Why Climate Change Won't Matter in 20 Years

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

Lots of misinformed chatter about coral bleaching from both sides. So in what will ultimately prove a futile attempt to help I offer these points:

1) Stony corals can't "migrate". They stay in one place their whole life as they are not mobile. Only the larval form can "migrate" by just random current flow. But that isn't called migration.

2) Most hard corals do not require thousands of years to grow back. Anyone who dives after a major cyclone and then returns a few years later knows this. Corals grow at a rate determined by many factors but largely based on resources and location. Much as do trees.

3) Coral bleaching is caused by the plant material within the coral either being "ejected" by the coral or the plant life just dies. If bleaching continues too long the coral starves to death because it's food supply is no more. So bleaching is usually not fatal right away.

4) Corals can't just take up residence anywhere they like. They require a fairly narrow range of depth and temperature to survive. That's because a stony coral is actually a symbiotic colony of life forms both plant and animal. The calcium carbonate secretions house it's own garden so to speak. A coral lives off its plant tenants. Too deep or shallow and the plant life within the colony can't make photosynthesis work, too hot or cold and the plant life can't survive.

The 93% bleaching snippet is a headline designed to mislead the easily duped while also giving fodder to deniers. This kind of journalism hurts both sides. It needs to be called out, not used to make either side's point because it doesn't.

Thank you, this is exactly what I was trying to say. Although, in a more simplistic way of course.

[Reefmagnet]

Corals have been around for around 500 million years in one form or another and have survived multiple major extinction events of both the "hot" and "cold" variety. They have also handled sea level rise and fall on scales that make present rates look insignificant. They've also weathered changing environmental conditions caused by geological events like continental shift. They must be somewhat hardier than given credit for, methinks.


And headlines stating that "Only 7% of the Great Barrier Reef has avoided coral bleaching"



Is akin to saying that "Only 7% of Americans don't drive Fords" based on data showing that Fords have been seen in driveways in 93% of American cities.

And meanwhile in the real world, while all this banter transpires on an el Nino related issue that will resolve itself eventually...

More than one-third of North American bird species in danger: study - The Globe and Mail

The study, compiled by the North American Bird Conservation Initiative and the first of its kind to look at the vulnerability of bird populations in Canada, the United States and Mexico, said 37 per cent of all 1,154 species on the continent needed urgent conservation action.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

And meanwhile in the real world, while all this banter transpires on an el Nino related issue that will resolve itself eventually...

More than one-third of North American bird species in danger: study - The Globe and Mail

If Canada geese are on the list, then we'll know it's complete BS.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

If Canada geese are on the list, then we'll know it's complete BS.

Didn't they say that about the Passenger Pigeon?

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Didn't they say that about the Passenger Pigeon?

Have you ever come face to face with a Canada goose protecting its chicks? I've seen them boldly walk across a busy freeway with their chicks in tow while the cars all slam on their brakes. The country clubs and parks have a difficult time keeping the flocks from wrecking the place with poop.

They must taste bad, nobody hunts Canada geese.

[Reefmagnet]

Sounds like our plovers. Live and nest in the middle of suburbia on the ground, are smaller than a chicken and are veracious in defending their chicks. Nothing seems to touch them!

[sailorboy1]

FINALLY!!! We've gotten to goose crap I was starting to get concerned that you all had lost your frekin minds in order to post 3 pages of replies on this thread in 1 hour even after all this time.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

FINALLY!!! We've gotten to goose crap I was starting to get concerned that you all had lost your frekin minds in order to post 3 pages of replies on this thread in 1 hour even after all this time.

Might be a step up from the usual bull crap

[Kenomac]

Sailorboy,

Did you see the other thread where we were both on today's hit list? "Let other people pay for your retirement." Check it out.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Reefmagnet

Sounds like our plovers. Live and nest in the middle of suburbia on the ground, are smaller than a chicken and are veracious in defending their chicks. Nothing seems to touch them!

Yep, exactly. Except the Canada geese are four times the size of a chicken.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Exile

Sooooo easy to show how unproductive & unpersuasive this sort of political spin has become, the best evidence of which is how simple the opposing side can "spin" it 180 degs. as shown below:

Nothing but pins & needles all morning awaiting another example of your brilliance.

Oh hooray, another Exile quote-mangle.

Hey genius, Kenomac opened the door to that topic. If you don't think US anti-AGW sentiment closely correlates with political ideology and party affiliation, you can take it up with Pew Research.

The flip side of freedom is responsibility. Knee-jerk rejection of science because it doesn't conform to an ideology isn't responsible. No "thought" or honest debate in that. Scrambling around for scraps of science to satisfy an ideology isn't much better.

[iyamwhatiyam]

Oh, conservatives don't want world government? I'm shocked. Shocked!!!

[iyamwhatiyam]

Governments fix everything fer crissake, wassa matter with those people?

[StuM]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Actually, I see the the container half full, with a large hole draining it quickly, and a small tap filling it slowly. For all practical purposes, that container will end up virtually empty.

An optimist sees the glass half full.
A pessimist sees the glass half empty.
A realist sees that the glass is too large.

A realist sees that the glass is full - of a certain quantity of liquid and a certain quantity of atmospheric gases.

[markpierce]

The sun will increase its output ten percent every billion years. Eventually mankind will be wiped out as the Earth will become Venus-like. So, why worry about a few hydrocarbons? Come to think, a slowly-increasing temperature might give humans more time to adjust to the inevitable.