Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Even 1.5C would kill 99% of all coral, according to the study. But I think there is room for a little doubt.
Corals doomed even if global climate goals met: study
by Marlowe Hood
FEBRUARY 6, 2022Coral reefs that anchor a quarter of marine wildlife and the livelihoods of more than half-a-billion people will most likely be wiped out even if global warming is capped within Paris climate goals, researchers said Tuesday.
An average increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels would see more than 99 percent of the world’s coral reefs unable to recover from ever more frequent marine heat waves, they reported in the journal PLOS Climate.
At two degrees of warming, mortality will be 100 percent according to the study, which used a new generation of climate models with an unprecedented resolution of one square kilometre.
“The stark reality is that there is no safe limit of global warming for coral reefs,” lead author Adele Dixon, a researcher at the University of Leeds’ School of Biology, told AFP.
“1.5C is still too much warming for the ecosystems on the frontline of climate change.”
…
Read more: https://phys.org/news/2022-02-corals-doomed-global-climate-goals.html
The abstract of the study;
Future loss of local-scale thermal refugia in coral reef ecosystems
Adele M. Dixon, Piers M. Forster, Scott F. Heron, Anne M. K. Stoner, Maria Beger
Published: February 1, 2022
Thermal refugia underpin climate-smart management of coral reefs, but whether current thermal refugia will remain so under future warming is uncertain. We use statistical downscaling to provide the highest resolution thermal stress projections (0.01°/1 km, >230,000 reef pixels) currently available for coral reefs and identify future refugia on locally manageable scales. Here, we show that climate change will overwhelm current local-scale refugia, with declines in global thermal refugia from 84% of global coral reef pixels in the present-day climate to 0.2% at 1.5°C, and 0% at 2.0°C of global warming. Local-scale oceanographic features such as upwelling and strong ocean currents only rarely provide future thermal refugia. We confirm that warming of 1.5°C relative to pre-industrial levels will be catastrophic for coral reefs. Focusing management efforts on thermal refugia may only be effective in the short-term. Promoting adaptation to higher temperatures and facilitating migration will instead be needed to secure coral reef survival.
Read more: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000004
Given that there is at least 6C climatic range from the subtropical Southern to the tropical Northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, it is impossible that 0.5-1C of warming would wipe out the entire reef.
So where did the study authors go wrong?
Delving into the study, it appears they pulled the marine version of the agriculture study trick.
Agricultural studies which predict imminent climate doom usually make completely unrealistic assumptions, like assuming farmers won’t try anything new, that they’ll keep dumbly planting exactly the same crop mix, year after year, regardless of what happens to yield.
In a similar way, the authors of this coral study appear to have assumed low coral mobility.
A lack of coral mobility is not a reasonable representation of nature. Mature corals might be stuck in place, anchored to rocks or other corals, but every year corals spawn countless billions of highly mobile larvae, which seek out favourable sites to colonise.
So any overheated reefs would be rapidly colonised by coral larvae whose parents are adapted to warmer water.
The researchers assigned a temperature value to each point on a very fine grid, compared it to the modelled pre-industrial temperature, and set a threshold which according to climate models will shortly be breached. This led to the unrealistic study conclusion that stressed grid points will rapidly increase from 6.8% of the study region (according to their assumptions) to 99-100% of the study region.
There is no serious upper temperature limit to coral heat endurance. Hot water extremophile corals like those from the Persian Gulf endure far hotter water temperatures than any open ocean, yet they are just as mobile as any other coral.
Even if the world were to experience insanely implausible levels of global warming, the extremophile corals would erupt out of their limited hot water ecological niches and colonise the entire rest of the ocean. The mix of species might change, but the reef as a whole would stay healthy.
These studies have a place, as a mathematically modelling exercise, or a baseline exercise. But the suggestion of real world applicability, the suggestion that corals cannot survive a small long term temperature shift is utterly contradicted by the wide climatic range of real world reefs like the Great Barrier Reef, which contain more or less continuous stretches of different climatic conditions, from the subtropics to the far Northern high tropics.
The ocean temperature can’t be adjusted via man-made emissions reductions.
“Adjusted”? The idea is to slow the process down, or preferably stop the warming entirely, and that can be done through emissions reductions. The oceans absorbed 90% of the excess heat from climate warming.
“The ocean did not absorb 90% of the excess heat from global warming.”
The ocean via absorbed solar radiation was the source of global climate warming.
The ocean warms the atmosphere and leads by 2 months:
Well… “adjusting” cannot be man-made, but “slowing down the process” or “stopping” it can be done!
Understood. (need add the /s?)
Oh, yes! The missing link in the rationale: talking to the oceans to make them agree to absorb the remnant 10% of “excess heat from climate warming”. Must send the idea to the G7, G20 and all the other financial G-groups.
China will do nothing. The US could totally stop using any carbon dioxide generating energy and the change in 2100 will be undetectable in all the models.
So what do you imagine we can do to “reduce emissions”?
And if the AMO and PDO go back into their cool phase for a few decades – does that mean that the “excess heat” is just getting MORE scary and absorbed by the ocean?
