Chasing coral

[DH-Reef]

but I will say that it's not up for debate anymore whether or not we as a species are contributing to the problem but rather how much longer does this planet have under the increasing destruction put forth on our part.

Classic. 160 years of measuring 4 billion years of existence, but we know that we are responsible for the cooling...oh wait, it's warming now, yeah that's our fault, too. Oh, let's just call it Climate change and say that we are responsible for whatever happens.

In fact, I'll do my part...I'll pay 10 people NOT to have a reef aquarium, just so that I can have mine. Too funny.

It may not be up for debate to the AL Gores of the world, but a lot of people still have a lot of pretty logical, common sense question...human existence guilt aside.

 

[Joseph Pagnotta]

I was literally sick to my stomach after seeing before and after pictures of The Great Barrier Reef, our government as well as Government Throughout the world,were made aware of this at least 20 years ago, but they looked at it like the Science was Crazy.

 

[Angel125]

Maybe some need to watch ( who killed the electric car )

 

[Maacc]

We should do what we can to mitigate impact where we can, but we need to be careful and not necessarily buy into current agenda and 'consensus'. There is unfortunately a lot of money and power at stake on both sides of this debate, both big oil and big green energy. Unfortunately, a lot of these projections are based on models that have problems. The fact that the models aren't accurate doesn't necessarily mean that man has no stake and impact on global climate change, but it also doesn't mean that man is the primary driver of it either.
From a historical perspective we have had larger deltas in temperature in the last thousand years much less hundreds of millions of years reefs and corals have been around.
Further this as a matter of economics is complicated. It's not just a matter of do we reduce co2 or do nothing, but rather do we reduce co2 or do something else more effective in saving the reefs like reducing industrial/chemical/agricultural runoff, spend more on nuclear fusion development instead of toxic batteries. Do we try to ****** industrial development in the pre-industrial world both condemning them to a life of poverty and encouraging the pre-industrial practice of larger families or instead help them industrialize and then have the wealth that they themselves are prosperous enough that they will be active stewards of the planet because they are not fighting for survival.
There are a lot of moving parts and pieces here that have a very real effect on the lives of everyone and if done improperly, through coercion and misalocation of resources can have devastating consequences and bring about the very catastrophe trying to be avoided.

 

[njtiger aquariums]

I watched the show and enjoyed it. I agree its eye opening. My point of issue is they only hammered on the raise of the ocean temp. There many factor that is affecting the corals and not just the raise in the ocean temp. One big factor is over fishing the reefs. We are pulling fish out of the ocean in boat full which in turn affecting the balance of the system. Also all the trash and junk in the ocean isn't helping. They even noted once in the film about the garbage but really didn't say much about it. Also note a bleach coral isn't a dead coral. They even said that in the film. Yes the corals bleach but its a defense mechanism that the coral takes. It releases the dead polyps and leave the base (which is white) of the coral and new polyps attached in time. The problem is it takes time and these issues are happing quicker and quicker which is hurting the corals from growing back. Kinda remind me of a forest fire. The forest fire kills everything but in turn it opens up pinecones, which are pine tree seeds, and new forest starts growing. Just like in the forest if there no chance for the trees and plants to grown and take hold before the next fire the forest starts dying off. Over all I think its a good way to show people to stop ignoring the reefs and start taking action

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Unfortunately, a lot of these projections are based on models that have problems. The fact that the models aren't accurate doesn't necessarily mean that man has no stake and impact on global climate change, but it also doesn't mean that man is the primary driver of it either.

How do you know there are problems? Have you looked into the data and methodology yourself? Do you have the requisite education and experience to understand the methodology to identify potential issues? Do you have the data analysis experience to examine large sets of data, and are you able to determine which data are correct and which are not? Do you have a team of researchers who are able to peer review your findings? Did you then submit your findings to scientific journals for other scientists to review? Have you received feedback from other researchers, addressed their concerns, and determined that your findings and data are still relevant and correct? If so, please share your research, I would very much be interested in reading it. I would also be interested in hearing about your academic and research experience, as well as that of your co-authors, so I can apply the proper context to your findings.

It's worth noting that even issues with fairly broad consensus, such as the link between smoking and lung cancer, still have detractors and people who call the consensus into question. In this specific example, the detractors are mostly tobacco companies, but still, the point remain: anyone anywhere can call research into question. That doesn't mean the scientific process and findings aren't accurate, it just means that someone has taken issue with the process or the findings. If one was to discount the importance of consensus surrounding smoking causing lung cancer, they would be claiming that every single research team that has done clinical and scientific research around this issue has serious problems with their approach, data, methodology or all of the above. This is highly unlikely. The academic and scientific community has many layers of review in place. It's not impossible for junk research to be released, but it's almost impossible for it to gain consensus.

