Good News: Great Barrier Reef Recovering Nicely!

[Reefmagnet]

One quarter of a century into a climate emergency, where it's worst than we thought and multiple "tipping points" have come and gone and everywhere is warming twice as fast as everywhere else and where sea levels are rising exponentially and where a series of unprecedented natural disasters and weather patterns that haven't occurred within the past 40 or even 100 years have been wreaking havoc and, of course, where tropical reefs are dying like red shirts in a Star Trek flick.

And yet here we are. The sun still shines, the rain still falls and the birds still sing.

[Exile]

Yes, reassuring news. Must be hard for so many to cope with.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

One quarter of a century into a climate emergency, where it's worst than we thought and multiple "tipping points" have come and gone and everywhere is warming twice as fast as everywhere else and where sea levels are rising exponentially and where a series of unprecedented natural disasters and weather patterns that haven't occurred within the past 40 or even 100 years have been wreaking havoc and, of course, where tropical reefs are dying like red shirts in a Star Trek flick.

And yet here we are. The sun still shines, the rain still falls and the birds still sing.

It's pretty easy to rattle off a bunch of vague assertions if you don't feel obliged to back them up with actual data.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by lestersails

I deeply wish that ACC was not true. I would love to go out and buy a nice sports car with a roaring V8 engine, jet around the world without concern,

Why don't you.???
That's what a lot of the Cheer Leaders of CC are doing.. seems to be the in thing shouting for one thing and doing the opposite..
Kinda like the pro Defund the Police Democrats who then boost their personal security budgets..

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Exile

Yes, reassuring news. Must be hard for so many to cope with.

Its got me worried mate.. here in Coimbra its usually 40C this time of year and wildfires are raging in Portugal.. but its very rarely reached the low 30's and most of the time its been in the mid 20's.. I blame Earth Tilt..

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by SailOar

It's pretty easy to rattle off a bunch of vague assertions if you don't feel obliged to back them up with actual data.

So actual reality doesn't work for you, then?

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

One quarter of a century into a climate emergency, where it's worst than we thought and multiple "tipping points" have come and gone and everywhere is warming twice as fast as everywhere else and where sea levels are rising exponentially and where a series of unprecedented natural disasters and weather patterns that haven't occurred within the past 40 or even 100 years have been wreaking havoc and, of course, where tropical reefs are dying like red shirts in a Star Trek flick.

And yet here we are. The sun still shines, the rain still falls and the birds still sing.

Originally Posted by SailOar

It's pretty easy to rattle off a bunch of vague assertions if you don't feel obliged to back them up with actual data.

• Climate emergency
  https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/...mate-emergency
• Warming worse than thought
  https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/worse-climate/
• Climate tipping points
  https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0
• Warming twice as fast
  https://realclimatescience.com/2019/...twice-as-fast/
  https://holoceneclimate.com/twice-as-much-warming.html
  https://www.livescience.com/49172-ar...s-quickly.html
• Sea level rise
  https://www.theguardian.com/environm...harold-wanless
• Unprecedented natural disasters
  https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1087702
• Reef dead
  https://www.iflscience.com/plants-an...cent-bleached/

[lestersails]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

One quarter of a century into a climate emergency, where it's worst than we thought and multiple "tipping points" have come and gone and everywhere is warming twice as fast as everywhere else and where sea levels are rising exponentially and where a series of unprecedented natural disasters and weather patterns that haven't occurred within the past 40 or even 100 years have been wreaking havoc and, of course, where tropical reefs are dying like red shirts in a Star Trek flick.

And yet here we are. The sun still shines, the rain still falls and the birds still sing.

Thanks so much for your profound insights and reassurances. Now we can all scamper off and ignore the problem because Reefmagnet tells us so.

At least now everyone on the thread knows you don't take this at all seriously.

Like the guy who falls off of a 20 story building and yells in the 10th floor window as he goes by "So far, so good!!!"

[lestersails]

(Let me try this)
Wow! The deniers on this thread are doing better than I thought.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climat...nce_denial.svg
I think you guys have hit every one of these! Silly me to think I needed to enumerate them one by one as you sputtered and ranted. Here it is, all in one tidy picture!

[lestersails]

Apologies again - here is the image (I hope).

[Buzzman]

Originally Posted by Exile

But when it comes to climate science, even the most zealous advocates -- don't dispute that the overall science remains unsettled.


Utter bollocks. The science is most definitely settled. Especially with reference to AGW. Natural forcings are absolutely NOT causing AGW or CC. This is solely down to us, and our emissions of CO2.
Not in dispute. Totally settled.



..... This consensus starts to break down, however, when conclusions are drawn about how much influence humans have had on warming vs. natural forces, and most critically, [over] what the remedies might be and at what cost to the well-being and livelihoods of people the world over.

The ONLY disputations still remaining are over the severity of the impacts ( as yet unknown and 'unprovable' until after they occur, but from the modelling still looking like being somewhere between serious and catastrophic ), and what we should or should not be doing about remedying those impacts and effects.


Naturally, business and others with vested interests in 'business as usual' are opposed to any changes to our current ways of doing things.


This in turn leads to the 'political opposition' (i.e. where people hold fast to an opinion, or opposition, that is NOT based on scientific facts).
This is, like religion, a 'belief system', based not on existential facts but on what the 'believer' chooses to 'believe'.


Both of thse positions are summed up using the shorthand 'denialist'.


The other 'side' if you will, are the 'acceptors' - those who accept the science, accept the moral obligation, and are keen to remediate our forefathers actions that created this AGW situation.


