More Bad News for Caribbean Coral Reefs

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Tar34

Well here is an objective lecture on Climate Change under the Science Curriculum Header / Sustainability. This will show how objective Science is taught in Canadian Universities.
Faculty of Science

I suspect your problem is more with balance, than objectivity.

Objectivity doesn’t require balance.

Balanced reporting is generally considered good journalism, and balance does have its virtues. The public should be able to get information on all sides of an issue; but that doesn't mean that all sides of the issue deserve equal weight, because that results in a a manufactured/invented controversy.

Teaching (like journalism) that falsely grants all viewpoints the same scientific legitimacy effectively undo one of the main aims of science - to weigh the evidence.

A survey of articles in U.S. newspapers published between 1988 and 2002, found that 52.6% of those that dealt with global warming balanced the human contribution to global warming with a skeptical viewpoint. Meanwhile, the scientific evidence for the human contribution to global warming became ever more convincing. A survey of 928 scientific journal articles published between 1993 and 2003 found that none of them disagreed with the idea that human activities are causing global warming. Such a disconnect between the true views of the scientific community and those represented in the popular press make it difficult for a casual reader to get an accurate picture of the science at stake.

There’s a disturbingly commonplace and superficially commonsensical idea that: “anything is possible”; but, in fact, not all ideas have equal merit.

"It is possible...even though hugely unlikely...that a fair and honest roulette wheel will turn up hitting number 21 (red) five hundred times in a row."
In some sort of pure abstract hypothetical theory, maybe it is possible. But it won't happen. Mark this well: it will not happen.
And that which will not happen isn't "possible" in a pragmatic sense. It isn't meaningfully possible.
Rush Limbaugh might say something sensible; but it’s not likely that he will.

[John Drake]

Hi Gord

The questions are perfectly legitimate. Science is about asking questions.

Protected reefs ARE fairing much better than unprotected ones. The unprotected reefs in FL and the carib have been devastated. This obviously points to human activity...but does undermine the argument for a global warming cause. A conundrum for those folks, I guess.

None of the predictions by global warming "scientists" have come to fruition. The predictions made in the 1970's are not even close to conditions today, in terms of sea level rise and ocean temperatures.

Climate changes. Climate scientists have a 50% success rate at predicting what will happen in 5 days, let alone 5 decades. Current predictions for sea level rise and ocean temperatures are ORDERES OF MAGNITUDE apart.

One thing everyone does agree one, the state of corals today is terrible. I suggest to you that reversing this trend will be aided by keeping people out of the water, much more so than by trading carbon credits.

But, no one will be willing to give up sailing and diving to do so. So, how could you possibly ask everyone to give up gas?

Respectfully

John

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by John Drake

... One of the first papers published on caribbean coral diseases and die offs was actually written by me. And a colleague who continues to be promenent in the field. That was in the early 1980's and our speculation then was a microorganism, not some specter such as global warming, but something we could demonstrate through observation, analysis and experimentation ...

I wold be very interested in reading that paper.

Is it your hypothesis/contention that CO2 forced warming isn't playing a significant role in the "die off"?

[perchance]

Originally Posted by delmarrey

So, why don't they just move north?

They would never make it through the immigration process.

[Tar34]

Originally Posted by GordMay

I wold be very interested in reading that paper.

Is it your hypothesis/contention that CO2 forced warming isn't playing a significant role in the "die off"?

Does Co2 force warming? Or is the rise in Co2 the consequence of warming?

[David_Old_Jersey]

Originally Posted by Mr B

The millions of wild animals that we have slaughtered over the last couple of hundred years,

Wildebeast, Elephants, Bison, Deer, That did roam in their millions, should put us in credit against car emissions, Or make us break even, Methane and CO2

Just a thought,

99% of creatures that ever existed on earth are estimated (humans not around to count them!, let alone kill 'em!) to be extinct.

90%(plus?) of earths history has had a climate of barren rock / single cell organisms.

90% (plus?) of earths futurs will be as barren rock as the planet slowly heads into the sun (and / or the sun slowly explodes - I forget which, probably a bit of both!).

Which altogether means that the natural state of the earth is NOT full of nice green stuff or cuddly creatures. and of course neither are we by the same measure - but we be winning the evolution race , suck it up Mr Coral .