You understand that the climate response to CO2 is logarithmic, right? Its not linear. The climate sensitivity by observation appears to be closer to 1C than the higher values — so in order to get to an additional 1C we would have to get to 800 ppm CO2.
I doubt we have enough hydrocarbon fuels to get there.
“Adjusted”? The idea is to slow the process down, or preferably stop the warming entirely, and that can be done through emissions reductions. The oceans absorbed 90% of the excess heat from climate warming.
Are you actually being serious?
Why on earth would anyone want to stop the warming. The world was much better off during the Holocene Optimum when temperatures were at least 2 to 3 degrees C warmer than they are today.
CO2 is an absolute blessing for plants as well.
Do you have any evidence that the oceans are warming?
Look: it is easy to make a mistake, and if we take some minutes before editing the post, we can no longer correct it.
But, when one misses the “/s” mark in a message, which was probably what you did in the first post, repeating the text without that mark will not help…
Kristi always heats her coffee with a hairdryer and her bathwater with infrared lamps. That’s how she knows water absorbs long wave infrared radiation.
Now all she needs to do is explain why the oceans are still here, after being evaporated for billions of years by the atmosphere.
Yes. The ocean temperature gets stuck at around 30°C max which is when the Vapour Pressure of water equals the Partial Pressure in the atmosphere, when thereafter the rate of evaporation very rapidly increases to swamp and absorb solar radiation at CONSTANT temperature. This because the Partial Pressure is fixed and the Vapour Pressure rapidly increases with temperature.
For info: the vapour and partial pressures are Around 0.6152 psi. at this 30°C figure’
Sheer lunatic Idiocracy!
Earth’s oceans were warmer than now in the Holocene Climatic Optimum, plus more recent warm periods, not to mention the Eemian Interglacial, numerous prior interglacials, Pliocene and Miocene Epochs.
Let alone the PETM, Eocene Maximum and Cretaceous Peak.
Unlike their ancestors, modern
studentscorals are snowflakes and melt easily.Sure, and the reefs were adapted to their environment. It’s a question of the rate of change, particularly extreme events.
Temperatures are currently cooling. Temperatures are currently 0.7C cooler than 2016.
Ocean temperatures have been much higher than this 2.0C scaremongering in the past and the corals did just fine. Coral reefs are not in danger. It’s ridiculous to say they are considering history.
How did corals survive the Holocene Thermal Optimum 5-7K years ago, when temperatures were 2-3C higher than today? Did they adapt?
And they will adapt again, nature is built around that it’s called natural selection. The only thing in danger of disappearing is the IQ of AGW true believers.
There’s no evidence that the current rate of warming is anything unusual. Indeed there were many periods as the Earth was recovering from the most recent glacial period where warming rates were much higher.
PLEASE!!!! Make some revisions of what you studied inbiology!
There is NO adaptation to EVENTS! There is adaptation to CHANGE, that is to say, to a more or less (in geological time) continuous evolution of a factor.
An EVENT, if it is “extreme”, may kill organisms; so no further reproduction; so no further ADAPTATION!
If it is not “extreme” (like the meteor that is said to have killed the dinosaurs), organisms will survive; and reproduce; and thus go on evolving. (this is a very rough sketch to help you reember what your teachers told you).
Remember, don’t confuse them with facts, their minds are already made up!!! 😉
So how did corals manage, for the majority of their history, when temperatures were up to 10 degrees warmer than now and CO2 was as high as 2000ppm? In fact, how did anything survive, as the past already broke through all the ‘tipping points’ that we are about to experience?
Corals have survived climate temperature changes of over 10 degrees, planetary magnetic shifts, CO2 levels of 15,000 PPM, giant undersea lava flows and plate tectonics for over 400 million years. They are probably more worried about us.
It’s worth noting that the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in its current location has completely died something like ten times during its existence – maybe many more times – as sea levels fell below the continental shelf from time to time, ie, in glacial periods. That the GBR keeps coming back says a lot about the mobility of corals and their ability to survive. If sea temperatures there go up two degrees, the corals will thrive as they always have done with warmer water. They love warmer water, that’s why they are closer to the equator now than they have been in the past. They evolved when temperatures were higher, and have been through millions of years of much higher temperatures.
It’s obvious: they all died, so living coral reefs no longer exist.
Coral reefs are the habitat of clownfish. Coral reef climate studies are the habitat of clowns.
So all the research done by thousands of scientists around the world are what? Stupid? Part of a vast conspiracy?
Yes
Bingo: vast conspiracy & you are an useful idiot.
Kristi is with the EPA.
What else would you expect?
How old are you?
Not old enough to have learnt not to come on this forum and simply push the CC narrative.
She is old enough to know better.
As a tee-shirt I saw recently says:
When does this old enough to know better thing supposed to kick in.
Or another
How can I know how to act my age, this is the first time I’ve been this old.
That research must be supported by peer reviewed papers, please share them.
You seem to be very naive.
