From the “science eventually self-corrects” department, new science showing coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef is a centuries-old problem, well before “climate change” became a buzzword and rising CO2 levels were blamed.
Marc Hendrickx writes:
New paper shows coral bleaching in GBR extending back 400+ years.
[This] busts myths promulgated by alarmist Dr. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg see for instance
“The science tells us that exceeding 2°C in average global temperature will largely exceed the thermal tolerance of corals today. It is already happening. Rolling mass bleaching events, unknown to science before 1979, are increasing in frequency and severity.”
Source: https://theconversation.com/drowning-out-the-truth-about-the-great-barrier-reef-2644
Also see the news report from The Australian https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/coral-bleaching-a-centuriesold-problem/news-story/33b3cbd7cd3b784322c0a7bc10e98eb6
Here is the paper: (open access)
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2018.00283/full
Reconstructing Four Centuries of Temperature-Induced Coral Bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef
Abstract:
Mass coral bleaching events during the last 20 years have caused major concern over the future of coral reefs worldwide. Despite damage to key ecosystem engineers, little is known about bleaching frequency prior to 1979 when regular modern systematic scientific observations began on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). To understand the longer-term relevance of current bleaching trajectories, the likelihood of future coral acclimatization and adaptation, and thus persistence of corals, records, and drivers of natural pre-industrial bleaching frequency and prevalence are needed. 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. Spatial inconsistency along with historically diverging patterns of bleaching frequency and prevalence provide queries over the capacity for holobiont (the coral host, the symbiotic microalgae and associated microorganisms) acclimatization and adaptation via bleaching, but reconstructed increases in bleaching frequency and prevalence, may suggest coral populations are reaching an upper bleaching threshold, a “tipping point” beyond which coral survival is uncertain.
This figure (especially panel B) suggests that there was bigger bleaching events in the past:
In the discussion section they say:
Both our reconstructed and the observational GBR bleaching records show maximum bleaching during 1998 across the whole GBR (Figure 3) although this is not scaled for observational effort.
Gosh, what happened in 1998? A super El-Niño, that’s what, and that natural cycle event wasn’t caused by man. Note all the warm ocean water near Eastern Australia where the GBR is located.
The UUIC writes:
Droughts in the Western Pacific Islands and Indonesia as well as in Mexico and Central America were the early (and sometimes constant) victims of this El Niño. These locations were consistent with early season El Niños in the past. A global view of the normal climatic effects of El Niño can be seen below.
Image by: CPC ENSO Main Page
But, Dr. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg makes his living blaming man-made climate change for just about every ill associated with the GBR, so I’m pretty sure he won’t like this paper as it draws attention to the obvious: Coral bleaching of the GBR is not a new problem unique to our time-frame.
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From the research paper:
“Here we show that corals bleached pre-industrially, (surpirise, surprise) but subsequently, bleaching has intensified.”
(My brackets)
Here, it becomes:
“[This] busts myths promulgated by alarmist Dr. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg…”
Don’t let the truth get in your way will you.
Bleaching events:
1700-1750: 17
1750-1800: 19
1800-1850: 7
1850-1900: 12
1900-1950: 10
1950-2000: 15
We’ll be right back to 18th century levels any time now….
@ur momisugly tty,
where did those figs come from please
The paper we have been discussing.
This is a logical fallacy – “we’ve just discovered this thing so it must be new”.
Activist science is rife with this fallacy in many scientific fields.
In radiation biology for instance, newly discovered molecular and genetic mechanisms of radiation damage become a “new threat” from radiation.
Like – they didn’t happen before you discovered them?
America didn’t exist before Columbus sighted it in 1492?
“we’ve just discovered this thing so it must be new”.
Actually you have a comprehension fallacy. That is nothing like what he said (back in 2011).