The problem is that many people are resistant to 'change' - of any kind - and so are drawn, almost naturally, to oppose anything that implies change 'must' happen. These people tend to be 'conservative' in their general beliefs and views (i.e. not 'progressive') and so tend to come more readily from the 'conservative' "side" of politics. Hence the 'politicisation' of the AGW 'debate'. [And I'd like to stress that this is 'tends' not absoljute, as I know there are Conservative political people who share the concerns about AGW, and Progressives who don't, so it's not an 'absolute'...]



Hence the puerile counter claims whenever anyone, anywhere, highlights an issue that is likely to be more than averagely affected by ACC. Such as coral reefs.

So the 'denialist' cherry picks the available data to find outlier 'facts' that support their claim that nothing needs to be done.

The scientists (and the acceptors) look for things we can do to mitigate, ameliorate and remedy the forecast catastrophe.

SailOar pointed out (which might on the surface appear unusual) that some corals in the Red Sea appear somewhat more resistant to heat stress than corals elsewhere. It is posited this is down to long, long term exposure to high temperatures and shallow waters (i.e. much of the Red Sea) and, over geormorphological time scales, this has enabled natural selection to afford them some degree of resistance to excess heat.


What is equally clear from all other reef monitoring scientists is that most corals are not so resistant.


But it does afford some hope that, in the event of the scientists being proved right, and coral reefs dying off severely, there might be some avenue of redress if coral biologists are able to adapt the heat stress resistance from Red Sea corals into other corals.


But we do know, from experiments already occurring in both Australia and the Phillipines that corals planted by humans - i.e. artificially, not naturally - do not grow anywhere near as fast as we need them to, and that for us puny humans to completely re-grow somthing like the GBR is going to be a MAMMOTH task, and probably not one we will be in a position to contemplate, should the predicted temp rises in fact occur.

Ergo, it is morally certain that we therefore do everything we possibly can not to end up in that scenario. Completely dead reefs will be a disaster for the ocean biome, and will upset the balance of nature in ways we simply cannot predict - other than to predict they will likely not be good outcomes, for us or the rest of the planet.



And that means ther is an incumbent responsibility on us to be doing everything we possibly can to prevent the significant temp rises predicted in the modelling.


Anyone arguing anything else is, therefore, morally suspect, at the very least.


Put it another way, if your mechanic tells you at annual service time that the brakes on your car are marginal, and will soon fail, possibly causing a catastrophic accident that may resuklt in the death of someone else, you can choose to take a 'punt' that this will not occur, and that the inevitable accident will not harm you or yours.


Or, you can ask the mechanic to fix the brakes. Sooner, rather than later.


I don't mind arguing the 'how to's' with those interested in seeking solutions but, frankly, arguing with denialists is about as productive as trying to hold back the tide.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by lestersails

Thanks so much for your profound insights and reassurances. Now we can all scamper off and ignore the problem because Reefmagnet tells us so.

At least now everyone on the thread knows you don't take this at all seriously.

Like the guy who falls off of a 20 story building and yells in the 10th floor window as he goes by "So far, so good!!!"

I'm not telling anyone to do anything, I was simply making observations.And the cliff notes of those observations are:

1. Nothing's changed of any extraordinary significance in the past 25 years.
2. Climate change - or rather "climate emergency" to use the latest parlence - papers and reports in the seemingly vast majority of cases would have Samuel Clemens claiming copyright infringement on his most famous of quotes.

And as to your analogy re falling from a building, that guy could very well fall onto a canvas awning, or into the swimming pool or even an open top truck full of duck down mattresses and survive. Too bad for him if he gave away his house, all his belongings and divorced his wife (or husband) halfway down. In someways, however, your analogy is spot on. Science is telling the guy he's going to die, but that mattress truck is just pulling up below him. In either case panicking and misinformation about the worse case scenario achieves little.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by Buzzman

The ONLY disputations still remaining are over the severity of the impacts ( as yet unknown and 'unprovable' until after they occur, but from the modelling still looking like being somewhere between serious and catastrophic ), and what we should or should not be doing about remedying those impacts and effects.
....

And yet, I'd just about wager you're burning fossil fuel - either directly or indirectly - every single day of the year with nary a worrying thought.

[lestersails]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

And as to your analogy re falling from a building, that guy could very well fall onto a canvas awning, or into the swimming pool or even an open top truck full of duck down mattresses and survive. Too bad for him if he gave away his house, all his belongings and divorced his wife (or husband) halfway down. In someways, however, your analogy is spot on. Science is telling the guy he's going to die, but that mattress truck is just pulling up below him. In either case panicking and misinformation about the worse case scenario achieves little.

Keep at it - you are giving us all good insights into the working of your mind.

[Buzzman]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Science is telling the guy he's going to die, but that mattress truck is just pulling up below him. In either case panicking and misinformation about the worse case scenario achieves little.

Yeah, but what if the guy driving the mattress truck stops for a leak, or a beer, or a woman....???

There's a reason people don't willingly jump out of a perfectly good aircraft without a parachute....it's not the fall that's the problem, it the possibility, likelihood, probability of the sudden stop at the bottom that compels the wearing of the parachute.


So forget the mattress truck, lets buy the earth a parachute, at least...

And, ftr, the only misinformation is being propagated by those who would prefer to 'do nothing'. IOW, wait till the last second to see if, by some 'miracle' the mattress truck turns up in the nick of time and cushions the fall.

Personally, I hope they're right, and the "mattress truck" does turn up.


But I'm realist and pragmatist enough to know the probability of this is vanishingly small, and so choose to "fix the brakes" and "provide a parachute".

It's called insurance.



How many CF members with expensive boats choose to sail with NO insurances......????

Vanishingly small numbers....I suspect....