Interesting side note, the science and data behind climate change and man's influence in it are as agreed upon as the science and findings that show smoking causing lung cancer.

 

[A Toadstool Leather]

The solution I see if this gets really severe is to genetically engineer so called "super corals." However given that there are literally 100,s of reefbuilding corals this is impratical at best

 

[Henryt]

It's sad to see things die, but people get a grip on the whole global warming. Earth goes through ice ages and thaw out ages. Anyone stop to think how people migrated from Asia to North America? Bering straits. How were the straits walkable? Due to an ice age where ocean levels receded and exposed land. So we're humans to blame for the massive coral die offs that were onset by the cooling of waters worldwide? No. Earth is a living planet that changes temperature often.

Now let's talk about water pollution that's a bigger issue than climate change. Why? Because it's directly affected by man. All of the run off into the oceans that cause algae blooms that's a man made effect. But global warming- that's something that there is data in the earths rocks to prove that earth cools and warms up in cycles. And we cannot change that. Carbon credits is a phone baloney political bs made up by politicians just like the Paris climate agreement. It's so elected politicians can get a press event.

All animals on this planet are all terraformers. Ants, termites, locusts, elephants, humans. They all change their environment.

Remember, univeristies make up a lot crap just to keep getting funded.
Which is why we should all be dead by now according to scientists 100,80,60,40,20 years ago.
Saccharin causes cancer.....in rats.

 

[Opus]

" Now, children, come on over here. I'm going to tell you a bedtime story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Once upon a time, there lived a magnificent race of animals that dominated the world through age after age. They ran, they swam, and they fought and they flew, until suddenly, quite recently, they disappeared. Nature just gave up and started again. We weren't even apes then. We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks. And when we go, nature will start over. With the bees, probably. Nature knows when to give up, David."

 

[Gil03]

How do you know there are problems? Have you looked into the data and methodology yourself? Do you have the requisite education and experience to understand the methodology to identify potential issues? Do you have the data analysis experience to examine large sets of data, and are you able to determine which data are correct and which are not? Do you have a team of researchers who are able to peer review your findings? Did you then submit your findings to scientific journals for other scientists to review? Have you received feedback from other researchers, addressed their concerns, and determined that your findings and data are still relevant and correct? If so, please share your research, I would very much be interested in reading it. I would also be interested in hearing about your academic and research experience, as well as that of your co-authors, so I can apply the proper context to your findings.

It's worth noting that even issues with fairly broad consensus, such as the link between smoking and lung cancer, still have detractors and people who call the consensus into question. In this specific example, the detractors are mostly tobacco companies, but still, the point remain: anyone anywhere can call research into question. That doesn't mean the scientific process and findings aren't accurate, it just means that someone has taken issue with the process or the findings. If one was to discount the importance of consensus surrounding smoking causing lung cancer, they would be claiming that every single research team that has done clinical and scientific research around this issue has serious problems with their approach, data, methodology or all of the above. This is highly unlikely. The academic and scientific community has many layers of review in place. It's not impossible for junk research to be released, but it's almost impossible for it to gain consensus.

Interesting side note, the science and data behind climate change and man's influence in it are as agreed upon as the science and findings that show smoking causing lung cancer.

PREACH!! Saying we have little to no part in climate change is like saying the flat earthers movement has merit.

 

[spieszak]

I dove in Hawaii last year. There is massive bleaching in the reefs there. It's really eye opening.
I didn't know until that trip that sunscreen contributes to reef bleaching. It makes sense, but I had never thought about it.

This sunscreen thing is the result of ONE scientific study were corals were blasted with insane amounts of oxybenzone. I'm not saying ignore it, but it really seems odd to me that folks are so accepting of a single non replicated study, even to the point of Hawaii looking to ban sunscreens. We need to hold ourselves to higher standards than that. (like 97% of all climate scientists agree that climate change is contributed to by man)

 

[RonMidtownStomp]

A few things ---

1) There was a really cool video I watched where there is a section of really remote reef northwest of Australia that had suffered a lot of damage and in ten years it was almost fully recovered. I wonder what the recovery time on the GBR would be if it were given conditions where it could heal.

