It’s like a team of obsessive compulsive scientists turned up to capture a magic show in slow-mo
They descended on Palmyra Atoll in 2009 and kept going for ten years, taking 1,500 photos across eighty plots of corals. They looked at all the living things on the ocean floor, and not just the hard corals, but the algae, the microalgae, and the turf. They followed plots where waves crashed and plots that were calm. Then they went through the photos with detailed digital-tracing and image analysis and tracked them — not just through one, but two full bleaching cycles and what they found was recovery. Stability!
In May this year their 10-year study of Palmyra Atoll was finally published
Palmyra is an isolated atoll, 1,300 km south west of Hawaii, with a tiny population. It’s about as pristine as anything can get, unaffected by human pollution, except of course, for CO2 — that fertilizer from the sky which is everywhere. If it was a problem, this was a good place to find out.
In 2015 a savage pool of warm water arrived that bleached not just ten or twenty percent of the corals but blitzed right through ninety percent. It must have looked like a graveyard. But one year later, only 10% had actually died. Within two years the reef was restored to “pre-bleaching levels”. It’s almost like reefs have been doing this for millions of years. Like corals are the tropical weeds of the ocean?
Even the researchers can’t contain their relief. The study authors are describing it as a remarkable recovery, one which gives everyone hope. It’s couched in the qualifier that this happened in an untouched wilderness, and that reefs closer to fertilizers, fishing and man-made pollution don’t start from such a high point and aren’t as well equipped to deal with trouble. They may have a point, but the study puts a big hole in the idea that rising CO2 is killing coral reefs already. After all, the CO2 was there before, during and after the bleaching and getting higher every year — inasmuch as it caused death, it also caused recovery. The reefs were fine.
The most important point is that reef systems are resilient, and that bleaching is not necessarily a big deal.
Thanks for the tip to Graham Young of the AIP
I’m sold. Can anyone get me tickets to Palmyra?
Palmyra Atoll Reef | Photo credit: Jim Maragos/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Central Pacific Coral Reef shows remarkable recovery despite two warm-water events
Steven Koppes, Scripps
The largest global coral-bleaching event ever documented struck the world’s oceans in 2014 and lasted until 2017. The onset of this abnormal whitening condition spawned widespread gloom-and-doom news reports about its calamitous effect on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and more general predictions of coral reef extinction by 2050.
But a new 10-year study from Palmyra Atoll in the remote central Pacific Ocean shows that reefs outside the reach of local human impacts can recover from bleaching.
“One year after each bleaching event, we did see signs of coral decline at some of the sites, but within two years this was restored,” said Adi Khen, a Scripps Oceanography PhD candidate and lead author. The research team of current and former members in marine ecologist Jennifer E. Smith’s laboratory saw only a small net change in the reef’s coral and algae populations after a decade. Khen, Smith and four co-authors published their results in the journal Coral Reefs.
“During the warming event that occurred in 2015, we saw that up to 90% of the corals on Palmyra bleached but in the year following we saw less than 10% mortality,” Smith reported.
Even the researchers were relieved and enthused:
New study gives hope that coral can recover
Bree Steffen, August 5
“I think most people are really fatigued and frankly kind of given up on the ability to do anything to save coral reefs or other marine ecosystems,” Smith said. “And so to have a case study where we can see that the reefs on Palmyra today probably looked the same way they did, you know, several decades ago or even a century ago. Even when it gets hit with a warm water event, there are impacts, but those species and the individuals that are there are able to recover really quickly.”
It’s a bit obsessive compulsive, but what good scientist isn’t?
They took 1,500 photos of the same reefs to keep track of the changes, and then someone had to squish them all together. 🙂
1,500 photos of the same reefs were taken to keep track of the changes.
