Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to EU Official Virginijus Sinkevičius, Corals which survived the dinosaur killer, the Cretaceous / Paleogene Extinction event, will soon disappear because we have raised atmospheric CO2 a few parts per million.
European Union official sounds alarm over threats to Great Barrier Reef
Daniel Hurst @danielhurstbne
Thu 1 Apr 2021 03.30 AEDTEU commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius urges Australia to sign Leaders’ Pledge for Nature that promotes a green recovery from Covid crisis
A senior European Union official has sounded the alarm over the rapid decline of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef while backing calls for all countries to make more ambitious cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
The EU’s commissioner for environment, oceans and fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius, told Guardian Australia he was deeply concerned by the threats facing the Great Barrier Reef. “As long as we do not change our behaviours, things will not improve,” he said.
Sinkevičius hopes Australia will sign up to the 84-country Leaders’ Pledge for Nature – a document that calls for a “green and just” recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and stronger political will to act against the “crises of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and climate change”.
The leaders’ pledge backs the objective of achieving net zero emissions by 2050. That is a target the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has said is his preference, but he has resisted making a formal commitment amid divisions within his government over climate policy.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/01/european-union-official-sounds-alarm-over-threats-to-great-barrier-reef
If this is an April Fools joke its a good one. At worse global warming would push Aussie Coral reefs a little further South, away from the equator. The idea that a tropical warmth loving organism would somehow die off because we’ve made the ocean a little warmer is absurd.
Well surely the ‘dinosaur killer’ made the world colder? whereas at present it is heating up…
and if corals have survived numerous climate change events, they haven’t always survived in the same place.
Evidence ? 😀
Or is your comment thought as an April Fool ? 😀
Ever see the movie “Groundhog Day”? In it Bill Murray is destined to live Feb. 2, Groundhog Day, over and over. griff apparently lives in “April Fool’s Day”.
The Great Barrier Reef formed in its current location 6,000 to 8,000 years ago at the peak of the Holocene Climate Optimum when temperatures were warmer than they are now. The Little Ice Age was a greater threat to the GBR than the slight warming (a few tenths of a degree C in ocean temperature) that we’ve seen in the last 150 years.
Did you know the original script had Phil (Bill Murray) reliving the same day for 10,000 years?
https://nationalpost.com/news/10000-years-heres-how-long-phil-connors-was-trapped-in-groundhog-day
More likely years rather than decades to acquire the skills he exhibits.
From the show, everyone relived that day.
Only Phil got to remember reliving the day.
What Phil should worry about is he one of those playing the mindless bit parts for the next 100,000 years?
The impact first made the world hotter, then cooler, then it returned to Cretaceous-level warmth, only to get even hotter in the Eocene.
Yes, over geologic time, animals move around. In the Cretaceous, crocodilians lived in the Arctic. In the Eemian, the previous interglacial 120 Ka, hippos swam in the Thames at the site of London.
Relevant for corals is water temperature, not that of the air.
No. These corals grew on a dry land for tens of thousands of years,
And the fishes fly arround 😀
rubbish
Oh I just realized…
“at present it is heating up…”
Heating up compared to when, Griff?
And don’t forget the elephants, griff !
Good of you to drop by as “The April Fool”, Griff. Someone needs to step up and you fill the role so well.
It’s spring where you live, so it should be heating up
Starts with regional effects of the impact. Please proceed to global after absorbing regional data. Thanks!
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/kring/Chicxulub/regional-effects/#:~:text=Students%20%26%20Teachers-,Regional%20Effects,the%20Gulf%20of%20Mexico%20region.&text=The%20Chicxulub%20Impact%20event%20produced,deep%20into%20the%20continental%20interior.
Passage in the global section comparing effects then to those presumed to be experienced today however is patently ridiculous.
There are papers around telling just the opposite 😀
Why is someone from Lithuania commenting on Australian corals. Has he ever seen one close up?
