From Andrew Bolt at Australia’s Herald Sun below, some sharp evidence in a new paper that the “coral bleaching” scare of the Great Barrier Reef is unfounded and mostly made up.
This study indicates that at the scale of the whole GBR there was no net decline in live hard coral cover between 1995 and 2009.
I can hear Dr. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (who rudely and selfishly disrupted my talk with David Archibald and Bob Carter last year in Brisbane) screaming all the way here in Washington DC as I post this. Since he’ll read this when he gets the linkback, maybe he’ll take time to read the funding acknowledgments (like your buddy Monbiot did) in Soon’s 2003, 2005, and 2007 papers and realize he’s just playing “follow the leader”. Ove, you’ve been bad and been had. – Anthony
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Latest research: no, the Reef isn’t being killed by warming
Julia Gillard claims global warming is already killing the Great Barrier Reef:
Australian natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef are already being damaged, and the risk of coastal flooding could double by the end of the century.
Warmist alarmist Sir Nicholas Stern made the same claim:
The snows on Kilimanjaro are virtually gone, the Barrier Reef is probably going…
The ABC was already hypeing up the destruction of the reef by global warming in 2002:
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says up to 10 per cent of the reef has been lost to bleaching since 1998.
ABC host Kerry O’Brien back then treated the death of the reef as imminent:
It’s not just Australia’s farmlands which are threatened by global warming, the greenhouse effect could also spell disaster for coral reefs around the world, including our own natural wonder, the Great Barrier Reef.
As Australia prepares for another hot summer, one man is on a mission to capture as many corals as possible on high-definition camera before even more stretches of once-spectacular reef are bleached bone-white.
And remember the alarmism of prominent warmist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg?
In 1998, he warned that the reef was under pressure from global warming, and much had turned white.
He later admitted the reef had made a “surprising” recovery.
In 1999 he claimed global warming would cause mass bleaching of the reef every two years from 2010.
He yesterday admitted it hadn’t.
In 2006, he warned high temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef could die within a month”.
He later admitted this bleaching had a “minimal impact”.
All that alarmism, relentlessly pushed by this desperately dishonest government, is now blown out of the water by the latest research by Townsville’s Australian Institute of Marine Science:
Monitoring data collected annually from fixed sites at 47 reefs across 1300 km of the GBR indicate that overall regional coral cover was stable (averaging 29% and ranging from 23% to 33% cover across years) with no net decline between 1995 and 2009….
Crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) outbreaks and storm damage were responsible for more coral loss during this period than either bleaching or disease despite two mass bleaching events and an increase in the incidence of coral disease.
While the limited data for the GBR prior to the 1980’s suggests that coral cover was higher than in our survey, we found no evidence of consistent, system-wide decline in coral cover since 1995. Instead, fluctuations in coral cover at subregional scales (10–100 km), driven mostly by changes in fast-growing Acroporidae, occurred as a result of localized disturbance events and subsequent recovery.
You have been deceived again and again and again.
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Here’s the paper: (link to PDF)
Disturbance and the Dynamics of Coral Cover on the Great Barrier Reef (1995–2009)
Kate Osborne,* Andrew M. Dolman,¤a Scott C. Burgess,¤b and Kerryn A. Johns
Abstract
Coral reef ecosystems worldwide are under pressure from chronic and acute stressors that threaten their continued existence. Most obvious among changes to reefs is loss of hard coral cover, but a precise multi-scale estimate of coral cover dynamics for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is currently lacking. Monitoring data collected annually from fixed sites at 47 reefs across 1300 km of the GBR indicate that overall regional coral cover was stable (averaging 29% and ranging from 23% to 33% cover across years) with no net decline between 1995 and 2009. Subregional trends (10–100 km) in hard coral were diverse with some being very dynamic and others changing little. Coral cover increased in six subregions and decreased in seven subregions. Persistent decline of corals occurred in one subregion for hard coral and Acroporidae and in four subregions in non-Acroporidae families. Change in Acroporidae accounted for 68% of change in hard coral. Crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) outbreaks and storm damage were responsible for more coral loss during this period than either bleaching or disease despite two mass bleaching events and an increase in the incidence of coral disease. While the limited data for the GBR prior to the 1980’s suggests that coral cover was higher than in our survey, we found no evidence of consistent, system-wide decline in coral cover since 1995. Instead, fluctuations in coral cover at subregional scales (10–100 km), driven mostly by changes in fast-growing Acroporidae, occurred as a result of localized disturbance events and subsequent recovery.
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Ove has got that firebrand preacher appeal that the gullible love.
The fact that he’s consistently wrong…won’t convince them otherwise.
Oh and another prize Aussie Nutter Dr Flim Flannery has been oddly silent
about the drenching his ‘ghost metropolis’ Perth has been getting this year.
Doesn’t look like ‘that’ prediction is going to come true any time soon either!
Now it seems to me that most of the Gorish AGW scare stories have been abandoned.
Are there anything left?
So, here are their qualifications:
1) Osborne appears to be a biostatistician who has specialized in epidemiology. She has one other paper on corals.
