Images Show Further Damage To Great Barrier Reef, But Scientists Assure It's Not Dead (huffingtonpost.com) 99
New images of the Great Barrier Reef, the largest living thing on Earth, are alarming and show the extent of the damage climate change has caused to the coral. But it's not dead yet, scientists have assured, reports the HuffingtonPost citing several scientists. In April, researchers found that more than a third of corals in central and northern parts of the reef had been killed and 93 percent of individuals reefs had been affected by a condition known as coral bleaching (which happens when the water is too warm). New research shows the damage has worsened. A story, however, doing rounds on social media claims that the Great Barrier Reef has died. The viral story has been picked up by many well-read outlets, creating confusion among people. From a HuffingtonPost article: But as a whole, it is not dead. Preliminary findings published Thursday of Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority surveys show 22 percent of its coral died from the bleaching event. That leaves more than three quarters still alive -- and in desperate need of relief. Two leading coral scientists that The Huffington Post contacted took serious issue with Outside's piece (the misleading viral story), calling it wildly irresponsible. Russell Brainard, chief of the Coral Reef Ecosystem Program at NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, told HuffPost he expects the article was meant to highlight the urgency of the situation. But those who don't know any better "are going to take it at face value that the Great Barrier Reef is dead," he said. The Spokesman-Review, in Spokane, Washington, fueled the myth Thursday, when it published a blog with the headline: "Great Barrier Reef pronounced dead by scientists." Brainard told HuffPost the recent bleaching event was a "severe blow" that resulted in serious mortality. Still, "we're very far from an obituary," he said.
Re:Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading! (Score:4, Funny)
Shhhh! I don't want them to get any ideas about making the main site as broken as the mobile one.
Don't improve facts, worsen characterization (Score:1, Insightful)
Seems it was politically useful to describe them as "dead", facts notwithstanding.
Not unusual, if highly annoying.
Just amp up the negativity of the description, and if necessary change the definitions of basic words. Worked for "they let you do it".
Historical context (Score:5, Informative)
The Great Barrier Reef has been monitored by AIMS since 1980. The first mass bleaching event occurred in (then) record warm year 1998 when 50 per cent of the reefs suffered bleaching. The next in 2002 where 60 per cent of reefs were affected. In both events, about five per cent [gbrmpa.gov.au] of the Great Barrier Reef's coral reefs were severely damaged. (compared to 22% now)
The impact from this most recent bleaching event, the most widespread and severe ever recorded [aims.gov.au] on the Great Barrier Reef, is still unfolding.
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You know, irony usually ends badly around here.
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I expected someone to surely quote "Excuse me, I'm not quite dead". What hath happenend to thy wit, /.?
Re:Historical context (Score:5, Informative)
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For even more historical context, corals in general have been around for about half a billion years.
They will be here long after homo sapiens is no more.
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The great barrier reef also dies every ice age, when it comes a coastal feature a hundred odd metres above the high tide mark, they have cores in the coral that prove it. A little more concern about coastal cities and little less concern about coral reefs might be well in order though. The current head in the sand approach to under water front properties, just ignoring it all, seems to be pretty poorly considered, just dumping that problem on future generations and doing nothing about it, except of course g
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gawd (Score:1)
your gettign news form the liberal canadian propoganda site...they are AWFUL.....another nail in coffn for why i just get news from real people in hte area rather then here or the nets lil govt buddies
In the meantime... (Score:1)
Envirowackos are disappointed that Mathew wasn't worse [investors.com]
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The Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have been designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. They follow the principle "what you don't know can't hurt you" and turn completely dark and opaque at the first sign of danger. This prevents you from seeing anything that might alarm you.
Its not dead! (Score:1)
Its probably pining for the fjords!
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Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead!
[A large man appears with a (seemingly) dead man over his shoulder]
Large Man: Here's one.
Dead Collector: Nine pence.
"Dead" Man: I'm not dead.
Dead Collector: What?
Large Man: Nothing. [hands the collector his money] There's your nine pence.
"Dead" Man: I'm not dead!
Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Large Man: Yes he is.
"Dead" Man: I'm not.
Dead Collector: He isn't.
Large Man: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
"Dead" Man: I'm getting better.
Large Man: No you're not,
ex-parrotfish (Score:4, Funny)
Images Show Further Damage To Great Barrier Reef, But Scientists Assure It's Not Dead
It's not dead, it's just CRESTing [usgs.gov]!