Abstract
The prevalence of coral bleaching due to thermal stress has been increasing on coral reefs worldwide. While many studies have documented how corals respond to warming, fewer have focused on benthic community responses over longer time periods or on the response of non-coral taxa (e.g., crustose coralline algae, macroalgae, or turf). Here, we quantify spatial and temporal changes in benthic community composition over a decade using image analysis of permanent photoquadrats on Palmyra Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean. Eighty permanent plots were photographed annually between 2009 and 2018 on both the wave-exposed fore reef (FR, 10 m depth, n = 4 sites) and the wave-sheltered reef terrace (RT, 5 m depth, n = 4 sites) habitats. The El Niño events of 2009–2010 and 2015–2016 resulted in acute thermal stress and coral bleaching was observed at both reef habitats during these events. Across 10 yr and two bleaching events, the benthic community structure on Palmyra shows evidence of long-term stability. Communities on the RT exhibited minimal change in percent cover of the dominant functional groups, while the FR had greater variability and minor declines in hard coral cover. There was also spatial variation in the trajectory of each site through time. Coral cover decreased at some sites 1 yr following both bleaching events and was replaced by different algal groups depending on the site, yet returned to pre-bleaching levels within 2 yr. Overall, our data reveal the resilience of calcifier-dominated coral reef communities on Palmyra Atoll that have persisted over the last decade despite two bleaching events, demonstrating the capacity for these reefs to recover from and/or withstand disturbances in the absence of local stressors.
REFERENCE
Adi Khen, Maggie D. Johnson, Michael D. Fox, Samantha M. Clements, Amanda L. Carter & Jennifer E. Smith (2022) Decadal stability of coral reef benthic communities on Palmyra Atoll, Coral Reefs volume 41, pages 1017–1029.
I go snorkelling or diving maybe once a fortnight…..on the reefs, and around the nearby islands…or directly from the beach to fringing corals. Where I live TENS OF THOUSANDS of locals and visitors go snorkelling/diving to reefs on a regular basis. Maybe hundreds of thousands have been out to the GBR on my ,and my friends, boats over the past few years…..
So far as I can recall hearing; and from looking at comments books oh the various boats…or on-line reviews of the multitude of day-trips, overnight trips etc, I see practically NO NEGATIVE FEEDBACK whatsoever.
The only people claiming there is a problem with the GBR are liars out for grant money. The only people believing these liars who out for grant money are feeble-minded fools, or people (politicians etc) preying on these feeble-minded fools. What else is new?
“One born every minute” ring a bell?
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Liars out for grant money!
What else have the left and complicit “scientists” lied about?
It’s a long list, starting with CO2. Then there’s coal, fracking, nuclear, oil, the necessity to leave forests unmanaged, amd above all of these things the Big Scam Climate Change.
Then on the social front we have the descent into madness that began with “women’s liberation” in the seventies, morphing into feminism and gay rights, gay marriage, now rampant transgenderism.
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And yet, here you are lauding and discussing grant funded science. Ever thought your jaundiced view of scientists is maybe wrong.
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“Ever thought your jaundiced view of scientists is maybe wrong.”
Yet others have a fantasy view of scientists.. especially self-name “climate” scientists, who they place on a pedestal..
Some people think they might even be actual be real scientists.
That view is mostly wrong.
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The problem is left wingers, greenies and activists with pre-disposed ideas and political agendas are the type of people attracted to the relatively new field of climate science. Hence the corruption and outright lies that has led to embarrassing doomsday predictions that never eventuate or more likely, the opposite happens. Polar bear extinction, Himalayas ice free, children in England wont know what snow is, increased cyclone activity, permanent Australian drought, etc, etc, etc How many failed predictions does it take before you are allowed to doubt ‘the science’ that must never be doubted? Climate science is nothing but a doomsday religious cult as far as I can tell with billionaire high priests pulling the strings, demanding everyone makes sacrifices (except for them of course).
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Gee Aye; Already discussed why so much grant-funded “science” is BS. To get the funding you need to tell the funders what the outcome will be (directly of implicitly) in advance= pre-determined outcomes only.
“To discover the cause of degradation of the GBR” yeah, that’s good.
“To explain why the GBR is in such great shape ” Nah. No good.
“To determine whether there has been any change to the GBR” Hmmm. Maybe next year.