2) Dolman is an ecologist who has never studied coral reefs.
3) Burgess appears to be a geneticist, who has never studied corals.
4) Johns is a physicist, who has never studied corals, although he may have dabbled in epidemiology.
Only one of these scientists has published on corals before and that was only one minor paper. Not exactly a crack team for such an earthshaking result. I anxiously await watching this paper drop on the floor or further research on this matter. Reported worldwide declines in corals due to bleaching would indicate that these results could be in error.
“Ove, you’ve been bad and been had. – Anthony”
That is so incredibly funny (and profound) I just have had a laughing fit, with tears all the way to my chin. Some of the best humor and great lines are found here.
“Are there anything left?”
Sadly, my children have been taught in school since kindergarten that all of this is fact. It is a constant battle deprogramming them from all that stuff. Many parents don’t. A lot of people reaching voting age know nothing different.
Sounds like the title of a new reference page. A photo album with all the lies these people have been telling for decades. Everyone likes to put a face with the words.
They are shot down in flames again and again……but still…..they come!
I can see no let up in the push for a carbon tax in Australia. Politicians like our Prime Minister Julia Gillard (she who said there would be no carbon tax under a Government which she led) are absolutely relentless. They are backed up by such experts on the subject as Prof. Ross Garnaut. As though an economist is in a position to make predictions about anything!
More comes from Tim Flannery who heads up the ‘independent’ climate change commission. In TV shows; the ABC Science Show on radio; a coterie of so called ‘liberal’ thinkers at Universities and elswhere who want to ban anyone who puts forward a contrary view; all of these people are pursuing the idea, and are absolutely convinced of the truth of dangerous anthropegenic global warming.
Apparently it follows that a carbon tax is necessary, presumably because it will stop these terrible things from happening. S..t for brains!
So whilst some of you skeptics have found recently a basis for confidence in the triumph of science and truth in all of this, I am very much afraid that the politicians and variouls earth botherers are still running the show.
@ur momisugly Rattus Norvegicus
I think it is clear that you did not read the paper before offering us your comment.
The first part of the paper takes into account the studies done to date. It talks of the existing consensus. It cites a number of the papers already out there.
It goes on to explain in detail how the conclusions alluded to in the abstract were reached.
But you think that the value of the paper is to be found in the formal qualifications of the authors.
Argumentum ad hominem …..for a couple of thousand years give or take, well known as one of the logical fallacies.
You might care to comment on the details of the paper instead of looking to the qualifications of the authors.
Rattus,
As usual, ad homs on the authors and nothing about the published science. Go through the publication and rebut it with science and facts, if you can.
And how many papers have you published? Judging from your criteria you should keep schtum and not even talk about scientists who have published then, isn’t it? How about following your own standards and keeping your trap shut?
But hey, why expect sense from a Norwegian rat.
Every time you’ve popped up with apologies for the alarmist crowd you’ve been smacked down with facts and made to look like a fool, not that it is too difficult to do that.
Continue making a fool of yourself. It’s good to see the alarmist side get discredited by it’s own mindless sycophants.
Did he ever! It was a disgraceful and petulant display, oozing with contempt, with all the usual BS about Big Oil funding. Anthony, David and Bob were the height of politeness and civility – which the Dr far from deserved! And yet they put him in his place despite the disparity in the fairness of the weapons each side was prepared to use.
Next they will be telling us that warmer waters encourage reef growth. Oh wait…..that is what happens. Hmmmm.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
July 1, 2011 at 9:46 pm “qualifications” ?
“Epidemiology is the study of health-event patterns in a society.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology
By golly, that seems to be exactly what this paper is about.
“””””” Australian natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef are already being damaged, and the risk of coastal flooding could double by the end of the century. “””””
Earth to Australia !: Coastlines are absolutely guaranteed to flood; all the time, in fact. That’s why they call it the “coastline” ! It’s the boundary between the flooded parts of the earth, and the unflooded parts of the earth. Get used to it, it isn’t going to stop happening.
@Rattus July 1 9:46 pm
Your comments are off target. The use of a multidisciplinary team was clearly an advantage to undertaking this study.
The physicist/epidemiologist? Would have been part of the team since bleaching is caused by disease. You want someone on your team with an interest in disease to study disease.
An ecologist? Ecologists are specialists at how relationships between organisms in an environment affect the survival of each of those organisms. As the study indicates, one of those organisms is apparently eating the coral.
A geneticist? One could only imagine the value of having someone who has an understanding of adaptation within a species. Whether coral or cabbage, the principles are the same.
Had the team been made up exclusively of coral researchers you would have complained there were no epidemiology, genetics, or ecology specialists.
Anyway they were all scientists and the paper was peer reviewed in case they all happened to be closet skeptics and therefore unable to undertake unbiased work.
Your comments are basically just ad hominem. Try again.
