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Oceanic Disaster: The death of the Reefs

:roll:

"The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998, and the four warmest years on record have all occurred since 2014. Looking back to 1988, a pattern emerges: except for 2011, as each new year is added to the history, it becomes one of the top 10 warmest on record at that time, but it is ultimately replaced as the 'top ten' window shifts forward in time."


Peter Ridd hits back at @jcu James Cook University – hard

This is a MUST READ op-ed. WUWT readers will recall that just a few days ago, we spearheaded an effort to make a legal fund go “over the top” to help Professor Ridd fight back against the bureaucracy at James Cook University that was censoring him. Today, he penned an op-ed that appeared on Fox…

February 8, 2018 in Opinion.

. . . I have published numerous scientific papers showing that much of the “science” claiming damage to the reef is either plain wrong or greatly exaggerated. As just one example, coral growth rates that have supposedly collapsed along the reef have, if anything, increased slightly.
Reefs that are supposedly smothered by dredging sediment actually contain great coral. And mass bleaching events along the reef that supposedly serve as evidence of permanent human-caused devastation are almost certainly completely natural and even cyclical.
These allegedly major catastrophic effects that recent science says were almost unknown before the 1980s are mainly the result of a simple fact: large-scale marine science did not get started on the reef until the 1970s.
By a decade later, studies of the reef had exploded, along with the number of marine biologists doing them. What all these scientists lacked, however, was historical perspective. There are almost no records of earlier eras to compare with current conditions. Thus, for many scientists studying reef problems, the results are unprecedented, and almost always seen as catastrophic and even world-threatening.
The only problem is that it isn’t so. The Great Barrier Reef is in fact in excellent condition. It certainly goes through periods of destruction where huge areas of coral are killed from hurricanes, starfish plagues and coral bleaching. However, it largely regrows within a decade to its former glory. Some parts of the southern reef, for example, have seen a tripling of coral in six years after they were devastated by a particularly severe cyclone. . . .
 
This speculative statement is a content-free political incantation, intended to ward off the twitter mob.

Over the coming century, rapid environmental change will include multiple-stressors (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007; Hofmann and Schellnhuber, 2009; Bay et al., 2017), and the increase in prevalence and frequency indicate that we may be coming to a tipping point beyond which survival in uncertain.

You... you do realize that quote summarizes the supporting evidence of the paper, right?
 
[FONT=&][/FONT]
Peter Ridd hits back at @jcu James Cook University – hard

[FONT=&]This is a MUST READ op-ed. WUWT readers will recall that just a few days ago, we spearheaded an effort to make a legal fund go “over the top” to help Professor Ridd fight back against the bureaucracy at James Cook University that was censoring him. Today, he penned an op-ed that appeared on Fox…
[/FONT]

February 8, 2018 in Opinion.

. . . I have published numerous scientific papers showing that much of the “science” claiming damage to the reef is either plain wrong or greatly exaggerated. As just one example, coral growth rates that have supposedly collapsed along the reef have, if anything, increased slightly.
Reefs that are supposedly smothered by dredging sediment actually contain great coral. And mass bleaching events along the reef that supposedly serve as evidence of permanent human-caused devastation are almost certainly completely natural and even cyclical.
These allegedly major catastrophic effects that recent science says were almost unknown before the 1980s are mainly the result of a simple fact: large-scale marine science did not get started on the reef until the 1970s.
By a decade later, studies of the reef had exploded, along with the number of marine biologists doing them. What all these scientists lacked, however, was historical perspective. There are almost no records of earlier eras to compare with current conditions. Thus, for many scientists studying reef problems, the results are unprecedented, and almost always seen as catastrophic and even world-threatening.
The only problem is that it isn’t so. The Great Barrier Reef is in fact in excellent condition. It certainly goes through periods of destruction where huge areas of coral are killed from hurricanes, starfish plagues and coral bleaching. However, it largely regrows within a decade to its former glory. Some parts of the southern reef, for example, have seen a tripling of coral in six years after they were devastated by a particularly severe cyclone. . . .
Well, there's three wasted minutes I will never get back.
 
Tell me Jack, what in the paper supports your position?