[David_Old_Jersey]

Originally Posted by tropicalescape

Having lived and worked in the NW pacific island I know for a fact that the sea level has risen...I have a house at N Topsail Island in NC and I was 5 houses away from the ocean 15 yrs ago ,now I am 2 houses away..anyone that says the sealevel is not coming up is either blind and stupid or they are in denial for some reason or the other...

Well, I live on a small island - and no sea level changes here. But our island is mostly granite . and where the coast is low level that nice Mr Hitler built us some very nice concrete sea walls ....which were built to last 1000 years .

[osirissail]

The report in the IP and referenced report (IUCN) appear to be another in a never ending saga of observing a natural occurrence and then using it to further a political objective (e.g. fund raising) for a particular cause. Mildly close examination of the source reports yields the classical "re-phrasing" of the original to fit the political objective. In this case the observed decline in live Caribbean Reefs. But it sure makes great forum discussions . . .

From the IUCN news release: “The major causes of coral decline are well known and include overfishing, pollution, disease and bleaching caused by rising temperatures resulting from the burning of fossil fuels,” says Carl Gustaf Lundin, Director of IUCN’s Global Marine and Polar Programme." you may notice that "rising temperatures" is the fifth listed possible cause. Yet the IP and referenced "More Bad News" moves it up to second place - or first place in the dying reefs category.

Furthermore, unsupported statements about Caribbean-wide surviving live reefs in the 1970's is derived from a couple of reports about the Florida Keys. I find it hardly valid to use a miniscule data set from one location to paint the entire Caribbean. That to me is extreme "over-reach."

After a decade as a "wanderer" in the Caribbean it is personally evident that large/mature fish are quite scarce these days. And reefs, well I have seen more healthy reefs than "90% dead/depleted" reefs. It is all in where you look. Painting the whole Caribbean based on U.S. V.I. reef observations and then deriving "climate change" as one of the primary culprits is also a lot of "over-reach."

One factor very obvious from the source report is the huge lack of data sets before 1998. Thereafter the subsequent huge increase in data source reports happens to coincide with the formation of the REEF.org which I joined and supported. And they did the first major efforts to accumulate valid and verifiable reports on the state of Caribbean reefs starting in 1998.

Add in that REEF.org found that the one major overlooked factor in reef bleaching was not water temperature but the overwhelming presence of "tourists" snorkeling, swimming and diving on the reefs that caused significant pH change in the water where thousands and thousands of human snorkeler/divers quite naturally "pee'd" into the water above and around the reefs.

Put all the above aside for the moment and ask yourself what possibly could these types of reports/news articles have on the reality of life in the Caribbean and its reefs? That is, beyond the source organizations pleas for funds/funding for more studies.

The answer - no change in current reality. The USVI's and other "tourist" islands are not going to stop scuba/snorkel tourists from going to the remaining reefs.

Overfishing - That is probably the one problem with the least amount of disagreement overall. Yet, who is going to tell the natives of these islands and the international fishing fleets that "raid" the area to "please don't over-fish?" Ain't gonna happen. The locals will strip the fish until there are none left - which is pretty much were the situation is today. I've seen schools of juvenile fish on an island reef during one day of snorkeling and gone back the next day to find several local boats gill netting the critters into extinction. Fact of life.

So, personally, all I can see from these periodic press releases of doom and gloom are the pleas for the particular organization's continued financial funding from either the public or governments.

All this has been hashed out on CF multiple times and makes some great long threads where everybody gets a chance to express themselves - which is good. But for those into reality, nothing is really going to be done and from my experience, beyond declaring new "preserves/parks, etc." there are no solutions or ways to stop, slow or mitigate the progress of nature.

[downunder]

Originally Posted by John Drake

.................................................. .........................................

.................................................. ...............................
But, you should probably stick to the original topic, the dying of coral reefs. There are many impacts on corals and the cumulative effects of all the people who use the reefs is tremendous.

What policies would help prevent further coral degradation: DON'T SAIL, DON'T MOTOR, DON'T DIVE, DON'T FISH, don't run around in your dink, turn OFF your bildge pump, don't eat seafood.

The above would have a much more beneficial impact on corals than trading carbon credits would. And positive results would be observed more quickly.

So, what should be done?

Respectfully

J

Agreed

Carbon credits trading makes Govt feel good and finacial traders rich.

