The Great Barrier Reef- resistant coral

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by Alan Mighty

That recently published paper by McNeill et al. suggests you're spot on with regard to water quality (i.e. runoff - turbidity and nutrients). So that correlates with rain. See the abstract at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0832-3

And then the question you're facing is whether anomalous rainfall such as that experienced in the band from Townsville west early this year was just another part of the climate change with which we're living.

The cause of the Townsville flood was a stalled monsoonal low that eventually drifted out to sea and went on to become cyclone Oma.

Historical records suggest monsoonal lows and cyclones are caused by summer, not climate change.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

The opposite is demonstrated by Ridd's actions, and his associations with the well known, industry-funded denial campaigners and scientists-for-hire.

Unlike Spencer, who apparently believes at least some of his mistaken rhetoric (as shown by his [mostly] bizarre personal website), Ridd, as with many others profiting from the denial cash-cow (Nova, Watts, Curry, et al.) seem clearly to have come to the conclusion that the monetary benefits derived from capitalistic endeavors greatly outweigh the monetary benefits derived from pure scientific or academic research.

'Follow the money' indeed...


"Peter Ridd is a former professor at James Cook University in Australia. According to his profile at JCU, Ridd was a geophysicist with interests in “coastal oceanography, the effects of sediments on coral reefs, instrument development, geophysical sensing of the earth, past and future climates, atmospheric modelling.” Ridd was fired from James Cook University in May 2018 for allegedly breaching his employment's code of conduct. [26]


“Peter Ridd raises almost all of his research funds from the profits of consultancy work which is usually associated with monitoring of marine dredging operation,”

his profile noted. The Marine Geophysics Laboratory at JCU has been involved in consulting for a range of coal terminal projects in 2012, funds which go to PhD scholarship and the staff of the MGL. [3], [4]

Ridd has consistently questioned the science suggesting the risks posed by climate change and other human activities to the Great Barrier Reef.

In January 2018, Ridd launched the website ”Great Barrier Reef Science Commentary” where he has covered a legal case between himself and James Cook University. Ridd has claimed the University is trying to silence him through a censure and then a disciplinary allegation of serious misconduct related to disparaging comments about two institutions linked to JCU - the Australian Institute of marine science and the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

Ridd has gained the support of many individuals and groups who question the impact of man-made climate change, including the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), which has helped Ridd to gather funds to cover legal costs in the case he filed against JCU. [5]

“Thanks to lots of people including Anthony Watts, Jennifer Marohasy, Jo Nova, Benny Peiser (GWPF), Willie Soon for spreading the word. Also a huge thanks to the IPA for helping with the organisation,” Ridd said in his GoFundMe campaign, which raised $99,322 in just 49 hours. [6]

Ridd was featured in the IPA publication “Climate Change: The Facts 2017” in which he wrote that coral is the “least endangered of any ecosystem to future climate change.” [7] Ridd has been a director of the Australian Environment Foundation, which promotes the rejection of human-caused climate change, since 2005."

"May 2, 2018

Ridd was fired from James Cook University for breaching his employment's code of conduct. According to a statement from Professor Iain Gordon, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Division of Tropical Environments and Societies at JCU: [26], [27]

“Professor Ridd has on numerous occasions and in numerous ways seriously and repeatedly breached the Code of Conduct – his employment has been terminated on this basis. To suggest otherwise is simply wrong,” the statement reads. [27]

On his website, where he has repeatedly published confidential legal documents about the proceedings, Ridd claimed “His employment has been terminated because he dared to tell the truth.” He also re-opened a GoFundme campaign to pay for legal bills estimated at $260,000 (his prior campaign raised nearly $100,000). As of late May, the campaign had already reached its $260,000 goal. [28]

While Ridd claimed “JCU appears to be willing to spend their near unlimited legal resources fighting me,” the university has pointed out that it was Ridd who commenced legal action. [26]

Following Ridd's firing, conservative websites and think tanks have come to his defense and urged readers to visit his crowdfunding page. Ridd and supporting groups have consistently reframed the case as being about academic freedom, free speech, and scientific integrity. The University's statement itself counters these claims: [26], [27]

“The University has not objected to Professor Ridd's right to comment on quality assurance.
However, the University has objected to the manner in which he has done this. He has sensationalised his comments to attract attention, has criticised and denigrated published work, and has demonstrated a lack of respect for his colleagues and institutions in doing so. Academic rebuttal of his scientific views on the reef has been separately published.”