. . . Here, we use linear extensions from 44 overlapping GBR coral cores to extend the observational bleaching record by reconstructing temperature-induced bleaching patterns over 381 years spanning 1620–2001. Porites spp. corals exhibited variable bleaching patterns with bleaching frequency (number of bleaching years per decade) increasing (1620–1753), decreasing (1754–1820), and increasing (1821–2001) again. Bleaching prevalence (the proportion of cores exhibiting bleaching) fell (1670–1774) before increasing by 10% since the late 1790s concurrent with positive temperature anomalies, placing recently observed increases in GBR coral bleaching into a wider context. . . .
 
And that is an empty and unsupported insult.
Insulted is exactly how my intelligence felt when it was forced to read that opinion piece you mislabeled as "data."
 
. . . Here, we use linear extensions from 44 overlapping GBR coral cores to extend the observational bleaching record by reconstructing temperature-induced bleaching patterns over 381 years spanning 1620–2001. Porites spp. corals exhibited variable bleaching patterns with bleaching frequency (number of bleaching years per decade) increasing (1620–1753), decreasing (1754–1820), and increasing (1821–2001) again. Bleaching prevalence (the proportion of cores exhibiting bleaching) fell (1670–1774) before increasing by 10% since the late 1790s concurrent with positive temperature anomalies, placing recently observed increases in GBR coral bleaching into a wider context. . . .

What does the bolded tell us?
 
Another cyclical change.

:lamo

Not a trend?

Just an fyi so you don't embarrass yourself in the future (you will still embarrass yourself in the future). If you listen to WUWT, your brain falls out of your head and you think a paper that doesn't support your position, supports your position.
 
:lamo

Not a trend?

Just an fyi so you don't embarrass yourself in the future (you will still embarrass yourself in the future). If you listen to WUWT, your brain falls out of your head and you think a paper that doesn't support your position, supports your position.

From the link:

[FONT=&quot]This figure (especially panel B) suggests that there were bigger bleaching events in the past:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
Figure 4. Massive Porites spp. bleaching frequency and prevalence. NOAA extended sea surface temperature (SST) for Great Barrier Reef (GBR) (A) from ship and buoy data (1854–2000, 11 yr moving average, red line) (Smith et al., 2008). Southern hemisphere surface temperature anomaly (ocean and land) reconstruction (Mann et al., 2008) (solid line) with the uncertainty (0.23°C) on the reconstruction indicated (the reconstruction includes coral extension rates so is not fully independent of our reconstruction). Dashed line indicates mean temperature over record length (1570–1995). Bleaching frequency (B) (number of years per decadal bin in which bleaching occurred) and prevalence (C) (% of corals bleached per decade) observed in at least 20% of coral for the GBR denoted by blue bars. Red color bars indicate years in which less than 2 (frequency)/3 (prevalence) coral cores were available; those years were excluded from further analysis (see Supplementary Material). Number of coral cores available in each decade indicated by solid black line. Dashed black line indicates breakpoint determined linear trend in bleaching and horizontal solid black lines represent breakpoint location 95%CI. For (B) decade notation marks the start of the bin for frequency and each coral core (n = 44) contributed up to 10 annual growth extensions per decadal bin.

[/FONT]
 
Nothing. And bleaching was greater in the past.

You don't think the bleaching will be... *drumroll* worse because of climate change? Like the trend that shows it is getting worse? With temperatures only going up what could possibly happen?
 
You don't think the bleaching will be... *drumroll* worse because of climate change? Like the trend that shows it is getting worse? With temperatures only going up what could possibly happen?

No. I do not believe there is a directional trend in the bleaching data, and I do not expect temperatures to keep rising in any case. In fact, I believe cooling has begun.
 
No. I do not believe there is a directional trend in the bleaching data, and I do not expect temperatures to keep rising in any case. In fact, I believe cooling has begun.

Your own paper illustrated an increasing trend in bleaching over centuries.

Science disagrees with you, temperatures are going to keep rising. And the bleaching is just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse until it's all dead. The temperature is not going to go down or stabilize as it normally would so it will never have a chance to recover over decades.
 
Your own paper illustrated an increasing trend in bleaching over centuries.

Science disagrees with you, temperatures are going to keep rising. And the bleaching is just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse until it's all dead. The temperature is not going to go down or stabilize as it normally would so it will never have a chance to recover over decades.

Actually, the paper shows no bleaching trend over centuries. Belief in CO2-driven AGW is, in my view, more religious than scientific.
 
Actually, the paper shows no bleaching trend over centuries. Belief in CO2-driven AGW is, in my view, more religious than scientific.

How many centuries is 230 years?
 
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