Ocean acidifcation .

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by newhaul

this is the first sentence in the paper linked to
"Ocean acidification is expected to negatively impact calcifying organisms, yet we lack understanding of their acclimation potential in the natural environment."
Read we don't have have a clue.
But it is a start and its not like this isn't a natural process that has been going both ways for eons .

I'm glad you can reduce a scientific paper down to the first sentence in it's “Abstract”.
Here's the 2ND sentence, and the last (in their Abstract):
"... Ocean acidification is expected to negatively impact calcifying organisms, yet we lack understanding of their acclimation potential in the natural environment.

2ND: Here we measured geochemical proxies (δ11B and B/Ca) in Porites astreoides corals that have been growing for their entire life under low aragonite saturation (Ωsw: 0.77–1.85). This allowed us to assess the ability of these corals to manipulate the chemical conditions at the site of calcification (Ωcf), and hence their potential to acclimate to changing Ωsw..."
Last: ... The naturally elevated seawater dissolved inorganic carbon concentration at this study site shed light on how different carbonate chemistry parameters affect calcification conditions in corals...”

Well done Newhaul! Unlike you, these scientists don’t (claim to) have ALL the answers, to everything.
The final 2 sentences of their “Discussion”:


“... Using the geochemical proxies in combination with the bio-inorganic model brought forward by McCulloch et al. 30, we could explain 41% of the variability in coral growth rates along a Ωsw gradient. The variability which is not explained indicates that additional physiological and environmental processes contribute to the control of calcification rates in natural environments. This provides promising new avenues towards studying acclimation and adaptation potential of long-lived marine invertebrates such as corals...”

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by GordMay

I'm glad you can reduce a scientific paper down to the first sentence in it's “Abstract”.
Here's the 2ND sentence, and the last (in their Abstract):
"... Ocean acidification is expected to negatively impact calcifying organisms, yet we lack understanding of their acclimation potential in the natural environment.

2ND: Here we measured geochemical proxies (δ11B and B/Ca) in Porites astreoides corals that have been growing for their entire life under low aragonite saturation (Ωsw: 0.77–1.85). This allowed us to assess the ability of these corals to manipulate the chemical conditions at the site of calcification (Ωcf), and hence their potential to acclimate to changing Ωsw..."
Last: ... The naturally elevated seawater dissolved inorganic carbon concentration at this study site shed light on how different carbonate chemistry parameters affect calcification conditions in corals...”

Well done Newhaul! Unlike you, these scientists don’t (claim to) have ALL the answers, to everything.
The final 2 sentences of their “Discussion”:


“... Using the geochemical proxies in combination with the bio-inorganic model brought forward by McCulloch et al. 30, we could explain 41% of the variability in coral growth rates along a Ωsw gradient. The variability which is not explained indicates that additional physiological and environmental processes contribute to the control of calcification rates in natural environments. This provides promising new avenues towards studying acclimation and adaptation potential of long-lived marine invertebrates such as corals...”

lets see the last paragraph says the same thing . They say they can explain 41% which means they can't explain it .
59% natural unknown just in fancy terminology

So what is your point aside from agreeing with my assessment .

They don't have a clue .

And the absolute last sentence says give us more money to blow on it

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by newhaul

l... They don't have a clue ...

Sometimes I enjoy my interactions with you, much in the way I enjoy playing peak-a-boo with a baby, or perhaps teasing a cat with a laser pointer.

This conversation is more like scratching an itchy eye with a razor blade, or perhaps a sabre.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by ImaginaryNumber

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0808103807.htm

Originally Posted by GordMay

“Using B isotopes and B/Ca in corals from low saturation springs to constrain calcification mechanisms” ~ by M. Wall, J. Fietzke, E. D. Crook & A. Paytan
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11519-9

Corals have been dominant framework builders of reef structures for millions of years. Ocean acidification, which is intensifying as climate change progresses, is increasingly affecting coral growth. Scientists have now answered some questions regarding whether and how corals can adapt to these changes by having gained important insights into the regulatory processes of coral calcification.