If the totally corrupt behaviour of almost all mainstream science during the wildly-exaggerated pandemic hasn’t shaken your belief in the integrity of most scientists then we know why that must be.
BTW: Still standing by your claim of about a year ago that that the US CDC’s decision to stop the then-prevalent PCR testing protocols as “unreliable in detecting SARS-CoV2” was all a mistake?
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I think you need to do a search of the ARC using coral or reef as a keyword. You might be pleasantly surprised by the titles and the abstracts.
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When Climate is the topic, the lies come thick and fast.
Another shocking example was the IPCCs 3rd report with the infamous “hockeystick”.
Emails show us that well before research (well, I would not call it that, more cherry picking) began the outcome had been decided – alarmist warming occurring.
Even worse, they discarded data counter to their alarmist conclusion, and included the hockey stick, which came out of nowhere and even in a court case Michael Mann could not explain how it came about.
There are multitudes more of these – but those pushing the alarmist barrow care nothing for facts, the scientific method, or integrity. Just lie and lie and lie again, as nobody will call you out. And the grants keep on coming…
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It goes all the way back. Incompetence, ideology or corruption. Take your pick.
The IPCC’s 2007 report used the study to justify the claim that “any urban-related trend” in global temperatures was small. Jones was one of two “coordinating lead authors” for the relevant chapter.
The leaked emails from the CRU reveal that the former director of the unit, Tom Wigley, harboured grave doubts about the cover-up of the shortcomings in Jones and Wang’s work. Wigley was in charge of CRU when the original paper was published. “Were you taking W-CW [Wang] on trust?” he asked Jones. He continued: “Why, why, why did you and W-CW not simply say this right at the start?”
Jones said he was not able to comment on the story.
Wang said: “I have been exonerated by my university on all the charges. When we started on the paper we had all the station location details in order to identify our network, but we cannot find them any more.
“Some of the location changes were probably only a few metres, and where they were more we corrected for them.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese
They corrected them. Yep. And, they continue to do so.
The Guardian – no less.
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Who has a jaundiced view of all scientists and all grant funded science ?.. No one that I know of
Whats your next Straw Man ?…
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Further to the grant-money motivation behind ALL these scams…..
Consider what would happen if grant money for alleged scientific endeavours was NOT tied to a pre-determined, declared objective; a stated line of enquiry….”Here’s a few million. Go find something guys. Whatever takes your fancy, and if it’s really useful, the same deal next year”
What “scientist” would be interested in BSing us about non-existent threats to the reef or to the environment if they did not have to lie to get funding?
Example: instead of some dope heading off to get stuck in sea-ice in Antarctica every year so as to “prove” there is no sea ice that year….wanting to get re-funded, to do the same thing again the following year…… they’d probably be thinking instead “since we get stuck every year, why don’t we discover some way to avoid getting stuck, and help scientific advancement for humanity for a change?” Big improvement in a very short time, I’d reckon!
BTW: Should anyone be thinking that some reprobate scientists would rip it all off and take holidays to Rio or the Greek islands rather than doing research….well they are ALREADY doing that,aren’t they?
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Yes. They found no ice in Rio so it must be worse than we thought.
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Good one Lawrie. Made me chuckle!
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Cue TdeF to come in an remind us that Turnball handed over 440 million to his wife and friends to do something on the GB Reef.
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Exactly. The other concern nominated by the surprised recipients of the $444 Million (7 1/2 tons of gold) after a few days was that they might do something about the Crown of Thorns starfish.
In fact it is now accepted by the researchers in Tahiti that the overall effect of the Crown of Thorn starfish is that they are welcomed by the natives as a regenerator of the reef. Who would have thought it? In the world of horticulture, it is called pruning. And the overall and immediate effect of the pruning is appreciated. More sand and a much healthier reef. Polynesians who have lived with the starfish and fished the reefs for a thousand years celebrated the arrival of the starfish, but Malcolm and Lucy’s friends want the evil starfish exterminated?
Now what sort of group of real ecologists has devastating a natural cycle of life and eliminating a species as their first order of business? I expect Malcolm and Lucy’s friends should hand the money back. After all, they do not need it and did not apply.