Someone once asked Sarah Palin about her knowledge of Russia or something like that. She replied that she could see Russia from her back yard. Virginijus Sinkevičius can’t even claim he sees the corals from his back yard.
link
It was Tina Fey on SNL who actually said she could see Russia from Sarah Palin’s back yard. But lots of people don’t know that, since all they saw were the SNL clips.
Yup. Palin correctly stated that, “You can see Russia from land in Alaska”.
Diomede Islands, two small islands in the Bering Strait, lying about 2.5 miles (4 km) apart and separated by the U.S.-Russian boundary.
You can also see Siberia from the Alaska mainland under the right weather conditions.
The Saturday Night Live skit used the line, she could see Russia from her back yard.
Palin never said any such thing.
But Greta did say she can see the CO2 in the air, but SNL didn’t do a skit about that.
Go figure.
I could see Will Ferrel in a Pipi Longstocking wig and a pouty look on his face. He’d just scowl at the camera and hiss, “How DARE you!”
But SNL went all woke and no jokes years ago, so they’d never do it.
I thought Virginijus Sinkevičius was a species of coral. Nope. It’s a pernicious species of bureaucrat.
Just another snake oil salesman.
OK, here’s a clip of what she actually said. It’s a typical politician answer to a stupid question.
If it had been me I would have engaged the interviewer in a long boring discussion and lost the election right there. Successful politicians have a set of skills that most of us don’t even realize we lack.
“She replied that she could see Russia from her back yard.”
Please stop spreading that lie. That was Tina Fey on SNL.
People will note that your comment was posted eight hours after my comment immediately above and get the wrong impression.
You could not have seen my comment because it was in moderation because I used the word ski11s which, of course, contains a word that triggers moderation.
Well Griff comments on lots of countries he has never visited and knows nothing about so I think it goes with the CAGW believers.
The GBR contains over 600 coral species, more than 3/4 of all known species.
Besides moving south, the mix of more and less heat-tolerant species can change.
But many corals like it hot. Modern groups evolved in the Mesozoic, with average sea temperatures higher than now. Max temps were also hotter.
The present GBR formed in the Holocene Climatic Optimum, which was globally hotter than now, as were the Egyptian, Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods, although progressively cooling.
Yes John.
And obviously those corals that live again in the Bikini Islands lagoon like it hot too.
They all came back from obliteration by nuclear bombs in the 1950s to robust health in ~ 60 years.
Talk about resilient.
(But not as resilient as that bloke 2k years ago who apparently resurrected himself a few days after he was offed by some Romans. He has quite a following even today. Not as dedicated as Greta’s followers though. Just ask Griff)
The Bloke reportedly had help.
What ‘help’ was that, John?
And ‘reportedly’ where?
Just curious.
The corals returned within 50 years:
https://www.livescience.com/2438-bikini-atoll-corals-recovering-atomic-blast.html
Thanks for posting this link up here John.
I have previously sent this to quite a few people in my circle who fret endlessly about “coral extinction” (the models can’t be wrong!).
Their reply – crickets.
They seem to prefer models’ outputs to actual, real-life, direct observations and recordings that demonstrate the resilience of corals.
We live in troubling times.
Not just observations today, but evidence from the past 250 million years. They’re obviously not interested in facts, but in narratives.
Politicians are (like most Journalists) not the sharpest arrows in the quiver. They surely have messed up the world’s response to Covid-19
https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FLCCC-Statement-on-Weak-Guidance-on-Ivermectin-from-WHO-March-31-2021.pdf
I’m more worried about the starfish kill-off than the corals.
It was never thoght to heal people, but to sell and use vaccination with what ever consequences.
Ivermectin didn’t make the Chinese approved list of talking points for WHO.
heh heh, they don’t even have a point
‘a “green and just” recovery from the Covid-19 crisis’
LOL. These people are so incredibly IQ-challenged. Is there no crisis, emergency, or human suffering that they will not try to hijack into their green policies?
How about we address COVID-19 to save human lives? It’s now, real, and has a practical solution.
If they want to help the Great Barrier Reef then address the pollution coming down the rivers (primarily fertilizer run-off). That is measurable and has practical solutions too.