This alone tells us there is a pretty good chance that, despite the horrors inflicted upon them by mankind (or is it Big Oil???), there's a pretty good chance they'll make it.



History is a wonderful teacher. Except when it comes to climate crystal balling, it seems.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by GordMay

I'm glad you can reduce a scientific paper down to the first sentence in it's “Abstract”.

Originally Posted by GordMay

This conversation is more like scratching an itchy eye with a razor blade, or perhaps a sabre.

I understand completely, except I think it's more self-induced than the fault of others. In fact, I increasingly find it amusing that non-experts believe that merely by citing & quoting expert evidence, it automatically bestows credibility on whatever larger point they're trying to make. And then when another poster uses that same source to raise questions or doubts, frustration & anger sets in. If, as a lay person, you are going to cite expert evidence, then it seems to me that you should at least understand it well enough to be able to explain it in your own words, and be able to reasonably respond to questions & challenges.

So what are the parts of this study you quoted trying to say? That 41% of negative impacts derive from lower ph, and therefore "most" of the negative impact is due to natural variability? Or that most of the impact is unknown? Or that the negative impacts have thus far only been proven by models or in lab conditions, and corals behave differently in actual ocean environments? In other words, what exactly is this "scientific evidence" being cited for? I'm sure the scientists could explain it quite well, but what are you quoting it to demonstrate?

Speaking of the lay public, what's wrong with relying on the abstracts of the zillions of studies that are posted on these threads? Are we all supposed to pretend that we're scientists too? Here's a definition:

"A scientific abstract is an overview of a scientific paper intended to give researchers and other scientists a general understanding of a particular study without making them read the entire paper. In terms of research, reading an entire paper would be an extremely inefficient use of time, especially if that researcher is looking for a specific piece of information. Abstracts are used in scientific journals and research databases to make pertinent information more accessible to researchers and scientists. Because the abstract is a representation of a scientific paper, it's important to make the abstract as precise as possible."

https://study.com/academy/lesson/how...-abstract.html

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Sometimes I enjoy my interactions with you, much in the way I enjoy playing peak-a-boo with a baby, or perhaps teasing a cat with a laser pointer.

This conversation is more like scratching an itchy eye with a razor blade, or perhaps a sabre.

the abstract speaks for itself .

They admit themselves. They don't know .

[Marc1]

If you though burning of witches is a thing of the past, think again.
The new GWR (global warming religion) encourages this practice, rather the new modern version of defamation, censure, and termination of employment to name a few.

One of the constant bleating and whining of the warmist cheer leaders is that the barrier reef is just about dead, kaput, finished forever.

Fake news of course, to support the other fake cult of so called global warming.

Fake Photographs At Heart of Peter Ridd’s Sacking
Jennifer Marohasy 25 March 2019 , IPA TODAY, PUBLICATIONS, In The News, RESEARCH AREAS, Climate Change Originally appeared in Jennifer Marohasy Blog
Share:Print this pageEmail to someoneShare on FacebookTweet about this on TwitterShare on LinkedInPin on Pinterest
EARLY last year a professor of physics at James Cook University was sacked – after a successful career spanning some forty years. Peter Ridd had won many university awards, including the inaugural ‘Supervisor of the Year’, presumably nominated by one or more of his thirty-something PhD students. He published over 100 scientific papers and earned the university millions of dollars through consultancies. Some claim that it all came to a sorry end because he dared to question the consensus of scientific opinion concerning the health of the Great Barrier Reef – particularly the impact of global warming. The university claims it was because he had become “un-collegial” and did not follow various directives while disclosing confidential information. These issues will be argued in the Federal Circuit Court in Brisbane on Tuesday, when the matter is heard by Judge Salvatore Vasta. Very few people realize that at the heart of the case are a couple of what might be best described as “fake-news” photographs.