Thousand of researchers studied quantum gravity and it lead nowhere. Millions of researchers studied classical physics and none could fix it because it is wrong and fundementally broken.
Thousand of researchers do and say lots of stupid things because they are researchers and your statement is just meaningless and stupid.
If they use unvalidated climate models as a base, yes, both stupid and part of a vast conspiracy. You should understand that most of these students/teachers use tools provided by their teachers and mentors. They never question whether the tools are valid or not. They are trained to use climate models from another discipline rather than do actual physical research to find factual information about their own subject
Look in the mirror, does this apply to you? Have you ever gone outside and tried to “guess” the temperature without any foreknowledge? Have you ever spent all day outside and written down what you think the temperature is every hour then checked to see how accurate you were?
Thousands? One should be enough.
Reminds me of what Bert Onestone said in reply to the announcement that over a hundred German scientists claimed his Theory of relativity was wrong when he said, “It only needs one to prove it!”
Good joke!…
If the said studies contradict the evidence and known history, then yes.
There is a difference between “working” and spending energy; or sweating.
I weep for Phys dot org.
Nah.
Scientific American is no longer scientific or American (owned by Germans).
Science refused to retract Marcott 2013 (essay A High Stick Foul in ebook Blowing Smoke).
Nature published the Fabricious scientific misconduct (essay Shell Games).
Why should phys.org get a pass?
I weep for my old school at Leeds.
Before I found the small print that said “Leeds” – I saw the name Piers Forster.
He is, and I know coz I’ve met him, the head of Climate Change Studies at Leeds University.
I felt really sorry for the guy. He has *the* most impossible stutter you ever came upon – trying to have a conversation with him is painful.
Tell me if I’m wrong here but isn’t that condition exacerbated by stress?
In which case, who saw fit to put him in charge of 200 people at a pretty major university?
(Vastly more major than Sheffield, just down the road and who were blowing their horn round here very recently)
The stress of that job surely can not be helping him – as I saw.
We met in the foyer prior to a presentation by Chris Stark from the UK Government Agency for Green Lunacy and he was The Host.
He was OK to chat to then. He went round intoducing himself and gently quizzing the attendees. Self included.
But he was ‘chair’ of the meeting/discussion/presentation and frankly, he could hardly get a word out. It was impossible, you could feel the whole room ‘egging him on’ when it was his turn to speak.
Poor guy.
You are left wondering ‘why’
One wonders how these junk science papers get ‘peer reviewed’ and accepted for publication?! There is no denying this paper deserves classification as junk, for it’s lack of acknowledgement of known natural replacement of corals on reefs experiencing minor thermal variations
There have been coral reefs found recently that are deep enough to be insulated from transient surface variations in temperature. They will surely survive the predicted 100% extinction at 2 deg C global average.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/19/world/coral-reef-tahiti-twilight-zone-climate-scn/index.html
https://news.yahoo.com/scientists-discover-600-mile-coral-201600573.html
https://www.icelandreview.com/news/new-coral-reefs-discovered-iceland/
I’m only allowed three links. But, I think you get the idea that the claim by the inexperienced grad’ student is unlikely to be valid. Back to the
drawing boardcomputer!Your link also says, “Warming oceans and acidification caused by the climate crisis has led to widespread coral bleaching. Last year, scientists found the global extent of living coral has declined by half since 1950 due to climate change, overfishing and pollution.
“The outlook is similarly grim, with scientists predicting about 70% to 90% of all living coral will disappear in the next 20 years.”
This is a reef that stretches for 2 miles, apparently dominated by a single type of coral. Notice how few fish there are there, compared to typical shallow reefs. It’s not performing the same ecological functions.
You ignore history, Kristi. History says coral reefs are not in danger of ceasing to exist. Predicting the demise of coral reefs is junk science. Claiming “ocean acidification” is harmful to coral reefs is also junk science.
Overfishing and pollution are sufficient to cause the loss.
Adding climate change just proves they are stupid and part of the conspiracy.
Anyone who predicts that a couple tenths of a degree increase in temperature is going to kill off the corals has demonstrated they are not a scientist, but instead are paid propagandists.
The Holocene Optimum was almost 10K years long and it was as much at least 2 to 3 degrees warmer than today. Coral didn’t die off. Instead like all other life on the planet it thrived.
Peer review amounts to getting people with a like belief to review your work. Why wouldn’t it ‘pass’ peer review?
Because scientists search for the truth, and they don’t want poor-quality research to lead them in the wrong direction.
*Chortle*
ROFL most scientists search for a pay cheque and make a name for themselves … #IAMAMAZING
Are you really as naïve as your post makes you sound.
Isn’t really fascinating how only the scientists who you agree with are these selfless pinnacles of virtue. It’s only those other scientists who are tainted by greed.
The peer reviewers are part of the club.
They are not ‘peer-viewed’. They are ‘peer-approved’. And anything not supporting the party line does not get passed the gatekeepers. Ergo, only junk gets through.
A 2C change in atmospheric temperature will take how many decades or centuries to heat sea water by the same?