Perhaps 75 wheelbarrows with 100 kg each of shiny gold bars into parliament with a thank you note?
In Melbourne there is a chase for a woman who received $10Million by accident instead of $100. Why is nothing said about an unrequested and utterly unjustified $444 million and why is no one asking? What’s the point of raising money for charities when a Prime Minister can hand out $444 million to his friends without any explanation?
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“Consider what would happen if grant money for alleged scientific endeavours was NOT tied to a pre-determined, declared objective; a stated line of enquiry….”Here’s a few million. Go find something guys. Whatever takes your fancy, and if it’s really useful, the same deal next year” ”
Isn’t that how Bell Labs used to work?
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It seems as if coral reefs other than the Palmyra reef are also showing signs of significant coral recovery.
https://oceanographicmagazine.com/news/great-barrier-reef-recovery/
https://www.aims.gov.au/monitoring-great-barrier-reef/gbr-condition-summary-2021-22
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President Eisenhower famously warned about government (i.e. taxpayer) funded science.
https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/12/26/eisenhowers-less-famous-warning-government-controlled-science-12219
Eisenhower’s Less Famous Warning: Government-Controlled Science
[..]
Ernest Lawrence, whose name is now on both Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Lawrence Livermore National Lab, ushered in the era of academic Big Science. He found that if you did what government wanted, they would throw money at you. And then you could use some of that money to do what you wanted.
[..]
Most famous of the concerned about this new control of basic research by the government was President Dwight David Eisenhower – “Ike.” Ike was someone so concerned about keeping politics out of strategic resources he refused to vote while he was a military officer. To him, it was a conflict of interest because he was paid by the government. His concern only grew while he was president during the bulk of the 1950s and government took more and more control of science funding. As politicians funded more of it, he believed, academia was going to self-select for those who also believed in big government and it would no longer be non-partisan. And corporations were going to control academic science by controlling politicians. Academics who “play the game” were going to get more funding and head up grant committees and panels. (4)
[..]
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Mantaray
I have dived at Hastings Reef off Cairns several times since mid to late 1980s. The last time was in Oct 2021. It was the best I had seen it at that time.
Yes, its just one place, but if its a disaster on the reef, which regularly gets a mention in the GETUP emails I receive , then this should show.
And in diving at Rabaul in May this year the photos I took were the same or better than in the past. Ditto other locations.
As with the Left, never let the facts get in the way of a good (bad in this case) story. Just endlessly repeat lies as you know your friends in the press will never ever question your credibility given the continual mistakes and falsehoods….
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Any ideas why it is getting better? Are they controlling agricultural run off? Maybe your first dives were not long after the days when people lopped off a piece of coral to take home.
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” Are they controlling agricultural run off ” ? …..
.Here he is hinting the the blame may be apportioned to farmers like some detached public servant Professor Peter Ridd assiduously debunked the agricultural pollution canard years ago .Do keep up .When was the last El Nino and high category cyclone to pulverize the Great Barrier Reef corals ?..
There is your answer …..Have you worked out the original definition of “Woke” yet ?
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Well, that’s a downer! No headlines in The Guardian or on CBSnews. Where’s the fear porn in this? Career limiting move by the researchers.
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OTOH when the great scam is finally dead and buried these few would be among those to be employed during the rebirth of science. You know when facts and truth and unbiased data collection become a requirement again.
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Here’s “e-dreams, travel stories” website; one of the most respected sources of travel info around. Top20 snorkelling spots worldwide….
They cover the tropics and the Mediterranean, and the Red Sea etc etc…then this….
“A UNESCO World Heritage Site and spread over 2,400 km across the Pacific Ocean, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the world’s most spectacular place to snorkel.
One more time: the liars stuffing grant-money in their pockets as reward for their ceaseless lying, are NEVER gonna tell the truth about ANYTHING.
These are the same liars telling us that snow in the Oz alps is a thing of the past while simultaneously paying big bucks to be members of the CSIRO Ski Club in Jindabyne and Perisher FFS. Corruption is as corruption does!
