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Australia's Great Barrier Reef Showing 'Signs of Recovery' (stuff.co.nz)

Posted by BeauHD on from the positive-updates dept.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef appears to be showing signs of recovery after a massive coral bleaching event in 2016 and 2017. Stuff.co.nz reports: The nonprofit Reef & Rainforest Research Centre has reported signs of recovery due to a milder 2017-18 summer, as well as cooperation among science, industry, and government in supporting the reef's recovery, according to the report issued on Wednesday by the Queensland State Government. The RRRC, in cooperation with the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, conducted detailed surveys at key tourism dive sites around the city of Cairns in 2016 and 2017 and says certain reefs that were strongly affected in the bleaching event are showing significant signs of improvement.

Coral bleaching occurs in multiple stages, according to RRRC Managing Director Sheriden Morris, ranging from the equivalent of a mild sunburn to coral mortality. "When a reef is reported as 'bleached' in the media, that often leaves out a critical detail on how severe that bleaching is, at what depth the bleaching has occurred and if it's going to cause permanent damage to the coral at that site," Morris said in the statement, adding that the Barrier Reef "has significant capacity to recover from health impacts like bleaching events." Reports that the entire reef is dead due to severe bleaching are "blatantly untrue," Morris said. Still, he warns that the recovery is "contingent on environmental conditions" and that the reef "may suffer further bleaching events as the climate continues to warm."

15 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. 2014-2016 El Nino? by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 2, Informative

    LOTS of hot water from that super El Nino (largest since 1998), and the temperatures have dropped dramatically since then... Not really a surprise.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    1. Re:2014-2016 El Nino? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      CNN isn't liberal, they're leftist. There's a difference. Liberals believe in free speech. Leftists will happily censor you. You're right about the fake news part though, CNN has been caught lying so many times that they're no longer credible.

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      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    2. Re:2014-2016 El Nino? by q_e_t · · Score: 1

      CNN isn't liberal, they're leftist.

      Don't be ridiculous, CNN is centrist or centre-right on the world political spectrum.

    3. Re:2014-2016 El Nino? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      The only ones doing any censorship are the Left. The Right is firmly in favor of free speech. You know, Enlightenment values, the ones the Left rejected as racist and sexist.

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      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    4. Re:2014-2016 El Nino? by q_e_t · · Score: 1

      The only ones doing any censorship are the Left. The Right is firmly in favor of free speech. You know, Enlightenment values, the ones the Left rejected as racist and sexist.

      CNN is nothing to do with the Left. It's Centrist or slightly to the right of it. And it's not about Left and Right anyway, it's about liberalism and illiberalism (in the classical sense). Many of those on the Left do not reject Enlightenment values, and some do. Ditto on the Right. I'm very much in favour of freedom of speech, yet I am not politically right wing.

      If we look at the UK, then in the 1980s we had the infamous Clause 28, which the right wing government introduced, and which sought to censor speech about homosexuality, by making it an offence to promote it in some contexts. There are many examples like this from the Left and Right, and oddly, in Cuba, laws fairly similar to Clause 28 too! Of if you look at Frano Spain, or Stalinism, etc., you can see that non-acceptance of Englightenment values as little to do with Left and Right, but everything to do with power.

    5. Re:2014-2016 El Nino? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      You don't know the arguments, do you? You call yourself educated? The Enlightenment legacy can be seen all around us: individualism, international commerce and trade, moral cosmopolitanism, freedom of the press and a culture of publicity, technological modernity, the valorization of expertise, and on and on. All of these are bogeymen to the Left and they wish to free our society from their oppression.

      The concept of "race" was birthed by the Enlightenment. Before that, there wasn't any racism, just Christians and heathens. But the white man came up with the idea there is "objective truth" and used it to oppress peoples of color. The Enlightenment's ontology, rooted in the new science of the 17th century, created a vision of human beings in nature which provided weapons to a new race-based ideology which would have been impossible without the Enlightenment.

      The entire idea behind today's Left-wing thought is that there is no objective truth, only differing points of view, all equally valid. For example, there is no valid genetic basis for human intelligence, there are merely different kinds of intelligence. Native Americans do poorly at intelligence tests designed for whites, but excel at tests designed to measure storytelling intelligence.

      White supremacy as enabled by the Enlightenment is most commonly conceptualized as a way for lower-class whites to feel socially superior to people from other ethnic backgrounds. More important, though, white supremacy is a tried-and-tested means for upper class whites to grow their wealth and power. This thought is all over the place on the Left and I am astonished that you are not familiar with it.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    6. Re:2014-2016 El Nino? by q_e_t · · Score: 1

      You don't know the arguments, do you?

      I do, but I seem to have a different opinion to you. This, I am allowed to have. Personally, I think you are wrong, but you are also allowed to have that opinion.

    7. Re:2014-2016 El Nino? by q_e_t · · Score: 1

      The concept of "race" was birthed by the Enlightenment. Before that, there wasn't any racism, just Christians and heathens.

      Do you honestly believe that? If you do, I am utterly baffled. That people had particular views of entire groups of people, and based on characteristics such as their skin, is attested to in ancient writings that predate Christianity.

    8. Re:2014-2016 El Nino? by q_e_t · · Score: 1

      The entire idea behind today's Left-wing thought is that there is no objective truth, only differing points of view, all equally valid.

      No. I have literally no idea where you get that concept from. In fact one of my criticisms on the left (which others have made on slashdot) is absolutism, which is the antithesis of what you propose. Your views are so far from what I have experienced I am again utterly baffled.

  2. But what of the Great Australian Reefer? by elrous0 · · Score: 1

    Please tell me it's still okay!

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    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:But what of the Great Australian Reefer? by elrous0 · · Score: 1

      He lives in heaven with Snoop now.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  3. Of course they have to say that by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    The RRRC has been the recipient of many millions of dollars of government funding. Much of this has been sqandered on wasteful programs ranging from pointless sub and sub sub contracting of maintaining the reef to tour boat operators to the downright absurd such as installing giant fans underwater to mix the deep cold water with warm surface water and average everything out.

    The RRRC is constantly at odds with scientists who study the reef and also have maintaining commercial tourism in their primary remit. It should come as no surprise that they are giving a rosy outlook despite what many scientists say.

  4. Nature is resilient by bradley13 · · Score: 1

    I wonder what the next global panic event will be, that the media decides to blow totally out of proportion. I mean, in the US, the media is undoubtedly cursing Hurricane Florence for no longer being a proper hurricane, but just a strong storm. They'll still find some idiot in his beach house, and splash it all over the news - that will keep them occupied for a couple of weeks. After that, what's next? /s

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    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
  5. Re:Fake news! Says noted ecologist. by pslytely+psycho · · Score: 2, Informative

    So full of shit. A few seconds produced hundreds of photos you claim don't exist. That alone invalidates everything else you falsely claim.

    Plastic in the ocean:
    https://www.google.com/search?q=plastic+floating+in+the+ocean&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwigmu3P2rrdAhVmHTQIHfseC_AQ_AUICigB&biw=806&bih=454

    Comparison photos of dead/living coral:
    https://www.google.com/search?q=pictures+comparing+dead+and+living+great+barrier+reef&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwir4rno2rrdAhUTMH0KHVT8B-4Q_AUICigB&biw=806&bih=454

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    Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
  6. Re:Fake news! Says noted ecologist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Not "comparison photos" or set shots of patches of trash directly offshore.

    Actual photos of the great garbage patch, as it's supposedly so large you have to be in orbit to see it all.

    And try getting video moving from healthy, if bleached, coral to dead coral.

    Because anyone can stitch two photos together and go "Look! This supports what I say!"