2) Has anyone watched the TED talk from Allan Savory? There are a lot of articles saying that it's "hard to reproduce his results," but his TED talk is very compelling. Even if it's hard to reproduce, it would certainly be worth any amount of effort to be able to figure out what is making it hard to reproduce and what we could do to be able to turn the deserts back into grasslands as he's been able to do. The argument that the deserts are releasing a tremendous amount of carbon that was previously stored is really interesting, and I don't see anyone arguing that point, just that his method of rehabilitating them "isn't scalable." Well, let's figure out how to scale it.

3) I was amazed at how healthy the reefs were in the Philippines when I went diving there two years ago. Huge colonies and incredible diversity.

4) I would also love to understand why small temperature changes have such a big impact on reefs in the ocean.

 

[Maacc]

How do you know there are problems? Have you looked into the data and methodology yourself? Do you have the requisite education and experience to understand the methodology to identify potential issues? Do you have the data analysis experience to examine large sets of data, and are you able to determine which data are correct and which are not? Do you have a team of researchers who are able to peer review your findings? Did you then submit your findings to scientific journals for other scientists to review? Have you received feedback from other researchers, addressed their concerns, and determined that your findings and data are still relevant and correct? If so, please share your research, I would very much be interested in reading it. I would also be interested in hearing about your academic and research experience, as well as that of your co-authors, so I can apply the proper context to your findings.

It's worth noting that even issues with fairly broad consensus, such as the link between smoking and lung cancer, still have detractors and people who call the consensus into question. In this specific example, the detractors are mostly tobacco companies, but still, the point remain: anyone anywhere can call research into question. That doesn't mean the scientific process and findings aren't accurate, it just means that someone has taken issue with the process or the findings. If one was to discount the importance of consensus surrounding smoking causing lung cancer, they would be claiming that every single research team that has done clinical and scientific research around this issue has serious problems with their approach, data, methodology or all of the above. This is highly unlikely. The academic and scientific community has many layers of review in place. It's not impossible for junk research to be released, but it's almost impossible for it to gain consensus.

Interesting side note, the science and data behind climate change and man's influence in it are as agreed upon as the science and findings that show smoking causing lung cancer.

It's not just me people on both sides of the argument agree that there is an observed problem with the models. I don't have to be a climatologist to be able to read an abstract, nor to look at empirical data and see if previous prediction models are borne out by that empirical data. Again, this doesn't mean that there is no warming nor that we are completely not responsible for it, however it does mean that some of the consensus opinions have flaws and that perhaps we should take that into account when making policy decisions that have real and crushing economic costs.
Just one of many links from one of many people who has written peer reviewed papers.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/02/95-of-climate-models-agree-the-observations-must-be-wrong/

 

[spieszak]

What are the alternatives, especially here on a reef forum? "

85% of Germany's energy comes from renewables. EIGHTY FIVE PERCENT. Moving the US from 14.94 to say, 50 even would make a huge impact.
We're being out done in the global market on renewable energy, and we're losing jobs to it.

 

[norfolkgarden]

The alternative is wind and solar power and utility level battery storage.

Germany has crappier solar potential than most of the USA other than the western Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
But they are forging ahead with a very ambitious solar energy program because it still works well there.

It is a real shame that America has not embraced solar and wind.
We have amazing opportunity and are much better geographically positioned.

While it is true (and often trumpeted by naysayers) they are far from perfect, they are far more productive than big oil wants to admit.

In the next 20 years we will have solar panels and home battery storage and the electric bill will be for maintaining the infrastructure for the 20 to 30% of remaining utility electricity we use.

 

[spieszak]

This is why our hobby is important. We are the preservers.

We aren't preserves. You think as cities on the coasts flood, people are going to run back for their reef tanks, screaming they will need to repopulate someday?

 

[spieszak]

One part of the whole bleaching story I don't understand is how 0.4C temp swings over 100 years cause massive bleaching events on the GBR. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that as I sit in front of my healthy tank that is currently running 3 degrees C hotter then it does in the winter. Obviously my tank is not the same as the ocean but I'm confused.

Trying doing that with maricultured colonies (you know, the ones we all complain never survive), or corals fresh from the ocean.
also, one degree C is 33.8 F
so, that swing is a bit more than a single degree, and constant

 

[norfolkgarden]

But we still won't have flying cars.

:- (

 

[DaftandDirty]

I anticipated the sadness, but was gripped by the reality that people may not even get the crap they do to the ocean is literally making it worse for the children they so badly want to thrive.

 

[reefbeard1]

I need to watch it again, but I don't recall them giving much attention to the ongoing acidification of the oceans in addition to temp rising. Did they cover that in any meaningful way?