[jackdale]

Originally Posted by Tar34

Does Co2 force warming? Or is the rise in Co2 the consequence of warming?

Historically CO2 was an amplifier to the natural triggers, now it is the trigger that has compromised the natural cycles, according to which we should be in a cooling phase. Water vapour is a major amplifier and other green house gases contribute to warming.

[tropicalescape]

Originally Posted by John Drake

Oh boy, you have a stroke and look what happens to the group.

One hates to wade in on these things, but really, 11 pages and the two "scientific" sources cited (the original NatGeo news blurb and the canadian lecture) are pathetically, woefully, terrbily inadequate pseudo-science puff pieces. NO data, no references, no peer review, no substance. The canadian lecture...balanced?? Not hardly, most of what this guy did was talk about newpaper articles and political polls. That is not science.

One of the first papers published on caribbean coral diseases and die offs was actually written by me. And a colleague who continues to be promenent in the field. That was in the early 1980's and our speculation then was a microorganism, not some specter such as global warming, but something we could demonstrate through observation, analysis and experimentation.

Speculation regarding urchin dies offs is also plausable. But, I suspect there are many reasons. A much simpler and more likely cause is all the &*%@ tourists that come and impact the reefs on a weekly basis.

Fishing has an impact on the reef. What do you think the abrasion of all that monofiliment does to that single cell layer of coral, on living rock? And not just the lines from people fishing, but all the gobs of monofiliment that accumulate in the oceans and onto the reefs.

If you really want to get into the global warming debate (and I do not care to, it is far too specious a topic)you need to address several questions separately:

Is the earth warming, in some unnatural way?
Is this warming man made?
To what extent is it man made?
Can man do anything about it?

Ahh.... got you with the very first question.

And then after that, the following three questions are conundrums. They cannot be accounted for or adequately calculated given the lack of data. It would take a super computer to do the analysis of all sources (earths position to the sun, solar activity, space weather, geologic activity, volcanic activity, cow and sheep farts, release of methane from the oceans, the pH of the seas), and to date, no one has done this.

The final question is also a conundrum. Since you cannot legislate all man made activity on earth, China, India and all other developing nations exempted themselves under the Kyoto protocol.

But, you should probably stick to the original topic, the dying of coral reefs. There are many impacts on corals and the cumulative effects of all the people who use the reefs is tremendous.

What policies would help prevent further coral degradation: DON'T SAIL, DON'T MOTOR, DON'T DIVE, DON'T FISH, don't run around in your dink, turn OFF your bildge pump, don't eat seafood.

The above would have a much more beneficial impact on corals than trading carbon credits would. And positive results would be observed more quickly.

So, what should be done?

Respectfully

J

Glad your back,hope all is good...

[tropicalescape]

Originally Posted by David_Old_Jersey

Well, I live on a small island - and no sea level changes here. But our island is mostly granite . and where the coast is low level that nice Mr Hitler built us some very nice concrete sea walls ....which were built to last 1000 years .

In the western islands of the Pacific you can see it happening,maybe like Tar said its erosion,but the sea level is also rising,having seen crops that were 150 ft above the sea one year then return 3 yrs later and the sea has poisoned the Taro patch and there were no storms..

[masalai]

Ahhh, just wait for the ice caps on top of the landmass of Greenland, Iceland and Antarctica to melt and drown all the major population centres of the world - Some academic with more resources than sense or capacity to do something constructive with his time seems to have run a radar over these iced regions and calculated the volume of water therein - From memory some 9 meters of sea level rise is the result, - - but I am sceptical and cannot find the "research" no matter what phrase I enter in my search engines...

[Therapy]

Originally Posted by downunder

Agreed

Carbon credits trading makes Govt feel good and finacial traders rich.

Yep. I know the sister of one of those. International, smart and very rich.
Flys all over.

Heh.

[John Drake]

[side note]

Thanks, Tropical Escape. I appreciate the kind words.

Having a stroke was a very serious wake up call and it has taken me three months to be able to work at the computer again. I am recovering well and will soon get back to work.

The boat had to sell, though, since there was no returning to it. Not much possibility of cruising now. BUT......I am very thankful that I got out there and got my cruising in. I left the boat with no regrets (as the paramedic truck rushed me to the ER).

More reason to get out there now. (and the reefs are suffering...I could see a difference in the 6-7 yrs I have been here)

No worries. And many thanks.

[side not over]