If Peter Ridd had become un-collegial and disclosed confidential information, it was because he was fed-up with the fake-news many of his colleagues continued to spread. As he wrote in chapter 1 of the book that I edited two years ago, a chapter entitled ‘The Extraordinary Resilience of Great Barrier Reef Corals, and Problems with Policy Science’:

“I [Peter Ridd] have carried out half-a-dozen audits on some of the science claiming damage to the Great Barrier Reef, and in every case I have discovered serious problems.”

Ridd was censored a final time by the University soon after the book chapter was published, and then, when he refused to remain silent about this, he was sacked. His first censoring by the University had been two years earlier, just after he sent Peter Michael, a News Ltd journalists, photographs that showed spectacular and healthy corals growing off Stone Reef not far from Bowen in Central Queensland.

Ridd has spent his entire university career studying the reef – the first decade as part of a team measuring water quality in the inner Great Barrier Reef, including port facilities and river mouths. Ridd was responsible for the invention of three instruments, all built at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University and concerned with measuring the muddiness, technically known as turbidity, of water.

His colleagues, Piers Larcombe and Ken Woolfe, published several seminal papers concluding that the turbidity of the inner reef waters is controlled by the size of the waves varying with the wind and weather, not adjacent land use.*

Yet the popular message from prominent scientists has been that sediment from farming and mining is killing corals. In particular, the “before and after photographs” of Stone Reef have been acclaimed and were promoted by Terry Hughes of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies as evidence that sediment has destroyed the fringing coral reefs off Stone Island.

Historical photographs supposedly taken at the same location circa 1890 (left) and 1994 (right), off Stone Island. The profile of the far horizon is similar, but not the same.
The photographs have now become an iconic symbol of reef ruin, but as Ridd wrote to journalist Peter Michaels:

“I have always been highly sceptical of these photographs … My own work has shown that this explanation is virtually impossible especially for locations such as this. In addition it does not take account of the fact that these inshore reefs can change dramatically with time especially with the passage of cyclones which can temporarily obliterate them. Ten years after a cyclone they may have fully recovered.

“The presentation of the photographs also gives us the impression that we know where the original 100-year-old picture was taken. In fact, we can only guess within a kilometre or two, and in this area it would not be unusual to find great coral in one spot and nothing a kilometre away. The selection of the position of where the modern photo was taken can thus decide what message we see. Finally, seeing dead reef does not necessarily mean that it died recently. In fact there are literally hundreds of square kilometres of dead reef-flat on the GBR which was killed due to the slow sealevel fall of about a meter that has occurred over the last 5000 years. This has left a lot of coral high and dry at low tide which kills the coral. It is easy to take a picture of a dead reef, but it does not mean it died recently.

“A month or so ago I decided to see if there was good coral in the area that these pictures were taken so I asked a couple of my field technicians to take some photographs in the area with the same island backdrop as the two original pictures. You will note that there is spectacular coral living there – at least in many spots within the area that the original photos were taken.” End quote.

I am quoting extracts from the email that Ridd sent to Peter Michael three years ago. He also commented in that email:

“Any decent marine scientist or boat owner around Bowen, could have told you there is lots of coral around Bowen and that it is spectacular.”

Rather than investigate, Peter Michael sent the photographs and correspondence from Ridd to Terry Hughes, the scientist who had been claiming these same corals off Stone Island were all dead. That correspondence was immediately passed to university administrators, and then used to censor Peter Ridd for being un-collegial. This began the process which eventually resulted in Peter Ridd’s sacking last year, in early 2018.

Seeing is believing, yet the truth in the 2015 photographs showing healthy corals was ignored.

I’m hoping that Peter Ridd’s correspondence to journalist Peter Michael will be tabled in the Federal Circuit Court this week for all to see, and for all to judge. There is no need of scientific qualifications to see that there is still spectacular fringing coral reef around Stone Island.

This is but one example of the fake news continually propagated about the imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef.

Sixteen years ago, I wrote about how a naturally occurring dioxin was incorrectly classified as a pesticide from sugarcane farming and then blamed for the death of two dugongs that had been killed in fishing nets.