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One interesting thing about snow, apart from the fact we don’t see much of it here in Queensland .
Snow is “fluffy rain”; just a different form of precipitation. If there were NO evaporation, there would be NO precipitation. Pretty straightforward, really.
Where an atmosphere is present, it takes thermal energy to cause this evaporation. The big Nuke in the sky apparently plays some part in this.
Thus: No warmth, no evaporation. No evaporation, No precipitation.. NO precipitation, no driving force for “classical” downhill glaciers.
All relatively simple mechanics.
HOWEVER, consider “cross-country” glaciation. Prime example of this is North America. The whole of Canada, east of the Rockie, is pockmarked with LAKES; every one of them gouged out of raw rock by a kilometres-thick ice sheet leaping (glacially) out of the Arctic Ocean and grinding across the ENTIRE continent. This sheet reached well into parts of modern USA. A few prime examples are the US Pacific North Wast, the Great lakes and Manhattan Island.
Scandinavia copped a thorough scrubbing, as well. All of this activity is less noticeable in the Southern Hemisphere, probably because of all that circulating, deep ocean water was not as subject to being “corralled” by land-masses and hence freezing.
While we are at it; it is one of those serendipitous quirks of Nature that, unlike almost every other material, when water “solidifies” (freezes), it EXPANDS and thus becomes less dense and so, as those on the “Titanic” discovered, it FLOATS. The “floating” ice sheets actually “insulate” the eater below and so, marine / aquatic life can struggle on. If it were NOT so, at the first hint of an “Ice Age”, the planet would have become a perpetually frozen snowball and life would have NEVER developed. The “wild card” may be “geothermal activity”, a current prime example being “anomalies being Antarctica . (Planetary Albedo is not always your friend).
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Bruce. Good read….however it depends where you are in Qld and when. 10 weeks ago, no snow but close enough. Thermometre at -7 degrees, up at Eungella and about 2 degrees at Proserpine (only 20 metres above sea-level) overnight
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-11/cold-weather-hits-tropical-north-queensland-causing-frost/101145490
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I’m in Briz-Vegas, 93 feet above sea-level.
It’s nothing like camping at Girraween in late July.
But i do remember the time, back a few decades ago, when Toowoomba copped a good snowfall. The highway was jammed with cars full of people wanting a happy snap.
You are right about Eungella getting chilly; ditto Atherton Tablelands on occasion.
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Once again, the anti-scientists who promote the anthropogenic global warming fraud are demonstrated to have zero knowledge of science and the natural cycles of the earth system or the ability of the ecosystem to recover from natural events such as a pulse of warm water which caused temporary “bleaching” in the present case.
The idea these anti-scientists have that the earth is invariant and unchanging is quite a primitive belief and at variance with the geological record and even changes to the earth system known from both the written and/or archeological record from the last 5000 years or so.
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To appease what they perceive to be their angry goddess Gaia they demand that humans are sacrificed by being made to suffer or die from Energy Starvation.
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“The idea these anti-scientists have that the earth is invariant and unchanging is quite a primitive belief…”
Oh, I don’t know, I suspect that primitives were all too aware of just how variant and changing the earth is. Only a special kind of “Scientist” could believe that the earth was invariant and unchanging until man messed things up.
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Once again, the anti-scientists who promote the anthropogenic global warming fraud are demonstrated to have zero knowledge of science and the natural cycles of the earth system or the ability of the ecosystem to recover from natural events such as a pulse of warm water which caused temporary “bleaching” in the present case.
The recent information from the Australian institute of Marine Science also notes current coral regeneration
Over the past 36 years of monitoring by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), coral reefs in the GBR have shown an ability to begin recovery after disturbances.
In 2022, widespread recovery has led to the highest coral cover recorded by the LTMP in the Northern and Central GBR, largely due to increases in the fast-growing Acropora corals, which are the dominant group of corals on the GBR and have been largely responsible previous changes in hard coral cover.
https://www.aims.gov.au/monitoring-great-barrier-reef/gbr-condition-summary-2021-22
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The abstract says what it must;
“The prevalence of coral bleaching due to thermal stress has been increasing on coral reefs worldwide.”
