I agree. I honestly believe the biggest PR (Public Relations) issue of the anthropogenic climate change debate is the media, and Politians. Most Climatologists are *not* saying what the media tends to exaggerate and sensationalize. Then the general masses believe the sensational, exaggerated news, is the position of the majority of the scientific community engaged in the various related branches. Then they go on the internets and yell at each other :) Anecdotally, it seems to me (opinion), based on a cursory search of today's internet news highlights, that there isn't a single thing that happens in this world for which anthropogenic climate change can't be blamed for.
What I fear is, in my *opinion* is a disproportionate amount of funding and talent is diverted from, serious and real global threats (pollution for example) that we have the ability to make real impacts on (take the wildly successful Montreal accord and CFC's/Ozone depletion, for example) being wasted on what has become, in my *opinion* a politically driven ideology.
The Great Barrier Reefs, for example, the concern for which started this thread. It only takes a few minutes to superficially read through the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park's "Great Barrier Reef Outlook Report" summary. This is an independent, peer reviewed report developed every few years. Under "Biodiversity" I read the following lines "Coral reefs are the cornerstone of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem and its evolutionary history. Since monitoring began in 1986, though there have been some periods of recovery, the overall average hard coral cover in the Region is estimated to have declined from 28 to 13.8 per cent and the rate of decline has increased substantially in recent years. The decline in coral cover has been most severe in the southern two-thirds of the Region. It is largely the result of a combination of cyclones, crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks and mass bleaching, with elevated nutrients, sediments and pesticides in land-based run-off likely to have affected recovery in inshore areas. While coral reefs have a natural ability to recover from periodic disturbances, corals exposed to chronic pressures such as poor water quality, are likely to have less resilience. There are early signs of regeneration of some reefs affected by severe weather, for example areas in the path of cyclone Yasi in 2011".
A quick look at google would give you the impression it is largely a result of anthropogenic global warming and ocean acidification which has irreversibly killed the reefs (they haven't been killed, and are recovering nicely in some areas, and poorly if at all in others).. How, exactly, do you tease out a few hundredths of a percent of CO2 in the atmosphere's impact on the reefs, in the face of "chronic pressures" from elevated nutrients, chemicals, overfishing, animal plagues, shipping, cyclones, etc. Simply answer is (my opinion) there is no reasonable way to quantify the effect, if any, of "man made climate change", on a system beleaguered by fairly obvious man made and natural negative stressors. If it was a global effect (acidification, thermal etc), it would seem to me that the reef as a whole, would be suffering the same fate relatively equally. The fact that some areas are continuing to decline, while others are rebounding very well, lends my mind to other factors than a global change of the external environment but rather a local change of the internal environment..(such as water pollution and the paths it circulates through the reef for one example). Good news is, we *can* do things about the nutrients/pollutants dumped into the reef waters, the illegal fishing, the direct and indirect damage from shipping, and so on, and where these measures are taking place, there are encouraging signs of recovery.