A two-year investigation by the National Research Centre for Environmental Toxicology concluded that this specific dioxin was common in soils along the entire Queensland coastline, and predated the era of European settlement … however, the fake news about “pesticide kills dugongs” continued to be repeated by the media and was added to a key report by Queensland’s then Chief Scientist, Dr Joe Baker.

The litany of false claims when it comes to the Great Barrier Reef is as spectacular as the many healthy clown fish that continue to amuse and entertain anyone who dives into its warm waters.

I’m hopeful that Peter Ridd will win his case this week, but it is likely to be argued on the basis of an academic’s right to intellectual freedom. It is unclear how much evidence about the actual state of the Great Barrier Reef will be heard – if any.

If Ridd wins, the assumption may be that this academic is nevertheless wrong in detail – and the Great Barrier Reef is ailing, if not from bad farming practices then from catastrophic human-caused global warming. To report that the Great Barrier Reef may be in good health – or at least that the fringing corals off Stone Island have not been harmed by farming – would be to admit that much of what has been reported over recent decades is fake news. It is. Fake news, and sometimes accompanied by fake photographs.

* Specifically, the prevailing south-easterly trade winds have a dominant influence. The wind and resulting waves produce a current that flows northward. The current traps sediment in north-facing bays because they are relatively protected from winds blowing from the south-east. Importantly, this research established that any additional sediment coming down the rivers will have no effect on the muddiness of the waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

One of the most important technical papers is ‘Increased sediment supply to the Great Barrier Reef will not increase sediment accumulation at most coral reefs’ by P. Larcombe and K.J. Woolfe in the journal Coral Reefs, volume 18, page 163-190, published in 1999.

Quoting directly from this technical paper:

“The interplay between coral reefs and terrigenous sediment along the inner-shelf of the GBR shelf can be discussed in terms of two principle components, sediment accumulation and suspended sediment (the latter being the main regional contributor towards turbidity). Sediment accumulation describes the increase in thick- ness of a sediment body, caused by addition of material at its upper surface. In this context, accumulation is a regional geological phenomenon, and has probably played a significant role in controlling the distribution of coral reefs within the GBR at various stages of sea level, primarily because accumulating sediments blanket substrates otherwise suitable for colonisation by corals.

In contrast, turbidity is a transient oceanographic phenomenon, that is temporally and spatially variable because it is largely related to physical forces acting on the sea bed. The role of turbidity in influencing the distribution of corals is thus also spatially variable, related to regional variations in turbidity regimes, and, also on a regional scale, is probably partly controlled by the location of accumulations of muddy sediments.

It is also necessary to distinguish between changes in the turbidity of rivers entering the GBR lagoon and changes in turbidity in the lagoon itself. Few coral reefs occur near river mouths, because of the high turbidity, rates of sediment accumulation, and low availability of suitable substrates generally associated with such environments.

… In most places on the inner shelf, the thickness of the sediment wedge means that there is ample (muddy) sediment immediately available for resuspension. Sediment availability does not limit the concentration of suspended sediment (and largely, turbidity) in the water column, rather the controls are hydrodynamic in nature.

[Marc1]

And this article when old, says it in a much more eloquent language.

The Great Great Barrier Reef Swindle
By Peter Ridd - posted Thursday, 19 July 2007

Those of you who watched the ABC’s presentation of The Great Global Warming Swindle might not have been convinced by the arguments challenging the conventional wisdom that carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming. However, it should be apparent that scientists and politicians such as Al Gore, who have been telling us that the science is unquestionable on this issue, have been stretching the truth. It seems that there are some good reasons to believe that we may have been swindled.

Closer to home, there is a swindle by scientists, politicians and most green organisations regarding the health of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). We are told that the reef is a third of the way to ecological extinction, is being smothered by sediments, is polluted by nutrients and pesticides, and is being cooked by global warming. Some scientists and organisations give the reef only a couple of decades before it is finished.

