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
As quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald article on his paper… “Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said research on even more bizare solutions was needed if the reef was to survive.”
In other words, the message to government is “just send more money and leave the rest to us scientists to save the world”!!
If Labor can cover a playground for $100,000 why not the 387,000 sq kilometres of the GBR
Alley E. ” I think I’ve just gone brain dead….”
Reply: Your brain is not responding because of a long running script. Do you want to stop the script?
Click, Yes! Yes! Yes!
I think we have all had enough.
Gunga Din says: August 20, 2012 at 6:52 pm
If you’re idea of saving the Great Barrier Reef from human influence is for humans to throw a really BIG blanket on it …. You might be a Green-neck.
Green-neck, now that I like. It opens up a whole new world of jokes–ala Jeff Foxworthy–e.g., “If your garden is used to power your car, you might just be a green-neck.”
Anyone else?
Crazy. The blue shade will kill the coral. I grew up near coral reefs and continue to swim on them from time to time. The sun is part of the cycle. Bleached coral recovers, always. The scary part is that some CSIRO Aussie scientists might listen to this craziness, and the Government has such a long history of making bad environmental decisions that they might try and fund this. Scary.
If your idea of saving the planet is to watch to watch an ice sculpture melt in DC, you just might be a green-neck.
Someone wake up Josh!
No, not a floating tarp… Orbital tarp…
To idiot Australian scientist dude: you’re welcome.
My comment on Joanne Nova’s blog
OH sweet jeezus. That is all we need. Eco-nuts running around the ocean throwing debris and electrical fields in to the oceans. Save the reefs by electrocuting fish and killing phytoplankton.
And people wonder why normals are having a problem with scientists right now. This dude is one of them that came up with the brilliant idea of testing syphilis on blacks, or mutilations on German Jews, isn’t it?
If you think we can save people from starving by burning the food, you just might be a green-neck.
If you can bear to listen, here is an interview with Hobday: http://archive.org/download/ESHobday/ES_Hobday.mp3
There is nothing in his universe which is not governed by global warming. In such a complex field anybody can claim anything and get away with it. It’s about time the hard sciences (Institutes of Physics, say, or Chemistry) came out and denounced the lack of rigour in the climate industry. Snake oil salesmen!
Green-neck:
If your compost pile has a higher IQ than you do, you might just be a green-neck.
If you would sign a petition to get all CO2 out of the atmosphere, you might just be a green-neck.
HG, keep yer cotton pickin’ fingers of our Barrier Reef !!!
Just wondering wouldn’t keeping the sun from shinning on the coral reef kill it or am I missing something here???????????????
James Bull
Global warming does not heat the oceans. The air in contact with the ocean only warms the top few millimetres which is largely lost to evaporation. The ocean is heated by direct sunlight down to about 100 metres. It has nothing to do with carbon dioxide. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/ocean_warm_and_cool.pdf
Passing electric currents through the sea water may play havoc with aquatic fauna sensing systems.
Some will starve because they can not find their prey and some will die because they cannot sense the predator creeping up on them.
Why not breed huge rays? Thousands of them. Millions of them. Their wings will shade the reef and their electricity will do what ever he thinks it will do. There must be a government grant in there somewhere.
Bright cloth on a resplendent sea – sorry, but Christo was there first. And he sold it as art, not as global first aid. Though I suppose the latter is more handy in grabbing at funds.
It appears there may be a particular lunacy in marine scientists. BBC has just shown a program about blue whales, which was mostly just informative and very watchable, but of course they had to get the climate change angle in at the end.
According to the expert, blue whales are dying out because the dramatic warming in the antarctic oceans is resulting in massive reductions to krill, the main food source of the blue whale.
This bit of information was immediately followed, literally in the following sentence, with the “but it not all bad news” section informing us that blue whale numbers had increased significantly since hunting of the blues has been stopped in the last 30 years.
So what is the evidence that the increasing numbers of whales are dying out due to climate change?
The Telegraph’s take on the report:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/9487095/Underwater-umbrellas-should-be-used-to-protect-Great-Barrier-Reef-says-report.html
It’s a worry.
The same species of coral inhabit the GBR as inhabit the reefs round Borneo, etc to the north where water is some 10C warmer. They have no problems there! Mass bleachings occur when the symbiot algae die and the corals change algae which can take some time but does not mean that the reef has died. New algae means new life for the coral.
jorgekafkazar says:
August 20, 2012 at 4:11 pm
“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. ………………..”
It’s gonna take a few miwwacles for a zillion species to adapt to all that shade cloth.
Yeah, yeah! Great! Make the sun shades out of those blue
tarps! Ideal material! It will last only six months (or less!).
Leave that stuff out in the sun in the southern hemisphere summer
and it is UV rotted, breaking up, and shredding within 4 months.
(I have personal experience!).
Most plastic goods left out in the sun down-under are embrittled
and ruined within 3 years—but those tarps must be made of a
really inferior material as they go within one summer—really fast.
(Some plastic goods manufacturers like using the line “Tested in
the Arizona desert …” If it was tested in the Ruapehu desert—AND
it survived—it would be good tough stuff indeed! :-).
guess Gore n the Liar are a team, both psychopathic liars.
and he will have something invested making money outta aussies I bet.
the gravy train will screech to halt when labor is removed in a landslide loss sometime soon.
with luck ALL of the prowarmist liars will be removed from their positions of trust which they have abused shamelessly.
You’ve got to watch this discussion between Andrew Bolt the journalist and Professor Hoegh-Guldberg the ‘scientist’ It’s a few years old and I vaguely remember Andrew coming out on top.I have just watched it again and Andrew doesn’t just come out on top,he comprehensively demolishes the poor sap from the word go.By the way ‘Bolta’ is Australia’s top columnist,a prodigous blogger,has his own tv show and is one of the best counterpunches in the business.
Second item down on the index
http://www.abc.net.au/austory/specials/ove/default.htm