothing in the rest of the summary or links support that statement, which clearly was put there just so self-righteous dullards like yourself won't accuse the study to be conservative propaganda. Looks like it worked.

  7. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by I75BJC · · Score: 1

    I don't think that is what the post that you are responding to means. I take it to mean that the loss that the Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing is not as great a threat (at the present moment) as some portray it. In practice terms, there is more time to solve/remediate the problem and to restore the Great Barrier Reef to its modern condition. That is, the best solution can be found and applied instead of a stop-gap or knee-jerk remedy.

  8. It always bounces back by OrangeTide · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Except when it doesn't.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  9. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by quantaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All of these chicken littles view these changes in nature as if they are happening in a vacuum.

    Nature is like a beanbag. Push here and it pops out there. One change spawns another change. Nothing is static and nature isn't in a vacuum.

    Tell that to the Mammoths, Dinosaurs, and the obligate anaerobes that predated cyanobacteria.

    Just because a system is resilient doesn't mean you can do whatever the hell you want to it and come out fine.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  10. Re:no need for cash splash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    http://notrickszone.com/2011/0...

    Not even close anywhere.

  11. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by q_e_t · · Score: 1

    I don't think anyone has said its loss will destroy the world, but rather its lots is like a canary in a coalmine.

  12. Re:The reef is not 13,000 years old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    We show that reefs migrated seaward as sea level fell to its lowest level during the most recent glaciation (~20.5–20.7 thousand years ago (ka)), then landward as the shelf flooded and ocean temperatures increased during the subsequent deglacial period (~20–10ka).

    They didn't just look at where the reef is now, but where it has been in the past. It has an ability to migrate at 0.2-1.5m/year. The reef is older, but it wasn't always in the same place. Source

  13. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by bazorg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Push the beanbag of coral reefs and the ecosystem that provides humans with fisheries pops. Push the fisheries and populations of SE Asia will pop across borders en masse, as they are faced with serious threat of poverty and famine. This all leads to suffering and conflict that did not need to happen.

    Call me chicken little all you like, I still think that politics is about exercising power AND ethics, not just observing and passively waiting for the next equilibrium.

  14. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by Required+Snark · · Score: 1, Troll
    Let's apply that argument to your body. Just consider it as a thought experiment, not a threat IRL.

    If I were to lop off a limb, you would not bleed to death right away. The blood vessels automatically contract to keep you alive. But that only helps you with short term survival. You still might not make it.

    If I chop off all your limbs at once, even if the blood stops flowing out where your arms and legs used to be, your chance of survival go way down, obviously. There are military personal who have lost multiple limbs and lived.

    If your limbs are off and I keep hacking so you keep bleeding, you become dead meat.

    Apply the analogy to the Great Barrier Reef. Loosing a limb is like rising/falling sea levels. Loosing all limbs is like ocean acidification. Changing sea levels plus acidification plus rising water temperature plus plastic ocean waste plus ... is like hacking up your body without stopping. And it's not just the Great Barrier Reef, it's all the oceans, the Amazon Basin, the atmosphere, basically the entire planetary ecosystem.

    Do you get the picture? If this doesn't convince you them perhaps you could volunteer and we could do the experiment. Or course you would have to buy a coffin and a burial plot first...

    --
    Why is Snark Required?
  15. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by bradley13 · · Score: 2

    All of these chicken littles view these changes in nature as if they are happening in a vacuum.

    Nature is like a beanbag. Push here and it pops out there. One change spawns another change. Nothing is static and nature isn't in a vacuum.

    Tell that to the Mammoths, Dinosaurs, and the obligate anaerobes that predated cyanobacteria.

    Just because a system is resilient doesn't mean you can do whatever the hell you want to it and come out fine.

    Mammoths turned into elephants. Dinosaurs turned into birds. Etc.

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
  16. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

    I take it to mean that the loss that the Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing is not as great a threat (at the present moment) as some portray it.

    We don't know that. Just because it has suffered before, and recovered, doesn't say much about current threat. It could be worse this time.

    That is, the best solution can be found and applied instead of a stop-gap or knee-jerk remedy.

    We already know the best solution, but we don't want to apply it.

  17. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

    Mammoths turned into elephants. Dinosaurs turned into birds. Etc.

    That's not how evolution works.

  18. Fear mongering by countach · · Score: 1

    This is all fear mongering. There are reefs in the world with water FAR hotter than the great barrier reef. Despite what researchers who benefit from government funding would like you to believe, there is far from agreement that the reef is in any way in trouble.