In the light of all this dismal news comes a new study by Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) which indicates that the corals are more tolerant to rising waters temperatures than first thought by most people.

Under conditions of extremely high water temperature, corals expel the symbiotic algae called zooxanthelae that reside within the polyp making them appear bleached white. Some coral die from this bleaching and there have recently been some major mass bleaching events in the Great Barrier Reef and around the world, particularly in 1998 and 2002. The AIMS work shows that the corals can adapt to rising water temperatures by using strains of zooxanthelae that make them tolerant to higher temperatures.

In biological circles, it is common to compare coral reefs to canaries, i.e. beautiful and delicate organisms that are easily killed. The analogy is pushed further by claiming that, just as canaries were used to detect gas in coal mines, coral reefs are the canaries of the world and their death is a first indication of our apocalyptic greenhouse future. The bleaching events of 1998 and 2002 were our warning. Heed them now or retribution will be visited upon us.

In fact a more appropriate creature with which to compare corals would be cockroaches - at least for their ability to survive. If our future brings us total self-annihilation by nuclear war, pollution or global warming, my bet is that both cockroaches and corals will survive.

Their track-record is impressive. Corals have survived 300 million years of massively varying climate both much warmer and much cooler than today, far higher CO2 levels than we see today, and enormous sea level changes. Corals saw the dinosaurs come and go, and cruised through mass extinction events that left so many other organisms as no more than a part of the fossil record.

Corals are particularly well adapted to temperature changes and in general, the warmer the better. It seems odd that coral scientists are worrying about global warming because this is one group of organisms that like it hot. Corals are most abundant in the tropics and you certainly do not find fewer corals closer to the equator. Quite the opposite, the further you get away from the heat, the worse the corals. A cooling climate is a far greater threat.

The scientific evidence about the effect of rising water temperatures on corals is very encouraging. In the GBR, growth rates of corals have been shown to be increasing over the last 100 years, at a time when water temperatures have risen. This is not surprising as the highest growth rates for corals are found in warmer waters. Further, all the species of corals we have in the GBR are also found in the islands, such as PNG, to our north where the water temperatures are considerably hotter than in the GBR. Despite the bleaching events of 1998 and 2002, most of the corals of the GBR did not bleach and of those that did, most have fully recovered.

Of course, some corals on the Queensland coast are regularly stressed from heat, viz. the remarkable corals of Moreton Bay near Brisbane which are stressed by lack of heat in winter. A couple of degrees of global warming would make them grow much better.

Even the GBR has seen massive changes in its comparatively short life. Eighteen thousand years ago, the GBR did not exist as water levels were about 100m lower than today. At that time, the Australian coast was about 100km from its present position, and the small hills upon which the reefs were to form dotted a broad and flat coastal plain that would become the GBR lagoon. When the sea level started to rise at the end of the ice age, the coast eroded at a phenomenal rate. The Aboriginal people living on these coastal plains lost land at a rate of about 50m each year as they witnessed the birth of one of the natural wonders of the world.

The reef was born in conditions that most biologists would regard as horrific for corals and far worse than what most of the present GBR would see: rising temperatures, high water turbidity due to the erosion, high nutrient concentrations due to erosion and the closer proximity of river mouths, rising CO2 concentrations, and rapidly rising sea levels (10mm per year). These are all factors presently regarded as threats to the GBR.

A few millennia later, Aboriginal people were to witness the greatest loss of coral ever seen by humans in Australia, for about 5,000 years ago, whilet civilisations were being born around the world, the sea level of eastern Australia started to fall. The coral reefs that had grown rapidly upwards to the low tide level were now exposed to the air and sun during spring tides. They died and formed the extensive dead areas called reef flat that make up a large proportion of many reefs in the GBR. It is ironic that if we see a modest sea level rise of one metre due to global warming, these dead areas of reef will explode into life, potentially doubling the coral cover. Sea level rise will be bad for Bangladesh and Venice but it will be good for the GBR.