As the media (newspapers, TV, etc.) know all too well, there is money to be made through fear-mongering. The general public will mostly forget all the lies when they are revealed as such.
“If they want to help the Great Barrier Reef then address the pollution coming down the rivers (primarily fertilizer run-off).”
Already solved. Steady work that did not cost a bomb. Landcare consortiums. Local Councils, farmers, graziers, Greencorps, even some greenies actually got off their backsides and helped.
Landcare volunteer groups do great, practical, largely unacknowledged local environmental remediation projects all around the country.
What you won’t find among their ranks are protestors.
They just roll up their sleeves, pick up their tools, and get to working on things that need fixing.
(In my experience, these volunteers are also mainly “old fart baby boomers”)
There’s no evidence that we’ve made the ocean a little warmer.
….. nor is there any evidence that we could if we tried.
I thought we boiled the oceans to kill off the U-boats in World War II.
Must be April fools. This piece of junk returns every year and every year itś nonsens.
How many Groundhog Day’s/Memento’s must I endure?
For your average Finn he has a remarkably Latin name. Perhaps his sunkennastiness has cought up with him. As they say in Switzerland: off into the ocean with him. 😉
I’m wondering if the Grauniad was April Fool pwned?
It’s hard to tell with the Grauniad and BBC. Fake News here in the States is much less subtle.
He’s Lithuanian, and they take Latin names because they’re catholic, but, otherwise, is an idiot green politician
“an idiot green politician”
That is redundant.
Nice pic from 2016 by Peter Ridd. It would be nice to see the same shot in 2021. Having grown prolifically, and by 2016 exposed to sunlight, air, and warm water in the temporary shallows caused by prevailing winds….all these corals should now be bleached white dead with parts of them washed up as beach sand. New pic to confirm coral life cycle, Peter ?
“New pic to confirm coral life cycle”
There is a huge resource at https://jennifermarohasy.com/
Spectacular video, 360 images from transect surveys. Ya have to get in the water. Nothing can be seen sitting in an aircraft 50m above the water.
Pinch, punch first of the month
This is “science”? Hard corals first appear in the fossil record during the Ordovician period about 488 million years ago when atmospheric CO2 levels peaked at over 2,000 PPM!
CO2 was about 4400 ppm in the Ordovician.
Modern stony or hard corals (Order Scleractinia) arose in the Middle Triassic, after their Paleozoic predecessors were wiped out in the end Permian Great Dying.
Point being that there is no such thing as natural “ocean acidification” due to increased CO2 to the extent that aquatic plants and animals are negatively effected. The greatest explosion of life in the oceans occurred during the Ordovician and Silurian periods when CO2 levels remained many times what currently are.
Even higher in the Cambrian, ie ~7000 ppm, during which period most animal phyla emerged. In the Ordovician and Silurian, plants, fungi and animals began to move into land.
SIDC sunspot data for March are out, After about 15 months from its start the SC25 is still in its low phase, it might end up longer and weaker than average.
After the Kamchatka’s late December eruptions (caused SSW, discussed on the WUWT in mid January), the stratosphere has cooled well below average and it is still there.
Yawn. Here we go again, against all evidence.
It must be April 1.
I’d be surprised if it wasn’t. Is there an claim about the “climate crisis” or AGW made by the true believer warmulists that is NOT absurd? If so. I have yet to hear of it.
The GBR disappeared entirely during the last glaciation and started re-appearing about 9,000 years ago. The aboriginal inhabitants must have been terrified by the rise in sea level … about 120m 400ft).
But it took about 10,000 years.
OMG! That is almost a half inch (~1cm) per year. Yes, they must have been truly terrified, realizing that it would be midway up their shins in a generation.
In the middle the rate was higher. But still not something people then would have noticed, since lifetimes were on average shorter.
Keep in mind, calcium and magnesium carbonate deposits form and grow in warm shallow seas. The warmth is a key ingredient to the carbonates stability otherwise they can dissolve via calcium or magnesium bicarbonate dissolution. That’s what happens in the cold deep ocean.
Again ? I thought I disappeared it 8000 years ago.