    1. Re:Fear mongering by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is all fear mongering. There are reefs in the world with water FAR hotter than the great barrier reef. Despite what researchers who benefit from government funding would like you to believe, there is far from agreement that the reef is in any way in trouble.

      If that's fearmongering then your post is stupidmongering.

      Yes there are warmer reefs elsewhere. That doesn't mean you can magically transform the great barrier reef into a hot water reef without it first crashing badly and for a long time, and losing the huge diversity that's present there now.

      I like how you layer it on with a nice chunk of anti-research and anti-government paranoia. Though it's kind of entertaining that you thing researchers do it for the money.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re:Fear mongering by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There are reefs in the world with water FAR hotter than the great barrier reef.

      Yes there are and they adapted to their environment over a very long time. Thanks for pointing out you don't actually know much about the topic or the reason why the problem exists.

      Despite what researchers who benefit from government funding would like you to believe

      There is no shortage of government or private funding for researchers in a myriad of topics both for and against every topic. If you think because the government provided funding for research that researchers are somehow biased to producing results requiring a small fortune of government spending and mass change in behav.... wait, that's anti-bias. What was your point here? That the results are the opposite of the expected funding source and therefore should be taken extra serious because researchers are all corrupt and biased?

      there is far from agreement that the reef is in any way in trouble

      Yeah I know. It's just a manufactured idea from China. Just as manufactured as the idea that you are not a complete moron.

    3. Re:Fear mongering by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      Open your eyes and question everything you mindness robot.

      And this is why we still have flat-earthers.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  19. Separating human activity from natural causes by davide+marney · · Score: 1

    is the Achilles Heel of climate science. Define "normal" for our climate. Is it normal for barrier reefs to die out? Apparently so. Now that humans are on the scene if we experience another loss of the reefs, would that still be normal?

    --
    "We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
    1. Re:Separating human activity from natural causes by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 2

      Apparently, the current anthropogenic sea rise is indistinguishable from noise. That would mean it would be normal occurrence, regardless of what we believe...

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  20. Re: Hasn't faced BeauHD by the+real+BeauHD · · Score: 1

    127.0.0.1

    Expect to get hacked by the CIA in 3, 2, 1...

  21. Most know nothing. by Charcharodon · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The reef is nothing more than the dead skeletons of corals. It is not "alive" The living portion of the reef, is just the top few centimeters. They do not take millions of years to form, they take weeks/months/years to form, much like plants on land. They thrive where ever the conditions are right. When the conditions change the corals die, and the reef becomes barren. That is not the end of the story as the political eco opportunists would have you believe. The spawning methods of corals literally cast their offspring everywhere so there is always corals trying to establish new reefs in nearly every part of the ocean. As the conditions change new areas become habitable for the corals and their numbers will rapidly grow.

    If things swing back the other way dead corals will bounce back within a year or two.

    Now specific man-made problems such as silting, runoff, fishing, recreational diving, and anchor dragging and kill off corals in an area and should be addressed as solvable solutions. Trying fight climate change well that is just pissing into the wind. Even without the so called global warming caused by mankind the reefs were going to die off and relocated anyway.

    1. Re:Most know nothing. by careysub · · Score: 2, Informative

      So what you are saying is that your lead sentence is false, the reef is more than the dead skeletons of corals, given that part of it is alive. Further, although you do not acknowledge it or perhaps even know it, it is also an entire eco-system consisting of more than just corals - in fact they are the most diverse ecosystems in the entire ocean.

      The notion that "dead corals will bounce back within a year or two" is similar to asserting - "Hey, trees sprout from seeds every spring! So if an old-growth forest is destroyed, it can bounce back the very next year!"

      Big, big different between the earliest stages of recolonization and a mature ecosystem.

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    2. Re:Most know nothing. by richrz · · Score: 1

      I'm looking for a source that says that they take weeks/months/years. Can you provide 1 or 2? Thanks!

    3. Re:Most know nothing. by Charcharodon · · Score: 1
      https://www.amazon.com/Reef-Aq...

      Check out reefbuilders.com for a more commercial approach.

      https://reefbuilders.com/2015/...

      This is where all the plugs come from that they use to try to revitalize areas. You can either break off pieces of an adult and glue them to a plug, or just pick up all the pieces naturally broken off that are on the bottom everywhere after a storm.