The UK's Global Warming Policy Forum, an extension of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, reposted an article from The Australian and linked to Ridd’s website. Climate change denial journalis James Delingpole reinforced Ridd's claim that he was fired for “telling the truth.” In the U.S., the Heartland Institute described Ridd's firing as “an international scandal & part of the fight for global free speech,” and linked to an article by climate change denial blogger Anthony Watts. [29]

The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) already donated at least $6,000 towards Ridd's legal fees, helped coordinate his fundraising, and promoted his cause on social media."

So Ridd's evil plan all along was to get booted from his university role so he could rake in the big bucks in private industry?

A letter of resignation would have been just as effective.

It must only be a matter of time before kitten torturing allegations surface.

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

Au contraire, Holocaust deniers should thank AGW deniers for supplanting them in the vernacular.

Words have meanings. Where one chooses to attach associations to them is up to the individual, and is often a direct indication of motive.

AGW 'skeptics' are deniers by definition, in the modern English usage of the word, whether you like it or not.

Scientists, who hold the strongest claim to the word, should unite to protest the usurpation and bastardization of 'skeptic' by the pseudo-skeptics, many who inhabit the AGW-conspiracy universe (along with flat-earthers, creationists, moon landing deniers, etc...)


de·ni·er1
/dəˈnīər/
noun
noun: denier; plural noun: deniers

1. a person who denies something.
   "a prominent denier of global warming"
   
   
   
   

de·ni·al
/dəˈnīəl/
noun
noun: denial

1. the action of declaring something to be untrue.
   "she shook her head in denial"
   
   
   
   

A couple of slight differences:

In the case of The Holocaust.

The allied invasion of Nazi occupied Europe discovered the physical evidence for The Holocaust in the death camps, some of which remain today as remembrance shrines to the victims, and a number of the countries involved had a problem explaining the whereabouts of six or seven million of their jewish citizens.

In the case of AGM (Rebranded as Climate Change)

The rocketing temperatures did not arrive as predicted (hence the requirement to rebrand from Global Warming into Climate Change) and what increases there have been are still down in the statistical noise.

In Australia at least all the old temperature records had to be "normalized" in order to allow a lot of new temperature records to come into being (Apparently the forbears of the rotten deniers preciently situated all the weather recording stations out in the sun and consequently all the temperature records were too high and needed to be "normalized" down)

I still tend to the opinion that the terms "proponents" and "sceptics" are both more moderate and appropriate terms for use in a debate about a yet unproven theory (We know from observing Venus that run away greenhouse effects can exist on a planetary scale can but us lay folk have not yet had it explained to us as to why in did not occur when the earth had an atmosphere with 7,000 ppm of CO2 and why it is now going to cook us when the atmospheric CO2 concentration is still in the low hundreds?)

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

... I still tend to the opinion that the terms "proponents" and "sceptics" are both more moderate and appropriate terms for use in a debate ...

Except that those on the other side of the debate, from "skeptics", are neither advocates nor supporters of climate change - they are opponents.



Definition of proponent:
one who argues in favor of something
a person who speaks publicly in support of a particular idea or plan of action
Synonyms:
advocate, exponent, supporter

[GTom]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

For those that don't FB


That article above certainly agrees with my direct observations.

I saw hills of dead coral in the Seychelles, 16 years after their big extinction event of 1998. And that was a less affected area where the dive center brought the tourists.