These folks need to take thermodynamics 101
The science says the mass of the Earth’s oceans is 269 times that of the atmosphere … and the specific heat of water is 4.23 times that of air.
What that means is that for every degree C or K temperature that the oceans heat up due to atmospheric temperature rise, assuming perfect heat transfer from atmosphere to oceans, the atmospheric temperature increase to drive that heating of the oceans would be well in excess of 1,100 deg C or K.
Or in other words, the average temperature increase of the oceans due to heat transfer from air increasing its temp by 1.5 deg C would be on the order of one thousandth of a deg C, ignoring all other effects and processes such as evaporative cooling, the effects of ocean currents, etc.
It’s science.
What’s the mass of the top few feet of the ocean’s surface, and what is the effect of water depth and currents on heat absorption? The oceans have absorbed 90% of the increase in global average temperature – do you think that has been equally distributed throughout the oceans?
Just asking you to explain the science, since you seem to be an expert.
‘The oceans have absorbed 90% of the increase in global average temperature”
I guess we could also say the oceans have cooled since 2016, because temperatures have cooled by 0.7C since that time. You seem to still be living in 2016, Kristi.
NASA/NOAA say 2016 was 1.1C above their average and coral reefs were thriving then. And now the temperatures are 0.7C cooler than 2016. There’s nothing to see here, Kristi.
The top few feet don’t matter much at all – because of currents and wind and waves, the ocean constantly mixes.
I guess Kristi isn’t as much of an expert as she believes.
In addition, to what I wrote about ocean mixing due to currents, wind, and waves, even eliminating those very real effects, the physics say that the specific heat of liquid water is still 4.23 times that of air. on a mass basis. So even only using the top few feet of the ocean the heating of the bottom layer of the atmosphere by 1.5 deg C would still create only the most minor effect on surface temperatures, which themselves are completely wiped out by ocean mixing.
Basic fact hot surface ocean water evaporates faster … even Griff understood that so that rates your understanding right down there in the gutter.
You have the process reversed. The atmosphere DOES NOT heat the ocean, the sun heats the ocean, which then heats the atmosphere.
Go back to school.
Kristi asking others to provide proof. That’s rich.
Ok. So let’s call it millennia, lots of ’em.
The heat capacity of the oceans is 1,000x (roughly) that of the atmosphere. Some might argue that the deep would never get much above zero. I’m dubious with the amount of oscillation, but let’s be generous and call it 100x.
So, if we were to experience 2C of warming every century, and all that heat energy is transferred to the oceans, it would take 100 centuries, or 10,000 years.
This is why the oceans will never warm up as the CAGW Doomsday Death Cult acolytes want them to.
How does it affect your calculations that it takes 1000 years for water to travel through the ocean currents (including the depths, of course) to come back to where it started? How rapidly would a rise in 2 C in the average global air temperature be distributed throughout the oceans? Very slowly, as you point out. But the issue is what happens at the top. The change is not uniform throughout the oceans, even on the surface – it’s not even uniform throughout the year, obviously.
You are taking an extremely complex system and boiling it down to a simple calculation, without even having the data (“lets be generous, and call it 100X”)
So you are suggesting the current ocean temperatures are a result of a previous Holocene optimum event?
The atmosphere doesn’t heat the ocean, the sun does!
That’s funny, coming from someone who believes CO2 is gonna kill us all.
Please be kind, the lead author is a child.
Can she see CO2 too?
… or smell the snow?…
From Leeds. I wonder if she’s every seen a coral reef?
Send her up the cost to the cooling water outlet from a certain nuclear reactor there be corals there i hear
Pretty sure this is an appeal for funding so she can go on an all expenses paid 6-month diving holiday in the tropics. She might even put in an hour or two of “research”.
When the OPM sources dry up with the collapse of the CliSciFi scam, I guess she and other “researchers” can go back to mommy or get a burger-flipping job. Seriously, when will the CliSciFi practitioners learn that computers cannot tell you anything you didn’t already know?
Yes. And one must ask what are doing her co-authors, among them at least one supposedly should be more responsible.
… Not to mention the peer-“reviewers”…
Imagine the carbon fraud is a malignant narcissist [NPD] whose favorite sport is gaslighting. Imagine an army of them. Every survivor of a narcissist knows that debate is an exercise in futility and truth is not a shared goal.
The same trick is routinely used in sea level rise horror papers and government reports. Put a stick in the ground at the 100 year return period high water mark today, and report how quickly it gets to annual return period as the SL works its way up the distribution curve. Best used with low tidal range beaches.
I call BS. Just did a bit of research. Depends on where on the GBR, but on the northern end (toward the equator down under) the seasonal SST high is 84F.
Now a bit further north at Milne Bay PNG (famous coral dive spot, site of Fabricious ocean acidification coral scientific misconduct exposed in essay Shell Games in ebook Blowing Smoke) the last 10 year average seasonal high is 86F and within that the annual surface water high was 87F.
You know warmunists are getting desperate when their new alarmist papers can be easily fact refuted by 5 minutes on Google asking the ‘right’ question.