Other threats are also overstated. Studies have shown that the quantity of sediment in rivers’ plumes that wash out into the lagoons is much less than sediment that is resuspended from the seabed every time the south-easterly trade winds blow. Pollution due to nutrients is also probably restricted to a few reefs close to a couple of river mouths as the rest of the lagoon receives relatively small nutrient loads from rivers compared to other sources, and the water is rapidly flushed to the Coral Sea.

Fishing pressure is very limited. The coast adjacent to the GBR contains about half a million people compared with 50 million for the similarly sized Caribbean reefs. Most Queenslanders never visit the reef and do not use it as a significant food source unlike most other reefs around the world. The northern 1,000 kilometres of the reef has a population that can be counted in 100’s. It has been barely touched by mankind.

[Exile]

Interesting article, and written so even I understood.

I'm waiting for Puddleduck to explain in equally clear language why it's all wrong.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by Exile

Interesting article, and written so even I understood.

I'm waiting for Puddleduck to explain in equally clear language why it's all wrong.

..Or jackdale posting a DeSmogBlog link on Ridd that will invariably paint him as a crackpot.

[Puddleduck]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

there's a pretty good chance they'll make it.

Here we go again!

Please Mr expert let’s go back to basics, define “they”. Coral reefs, corals or Porites? Which one you talking about exactly?

Big Hint... which species out of the hundreds of coral sp. does your false idol worship? If you can be ass’ed to re-read the paper bear in mind ‘rate of change’, it’s mentioned and is important!

Better still why? Answer these and I’ll know your legit, I don’t expect you too.


How you getting on with your sea bass home work?

Hint key word search...

Sea bass

Olfactory

Reproduction (this bits important for species survival not just grant acceptance!)

[Puddleduck]

Originally Posted by Marc1

If you though burning of witches is a thing of the past, think again.
The new GWR (global warming religion) encourages this practice, rather the new modern version of defamation, censure, and termination of employment to name a few.

One of the constant bleating and whining of the warmist cheer leaders is that the barrier reef is just about dead, kaput, finished forever.

Fake news of course, to support the other fake cult of so called global warming.

Fake Photographs At Heart of Peter Ridd’s Sacking
Jennifer Marohasy 25 March 2019 , IPA TODAY, PUBLICATIONS, In The News, RESEARCH AREAS, Climate Change Originally appeared in Jennifer Marohasy Blog
Share:Print this pageEmail to someoneShare on FacebookTweet about this on TwitterShare on LinkedInPin on Pinterest
EARLY last year a professor of physics at James Cook University was sacked – after a successful career spanning some forty years. Peter Ridd had won many university awards, including the inaugural ‘Supervisor of the Year’, presumably nominated by one or more of his thirty-something PhD students. He published over 100 scientific papers and earned the university millions of dollars through consultancies. Some claim that it all came to a sorry end because he dared to question the consensus of scientific opinion concerning the health of the Great Barrier Reef – particularly the impact of global warming. The university claims it was because he had become “un-collegial” and did not follow various directives while disclosing confidential information. These issues will be argued in the Federal Circuit Court in Brisbane on Tuesday, when the matter is heard by Judge Salvatore Vasta. Very few people realize that at the heart of the case are a couple of what might be best described as “fake-news” photographs.

If Peter Ridd had become un-collegial and disclosed confidential information, it was because he was fed-up with the fake-news many of his colleagues continued to spread. As he wrote in chapter 1 of the book that I edited two years ago, a chapter entitled ‘The Extraordinary Resilience of Great Barrier Reef Corals, and Problems with Policy Science’:

“I [Peter Ridd] have carried out half-a-dozen audits on some of the science claiming damage to the Great Barrier Reef, and in every case I have discovered serious problems.”

Ridd was censored a final time by the University soon after the book chapter was published, and then, when he refused to remain silent about this, he was sacked. His first censoring by the University had been two years earlier, just after he sent Peter Michael, a News Ltd journalists, photographs that showed spectacular and healthy corals growing off Stone Reef not far from Bowen in Central Queensland.

