Good News: Great Barrier Reef Recovering Nicely!

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

Except he is a paid member of the unimaginably hugely-funded denialist campaign.

Sure he is. Probably nowhere the level of Mann, Gore and Pachauri though. Sky News doesn't pay it's regular guest speakers that well.

In case you're unaware, the IPA is directly responsible, amongst other global actors, for the position the earth finds itself in now, specifically because of it's adoption of the Reagan/Thatcher myopic neo-liberal economic policies of the early 80's.

Thank goodness for that, then.


https://ourworldindata.org/explorers...c=Actual+yield

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/s...y-world-region


https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/l...ancy?tab=chart

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/i...lity?tab=chart


https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/b...cts-since-1946

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/heat-wave-index-usa


https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/d...s?country=~USA

So yeah, RM's opinion on climate-science-related matters should be taken for exactly what it is, meaningless.

Can't be too meaningless based on the effort you and others, even if it is just "attack the messenger" for the most part, are expending trying to counter.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by GordMay

If you know of one, perhaps you should point it out.

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” ~ Christopher Hitchens

There is this snippet:
In an emailed response to Guardian Australia, Larcombe and Ridd maintained their concerns and rejected the criticisms.

“Comment on Fabricius et al 2018" ~ by Larcombe and Ridd
➥ https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2018/03/2...et_al_2018.pdf

In which they state: "... We are working on a much longer publication where all of this detail can be included ..."
I've seen no evidence, of any such publication.

Considering the GBR was dry eucalyptus forest 10 000 years ago, I suspect there isn't one.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Considering the GBR was dry eucalyptus forest 10 000 years ago, I suspect there isn't one.

You're going to be more specific about your complaint, and just what it is you think you're questioning/refuting.


“Rise and fall of the Great Barrier Reef”
Landmark international study examines reef's ability to recover from abrupt environmental change over millennia

Thirteen thousand years ago, as the last ice age ended, entire stretches of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef perished. Rising sea levels blanketed the world’s largest collection of corals with sediment coming off the newly inundated land, blocking the sunlight corals need to grow. The reef eventually recovered, but it took hundreds to thousands of years.

This near death and eventual resurrection wasn’t a one-off, according to a study [1] that reveals the reef’s shifting boundaries over geological time. It’s a tale that has played out five times over the past 30,000 years—and it may be happening again today.

The reef couldn’t always keep up with changing sea levels. The researchers identified five times when it appeared to die off:
- twice during the cool down of the last ice age, when falling sea levels exposed corals to air;
- and three times 10,000 to 17,000 years ago, when glacial melt caused sea levels to rise rapidly.

The final reef-death event about 10,000 years ago, from before the emergence of the modern reef about 9000 years ago, was not associated with any known abrupt sea-level rise or "meltwater pulse" during the deglaciation. Rather it appears to be associated with a massive sediment increase and reduced water quality alongside a general rise in sea level.

More about ➥ https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0528124008.htm

[1] “Response of the Great Barrier Reef to sea-level and environmental changes over the past 30,000 years” ~ by Jody M. Webster et al
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0127-3

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by GordMay

You're going to be more specific about your complaint, and just what it is you think you're questioning/refuting.


“Rise and fall of the Great Barrier Reef”
Landmark international study examines reef's ability to recover from abrupt environmental change over millennia

Thirteen thousand years ago, as the last ice age ended, entire stretches of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef perished. Rising sea levels blanketed the world’s largest collection of corals with sediment coming off the newly inundated land, blocking the sunlight corals need to grow. The reef eventually recovered, but it took hundreds to thousands of years.

This near death and eventual resurrection wasn’t a one-off, according to a study [1] that reveals the reef’s shifting boundaries over geological time. It’s a tale that has played out five times over the past 30,000 years—and it may be happening again today.

The reef couldn’t always keep up with changing sea levels. The researchers identified five times when it appeared to die off:
- twice during the cool down of the last ice age, when falling sea levels exposed corals to air;
- and three times 10,000 to 17,000 years ago, when glacial melt caused sea levels to rise rapidly.