I better believe a university than a kicked out professor trying to raise some coins acting as "scientist". "crying wolves" and other similar propagandist statements won't increase his credibility much either.

I am by no way a climate-doomer, climate change is definitely not the #1 problem of the planet - that would be overpopulation and everything that comes with it.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

......I still tend to the opinion that the terms "proponents" and "sceptics" are both more moderate and appropriate terms for use in a debate about a yet unproven theory (We know from observing Venus that run away greenhouse effects can exist on a planetary scale can but us lay folk have not yet had it explained to us as to why in did not occur when the earth had an atmosphere with 7,000 ppm of CO2 and why it is now going to cook us when the atmospheric CO2 concentration is still in the low hundreds?)

If you still maintain your "skepticism" after reading the following scientific explanation, then your skepticism will look more like denierism.

CO2 was higher in the late Ordovician

During the Ordovician, solar output was 4% lower than current levels, and there was a large continent over the South Pole. Consequently, CO2 levels at around 1,000 to 2,300 ppm were actually low enough to promote glaciation in the southern continent of Gondwana. Ample geological and geochemical evidence points to strong weathering in parallel with the cooling of the Ordovician climate. Since rock weathering reduces atmospheric CO2, this again reinforces the scientific fact that CO2 is a strong driver of climate......

Older scientific papers inferred very high CO2 levels in the Ordovician, generating a paradox of a cold climate during a time of high greenhouse gas levels. But recent work has shown that atmospheric CO2 was much lower than the myth claims, and it kept falling through the Ordovician. It was less than 8 times preindustrial values towards the end (see the graph below), which may sound very high, but with a 4% fainter sun back then and with a large continent over the South Pole, it was low enough to trigger a major continental ice sheet.

The Ordovician was a time of mountain building (the Taconic/Caledonian orogeny) and violent ashy volcanic eruptions as the continents of Laurentia, Baltica and Avalonia began to collide. Mountain building, lots of fresh volcanic ash and erosion tend to accelerate the weathering of silicate rocks, which draws down CO2 from the atmosphere, cooling the planet on a timeframe of hundreds of thousands to millions of years. And indeed, strontium isotopes confirm a large increase in the contribution of weathered volcanic rocks into ocean waters between about 470 and 450 million years ago. Neodymium isotopes (a proxy for ancient sea level change) show that ice sheets were in place in the late Ordovician.

The latter half of the Ordovician also saw the development of Earth's earliest plant-dominated terrestrial biosphere. Those early moss-like plants accelerated rock weathering rates, simultaneously drawing down CO2 and supplying nutrients like phosphorous to the oceans, which fertilized plankton activity, which further reduced CO2 as their carbon-rich remains sank to the sea bed. The climate cooled so much that it crossed a "tipping point" 444 million years ago, triggering the Hirnantian Glaciation, which was so severe it resulted in one of the biggest mass extinctions since animals first evolved. For more on that see this article.

So, far from presenting a paradox, late Ordovician CO2 levels are entirely consistent with a cool climate and glaciation. Moreover the geological, geochemical and fossil evidence all consistently show that a big drawdown of CO2 drove that cooling, proving again that CO2 is the principle control knob on climates both ancient and modern.



Cooling climate before the Hirnantian Mass Extinction. Cyan horizontal band is the Hirnantian Stage. Redrawn from Armstrong & Harper 2014. 13C-derived CO2 range from Pancost et al 2013, Plant spore first appearance simplified from Edwards et al 2014 and Rubinstein et al 2010.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by GTom

I saw hills of dead coral in the Seychelles, 16 years after their big extinction event of 1998. And that was a less affected area where the dive center brought the tourists.

I better believe a university than a kicked out professor trying to raise some coins acting as "scientist". "crying wolves" and other similar propagandist statements won't increase his credibility much either.

I am by no way a climate-doomer, climate change is definitely not the #1 problem of the planet - that would be overpopulation and everything that comes with it.