Ridd has spent his entire university career studying the reef – the first decade as part of a team measuring water quality in the inner Great Barrier Reef, including port facilities and river mouths. Ridd was responsible for the invention of three instruments, all built at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University and concerned with measuring the muddiness, technically known as turbidity, of water.

His colleagues, Piers Larcombe and Ken Woolfe, published several seminal papers concluding that the turbidity of the inner reef waters is controlled by the size of the waves varying with the wind and weather, not adjacent land use.*

Yet the popular message from prominent scientists has been that sediment from farming and mining is killing corals. In particular, the “before and after photographs” of Stone Reef have been acclaimed and were promoted by Terry Hughes of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies as evidence that sediment has destroyed the fringing coral reefs off Stone Island.

Historical photographs supposedly taken at the same location circa 1890 (left) and 1994 (right), off Stone Island. The profile of the far horizon is similar, but not the same.
The photographs have now become an iconic symbol of reef ruin, but as Ridd wrote to journalist Peter Michaels:

“I have always been highly sceptical of these photographs … My own work has shown that this explanation is virtually impossible especially for locations such as this. In addition it does not take account of the fact that these inshore reefs can change dramatically with time especially with the passage of cyclones which can temporarily obliterate them. Ten years after a cyclone they may have fully recovered.

“The presentation of the photographs also gives us the impression that we know where the original 100-year-old picture was taken. In fact, we can only guess within a kilometre or two, and in this area it would not be unusual to find great coral in one spot and nothing a kilometre away. The selection of the position of where the modern photo was taken can thus decide what message we see. Finally, seeing dead reef does not necessarily mean that it died recently. In fact there are literally hundreds of square kilometres of dead reef-flat on the GBR which was killed due to the slow sealevel fall of about a meter that has occurred over the last 5000 years. This has left a lot of coral high and dry at low tide which kills the coral. It is easy to take a picture of a dead reef, but it does not mean it died recently.

“A month or so ago I decided to see if there was good coral in the area that these pictures were taken so I asked a couple of my field technicians to take some photographs in the area with the same island backdrop as the two original pictures. You will note that there is spectacular coral living there – at least in many spots within the area that the original photos were taken.” End quote.

I am quoting extracts from the email that Ridd sent to Peter Michael three years ago. He also commented in that email:

“Any decent marine scientist or boat owner around Bowen, could have told you there is lots of coral around Bowen and that it is spectacular.”

Rather than investigate, Peter Michael sent the photographs and correspondence from Ridd to Terry Hughes, the scientist who had been claiming these same corals off Stone Island were all dead. That correspondence was immediately passed to university administrators, and then used to censor Peter Ridd for being un-collegial. This began the process which eventually resulted in Peter Ridd’s sacking last year, in early 2018.

Seeing is believing, yet the truth in the 2015 photographs showing healthy corals was ignored.

I’m hoping that Peter Ridd’s correspondence to journalist Peter Michael will be tabled in the Federal Circuit Court this week for all to see, and for all to judge. There is no need of scientific qualifications to see that there is still spectacular fringing coral reef around Stone Island.

This is but one example of the fake news continually propagated about the imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef.

Sixteen years ago, I wrote about how a naturally occurring dioxin was incorrectly classified as a pesticide from sugarcane farming and then blamed for the death of two dugongs that had been killed in fishing nets.

A two-year investigation by the National Research Centre for Environmental Toxicology concluded that this specific dioxin was common in soils along the entire Queensland coastline, and predated the era of European settlement … however, the fake news about “pesticide kills dugongs” continued to be repeated by the media and was added to a key report by Queensland’s then Chief Scientist, Dr Joe Baker.

The litany of false claims when it comes to the Great Barrier Reef is as spectacular as the many healthy clown fish that continue to amuse and entertain anyone who dives into its warm waters.