The final reef-death event about 10,000 years ago, from before the emergence of the modern reef about 9000 years ago, was not associated with any known abrupt sea-level rise or "meltwater pulse" during the deglaciation. Rather it appears to be associated with a massive sediment increase and reduced water quality alongside a general rise in sea level.

More about ➥ https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0528124008.htm

[1] “Response of the Great Barrier Reef to sea-level and environmental changes over the past 30,000 years” ~ by Jody M. Webster et al
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0127-3

To be more specific, the local indigenous population have been here for somewhere between 40 000 and 60 000 years.

Dr Ridd’s first public criticism of the claims of his colleagues was a critique of the method used to conclude that 25 percent of the inner Great Barrier Reef was destroyed with the arrival of Australian Aborigines as published by John Pandolfi and ten other reef researchers, each a high-profile marine biologist including Terry Hughes from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Research. The Pandolfi paper was published in the very prestigious journal Science in 2003, entitled Global Trajectories of the Long-Term Decline of Coral Reef Ecosystems. While providing no new data, it purported to be a summary of how coral reefs are variously heading for extinction with the inner and outer Great Barrier Reef already 36 percent and 28 percent destroyed, respectively. Dr Ridd’s critique published in Energy and Environment in 2007, explains that the proposition the Great Barrier Reef was pristine before the arrival of humans as detailed in the Pandolfi et al. 2003 article cannot be sustained because the Great Barrier Reef is at most 10,000 years old, while human habitation of this region goes back at least 45,000 years and probably much longer. How could Pandolfi and colleagues, none of them experts in archaeology, have got their story through peer-review and published in the prestigious journal Sciencebecause it is without evidence? In fact, they have got the most basic of chronologies wrong: people predate the Great Barrier Reef. During the depth of the last ice age that was just 20,000 years ago there was so much ice at The North and South Poles that sea levels were about 130 metres lower than they are today. The region now known as the Great Barrier Reef was mostly open Eucalyptus woodland back then. The Pacific Ocean began at the edge of the continental shelf that is now 100 to 200 kilometres offshore. Sea levels began to rise 18,000 years ago sea levels after the arrival of Aborigines. They would have witnessed the very dramatic rise in sea levels that occurred up to 10,000 years ago with coastlines eroded by up to 50 metres each year. Evidence from geology suggests that sea-levels have since fallen globally by 1.5 metres over the last 4,000 years. Peter Ridd contends that this has caused massive coral loss that can be seen on many reefs in the form of dead reef flats. Indeed, Dr Ridd acknowledges there has been extinction of coral reefs, and he attributes this to climate change that is part of natural cycles rather than evidence of a linear trajectory towards extinction as claimed by John Pandolfi and colleagues.

[Lake-Effect]

For the rest of us, the GBR is not under threat because there's this ONE guy...

You're welcome.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

For the rest of us, the GBR is not under threat because there's this ONE guy....

Be fair. There's at least three guys: Piers Larcombe, Peter Ridd, & Reefmagnet.

[jimbunyard]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Sure he is. Probably nowhere the level of Mann, Gore and Pachauri though. Sky News doesn't pay it's regular guest speakers that well.

Ahhh... Probably. You don't even care enough about your own opinion to validate your claims. Thus, just more meaninglessness. Gore isnt a scientist, Pachauri is a dead politician/scientist (if you mean that one) and Mann isn't spreading documented lies in order to make a profit. Whatever he makes in plying his trade is probably fairly easy to determine, whether they're university salary, book sales or speaking engagements.

Thank goodness for that, then.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers...c=Actual+yield....

That you post such a meaninglessly disjointed list just shows how much you don't understand the point. (among other things)

If you wanted to show that you had something to say, two proper responses would be "Why?" or "How?"

Instead, you choose to illustrate your well-known penchant for assuming a single data point makes a case for or against complex, dynamic situational system interpretations or analyses.

Can't be too meaningless based on the effort you and others, even if it is just "attack the messenger" for the most part, are expending trying to counter.

The only 'meaning' your opinion about climate-science-related issues is it meaninglessness. Although perhaps a better word might be invalid or nonsensical or useless.