Rud,
Some relevant research by Dr Bill Johnston, finding that sea temperatures measured in an 1871 scientific survey are the same as those of today, with an upper limit of 30C (86F) due to plausible mechanisms. Geoff S
Trends in sea surface temperature at Townsville, Great Barrier Reef | http://www.BomWatch.com.au
Hey, Rud, this reminds me of the stuff in your Blowing Smoke ebook: Did Oregon State University ever do anything about the scientific misconduct of Marcott and his paleo thesis advisor? Was their paleo paper ever retracted?
I wrote McNutt, then editor in chief in re Marcott. Her assistant acknowledged receipt. Then nothing. Nope, no retraction of provable scientific misconduct.
Thanks for your reply, Rud. It is my opinion that an entity that cannot self-correct will not survive. But, then again, fountains of government money can support all sorts of insanities on timeframes relevant to humans.
If we could trade eco-apocalypse predictions for gold, we would all be billionaires. Unfortunately in their raw form and as fodder for idiotic policies these predictions will lead to any wealth we have being frittered away on expensive and destructive green programs that kill the environment and destroy the underpinnings of modern society.
Is she sure that the mortality won’t be 110%?
As usual, measurements and calculations are presented as exact numbers with no error bars! I don’t think that a PhD today means what it used to.
If 1.5 C warming will destroy 99% of all reefs, what does a little over 1 C do? 50% destruction? 67%? 80%? Give us a number, alarmists, because we’ve been at +1 C for awhile and we don’t see widespread reef destruction.
I think awkward questions like yours is why they came up with “Tipping Points!”.
The carnage _will_ happen, honest.
There are many corals that live at many depths (including past 60m deep) & cooler temperatures.
1) How much warmer will these deeper depths be?
2) A thermal gradient would normally occur so a 1C warmer surface is a 0.1C warmer at 3) depth. How long will it take for deeper water to warm?
4) What coral varieties & water climates were tested?
5) Can the coral colonies move away from the equator as they have adapted many times before?
6) Can we create semi-floating artificial reefs away from the equator to start new coral colonies (we populate them with baby coral) that will eventually be lowered (generations of new coral will grow on top & spread)?
You don’t understand, tygrus; nothing was tested in this study. There were a bunch of assumptions (wild-assed guesses) dumped willy-nilly into some fantastically down-scaled versions of existing CliSciFi climate models, themselves unverified. Their models say that current coral areas of the ocean have refugia (the ocean’s ability to buffer climate warming) of only 84% of those existing in pre-industrial ocean temperatures (an increase of 1 C). At an increased 1.5 C there are only 2% left and at 2 C there are 0% left. [Look up “refugia” to get a better explanation.]
Don’t encourage them Tigrus. “Rescuing” coral through transplanting and genetic engineering is big business in Australia, completely ignores that coral have near bacteria level capability to adapt to changed conditions all by themselves.
Mo’ models?
The one thing missing from this paper is the experiments carried out where sample corals were subjected to sea water slightly warmed by 1.5C or 2.0C for a prolonged period of time, to OBSERVE the effects of this change.
What we have is models, which may be good models, but remember the golden rule, GIGO.
Weapons grade bollocks
Going back in time to 50 Myr ago or 100 Myr ago, global temperatures were much warmer than today. YET, corals in great abundance thrived, as any good text on marine paleontology will tell you.
Climate change alarmists don’t study the history of weather and climate. If they did then they would not be climate change alarmists. If they were honest with themselves.
PLOS climate journal POS more like it
Someone needs to remind these jokers about the Bikini Atoll corals that resurrected themselves after a 4,500 degrees temp increase.
1.5 degrees – pffft.
It’s a bit disconcerting that the claims are becoming so outlandishly fantastic and yet are reported without the slightest doubt.
“outlandish” is a good description for what is passing for climate research these days and particularly applies to this coral reef study.
It’s a bit disconcerting that the claims are becoming so outlandishly fantastic and yet are BELIEVED without the slightest doubt.
Like Willis said in a recent article, when you model, you need to be careful of boundaries where the rules change! Nature is often nonlinear.
I thought they had already died.
At least that’s the impression they gave a decade or so ago – they’d be dead by now.
Then again, I had to pull out my snow blower last Friday. Snow was also supposed to be gone by now.
(Maybe it would be wise to ignore the impressions the “97%” (of the MSM) give?)
Don’t pay attention to the climate change doomsayers, they have been wrong in every prediction they make. It’s ridiculous that they can be so wrong for so long and still be in business.
Don’t deal in corals but ran across this interesting paper. —“ In 1976, a lush 220-hectare Acropora cervicornis reef occupied what had been octocoral dominated hard bottom in 1881. The 44-hectare swath of A. palmata on the reef crest in 1881 was reduced to two small patches totaling less than 600 m2 in 1976.More than 90% of the extensive thickets of A. cervicornis at Dry Tortugas were killed during the winter of 1976–77, apparently as a result of thermal shock.” Davis, G. E. 1982. A century of natural change in coral distribution at the Dry Tortugas: a comparison of recent maps from 1881 and 1976. Bulletin of Marine Science. 32(2):608-623. 1977 had a bad Florida freeze. Gilmore, R. G., L. H. Bullock, and F. H. Berry. 1978. Hypothermal mortality in marine fishes of south-central Florida January, 1977. Northeast Gulf Sci. 2(2):77-97.