The acknowledgement of “CO2 induced Global Warming” is right there, up front.
There’s also a well known term in psychology which describes the current situation on the reefs; something about seeing something more than you once did because you are going there to look at it more frequently.
Sadly for the observers there’s nothing unusual happening, it’s just nature in Flux.
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The biggest threat to coral is falling sea levels. Imagine the destruction done as sea levels fall 400 +/- feet, in short order, as the earth enters a glaciation cycle as it has several times during the past 1/2 million years or so. Of course, it always recovers. Not of concern is when we come out of such an era, as we did exiting the last said period leading up to our current warm Holocene era. Coral just grows into the rising sea levels.
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There are examples of Devonian coral reefs visible above ground in the Kimberely Region in WA and near Charters Towers in Queensland and no doubt elsewhere.
They are a real problem for warmists who believe in a static, unchanging earth to explain.
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On a micro scale the El Niño events of 2009–2010 and 2015–2016 saw sea level fall in the Western Pacific, exposing corals to the sun and causing bleaching.
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Yes – I saw that. Pictures don’t lie.
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“The biggest threat to coral is falling sea levels”
Yep, the major bleaching of the GBR in 2017-19 was because of low sea levels exposing the coral to too much direct sunlight.
Also had a drying affect on Mangroves in some area, killing a wide expanse in the Gulf region.
I still haven’t figured out how CO2 causes LOW sea levels, could someone enlighten me, please 😉
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Well, CO2 causes both global warming AND global cooling, hence more polar ice and record low temperatures.
That’s why the marketing/propaganda people changed the name from “global warming” to “climate change”.
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David,
No. No. No. It’s not marketing. It’s simply climate “science”.
Let me explain.
When the sun heats up the ocean (as it does) it drives CO2 out into the atmosphere. Agreed?
Now, here’s the difficult part:
When all that CO2 leaves the oceans, the volume of the oceans decreases by the equivalent amount of CO2 driven out.
That means less volume in the oceans.
Hence it falls.
You won’t read about this fact in any IPCC publication (or indeed on the Skeptical Science website) because they don’t want the world to know that the sun is the culprit.
That’s climate “science” for you. 🙂
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Bleached coral is not dead.
Science teaches us that bleaching occurs because the coral polyp (an animal) expels the photosynthetic alga (a plant-like organism) living in it because as temperature rises the alga produces toxic-to-the-polyp oxygen species. The alga is responsible for the usual colour of coral.
The alga can return as soon as the natural stressor (warm water) has passed.
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Its just like Sydney during the summer holidays.
Everybody leaves…. Then comes back…
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Is there anyone in the comment section with the photoshop skills to take the collage of reef pictures and make it say “Let’s Go Brandon”?
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There appears to be enough ‘pixels’ to work with.
Use say 6 photos per letter across the page, then it could be possible. It’d be on several lines. All you have to do is sort the darker frames onto the letters and the lighter onto the background.
Knock yourself out.
But wouldn’t it be more topical to write something like ‘Trump did it’?
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Eng_Ian – I do not have the software nor skill….not paying monies to do one meme. “Trump Did It” might be confusing, did what…caused the bleaching….caused the recovery…caused both. “Let’s Go Brandon” is an unambiguous message….FJB!! And the caption could read “Message from GAIA”.
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You might be able to use one of these free online tools to do this.
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/free-online-photo-collage-makers/
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Well, you would not read about this in the Pix!
Or our ABC.
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Maybe the warm water was the result of volcanic activity upstream of the atoll? Atolls are, usually, the remains of extinct volcanoes. Galapagos anyone?
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Frequency of the bleaching events is what is concerning. And the evidence is that the frequency is increasing.
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When is the non-fraudulent and scientifically-acceptable evidence?
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Where not when.
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It hasn’t been studied long enough to get any significant data for any trends.
Fly-overs are a very, very poor way of judging bleaching !
But its all JCU GBR farce team (Hughes et al) can manage, despite having huge funding for court cases.