If you think your demonstrably incorrect opinions about climate science are you, then perhaps you should join Ridd in his 'snowflakery'...if you think Ridd is the 'messenger', then you understand even less than thought, because obviously what is being 'attacked' are his actions and false statements.

Judging from that last little bit of illogic, it can be assumed that you think letting a blind and deaf man paddle over a cataract is perfectly ethical...

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

To be more specific, the local indigenous population have been here for somewhere between 40 000 and 60 000 years.

I'm curious how Pandolfi came to the conclusion that Australian Aborigines destroyed 25% of the Inner Barrier Reef. What did they use, boomerangs and bullroarers?

I'm also curious how Ridd came to the conclusion that sea levels have dropped 1.5 meters in the last 4,000 years. A cursory search suggests that sea levels world-wide have risen in the last 4,000 years, albeit slowly.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level

[lestersails]

Originally Posted by Buzzman

Well, rather than go to news sites, how about reading the actual science, and the rebuttal of Ridd's clams by the authors of 7 of the nine papers he cited (the other two being left to them to rebut themselves).

Based on thier rebuttal, I'm convinced he cherry picked data and did not perform precisely the kind of rigorous methodology and quality controls he himself claims were not used by the many scienntists in both their original papers, and their rebuttals of his initial criticisms, which the authors note he does not acknowledge in the later 2018 Science piece.

In other words, he's ignored the rebuttals of his initial claims, only one of which was found to have any validity, and the authors of that paper subsequently re-calc'd their data and found a minor difference. So science peer reviewed 'critique' does work.

Just that what he did was mostly not this. Hence why he was fired. For breaching the Universities code of conduct that says you can't do this. QED

You can read it for yourself, if you like....

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...425?via%3Dihub

Wow, thanks for providing this. It is very helpful. For those of you who aren't actually practicing scientists, I can tell you that this is one scathing article. It is written in polite terms, terms that are not inflammatory, yet convey to the expert a flat out scorching critique of what Ridd has done. To translate, he is sloppy, he cherry picks data, and makes incorrect conclusions from data. They also make clear that he did not rebut most of their critique. These are things that no scientist can do and keep their job.
The University is waaaaay within their prerogative to fire a scientist who does this.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by SailOar

I'm curious how Pandolfi came to the conclusion that Australian Aborigines destroyed 25% of the Inner Barrier Reef ...

I don't believe that Pandolfi said any such, although he did say in:
“Historical Ecology of Coral Reefs”

The diversity, frequency, and scale of human impacts on coral reefs are increasing to the extent that reefs are threatened globally (Wilkinson, 2008). The direct and indirect effects of overfishing and pollution from agriculture and land development have been the major drivers of massive and accelerating decreases in abundance of coral reef species (Moberg and Folke, 1999; Abram et al., 2001; Jackson et al., 2001; Gardner et al., 2003; Hughes et al., 2003; Pandolfi et al., 2003). These human impacts and the increased fragmentation of coral reef habitat are unprecedented and have the possibility to undermine reef resilience (Bellwood et al., 2004), raising the likelihood that modern coral reefs might be much more susceptible to current and future climate-change than is suggested by their geologic ...

➥ https://link.springer.com/referencew...-481-2639-2_94
➥ https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2639-2_94

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

For the rest of us, the GBR is not under threat because there's this ONE guy...

You're welcome.

Remind us all again of the date UNESCO officially stamped the GBR as endangered?

Originally Posted by GordMay

Be fair. There's at least three guys: Piers Larcombe, Peter Ridd, & Reefmagnet.

A few billion marine critters can be included as well.

Originally Posted by jimbunyard

Ahhh... Probably. You don't even care enough about your own opinion to validate your claims. Thus, just more meaninglessness. Gore isnt a scientist, Pachauri is a dead politician/scientist (if you mean that one) and Mann isn't spreading documented lies in order to make a profit. Whatever he makes in plying his trade is probably fairly easy to determine, whether they're university salary, book sales or speaking engagements.

...

You're making excuses for your own AGW poster boys now?

Originally Posted by SailOar

I'm curious how Pandolfi came to the conclusion that Australian Aborigines destroyed 25% of the Inner Barrier Reef. What did they use, boomerangs and bullroarers?