Quote of the day: “What starts out here [US] as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation” (Eric Hoffer).
In the case or CC™ all three.
Black Lives Matter comes to mind.
The proper name for BLM is Burn Loot Murder. You are what you do.😞
Was this peer reviewed? If so, who reviewed it? These are the ones who really need to answer questions. Come on now. who are you? I know you are reading this thread.
And as for you Adele, you are an embarrassment to science.
I wonder if she can bake a cake. Maybe she would do well working in a bakery. Unless, of course, the thermal gradients involved terrify her.
Let’s just throw a few more billions of dollars at them and see if they get any better!
Morons going on record, apparently to prove they are morons to future generations.
“All Coral Reefs will Die if 2C Climate Target Breached”
Tell that to the coral reef in my living room that experience 2C temperature variation every day. I guess my reef didn’t get the memo!
My introduction to Anthony Watts was regarding a weather station inside Los Angeles where urban heat islands would impact the weather station. It is important for readers to understand that urban heat islands are in fact urban heat generators first.
In Canada, Environment Canada, Meteorological Services provides Regional Climatic Data through Building Codes. Buildings are designed and insulated to accommodate different regions from the deserts to the Arctic. The goal is not to impose on the atmosphere and be energy efficient so less fossil fuels are used which reduces GHG emissions.
In my area Building Code uses -20 degree C to simulate the coldest time of the year and 35 degree C for the hottest time of the year. Buildings will be insulated and their energy systems will be designed to accommodate those temperature extremes. Building Code warns of solar radiation impact being more significant than Climatic Data.
Municipalities or regions depend on this as do banks, lenders or insurers. A building not compliant with applicable codes would not get financing or allow occupancy.
Exterior finishes of buildings has to be low emissivity(not absorbent) or shaded all year to protect the building from solar exposure. White washed buildings reflect solar radiation.
The deregulation of the construction industry has allowed contractors and public to use absorbent siding, paint or finishes on the solar exposed exteriors. Here is an example of what that looks like in the winter. Keep in mind when you talk about heat transfer, hot excited energy always transfers to cold. As a thermal radiation consultant with a 43 year background, temperature for us starts at Absolute Zero(-273 deg. C or -496 deg. F). As far as accuracy, we have been within 1/10 of a deg. C imaging groundwater upwellings in a river. Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans used our work as their standard due to the fact no one else had developed the imaging application.
UN is worries about a 2 deg. rise in atmospheric temperature, here is a brand new building generating extreme heat in the winter. It is 39 deg. F day in January and the exposed exterior is as hot as 155 deg. F. The UV index is lower and the radiation weaker. In the summer months, air conditioning will run 24/7 using 1000s of watts per hour responding to symptoms.
Air conditioning is in fact refrigeration.
Is 155 degrees F more than a 2 degree rise? Hell is here for what politics and special interests have allowed to happen.
155F would blister anyone who touched it instantly.
If it’s that hot in the winter, how hot does it get in the summer.
I strongly suspect your calibrations are way off.
You’re right. See the sun shining upon the dark surfaces in front. The same dark surfaces around the corner in the shadow are far colder even though are at walls from the same room inside.
Dang! Soon there will be coral reefs in Nova Scotia. Next trip to Canada, I’ll bring my snorkel, flippers and baggies!
This isn’t science … it’s bullshit, not to put too fine a point on it.
Clearly I’m too stupid, as are all of you, to read history and note some inconvenient facts such as the climate has always changed? Sometimes hotter, sometimes colder. Always and ever changing.
But no – “trust the seance”. Communism will solve our problems.
Too stupid for words, in the event of warming the Australian reef could migrate from Queensland in the direction of Tasmania as it dies off at the top and extends at the bottom.
But there is no need for that as the commentary explained.
It is stunning idiocy that they modeled this and have ZERO clue about the aquatic environment. With upwells, winds, slacks, etc., the reef temperature varies more than 2.0C. A quick search would have shown them that there is already a 6 degree change seasonally. Their model PROVES that having a salt water aquarium with coral is beyond impossible. How stupid do you have to be to make the assumptions they do? So the new low bar is, if you can succeed at any major, become a climate ‘scientist’? Bachelor degrees in basket weaving now have someone to sniff their noses at.
PhD students have typically graduated from lower levels of academia, have they not? Has the education system so degenerated that the very concept of critical thinking no longer exists?
Yes.
I think I’ve figured out how this works. If it’s 2 degrees of natural warming the corals will do fine because natural systems work in harmony. If it’s 2 degrees of manmade warming the corals will die because mankind is a relentlessly destructive influence.