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b.nice. These teams get paid to go flying. Then they get paid more to go “investigate” bad stuff they imagine they can see.
What would happen IF they reported “all is well on the GBR. No follow up necessary”?
This is as unlikely as the local Vet telling a worried pet-owner ‘Rufus is tip-top despite being 15 years old. No X-rays, blood tests, ultra-sounds or expensive tablets necessary. No huge Vet bill coming your way”
JCU (and the local vet, in too many cases) are in it for the dough; the easiest dough possible. And that’s all!
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Yes.
A lot of “research” involving the anthropogenic global warming fraud involves travel to interesting and exotic places or doing fun things like visiting tropical islands, visiting Antarctica or the Arctic, going to Klimate Krisis Konferences, preferably in private jets, flying small aircraft doing aerial surveys (great if a private pilot and want to get your hours up), scuba diving etc. all at taxpayer expense.
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Don’t be silly David. The last things these people want to do is go out to the reef in small boats & get wet & stuff. That is why they do so called surveys by aircraft, to avoid scuba diving.
They do their research on land in big fish tanks. easier to gig experiments & they can go home at night.
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So what? That introductory statement in their abstract has no time frame included with it. In essence their statement may be correct if the measure is 30 years, but maybe untrue if the time frame is 200 years. Coral marine science really only dates back to the 1950’s, at most. A statement like that should be qualified.
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‘And the evidence is that the frequency is increasing.’
El Nino causes the Western Pacific sea level fall and coral exposure, so in La Nina like conditions the bleaching frequency should theoretically decline.
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So, where’s our $444mil.
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Under the agreement with the Australian Government, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation has established a Partnership Management Committee to oversee delivery of the $443.3 million Reef Trust Partnership. It will be interesting to see what the new government does.
20
Follow the “spillage”.
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Let me ease Dr Smith’s burden a little: she should stop worrying about “saving” coral reefs. As a scientist, her job is to understand them. She obviously has a long way to go on that score.
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Robert swan; here’s a much more ethical Jennifer….Morahasy.
I’ve swum/ snorkelled/ dived / fished this reef a hundred times…and she is spot on. The entire grant-money-driven scam is BS. GBR doing very well indeed!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqFFqBuFVqU
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Lets look at this through a larger lens.
Perhaps,just perhaps coral bleaching is actually a vital and integral part of reef health and survival.
This natural effect actually drives renewal and regeneration. The “new” life is that which is best suited to the current environment and is derived from a genetically prolific resource.
Darwin wouldn’t be surprised!!!
Looking at it from this perspective bleaching is a welcome but short term setback in coral growth with positive,not negative outcomes.
Crown of thorns similar!!
Nature knows best.
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I think of it like a tree shedding bark, natural renewal.
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Typo in the 5th paragraph?? …”Even the researchers can’t The study authors…”
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Ahem, yes, me writing at silly hours. Even the researchers can’t contain their relief.
Fixed. Thanks.
I was struck that these researchers were not even trying to hide what good news this is, even though they had to frame it speculatively as only applying to corals in untouched locations. They were at least not trying to bury their discovery. (The media could do it for them).
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My logical view is that bleaching is a very likely and regular event. If not predictable at least likely. The idea that having taken any notice of the reef in the last 50 years as a tourist attraction, the otherwise useless and dangerous natural structure is our responsibility according to UNESCO. Really? And it is under threat? We didn’t build it. We don’t and cannot maintain it. And it’s 200km out to sea in an ocean half the size of the planet.
However we do understand the basics.
“Algae live within the coral polyps, using sunlight to make sugar for energy. This energy is transferred to the polyp, providing much needed nourishment. In turn, coral polyps provide the algae with carbon dioxide and a protective home. Corals also eat by catching tiny floating animals called zooplankton.”
So coral needs sunlight, but polyps are fragile and if they get too close to the surface, they run the risk of drying out and dying. So there is a dance of death, trying to get close to the surface, certainly in the top few metres but no so close as to get routinely exposed to the air.