You'd need to ask the authour that.

I'm also curious how Ridd came to the conclusion that sea levels have dropped 1.5 meters in the last 4,000 years. A cursory search suggests that sea levels world-wide have risen in the last 4,000 years, albeit slowly.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level

Probably as a result of his 30 years experience as a marine physicist would be my guess. The reef's big but it aint as big as Australia. My basic geography skills also tell me the "Ring of Fire" passes to the east and north so tectonic plate movement may have something to do with it.

Originally Posted by GordMay

I don't believe that Pandolfi said any such, although he did say in:
“Historical Ecology of Coral Reefs”

➥ https://link.springer.com/referencew...-481-2639-2_94
➥ https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2639-2_94

Well Ridd claimed he "said" it and it hasn't been refuted, apparently. In my interpretation the paper itself was pretty much nonsensical based on topic alone and it did assign loss of reef health from "pristine" due to "hunter/gatherers". As SailOar noted (in the case of the GBR), what did they do? Use boomerangs (which were mainly used for ceremonial purposes) and bullroars (whatever they are) to flay the reef?

[Exile]

Originally Posted by lestersails

Wow, thanks for providing this. It is very helpful. For those of you who aren't actually practicing scientists, I can tell you that this is one scathing article. It is written in polite terms, terms that are not inflammatory, yet convey to the expert a flat out scorching critique of what Ridd has done. To translate, he is sloppy, he cherry picks data, and makes incorrect conclusions from data. They also make clear that he did not rebut most of their critique. These are things that no scientist can do and keep their job.
The University is waaaaay within their prerogative to fire a scientist who does this.

Interesting comment, especially since the University's defense is that they did not fire Ridd for these reasons. You may want to offer your insight to Ridd's snowflake lawyer.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Remind us all again of the date UNESCO officially stamped the GBR as endangered?

There's science, and there's lobbying. Both powerful influences, but one too often dominates.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

For the rest of us, the GBR is not under threat because there's this ONE guy...

You're welcome.

Not only do you not know how many there are, but this ONE guy happens to be recognized (apparently) as one of the leading experts on the GBR. But maybe you're right, and there isn't more than ONE guy (or two, or gals) who's willing to risk conducting a study into whether anthropogenic forces only play a minimal role in global warming. Good luck getting a research grant for that one, or perhaps even keeping your job. There's every incentive in place to find evidence that it's primarily or even exclusively human-caused, and every disincentive to even hypothesize otherwise. This doesn't seem exactly simpatico with the scientific method.

You are certainly correct to highlight the obvious weight of the evidence, but you're also underestimating the power of group think and the appeal of conformity, especially when it is occasioned by the enticing combination of professional recognition, career advancement, and the lure of grant money. No "conspiracy" suggested here, only basic human nature, and why objectivity is normally the cornerstone of science in order to overcome these basic human shortcomings. This is why I'm flabbergasted that the IPCC doesn't at least acknowledge dissenting opinions from scientists with acknowledged and respected expertise.

This only feeds those who attempt to discredit the IPCC as a purely political if not partisan body. As Ridd himself pointed out in one of the videos Reef posted, it's like presenting the prosecutor's entire case without allowing any participation by the defense. But then this is the same pattern we see again and again -- from both inside the science world and in places like these threads -- a consistent effort to quell dissent through a variety of different means other than legitimately acknowledging and challenging the science itself. The only issue that will always be "well-settled" is the human capacity for undisciplined bias when it comes to personally desired outcomes.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Exile

You are certainly correct to highlight the obvious weight of the evidence, but you're also underestimating the power of group think and the appeal of conformity, especially when it is occasioned by the enticing combination of professional recognition, career advancement, and the lure of grant money. No "conspiracy" suggested here, only basic human nature, and why objectivity is normally the cornerstone of science in order to overcome these basic human shortcomings. This is why I'm flabbergasted that the IPCC doesn't at least acknowledge dissenting opinions from scientists with acknowledged and respected expertise.

See above re lobbying. It's amazing what you'll ignore from those with obvious vested interests, in your continued efforts to tear down the science.

I'm sorry that the IPCC hasn't met your purity test.