Referring to figure 4B above, here is my published comment to the Australian Newspaper on 16/08/2018:
“Choosing 1850 as your starting point and then claiming that coral bleaching is increasing, is a classic case of false logic called cherry-picking. Looking at the data, I could just as easily claim that coral bleaching is controlled by the level of solar activity. There have been two periods in the last 400 years where the level of sunspot activity on the Sun has dramatically decreased. They are the Maunder minimum and the Dalton minimum. Both were associated with distinct periods of cooling in the world’s mean ocean temperatures, with the Maunder minimum reaching its coolest temperatures in about 1660 and the Dalton minimum in 1820. This matches the observed minimums in coral bleaching observed around these same dates. If the world’s mean ocean temperatures are in fact affected by the level of sunspot activity, then we should expect the level of coral bleaching to decrease between about 2020 and 2050, matching the expected decrease in solar activity.”
what really gets me is that apart from tourism what the hell matter is it if the entire damn thing turns white purple or brindle really?
it wont all curl up n die and the fish will find smaller areas to live in
and it really isnt “dying” just bits get seedy n recover as is perfectly natural in cycles of things
its the HUGE money from tourism thats the driving force behind the moans
oh and recently of course the insane funding for doing sfa and getting on media as an expert something or other
Im so pd off by it all for at least 40 yrs i remember it always being someones pet whine
Id frankly like it to get wiped out entirely and end the crap for good.
Regarding coral bleaching, first its not the death of the coreal, only the greatures which live on iot. Second. What about hot places like Madang in New Guinea, I lived there way back and the water is very wrm and the corals are beautiful. What about the corals in the red sea, a shallow and very hot place, yet coral grows there too.
Anyway the GBR is very long, from warm in the North and cooler in the South. If warm should be a problem the reef will slowly move to the South.
MJE
Figure 4a gives the sea surface temperature as the red line (based on buoy and ship measurements), and anomaly for the sea surface temperature from Mann (based on a lot of proxies) as the black line, yet the two scales are not the same. The left spans 27.4 to 28.8°C, while the right spans -0.4 to 0.6°C. As they are both temperatures of the same area, they should both be plotted on the same scale. This is a bit deceptive to scale the two differently and then plot them on the same graph. I don’t believe the uncertainty of ±0.23°C either. Is that 1-sigma because it cannot be 3-sigma with the uncertainty of the measurements both accuracy and spatially, and the resolution of the instruments.
I wonder if that Paragon of virtue th BBC will report this after their previous promotion of some truly junk science on this subject? No I thought not. Welcone to the well named Adjustocene.
Living standards are increasing the world over, so what’s an “alarmist” to do when faced with a critical shortage of hobgoblins? The scary thing is that there is a vast army of these SJW types, whose entire existence is defined by their adherence to a “cult of doom” ideology. You could summarize it as: “Man bad, nature good.” and “Business bad, gov’t good.”
All this sciencey stuff goes over my head but doesn’t global warming also affect El Nino? If so then surely this doesn’t prove it’s nothing to do with global warming
I was taught at school that the Coral Reef is a living thing that grows upwards like a tree. As it grows upwards, it gets closer to the surface where it is vulnerable to Sun exposure, particularly at low tide where it can be above tide level. The exposed area becomes bleached and dies. The dead top section is then eroded away by high seas during storms, and ends up on our sandy shores. This then allows enough water cover for healthy Coral to grow again. This is no longer taught at Schools since the Green Brigade convinced the teachers otherwise…A natural cycle.
But an El Nino blows warm surface waters away from Australia and reduces the sea level by up to 20 cm I have read. Temperature? More likely exposure to air/stronger sunlight is the cause.
So because GBR bleaching occurred before global warming proves that global warming will not exacerbate GBR bleaching?
Here’s what the authors concluded:
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.
And the fact that lung cancer existed before tobacco use was prevalent proves that smoking does not cause lung cancer!
*buzzzz* Flag on the play! Straw man and red herring rolled into one. 30 yard penalty and loss of down.