Consider then that the Reef is 2500km tall and 250km wide, a country just below the surface. A fall in sea level for too long in an area can devastate the polyps, resulting in mass bleaching. But it is part of their risky life cycle. However now we think that if there is mass bleaching, varying sea levels, tides, blockages in draining areas or their removal are all the fault of farmers. Or even Global Warming or a slight increase in water temperature, which is odd considering the natural temperature range within the reef itself which spans 12 degrees of longitude and the fact that corals like warm water.
It looks then that the recent mass bleaching was a regular event but a wonderful emotional device for extorting cash. As if you can ‘fix’ something covering half a million square kilometers, twice the total area of Great Britain. No, it is all just eco milking, coming up with reasons why everyone should give you cash. And you will promise to fix everything, without being too specific. But those farmers are the problem. They need to stop farming. Like the farmers in the Nederlands and Belgium and Sri Lanka. Farmers like factories are the real problem. As Bill Gates would say, if they want real meat, let them eat bugs.
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“thermal stress”
I experience a lot of that every year. (I hate long pants.)
I think the folk in Europe are about to have beaucoup thermal stress.
Hopefully that thermal stress stops 2050 thermal stress.
Funny how there is so much concern for ‘warming’.
No concern for ‘colding’.
(Spell check doesn’t even recognize the word.)
I think when spell check recognizes ‘colding’, we’ll be in real trouble.
At least until we can find another space rock that’s warming.
.
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I once looked through Captain Cook’s diary looking for any observations of coral bleaching when he was around the GBR but could not find any. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, it obviously does. Unlike warmists I was looking for primary evidence.
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He was more concerned with beaching than bleaching.
Bank on it.
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The first report of coral bleaching was in the reference below and it was observed on the Great Barrier Reef. That is not to say it started then, it has probably been going on for the last 535 million years that coral has been around.
Yonge & Nicholls (1931) Yonge CM, Nicholls AG. Studies on the physiology of corals: IV. The structure, distribution, and physiology of the zooxanthellae. Scientific Reports / Great Barrier Reef Expedition. 1931;1:135–176. 1928-29
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The first reference to coral bleaching that I’ve seen was in the Mediterranean in 1862
https://joannenova.com.au/2021/06/corals-bleached-in-1862-by-all-the-cars-and-coal-plants-that-didnt-exist/
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“…in the absence of local stressors…” Don’t worry, not (that) career limiting, they included the caveat for their carpetbagger friends around the GBR – there is enough local “stressors” around the GBR to get around this finding and continue the gravy train. But oh boy, now the stupid GBR is also showing signs of recovery, and then there’s those pesky people like Ridd and Marohasy that had to ring the bell on dodgy research…:-)
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It’s almost like corals have been doing this for millions of years. It’s cyclic over the history of the GBR’s existance and varies with partial pressure of CO₂ in salt water. When this is higher coral growth is the result and vice versa. The Crown of Thorns phenomena is another example of the cyclic nature of events for coral reefs. The AGW bunkum on the GBR is money driven scientism. Look into the Physics of partial pressures in liquids and the Laws of Chemical Equilibrium relating to CO₂ in sea water for the mechanisms.
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Coral shows amazing resilience, Bikini Atoll is a good example.
‘The team discovered a diverse eco-system of animal life in and around the bomb crater, including coral as big as “cars”, hundreds of schools of fish including tuna, sharks and snapper, and coconut crabs devouring radioactive coconuts on the shore.’ (Guardian)
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Recovery for isolated atolls such as Palmyra Atoll is at a disadvantage. With the Great Barrier reef any damaged area is quickly reseeded by the next annual spawning event of near by reefs. Isolated reef systems must rely basically on their own resources to regenerate.
That they are proven to do so indicates they are well able to manage the occasional disaster.
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Good point. This atoll is in the middle of nowhere…
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Something worth investigating.
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I assume James Cook Uni will lobby to have all those researchers sacked and will ban them from from their campus?
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[…] Jo Nova covers coral bleaching and recovery […]
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[…] It’s almost like corals have been doing this for millions of years. 90% bleached but recovered… […]
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