“They” were telling us in 1973 that the reef was doomed from the ravages of the Crown Of Thorns starfish that was dining on the hard corals and having a population boom. Doomed I tell you. It got better, quietly. Some people thought you could eradicate the C.O.T. by hacking them to pieces, not knowing that they regenerate a new body from each piece. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
Another myth – the Pacific atoll islands drawning because of the water level rise – is addressed in a new peer-reviewed paper in “Global and Planetary Change” here: http://www.pacificdisaster.net/pdnadmin/data/original/The_dynamic_response.pdf
Just one paragraph from its conclusions: “The results show that island area has remained largely stable or increased over the timeframe of analysis. Forty-three percent of islands increased in area by more than 3% with the largest increases of 30% on Betio (Tarawa atoll) and 28.3% on Funamanu (Funafuti atoll). There is no evidence of large-scale reduction in island area despite the
upward trend in sea level. Consequently, islands have predominantly been persistent or expanded in area on atoll rims for the past 20 to 60 yr.”
Good insight into how media treats the science (and replaces it with propaganda) is here: D:\_1D\AGW\AGW drowning Kiribati\The truth – Tuvalu is not sinking nzclimatescience_net.mht
Dear Norwegian Rat,
The authors you name and then try to shame are indeed coral biologist and either work, have worked at or have collaborated with marine scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. They have been on, dived untold hours on and have surveyed the reef for years and years and are first hand eye-witnesses. I have no idea where you get your information from but you are as wrong as one can possibly get. These authors are objective scientists who do the analysis (and on the longest dataset available for the GBR) and come up with the facts. These authors are not subjective scientists who cherry pick data from here and there and then patch together a ‘sky is falling story’ based on selective data that fits their vision of the world. As you are a rat I suggest you stay on your sinking ship this time.
In Dec 2010 Osborne wrote:
“The widespread decline of coral reefs requires integrated management measures across whole regions.”
So something ‘fishy’ is going on.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
July 1, 2011 at 9:46 pm
FFS Ratty – are you mad? Perhaps you’d like to give us a review of Gore’s professional qualifications regarding is apocolyptic ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.
More importantly, are you trying to suggest that just because a biologist, ecologist or biostatistician have done little or no ‘work’ on corals that they would know nothing? Are you derranged? I am well aware there are specialised fields in all subjects – but I am pretty sure a survey/review type study could be done by anyone with a basic understanding of the subject. I presume you would refuse treatment from the nearest available doctor whilst having a major illness as you’d prefer to be ‘treated’ by someone who has treated that specific illness before?
But the main point is – if you bother to actually think – that perhaps the so called ‘coral specialists’ have missed the information or more likely deliberately ignored it!
It happens in all science, you know, a ‘not seeing the wood for the trees’ type mentality – so this is exactly the kind of result you could expect from completely ‘reviewed’ analysis!
Rattus Norvegicus says: July 1, 2011 at 9:46 pm
“Reported worldwide declines in corals due to bleaching would indicate that these results could be in error.”
I think you mean that worldwide there is no shortage of “scientist”-activists who want taxpayers to carry on paying for their scuba diving and shroudwaving hobbies.
If anyone wishes to do their own analysis of sea water temperature change over the past 20 plus years on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) they can go to the raw data itself at
http://www.aims.gov.au/docs/data-centre/seatemperatures.html
and download and process the data as they please, so if they can’t actually dive and survey the GBR for decade plus periods (1995-2009) they can do their own data analysis on long term in situ temperature probes that have been deployed throughout the south to north extent of the GBR and reach their own conclusions; at least on temperature profiles over many years. One might find the exercise an eye opener.
In Mike Hulme’s book , “Why we disagree about Climate Change”, he says;
“We need to ask not what we can do for Climate Change, but to ask what Climate Change can do for us.”
So the bleaching story is just a part of this tactic. Use the Climate Change cycles to come up with thousands of scare stories, only to get money for the “IPCC institutes” around the world.
They need a constant stream of money to fulfill every years budget.
Must be hard in the long run. Especially now that we have Global Cooling.
Rattus Norvegicus says:
July 1, 2011 at 9:46 pm
Only one of these scientists has published on corals before and that was only one minor paper. Not exactly a crack team for such an earthshaking result.
I am in no position to comment on the expertise, or lack thereof, of the individual authors, however, the study was partly funded by the Australian Institute of Marine Science which appears to be quite a reputable organisation and part of an Australian government scientific agency. From the website:
The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) is a leader in tropical marine science.
The Institute is consistently ranked among the top one per cent of specialist research institutions internationally and is known for its unique capacity to investigate topics from broad-scale ecology to microbiology.
http://www.aims.gov.au/index.html
James Cook nearly lost his ship Endeavour to The Great Barrier Reef. I see the Reef is now punching holes in the endeavours of climate alarmists. Their vessel must be taking on water as I notice the rats are getting agitated 🙂
@Rattus Norvegicus. Nothing like a bit of generalised Ad Hommery when a dogma is challenged. The world is full of people who are experts in a field without conventional qualifications – Al Gore and Julia Gaillard, for instance. At least the authors of the report are trained scientists who have hopefully used traditional scientific methods to come to their conclusions. Your remarks would have been far less lumpen if you had challenged the science in the report – as a scientist should do.