Re:Not dead (Score:4, Funny)
Look, matey, I know a dead reef when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
Let's not forget... (Score:5, Interesting)
...that as a geological feature, the GBR is relatively new.
As it only developed over the last 8000 years or so (since the last ice age) it's entirely possible that - in geological spans - the GBR is an ephemeral thing, like foam on the crest of a wave to us. To our short timeframe it seems permanent but it really isn't.
I know, that's not part of the FUD-creed, so downvote me to oblivion.
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Yes, well, your entire life span is also ephemeral in such a timeframe, does that mean that anything that happens to you is inconsequential? So I guess we should burn your house down with you in it. It's just ephemeral, we should keep burning houses with people in them.
In this example, the house represents the Earth, you represent all life on Earth, and keep burning houses is the equivalent of spouting pseudo-intellectual emotional rubbish about geological spans instead of acting like an adult.
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Yes, well, your entire life span is also ephemeral in such a timeframe, does that mean that anything that happens to you is inconsequential?
Yes.
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:4, Insightful)
it's entirely possible that - in geological spans - the GBR is an ephemeral thing,
I suppose we may find that many things are ephemeral during periods of rapid climate change.
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I think his point was this is ephemeral, in geologic timescales, regardless of climate change. But I guess you proved his point about getting downvoated/negative comments to his true statements.
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Would you watch & do nothing while a bus sped towards an old guy standing in the road?
How many buses will you set into motion in the process of saving this one guy and how many people will they run over?
A key problem with climate change mitigation is that it doesn't take into account the harm that it causes, even to its own climate goals. Making a bunch of high fertility poor people is a great way to create future ecological problems among other things.
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:5, Interesting)
...that as a geological feature, the GBR is relatively new.
As it only developed over the last 8000 years or so (since the last ice age) it's entirely possible that - in geological spans - the GBR is an ephemeral thing, like foam on the crest of a wave to us. To our short timeframe it seems permanent but it really isn't.
I know, that's not part of the FUD-creed, so downvote me to oblivion.
You are totally correct. The GBR wasn't there in the Pleistocene, when CO2 levels were higher than today.
In fact when the GBR was getting started the Sahara desert wasn't a desert at all, it was lush grass and swamp land.
Humans take such a short term view of things.
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Humans take such a short term view of things.
Probably because we don't live very long and can only survive under some very specific environmental conditions.
If human survival is insignificant, then the state of the GBR isn't worth worrying about.
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Humans take such a short term view of things.
Probably because we don't live very long and can only survive under some very specific environmental conditions.
If human survival is insignificant, then the state of the GBR isn't worth worrying about.
I'm sure we could have survived in the Pleistocene. You have to be prepared to move around the planet a bit to find equitable habitats, something that the system of nation states interferes with. Perhaps we will have to do away with them to survive.
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I'm sure we could have survived in the Pleistocene. You have to be prepared to move around the planet a bit to find equitable habitats, something that the system of nation states interferes with. Perhaps we will have to do away with them to survive.
Pretty staggeringly naive, IMO. Unless by "we could have survived" you mean billions would perish but the species would not go completely extinct.
I think there are a couple other hurdles to "find(ing) equitable habitats" than political borders.
Re: Let's not forget... (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that this time, climate change isn't happening on geological timescales, it's happening within the scale of our lifetime - and there are billions of people who are too poor to cope.
All it takes is a decade of drought, a little too much sea rise, or an unusually big storm surge salting croplands in a river delta, and hundreds of thousands can no longer live there. The refugees have to go elsewhere, eat something, which results in stress and conflict in neighboring areas.
The Pentagon and other militari
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You are assume that these climate changes happen overnight such that someone could be caught out in the cold or caught in the desert and actually die.
False.
That is not how it would work.
Of course not. The problem is that nobody knows how it would work. It is you who assumes too much. E.g. that if the current agricultural areas of the world becomes a huge desert, the proper terrain, soil conditions etc. will inevitably appear wherever the climate happens to shift into the correct range.
Your theory requires a constant level of habitable terrain that humans merely need to move fast enough to exploit. It totally ignores the more likely scenario -- The Sahara will remain an uninhabitable
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Your theory requires a constant level of habitable terrain that humans merely need to move fast enough to exploit. It totally ignores the more likely scenario -- The Sahara will remain an uninhabitable dessert, and North America, South America, Australasia and Eurasia will join it.
Why do you believe that your scenario is more likely, when it's not a scenario with any support in the climate science as documented by the IPCC?
