Global warming dud predictions on the Great Barrier Reef

You forget that, besides all his other achievements, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg also employs John Cook.

He as found a good way to make easy money and get personal glory , by playing on the lazy and uninformed nature of journalists, why should he stop when it still works.

I prefer that nature proves them wrong even if they are robbing us blind than nature proving them right and game over for the planet. Strange choices we are left with.

KNR says: March 10, 2014 at 12:45 am

…the lazy and uninformed nature of journalists…

I’m afraid that you woefully understate the nature of this grotesque problem common to all warm-mongers…it fills their personal rice bowls. No alarm, no rice.
“Journalists” are as complicit in this wretched funding scam as are the “climate scientists” and politicians that instigated it.

Is this the same O Hoegh-Guldberg mentioned above? [paywalled]
“Coral Reefs
September 2004, Volume 23, Issue 3, p 444
“Low temperatures cause coral bleaching”
O. Hoegh-Guldberg, M. Fine ”
Wake me up when corals can’t recover.

Abstract – 2009
Doom and Boom on a Resilient Reef: Climate Change, Algal Overgrowth and Coral Recovery
……….Methodology/Principal Findings
In 2006, mass bleaching of corals on inshore reefs of the Great Barrier Reef caused high coral mortality. Here we show that this coral mortality was followed by an unprecedented bloom of a single species of unpalatable seaweed (Lobophora variegata), colonizing dead coral skeletons, but that corals on these reefs recovered dramatically, in less than a year. Unexpectedly, this rapid reversal did not involve reestablishment of corals by recruitment of coral larvae, as often assumed, but depended on several ecological mechanisms previously underestimated.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005239#pone-0005239-g006
——————————
Abstract – 2008
Bikini Atoll coral biodiversity resilience five decades after nuclear testing
Five decades after a series of nuclear tests began, we provide evidence that 70% of the Bikini Atoll zooxanthellate coral assemblage is resilient to large-scale anthropogenic disturbance……

And what’s this?

Abstract – 1983
A dead Central American coral reef tract: Possible link with the Little Ice Age
…..Coral growth in the Gulf of Papagayo consisted mainly of dead reefs that died from 150–300 years B.P. The 18O records revealed that most of the dead reefs were exposed to relatively cool water immediately preceding death. We propose that during the latter part of the Little Ice Age there was probably an equatorward shift of the Northern Trade Wind system, which caused an intensification of upwelling at lower latitudes. This increased upwelling was the likely cause of the demise of coral reefs in the Gulf of Papagayo.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jmr/jmr/1983/00000041/00000003/art00010

I have read that a major hazard for a coral reef ecosystem is a rapid local relative fall of sea-level of >10 metres or so in a matter of years. This can leave the whole ecosystem high and dry. However reef organisms can generally recolonise from elsewhere at the new lower sea level. Aharon and Chappell, 1986, Palaeogeography, palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology vol 56, p 337.

Hoegh-Guldberg tells us about the resilience or corals. He must have been surprised.

Phase Shifts, Herbivory, and the Resilience of Coral Reefs to Climate Change
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2006.12.049

Jan 03, 2013
“Deep-sea corals discovered at Great Barrier Reef”
“What’s really cool is that these corals still have photosynthetic symibionts that supposedly still harvest the light,” Hoegh-Guldberg told AFP.
“It’s interesting to know how they can handle such low light conditions—it’s very deep dusk, you can barely make out much at the bottom.”
http://phys.org/news/2013-01-deep-sea-corals-great-barrier-reef.html

No doubt nature will continue to surprise him as he continues to predict doooooom

Got to say I’m uneasy about accusing them of “crying wolf”. The moral of that story was that nobody listened when the wolf did arrive.
Given that it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the wolf of AGW doesn’t exist, using that phrase lends the doom-mongers unwarranted legitimacy and a basis to continue their claims of “ahh, but one day soon….”

Surprise!

“Coral reef thriving in sediment-laden waters”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120731201251.htm
——-
“Evidence of very rapid reef accretion and reef growth under high turbidity and terrigenous” sedimentation. Geology, 2012
http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G33261.1

Surprise, surprise!

Abstract –
Coral bleaching — capacity for acclimatization and adaptation
…. There is information that corals and their symbionts may be capable of acclimatization and selective adaptation to elevated temperatures that have already resulted in bleaching resistant coral populations, both locally and regionally, in various areas of the world. There are possible mechanisms that might provide resistance and protection to increased temperature and light. These include inducible heat shock proteins that act in refolding denatured cellular and structural proteins, production of oxidative enzymes that inactivate harmful oxygen radicals, fluorescent coral pigments that both reflect and dissipate light energy, and phenotypic adaptations of zooxanthellae and adaptive shifts in their populations at higher temperatures…..
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2881(03)46004-5
—————
Brief Communications
Coral reefs: Corals’ adaptive response to climate change
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v430/n7001/abs/430741a.html
—————
Abstract
The role of zooxanthellae in the thermal tolerance of corals: a ‘nugget of hope’ for coral reefs in an era of climate change
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/273/1599/2305.short

Joe writes:

Got to say I’m uneasy about accusing them of “crying wolf”. The moral of that story was that nobody listened when the wolf did arrive.
Given that it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the wolf of AGW doesn’t exist, using that phrase lends the doom-mongers unwarranted legitimacy and a basis to continue their claims of “ahh, but one day soon….”

That is the risk the alarmists are taking. If they want to be heard, they better say things straight and do less bad science.
But anyway, that phrase has become increasingly separated from the original story, so it doesn’t matter that much.

All this, of course, suggests that “journalism” must be returned to its indispensable function within any purportedly democratic society as a finder of fact as opposed to an instrument of propaganda. This disastrous transition became institutionally established in the 50’s/60’s with the wholesale embrace of “advocacy journalism” within “journalism’s” academia and has, in turn, all but corrupted the once noble discipline (eg. AP, Reuters, NY Times, LA Times, BBC, NBC, CBS, ABC) to its very core, with a too small minority still “fact-finding” to wherever “truth” might lead.
The most potent and immediate corrective action, as I see it, is the identification, ridicule and attendant shame (as is eloquently demonstrated in Mr. Bolt’s commentary) of CAGW high priests, acolytes and their enablers within journalism’s corrupted minions…eg some type of “Wall of Shame” to be artfully composed, sourced, authoritative, credible, widely disseminated and easily referenced…a veritable who, what, when, where, why, how (if I might steal a phrase from journalism as we once knew it) of the CAGW cabal.

Maybe such dud predictions should be called “claimet change” for all the failed claims? – Anth*ny

Kudos for the great neologism! Hope you don’t mind if we all steal it.
/Mr Lynn

Ooops! Sory for my tag error.

I first dove the Great Barrier reef in 1987. The locals called it the Great Barren reef. Guess a little warming since then has improved things.

Jimbo says: March 10, 2014 at 2:01 am
Abstract – 2008
Bikini Atoll coral biodiversity resilience five decades after nuclear testing
Jimbo you should note what those tough little corals went thru.
I believe coral may be a little tougher and these worries are idiotic.
From http://www.bikiniatoll.com/BIKINICORALS.pdf
In the northern atolls of the Marshall Islands, 23 nuclear tests with a total yield of 76.3 megatons (TNT equivalent) were conducted across seven test sites located either on the reef, on the sea, in the air and underwater between 1946 and 1958. Five craters were created, the deepest being the Bravo crater at 73 m depth (Noshkin et al., 1997a) (Figs. 2, 3). Post-test descriptions of environmental impacts include: surface seawater temperatures raised by 55,000 C after air-borne tests; blast waves with speeds of up to 8 m/s; and shock and surface waves up to 30 m high with blast columns reaching the floor of the lagoon (approximately 70 m depth)
The results of our nuclear war on coral.
A total of 183 scleractinian coral species was recorded, compared to 126 species recorded in the previous study
There are more species now than then.

Tiny Tim was ahead of his time and in the wrong business.
He would be a natural for Climatology, even the slightly creepy persona.
Shills like this “Reefer expert” will milk the act for all its worth.
Pays better than welfare, requires about the same effort.
Perhaps an Australian could tell this git, that according to his own prattling, there are no coral reefs.
They went extinct last time the planet; Warmed, Cooled, had more atmospheric CO2…

I read somewhere that coral reefs can grow 2cm per annum and all over the world, their expansion has been recorded in modern times. The idea that ‘climate change’ will destroy these animal/plant forms is not based on science or observation but fearmongering hopes. How many hundreds of predictions must be wrong before this cult of warm is simply tossed away as the trash that it is.

Interesting that Wikipedia has drank the coolaid on this one. Quoting expters of course.

I thin the term “bleaching” is a little missleading. There is clearly no bleach involved. Seems to me that “lower point of the life cycle” may be a better term.

Is this the same reef that survived the heat of the “Holocene Optimum,” about 8000 years ago, which was much hotter than it is today?

Good old water pollution also plays a role

Shouldn’t we ask the IPCC to reduce tropical cyclones and the Star of Thorns?

Abstract – 2012
G. De’ath et al
The 27-year decline of coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef and its causes
“…Tropical cyclones, coral predation by crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), and coral bleaching accounted for 48%, 42%, and 10% of the respective estimated losses, amounting to 3.38% y-1 mortality rate….”
doi: dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1208909109

Flew over the reef about 10 years ago with a pilot out of Cairns who had been flying over the reef daily for decades. He was also a keen swimmer on the reef. He said then the claims of the reef dying were b.s.