But, but, but, don’t they claim that the earth has already warmed by 1C? And corals seem to be doing just fine. Yet another 0.5C will be a disaster?
The year 2016 hit 1.1C above the average, according to NASA/NOAA, and, as you note, the corals did just fine then.
Now the temperatures are 0.7C cooler than 2016, so the coral reefs are getting farther from “danger” instead of closer.
Coral larvae don’t “seek out” suitable habitat except on a small scale. They aren’t going to swim 100 kilometers looking for cooler waters; they are at the mercy of the currents. The ability to adapt to temperature changes depends on the genetic diversity of the corals, and there’s not reason to assume that it’s enough to handle extreme temperature changes. It’s not the average water temperature that’s the issue, but periodic extremes. They can recover to some extent, but if you have extremes that are more frequent, they don’t have a chance to do so,
History tells a different story.
Krusti has never explained how corals survived far hotter conditions in the geologically-recent past.
So they spawn and just sit still … you really can’t be that retarded 🙂
Once again you demonstrate a complete lack of knowledge regarding the real world.
Ocean currents distribute each generations coral larvae over a wide area. When the get deposited in habitable environments, they thrive. If they don’t, they die. If they need to move a mile or two polewards in order to find that habitable environments, the currents will take care of that.
It is a similar survival strategy to pine trees that put out such a copious quantity of yellow pollen that roofs, sidewalks, and cars get covered with it, all in the ‘hope’ that a few find a receptive location.
Kristi, have you ever read what Charles Darwin (yes, that fellow who has its picture in every book on evolution) has written about the life of corals? In the geologic time scale? And speaking abut evolution, adaptation, extremes, distances, etc.: have you ever read the two volumes on cirripeds, written by the same Charles D.? There you have a lot of PRACTICAL information on methods to observe, evaluate and understand all those concepts.
You wrote somewhere in this thread that someone was “taking an extremely complex system and boiling it down to a simple calculation“: well, are you not doing the same thing?
Quoting from the paper “Oceans absorb about 93 percent of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions…” So anyone who is this incapable of basic calculations would be easily convinced that 1.5 C temp rise will kill all corals…
I thought it was supposed to be 97%?
This post is an example of a little knowledge being worse that none at all. You can’t understand the complexities of coral reels through argument.
Kristi Silber, you have spammed this thread relentlessly with inane comments. Are you getting paid by the word?
Kristi,it is apparent to me that you don’t understand the complexities of coral reefs,or the oceans and indeed the climate.
Keep digging. You are taking Leeds to a whole new level.
If you have no physical experiment data you are just guessing.
Kristi, thanks for the comments, your “input” is welcome. The knowledge I have gleaned from this website is far from “little”.
The instrumental record, such as it is, indicates the planet has been sporadically warming since the coldest decade (1640-50) of the “The Little Ice Age” (1250-1850), one of several cooling periods within the current interglacial epoch, The Holocene. From the mid-17th century existing data indicates mean temperature has increased .5 degrees C. per century. The ice-core millenial temperature reconstructions (GISP2) suggest the idea of a recovery out of the LIA is reasonable.
The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) supports the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis claiming the late 20th century warming (.5°C.) was mostly man-made. The academic climate science community explains the heat “trapped” by the additional CO2 (est.100 parts per million of the 410 ppm level) from our emissions along with the supposed lack of any other valid explanation affirms the position.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) does not “trap” heat, rather it convects it, (hot air rises, even if that “air” is CO2). Heat flux at the surface is “evaporation and convection”, scientifically described as “latent and sensible”. The surface is also where CO2 plays its vital role; the macroscopic effect of allowing photosynthesis and life on earth.
CO2 is a radiatively active molecule, its spectral properties are measured (MODTRAN), it absorbs and emits in the far infrared (IR) of the electromagnetic scale, centered on an amplitude of 15 microns, for which the corresponding (Wien’s law) temperature of minus -80°C. is found 5 to 6 kilometers above the surface, above the cloud deck where there is no water vapor yet still within the troposphere. Heat flux at this level is primarily radiative, it is academically described as the “Average Emission Level” where incoming solar shortwave IR is balanced with outgoing terrestrial longwave (OLR). Energy in = energy out (thermodynamics 1st law). The man-made CO2 raises the level to a colder altitude thus delaying the radiative cooling process ergo the temperatures below, including the surface, must increase to re-establish equilibrium. Entropy never decreases, maximum entropy is equilibrium (thermodynamics 2nd law.)
So the entire AGW premise is that there is an imbalance in the amount of radiant energy delivered to Earth by the Sun and the amount of radiant energy lost by the Earth via OLR . The difference shows up as an increase in temperature, and thus we have the concept of “global warming.” How much it warms is the debate. The IPCC places estimates of mean temperature increase from 1.5 to 4°C per atmospheric doubling from ice-core measured pre-industrial CO2 levels (270ppm). Observational studies lead to estimates around 1°C….i.e. marginal.