That's actually excellent evidence supporting the views of the "kicked out professor". Apparently, the GBR is doing much better those reefs in the Seychelles.


Let me let you in on a little secret. The tourist spots are, in general, the worst spots for damaged coral. Funnily enough, the constant, stream of tourists touching and stomping on corals whilst lathered in sunscreen has a somewhat negative effect.


And here's free tip on how to identify the touristy spots on the reef. The fish will flock around you as you dive or snorkel in the touristy spots. If you go to a non-tourist location the fish are much more cautious in your presence (and corals more vibrant). Of course that's assuming your reef has appreciable numbers of fish to begin with, which the GBR has in spades. But I guess you won't read about that in too many peer reviewed papers published by the anti-Ridd brigade.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

If you go to a non-tourist location the fish are much more cautious in your presence (and corals more vibrant). Of course that's assuming your reef has appreciable numbers of fish to begin with, which the GBR has in spades. But I guess you won't read about that in too many peer reviewed papers published by the anti-Ridd brigade.

So speaks the guy whose reference point for reef health is TripAdvisor


Where would we "read about that" - the stuff that the "anti-Rudd brigade" won't publish - Good Houskeeping? Architectural Digest? Bon Appetit?

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

So speaks the guy whose reference point for reef health is TripAdvisor


Where would we "read about that" - the stuff that the "anti-Rudd brigade" won't publish - Good Houskeeping? Architectural Digest? Bon Appetit?

Dunno, but I bet it won't be in the next IPCC report.


My tablet pines for ex Aussie prime ministers, who coincidentally was shafted to. Seems to be a recurring theme around here.

[WingRyder]

Why aren't people referred to as "dark matter deniers" or "expanding universe deniers"?

[Exile]

Originally Posted by WingRyder

Why aren't people referred to as "dark matter deniers" or "expanding universe deniers"?

Because there's no political agenda attached to scientific theories & debates over dark matter or the expanding universe. Despite efforts at dictionary references & tortured rationalizations, the purpose of the denier label is not to define but to suppress such debate. Besides, the denier label is an all too convenient way of simplifying the issue into those who "promote" CC vs. those who "oppose" it, neither of which makes any sense as applied to a theory which climate scientists themselves agree is not settled. Nobody who uses the denier label in an effort to equate CC with the absolute certainty surrounding the Holocaust, the moon landing, or the Earth's ellipsoidal shape is interested in serious discussion or debate about the actual science. They're simply pursuing a personal political agenda.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

So speaks the guy whose reference point for reef health is TripAdvisor


Where would we "read about that" - the stuff that the "anti-Rudd brigade" won't publish - Good Houskeeping? Architectural Digest? Bon Appetit?

Obviously nothing that's on your personal reading list. Try Google, but be sure to scroll down a ways.

[jimbunyard]

Originally Posted by WingRyder

Why aren't people referred to as "dark matter deniers" or "expanding universe deniers"?

Do you, or are you, one, or a member of a group of people who deny the evidence for the existence of dark matter or for the expanding universe? If so, then you are a denier of that particular, well supported, but problematic area of science. Your 'question' is disingenuous at best, and plain ------ at worse, because there is no need to understand anything to it's absolute ultimate cause to be able to determine it's viability, function, value or necessity in the world we perceive as real. Please, tell me why 2 + 2 = 4, or how actually the controlled flow of electrons through certain semi-conducters enabled you to type your disingenuous question. Or, better yet, describe the real physical properties of an electron in concrete visual detail...

Originally Posted by Exile

Because there's no political agenda attached to scientific theories & debates over dark matter or the expanding universe. Despite efforts at dictionary references & tortured rationalizations, the purpose of the denier label is not to define but to suppress such debate. Besides, the denier label is an all too convenient way of simplifying the issue into those who "promote" CC vs. those who "oppose" it, neither of which makes any sense as applied to a theory which climate scientists themselves agree is not settled. Nobody who uses the denier label in an effort to equate CC with the absolute certainty surrounding the Holocaust, the moon landing, or the Earth's ellipsoidal shape is interested in serious discussion or debate about the actual science. They're simply pursuing a personal political agenda.