I’m hopeful that Peter Ridd will win his case this week, but it is likely to be argued on the basis of an academic’s right to intellectual freedom. It is unclear how much evidence about the actual state of the Great Barrier Reef will be heard – if any.

If Ridd wins, the assumption may be that this academic is nevertheless wrong in detail – and the Great Barrier Reef is ailing, if not from bad farming practices then from catastrophic human-caused global warming. To report that the Great Barrier Reef may be in good health – or at least that the fringing corals off Stone Island have not been harmed by farming – would be to admit that much of what has been reported over recent decades is fake news. It is. Fake news, and sometimes accompanied by fake photographs.

* Specifically, the prevailing south-easterly trade winds have a dominant influence. The wind and resulting waves produce a current that flows northward. The current traps sediment in north-facing bays because they are relatively protected from winds blowing from the south-east. Importantly, this research established that any additional sediment coming down the rivers will have no effect on the muddiness of the waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

One of the most important technical papers is ‘Increased sediment supply to the Great Barrier Reef will not increase sediment accumulation at most coral reefs’ by P. Larcombe and K.J. Woolfe in the journal Coral Reefs, volume 18, page 163-190, published in 1999.

Quoting directly from this technical paper:

“The interplay between coral reefs and terrigenous sediment along the inner-shelf of the GBR shelf can be discussed in terms of two principle components, sediment accumulation and suspended sediment (the latter being the main regional contributor towards turbidity). Sediment accumulation describes the increase in thick- ness of a sediment body, caused by addition of material at its upper surface. In this context, accumulation is a regional geological phenomenon, and has probably played a significant role in controlling the distribution of coral reefs within the GBR at various stages of sea level, primarily because accumulating sediments blanket substrates otherwise suitable for colonisation by corals.

In contrast, turbidity is a transient oceanographic phenomenon, that is temporally and spatially variable because it is largely related to physical forces acting on the sea bed. The role of turbidity in influencing the distribution of corals is thus also spatially variable, related to regional variations in turbidity regimes, and, also on a regional scale, is probably partly controlled by the location of accumulations of muddy sediments.

It is also necessary to distinguish between changes in the turbidity of rivers entering the GBR lagoon and changes in turbidity in the lagoon itself. Few coral reefs occur near river mouths, because of the high turbidity, rates of sediment accumulation, and low availability of suitable substrates generally associated with such environments.

… In most places on the inner shelf, the thickness of the sediment wedge means that there is ample (muddy) sediment immediately available for resuspension. Sediment availability does not limit the concentration of suspended sediment (and largely, turbidity) in the water column, rather the controls are hydrodynamic in nature.

Fake photos...nope, fake claims, yes!

Suggest you look up P. Ridds’s last GBR press releases, he references them in his arguments!

Besides his specialism isn’t coral biology. See above!

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Puddleduck

Fake photos...nope, fake claims, yes!

Suggest you look up P. Ridds’s last GBR press releases, he references them in his arguments!

Besides his specialism isn’t coral biology. See above!

suggest you back your assertions with verifiable facts just like the rest of us do

In other words post links to your references

[Puddleduck]

Originally Posted by Exile

Interesting article, and written so even I understood

So you see the limitations right? That’s being objective!

[GordMay]

[quote... I'm sure the scientists could explain it quite well, but what are you quoting it to demonstrate? ...[/quote]
I took no position. My first citation of the scientific paper was intended to amplify the Science Daily article (based on that paper) linked by ImaginaryNumber, thinking it might further inform the interested reader.

... A scientific abstract is an overview of a scientific paper ...

I agree about the importance of a clear & informative Abstract, and often quote them, myself. Unfortunately, newhaul chose to imply that the introductory sentence represents the authors’ state of ignorance; stating that they learned nothing from their work, and know nothing. I believe that to be an unfair misrepresentation of the study (47% = 0), and the authors’ knowledge. Also believing that newhaul is too intelligent to fully believe that, I must also believe he was being intellectually dishonest.
Hence my frustration.