Furthermore, the academic emphasis on the CO2 “theory” of global warming overlooks the scrutiny required to dismiss the other arguments… namely natural variability, which, along with the glacial responses to the Earth’s orbital/axial cycles includes solar activity, the fluid dynamics for both ocean and atmosphere and the influence of the equator to pole temperature gradients. CO2 is a trace gas, its atmospheric portion is 400 molecules per million molecules of air, the man-made portion of that is estimated one molecule per 10-20,000 molecules of air. The “evidence” for AGW amounts to extrapolations of selected short-term trends apparent in the instrumental record, numerical model projections, comparing instrumental data with the mush of proxy data and treating a “consensus” as a scientific case for CO2 climate.
Long story short, there is no evidence supporting man-made global warming as a concern. Climate change is much more than CO2 and CO2 is much more than climate change.
Regards, M.W. Plia.
This from the girl who doesn’t understand how currents distribute coral larvae over a wide area.
BTW, so far all you have done is whine that us know nothings don’t agree with these scientists, therefore we must be wrong. Why don’t you actually try to refute any of the counter arguments? Or is whining truly all you are capable of?
Kristi: please, don’t say that! You don’t know who are the persons posting comments, what they are (or were; many of us are retired) professionally, what are, or were, their fields of activity.
Please, take the others seriously, don’t dare to judge or evaluate them, when they are exchanging sound arguments with you.
You seem to be quite young; I also was young, I can put myself in your shoes (at least, I try). All of us can help you, and (I speak blindly for them, without having asked their consent) many of us are WILLING to help you.
So, please, don’t break the bridges.
Very true. And it is likely that someone who is young and naive is inclined to assume that because we aren’t household names, or don’t flaunt our academic credentials, that we are bumpkins that don’t know anything.
Or understand it through a model. One fact that disputes it disproves a model. Just showing a seasonal variance > 6 degrees C shows put that far outside their model. My guess, their model would be 2 deg +/- 10 degrees.
/former Econometrics Masters candidate before I discovered computers were more fun and profitable.
Back here in “reality”, it would seem by all recent accounts that the GBR is doing fine despite the incessant petulant screeching of climate alarmists™ sat behind their computers.
Last year saw no prolonged high temperatures.
Outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish have decreased.
Hard coral cover was up 27% in the North, 26% in the Central GBR and 39% in the South.
How uncollegial of you. Daring to disprove the work of another scientist.
If you keep that up you will be declared a non-person and be fired.
Oh dear! One of my grandchildren is at Leeds University. Is this the sort of thing she will be taught? Where have all the standards gone?
It is unbelievable that people who claim to be scientists are being paid to produce such garbage. A quick look at the temperature profile along the GBR should have revealed a “catastrophic” spoiler alert for these drongos.
This is ridiculous. It is impossible for surface water temperature to increase above 31.5c due to evaporation/ equation of state.. It is a very well known phenomenon of tropical surface water temperatures. Coral is adapted to live comfortably up to 31.5c.
As several other commenters have noted data from the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) would indicate the media headlines resulting from the press release for this study are wildly exaggerated.
The HadISST dataset is a reanalysis of sea-surface temperatures on a 1°x1° grid with monthly time resolution since January 1870.
Following another “All corals are going to DIIIIIIIIIE ! ! !” story last April (2021), just out of idle curiosity I updated my spreadsheet to include HadISST numbers up to December 2020.
Selecting only those gridcells with at least 40% of their area included in the GBR, and calculating the “deltas” between each “summer max (/ winter min)” and “winter min (/ summer max)”, which have occurred every six months since 1870, I saw the screenshot below on my computer around 10 months ago …
Notes
– The minimum “deltas” (light-blue line / dots, right-hand axis of the graph) that have been “endured” by corals on the GBR every six months since 1870 are on the order of 3°C … i.e. more than the 2°C “hysterical headline” figure above.
– The maximum “deltas” (orange line / dots) for all gridcells (since 1870) are at least 6°C, and for some gridcells (close to the east coast of Australia, in the 20-22°S latitudes) around 9°C.
– Over the entire GBR, corals exist in temperature ranges from ~23°C to ~30°C in the northern (tropical) section down to ~20-21°C to ~29°C in the southern (sub-tropical) section.
NB : Other commenters have noted that there is a “hard upper limit” to open-ocean SSTs somewhere around the 31 to 32°C level.
– The “hottest” latitude for the GBR is in fact 14°S, whose 2 cells have (very slightly) higher “summer max” values than the 11-13°S rows.
2C merely gets the world back to where it was during the Medieval Warm Period.
Corals are old, they survived the PETM spike.
” Study: All Coral Reefs will Die if 2C Climate Target Breached ”
WRONG!
All they will die if 1.95C is breached!
Why do people insist on thinking that atmospheric temperatures cause marine heat?
The sun heats the ocean. Period. There is no other way demonstrated it can happen.
Coral is not a single species with uniform characteristics.
One might as well argue that mammals will go extinct if temps increase 1.5 C.
Even a single species will exhibit diversity in characteristics such as temperature tolerance as a mechanism to prevent extinction from transient events.