What is it, some kind of regenerating zombie ?
yours sincerely ,
God
“Life will find a way”
Wait! You’re NOT perfect??
Eric
This must put the GBR in line for
“more farewells than Dame Nellie Melba”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Melba
LOL.
Also remember when John Farnham was having his 3rd farewell concert tour.
He called it the “So Sue Me” tour.
The GBR did not exist, as we know it, 15000 years ago when sea levels were 400 feet lower. Was there a GBR during the last interglacial? If so then nature rules when and how long it survives.
Just curious — when sea levels were over 100 meters lower during the last Ice Age, wasn’t the area occupied by the current Great Barrier Reef high and dry? Did they walk into deeper water? And then pick up and move into shallower waters as ocean levels rose??
The current Great Barrier Reef has only been in place for less than 10,000 years. Previously the continental shelf on which it lives was dry land until the oceans rose and corals migrated there and built up the reefs we see today. It is nonsense to suggest it has been around for millions of years.
It should be suggested that the EU Official, Virginijus Sinkevičius, read Peter Ridd’s book, “Reef Heresy?” He will find that it is certain that he will disappear well before the GBR.
Aussie CO2 = bad. Chinese CO2 = good.
If there wasn’t a single person alive in Australia, it wouldn’t make the blindest difference to CO2 levels so why are they being singled out?
The majority of the Great Barrier Reef is less than 20,000 years old. It was dry land before then. Does it say this in the article?
The title is wrong. It should instead be how many times this week have “scientists” proclaimed that the GBR is going to be destroyed by CO2. How does that compare with last week?
This continual flow of nonsense about the Great Barrier Reef being about to vanish is becoming seriously tedious. It is like a perpetual April Fools Day joke presented by the April Fools. If there was Global Warming, it would make the reef bigger not smaller as life likes warmth not chill.
A bit further south but on radio this morning I heard a report from Philip Island that the world famous fairy penguin population there is booming. Not had to guess but climate change was blamed as the primary culprit. Seems like we need to cool the oceans, kill off their food supply and starve the little buggers to death.
It is dated 31st of March innthe article https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/01/european-union-official-sounds-alarm-over-threats-to-great-barrier-reef
A foreigner by the name of Obama came to Australia a while back and contrary to normal diplomatic behaviour visited a Queensland University and during his address to students said he was very worried that the GBR would disappear before he could take his daughters to visit it.
He was wrong of course, GBR is alive and in very good condition.
Like all coral reefs the Great Barrier Reef lives, the cycles of death and renewal are constant and at any given time the life cycles will vary across the reef location.
The GBR is however healthy and politically based claims about it disappearing defy logic and fact.
And consider why the GBR is picked on, there are many coral reefs around Australia and globally. Answer of course is cherry picking by leftist warming hoaxers. GBR is a very well known internationally tourist destination so the propaganda spin doctors target it.
Virginijus Sinkevičius – love the name, but that’s about all
Great Barrier Reef Set to Disappear..,
but when? Catastrophic alarmists making predictions with no dates now? They have learned that when they have predictions with dates they always fail. Especially when date is within a lifetime when people can remember the failed prediction.
My accurate prediction: GBR was not there ten zillion years ago, and it will not be there ten zillion years from now. Be afraid, very afraid!!
Genetic manipulation of Corals sound extreme in this study
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/5/2232
I wonder how the GBR was doing 18k years ago when it was 400 feet above sea level?
“ At worse global warming would push Aussie Coral reefs a little further South, away from the equator” There are reefs round Papua New Guinea with the same species as the GBR (Ridd) and much warmer water. So no, it wont move south.
absurd, by dinosaur times and later mammals , CO2 concentration was up to 2000 ppm , corals never disappeared , they probably evolve according to Darwin principles .
Great barrier didn’t exist 10’000 years ago , nothing remain unchanged over the time !
Claim: Great Barrier Reef Set to Disappear Because of Global Warming
I thought it already had?
OH! Wait. That was the Polar Ice Cap that already disappeared. (Several times by what they’ve said.)
Great Barrier Reef Set to Disappear Because of Global Warming
What – again?