This is total BS. The 'political agenda' is demonstrably and unequivocally a product of a concerted, highly-funded effort from entities whose interests are heavily invested in consumer-driven profit, and their personal desire to maximize their short-term gains over those who make those ill-gotten gains possible, to the ultimate detriment of themselves, those they're taking advantage of, and the planet as a whole.

The fact that GHGs produced by man are warming the planet at an historically unprecedented rate is a not disputed by any data.

Deniers are called such because they deny facts that are, as far as they can be, proven. AGW is no less proved that the Holocaust, the oblate sphericity of appropriately-sized masses rotating in space, the landing of humans on the moon, evolution, the relativistic effect of gravity on time, or a myriad of other scientific notions that are normally beneath the scope of the average, spoiled individuals who reap their benefits.

That you remain mired in the fantasy that there is a 'debate' among scientists about the reality of MMGW only illustrates how far you've been taken in by the Bernaysian propaganda so well utilized by the afore-mentioned vested interests.

The real debate is not is it real but how much and how fast. So far, the IPCC's predictions, as scientific policy making should be, for good reason, have been very, probably far too much so, conservative.

And, of course, whilst the hoi polloi bicker about media-driven conspiracy theories, the nuts and bolts keepers of 'civilization' plan for the inevitable future. Taking a look at what defense departments, civil engineering interests, re-insurance companies, medical-response interests, food security specialists, and a plethora of other organizations (whose ability to function [they know] will be affected by the rapidly approaching changes) are doing will convince any but the most media-blinded of the reality of the challenge facing humanity, and, by extension, earth as we know it.

[GordMay]

... those who "promote" CC vs. those who "oppose" it ...

I doubt there are many (idiots) who promote climate change, however, I expect you are referring to advocates of climate (mitigation) action.
Since the fundamental objection of (so called) skeptics is to policy, aimed at climate change mitigation, not the science, I propose we eliminate the epithets, and rephrase/reformulate the identities as:
Climate Action Proponents
vs
Climate Action Opponent.

All this talk about debatable science (by largely scientifically ignorant people, myself included) is the political equivalent of a carnie hand cajoling you to a ring toss, though none of the rings actually fit over the pegs, and someone will steal your wallet out of your pocket on your last throw.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by GordMay

I doubt there are many (idiots) who promote climate change, however, I expect you are referring to advocates of climate (mitigation) action.
Since the fundamental objection of (so called) skeptics is to policy, aimed at climate change mitigation, not the science, I propose we eliminate the epithets, and rephrase/reformulate the identities as:
Climate Action Proponents
vs
Climate Action Opponent.

A rephrasing would certainly be helpful, especially since I too had little understanding what you meant in your prior post (see below) about "advocates" & "opponents" of climate change. But rather than attempting to reformulate the "identities" of those on each "side" of the debate, I'd suggest you simply acknowledge there are many facets to the positions scientists & non-scientists have taken, and so focusing more on the science (as best we laymen can that is) as opposed to the people, personalities, groups who support or are skeptical of the mainstream position would be more accurate & realistic. This is exactly why the denier label is so distorting, but then that's also exactly why it's used.

Should you or anyone else be so inclined, the "official" position on the science surrounding the GBR can be found in the link provided by L-E in post 51. The "contrary" position from Professor Ridd is quoted in posts 24 & 26, along with information about Ridd himself.

Originally Posted by GordMay

Except that those on the other side of the debate, from "skeptics", are neither advocates nor supporters of climate change - they are opponents.

Definition of proponent:
one who argues in favor of something
a person who speaks publicly in support of a particular idea or plan of action
Synonyms:
advocate, exponent, supporter