      Been a while since I've read it, and there are much newer versions. This was back when I used to raise corals in aquariums in my house. They didn't take millions of years to grow more like 6 months to a year. Sure big coral heads that are forty feet across take a long time to form (hundreds/thousands of years), but again the main structure of those large corals are the dead skeletons. You could, this is something I used to do, is create a form out of concrete and reef sand, and glue (epoxy) clipping of corals to it. The corals would rapidly spread to cover the form, like an underwater Chia Pet. Growing corals is more like planting a lawn than regular gardening.

      This is the entire point of sinking ships. Within a year they are covered by sponges and other inverts and a large number of fish move in for shelter. Within 5 years they are covered by various corals. Within 10 years, if the conditions are right they will be completely covered.

    4. Re:Most know nothing. by Charcharodon · · Score: 1
      You have not invalidated anything that I said. All you tried to do is move the goal posts and redefine what is a coral reef to try to refute it.

      Well biology cares not what you think. I am familiar with how corals work. I've been a scuba diver for the past 20 years and have raised corals by hand in aquariums. You want corals to grow, you plant them in the right spot either by hand, or by natural events such as wave actions during storms, or by natural spawning and you will have a healthy active reef in under 10 years. There is nothing particularly important about reefs being 10 years or a thousand years old as far as most fish are concerned. They will make a home out of a plastic milk crate or a pile of car tires if that is what is available.

      A mature unspoiled reef is just more productive reef, than a unique thing. That is what sanctuaries are for since they don't do to well with tourists and 3rd worlder's stripping them bare.

  22. Survive have a time condition by angelbar · · Score: 1

    ok, but in all these situations there where enoug time to react to the changes of that period. If the changes are too fast, maybe there will be no time to react and survive.

    --
    -no sig today-
  23. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    No, just that when folks talk about sea level rise killing the reef, it's best to put the current change in perspective. When the authors talk about:

    Rising sea levels—like those we see today—killed off the coral twice between 13,000 and 17,000 years ago

    and then you look at the historical record, a scientist (someone skeptical of a claim without data) should go "huh?" We've seen massive sea level changes in the past, compared to what is happening now, and the reef survived.

    When you look at what has actually happened in the past, it's kind of humbling that for all our faults, we result in nothing different than noise in the system.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  24. If only.... by theblkadder · · Score: 2

    They had sensible C02 emission laws 30,000 years ago!

    --
    Earth is a single point of failure.
  25. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

    Tell that to the Mammoths, Dinosaurs...

    Okay, just yelled that at the dinosaurs eating at the suet block I put out for them. They ignored me.

    What, someone told you dinosaurs were extinct?? We shall politely assume they were misinformed....

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  26. Re: Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO W by Ferretman · · Score: 1

    > Yea, also, hopefully what pops is humanity as mass migration gives room to a global pandemic that > reduces the population by 95% and humans evolve into dead.

    And yet, you don't seem to really believe that enough to step up and off yourself....that's the logical consequence.

    Ferret

    --
    Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
  27. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by Ferretman · · Score: 1

    Heh...well said sir.

    Ferret

    --
    Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
  28. Re:Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO WA by Ferretman · · Score: 1

    What do you feel is the "best solution", exactly?

    Be precise please.

    Ferret

    --
    Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
  29. Stop spouting BS. by thesupraman · · Score: 1

    You really are big on your insults, but I notice rather lacking in facts.

    Here is one for you: How about a university FIRING a major research professor for daring to publicly discuss the fact that they are basically faking their reef data in their quest for funds??

    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/sacked-professor-peter-ridd-steps-up-push-for-reef-science-scrutiny/news-story/4a2e9134c68eaafea73d5acaf5e8deaa?nk=92206f0f0f531ff32f7590fc1f25c1d3-1527818676

    1. Re:Stop spouting BS. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Cool you found a case. Hurray for you. I'm sure you can find us research on climate change not being real, and that cigarettes are good for you. You may even find a few cases of research that shows autism is caused by vaccines and that some scientists have been oh so naughty. Finding odd cases does not point to any systematic issue within the field. It's is very much the process equivalent of anecdotes != data.

      On behalf of scientists everywhere: That's not how science works.

      You don't want to be insulted? Don't approach the topic like a complete moron.

  30. Re: Wait a second.. Nature isn't in a vacuum? NO by Ferretman · · Score: 1

    Odd, I gave no indication of my political leanings in my response. YOU, on the other hand, made numerous assumptions and felt that a combination of insult and ad hom attack somehow makes you more convincing.

    Spoiler Alert: it doesn't.

    I'm curious at this "right humans are left" assertion of yours....care to expand on it? I assume perhaps you'd like something along the lines of Thanos doing his glove thing or perhaps Mister Valentine from the Kingsmen movie?

    Ferret

    --
    Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc