From the ocean weather will eat this idea alive department comes a ridiculous bit of wishful thinking from the world’s lead scientist on “the coral reefs are going to die and its all your fault” discipline.
Yes, it is our hot headed buddy from Brisbane, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, with what just might be the wackiest climate change technology proposal ever – it is his blue tarp moment:
20 Aug: Sky News Australia: Shade cloth could save Barrier Reef
Scientists have proposed stringing up shade cloth over coral reefs and sending electric currents through the sea to help marine ecosystems weather the effects of climate change.”
“The paper also discusses the genetic engineering of species to help them adapt better to climate change, and mitigating ocean acidification by adding base minerals to the water.”
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg has pointed out conventional approaches to climate change have so far failed to prevent damage to the reef.”
Here’s the paper: Rau, G., McLeod, E.L. & Hoegh-Guldberg, O. (2012) The need for new ocean conservation strategies in a high-carbon dioxide world Nature Climate Change doi:10.1038/nclimate1555
And here’s the money quote:
In particular, various methods for reducing or mitigating thermal stress in corals have been proposed or demonstrated. For example, efforts to artificially shade sections of a reef during periods of thermal stress using buoyant shade cloth have been applied on the Great Barrier Reef. Light exacerbates the effect of heat stress and causes reef-building corals to bleach. Consequently, shading corals can reduce the extent of coral bleaching.
Jo Nova does the math and points out:
The Great Barrier Reef has an area of 348,000 square kilometers. It’s bigger than the UK, Holland and Switzerland combined. So perhaps we could just cover 1%, that’s only three and a half thousand square kilometers and then ask the water to stay in one spot?
Not to mention the the first storm that rolls through will pretty much blow any tarps, cloths, covers, etc to bits and beyond. Ah, I love the sound of shredded grant money in the morning.
I should apologize for this comparison to inventor Rube Goldberg, who made wacky looking inventions that actually worked. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg’s invention is not only wacky, but unworkable.
Loved this bit from Jo Nova:
Alistair Hobday Research Scientist – Marine and Atmospheric Research at CSIRO said novel solutions are required. “We need to be mature enough to listen to all sorts of arguments.”
To which Jo Nova, unfunded non government critic said: We need scientists who are mature enough to spot a plan that is bonkers.
h/t to WUWT reader Martin Clark
Next: Hoegh-Guldberg’s advice on how to to spread coloring fluid onto the Great Barrier Reef to mitigate the bleaching
Maybe they could use the tarps instead to make a giant sail. Then they could sail the GBR to the south.
“Coral reefs are being degraded by an accumulation of stresses arising from human activities. In simple terms, stresses can be grouped by the actions of people extracting material from, and placing materials upon, coral reefs. Over-fishing, pollution and coastal development top the list of chronic stressors.”
“Mass coral bleaching generally happens when temperatures around coral reefs exceed 1oC above an area’s historical norm for four or more weeks. Sea surface temperature increases have been strongly associated with El Niño weather patterns.”
http://www.icriforum.org/about-coral-reefs/status-and-threat-coral-reefs
Or maybe run a garden hose out from Cairns and have a climate scientist employed to spray water on the reef when it gets over heated……..
Breaking news: Cloud making ship ingests large shade cloth off the coast of Australia, film at 11…
Not sure how to react. I’m torn between falling down on the floor laughing or banging my head against my desk.
I’m told that bleaching and other supposed effects of warming/acidification/whatever are only happening in a relatively few locations. I think what’s needed is a comprehensive survey of the entire reef before making any decisions on mitigating strategies. Data first, then conclusions (or maybe I have that backwards?).
In any case I appreciate this is a large undertaking and if the situation is as dire as Hoegh-Guldberg asserts, clearly we can’t wait decades for a few researchers to survey all the reefs. We need a large group of volunteers to check a really representative sample of the Reef, Sort of like Anthony’s Surface Stations project. It would be a hardship to take so much time off of work, but I volunteer to spend up to three months diving the Reef if the Australian government would just pay my way over and back and provide a modest housing and meal allowance. I can bring all my own gear.
I’m sure other WUWT regulars could make a similar commitment. There’s a fair chance Willis would volunteer to skipper a boat.
Anybody in a position to put together a grant proposal? I hear there’s an initiative “Unlocking Australia’s Potential” which has enough money to piss away, so to speak: see poo power .
Yes it’s a sacrifice, but it’s for science and the environment!
Not enough attention is placed on recent research beginning to point to viruses having a major effect on coral eco-systems.
The massive growth in cruise shipping since the 80’s correlates with increasing bleaching. Cruise ships seasonally work very different parts of the oceans and may transfer microbes with them. Poorly maintained fishing fleets may also be responsible for spreading viruses, benign in one area, to another part of the ocean where it may be detrimental to coral organisms without immunity to this new strain..
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120712092610.htm
@ur momisugly David says:
August 20, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Not sure how to react. I’m torn between falling down on the floor laughing or banging my head against my desk.
***************************************************
The former would be considerably less painful. And I doubt that self inflicted injuries would be covered under Obamacare – but I could be wrong.
Hoegh-Guldberg said why don’t we cover
The corals with sheeting to smuvver
The hot water to cool
In a neat little pool
But Jo said, “it’s too big, so don’t bovver”!!
From the Australian Institute of Marine Science:
“Monitoring data collected annually from fixed sites at 47 reefs across 1300 km of the Great Barrier Reef 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
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/latest_research_no_the_reef_isnt_being_killed_by_warming/
“The paper also discusses the genetic engineering of species to help them adapt better to climate change….”
Because adaptation never occurs naturally. (If we hook up Darwin revolving in his grave at ~50000rpm to an alternator, we will have a sustainable power source)
Aussie Warmists are in deep deep trouble. The coalition between Green & Labor is crumbling as Labor MPs realize that their relationship with Greenie nutjobs is electorally suicidal!
The Gov has just shafted Greens over Immigration Policy and is backpedalling furiously on Carbon Tax (promising to limit damage to the economy etc).
I think the Warmists know that their days in the limelight are numbered and that the show is winding down. Even that ultimate button Greenies press when they’re in trouble down here, the one marked ‘GREAT BARRIER REEF’ isn’t working any more.
Old Ove can howl and squeal and rage as much as he likes, it’s music to my ears – it’s the sound
of the Fat Lady Singing.
Yeah because it’s not like the reef ecosystem depends on sunlight or anything.
OH WAIT.
It’s a shady business…
Forget the tarp/shade cloth. The most obvious solution is to anchor an iceberg(s) from Antarctica, of sufficient mass, up current from the reefs. Replace as needed.
Is there anyone out there who can write an article on the manipulation of measured temperatures by climate scientists, NASA, and various government weather bureaus in places such as
Australia and New Zealand, and write in such a way as to easily understood by anyone with a standard educational level – not a degree in science.
If you look at the actual temperatures recorded since the late 19th. century in Australian towns and cities and then compare then with the actual recorded temperatures today, it would be hard to make a case for any climate change, let alone the catastrophic rise in temperatures being promulagated by people just as Tim Flannery, Australian Climate Commissioner, on TV again today.
Yet if you look at temperature record on the Australian Bureau of Meterologies climate change pages, temperatures have been significanlty altered. A couple of years ago I emailed them to ask
why. The response was in words to the effect of ” Oh, the old instruments (late 19th, early 20th. centuries) had problems and we have corrected them.”
This manipulation of temperature seems to me to be at the heart of the issue. I know Anthony Watts and others have done great work in exposing this issue – the recent revelations about the
temperature measurement in places in California and the UK for instance – but as far as I can see this is not reaching the main stream media nor the politicians who are still promoting that
climate change must be addressed.
Knocking off stupid statements in the media on blogs is not going anywhere, because only a minority of interested people read them. It is like play “whack-a mole” for those who recall this old
arcade game.
We need a simple article, easy to understand by politicians and non scientists, which clearly deals with and debunks this issue. I think they would be a lot of people who would be horrified to
know this. The problem is they don’t read climate blogs.
Who could make this happen? I think sceptics are actually losing the battle.
“The paper also discusses the genetic engineering of species to help them adapt better to climate change, and mitigating ocean acidification by adding base minerals to the water.”
Or maybe those species, I don’t know how, perhaps it’s a miwwacle, already have built into them the ability to adapt to new conditions.
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg has pointed out conventional approaches to climate change have so far failed to prevent damage to the reef.”
Yes, and the reefs are also vulnerable to goblins and orcs and trolls. Conventional approaches have obviously failed to protect the reef from them, too. We must therefore hire druids to smear themselves with woad and dance widdershins about the wabe, chanting their eerie coral protection song. “Oooo-eeee-oooo, gimmeyodo, gimmeyodo…”
Alistair Hobday Research Scientist – Marine and Atmospheric Research at CSIRO said novel solutions are required. “We need to be mature enough to listen to all sorts of arguments.”
You must be mature enough to realize that no tropical troposphere hot spot and 15 years without significant warming means you’ve been had.
” I’m torn between falling down on the floor laughing or banging my head against my desk.”
Me too 🙁
Small correction to the above if I may? The blue tarp stuff. Here at 19 S 146 E, that stuff disintegrates within a month or two, with or without UV “guarantee”. The heavier silver-coated “UV protected” material never seems to last more than a year. Plastic bags (the type all the sea creatures are allegedly ingesting) last about 2 days on land, not much more in seawater.
Shade cloth is
I have some that has lasted 10 years or more, even new stuff tends to come to bits in cyclonic winds. Chunks of it floating in the water would look a bit like up-rooted sea grass.
Hope the dugongs can tell the difference …
It is difficult enough to get it off lawn mower blades, so it is quite capable of immobilising propellers.
I only skimmed the actual paper.
Didn’t see anything in it showing that temps in the vicinity had changed or by how much. If I missed it, perhaps someone could point it out? I’m really tired of these papers that come out saying X happened because of global warming so we have to do Y, but without any evidence to show that any warming has actually occured in that area.
Ah jeez: “Consequently, shading corals can reduce the extent of coral bleaching.”
Well yes ‘can’ rather than ‘will’. It’s a weasel clause at best, but in either case it’s directly contradictory to the effects of variance in lighting regimes and corals given in Chapter 10 of ‘Climate Change and the Great Barrier Reef’. The authors for Chapter 10 being Hoegh-Guldberg, et al.
Nevermind that the entire parade of hand-wringing concern over coral bleaching being an exemplar of simple answers to cure simple doom, as produced for consumption by simple minds. If one has any knowledge of reefkeeping, especially in regards to nano and pico reefs (Aquarium reefs of less than 30 gallons in size) the topic of bleaching is widely discussed.
The conclusions from the hobbyists that keep these expensive and fragile animals is: Don’t startle them. Much like the Tennessee Fainting Goat, corals take poorly to sudden changes in their environment. Apparently a notion too opaque for professionals. But nonetheless, it can be found that nano/pico reefs are kept — and well-kept — without bleaching with lighting and temperature levels considered absurd in the wild. As well it can be found that such reefs are remarkably hardy to shock so long as post-shock returns to equilibrium are measured. Where measured means ‘2 C delta’ in temp per day. And often up to keeping corals near 32 C over all.
And for all the nonsense of temperature dependence — and there is a remarkable predictive link over monthly average temperatures — it is more often the case that the issue at hand for mortality is bacterial colonies that both bleach and destroy the coral skeletons. Or: The only and entire problem everyone has the vapors about.
But given Australia and its current notion of Poo Power, the obvious solution is to ensure there’s more antibiotics in livestock urine draining from the watershed to the sea. Because goodness knows that corals are so fragile that they’ve only been around for 450 million years.
Wait…didn’t someone from the warming camp already claim that coral bleaching was caused by sunscreen wearing beach goers?
Have they not noticed the predicted increase in tropical storms from predicted warming may spread these shade cloths all over pristine beaches. Not thought out well at all 🙁
Here’s just the person to do this 🙂
Alistair Hobday, Research Scientist, Marine and Atmospheric Research at CSIRO said novel solutions are required. “We need to be mature enough to listen to all sorts of arguments. Remember how people laughed when I said that moon cheese was the answer to world famine? Well, I showed those immature cretins, yes sir. And so Hoegh-Guldberg will show those childish fools just what can be achieved with nothing more than a government grant, his wits, and a million square miles of blue cheese cloth.”
Meanwhile, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg has pointed out that conventional approaches to climate change – namely, taxing half of the world into poverty, diverting food crops to biofuels and erecting a few thousand windmills – have so far failed to prevent damage to the reef.
“I just don’t understand it,” said a confused Hoegh-Guldberg. “The taxes go up, the biofuels burn, the windmills get erected – and still the coral bleaching continues. My collosus blue cloth is our last great hope of saving the corals.”
Hobday and Hoegh-Guldberg were yesterday unavailable for comment, but this reporter has been assured by Head Nurse that as soon as the morning medication wears off there will be further flights of fancy to come.