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[
As well we should. I mean, I do take solace that something like the GBR will probably form at some other place millions of years in the future, but that's not really a substitute for being able to see what they once were in my lifetime.
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[
As well we should. I mean, I do take solace that something like the GBR will probably form at some other place millions of years in the future, but that's not really a substitute for being able to see what they once were in my lifetime.
Then you better move fast and check things out. Many wonderful things in this world are temporary. Check out New Zealands 'pink and blue terraces', oops earthquake.
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And what was the temperature? Coral doesn't care about co2.
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And what was the temperature? Coral doesn't care about co2.
I think the co2 levels may be relevant to acidity which coral does care about.
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Slightly but the GP is right in claiming that Corals existed when CO2 was higher. So let's assume that he's right and that Corals are not related to CO2. That leaves us with two options:
1. He believes corals aren't sensitive to temperature (this has been proven without a doubt to be false and you're more than happy to try this at home with a fishtank and overheat your water by only a couple of degrees).
2. He believes CO2 isn't related to global warming which at this point is about as big of a WTF as you can
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Slightly but the GP is right in claiming that Corals existed when CO2 was higher. So let's assume that he's right and that Corals are not related to CO2. That leaves us with two options:
1. He believes corals aren't sensitive to temperature (this has been proven without a doubt to be false and you're more than happy to try this at home with a fishtank and overheat your water by only a couple of degrees).
2. He believes CO2 isn't related to global warming which at this point is about as big of a WTF as you can get on a site that is supposed to have an intelligent tech minded readership which embraces science rather than politifiction.
I like that point about raising the temperature of the fish tank by a couple of degrees. If you raised the temperature by a couple of degrees over enough generations of fish I'm sure they'd be fine. How many generations is required, now thats the question.
Re:Let's not forget... (Score:4, Informative)
...But the great barrier reef isn't a geological feature. Reefs aren't formed by geological processes.
You could likewise say that as a astronomical feature, the GBR is relatively new only being 20,000 years old while it's closest star is formed 4.6 billion years ago.
It's ecological. The coral is living stuff. The fish and plants which make up the ecosystem are all alive. They are not rocks waiting for the tectonic plates to move them around. It's like a forest or a rain jungle. They certainly operate on larger timescales than people are used to thinking about, but they are not geological or astronomical.
Reefs are most certainly tied to geological features. They need shallow water at the right temperature. And change that and they'll die off. Just as much as if you somehow stop all the rain, the forests in California will all burn down.
On an evolutionary timescale, the GBR has been around a long time and it's fostered some amazing specialists which have unique and possibly useful genetic traits. As we're right on the cusp of understanding the genetic code and reaping that useful insight and millennia of real-world testing and application, it'd be a shame to lose it.
Of course it's not permanent and eternal. Nothing is. The sun will burn out and blow up eventually.
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Sure, if we increase the amount of funding for carrying out such tasks by several orders of magnitude.
It'd be cheaper and easier to just protect it in the first place though.
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Yes. And that's a very good thing to do. A useful act of conservation.
But it helps to actually see some of it in action to know what you're looking for in the barely legible terabytes of genetic code. It only takes a couple of mantis shrimp to punch a hole in a few aquarium tanks to let scientists know that hey, maybe we should take a look at how they can get their pincers to accelerate at 10,400 g's.
While the mantis shrimp is fairly well known with it's 8 families all with their own genus's and species, t
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"Reefs are most certainly tied to geological features. They need shallow water at the right temperature. And change that and they'll die off. Just as much as if you somehow stop all the rain, the forests in California will all burn down."
Just to clarify, that's not entirely true. It's true of some reefs such as the GBR for sure, but some go much deeper, and others can cope with distinctly different temperatures to those that the GBR sees, including down to about 2km and temperatures ranging from 4c up to ab
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"93 percent of individuals reefs had been affected by a condition known as coral bleaching (which happens when the water is too warm)" ...or when the water is too cold, or when the sun shines too much, or when the corals die off from diseases brought in by ecologists who swim around the area while getting paychecks for goofing around on a boat in the tropics...
As someone who has kept coral in aquariums for several decades, I'm not sure why this post was marked troll. Other than the the part about ecologists causing a bleaching event, it's pretty accurate, though I'm assuming that part was added for humorous effect.
I tended to keep fairly high end systems which had brighter than average lighting. So I've witnessed coral bleaching due to it being kept in dimly lit systems at pet stores and holding facilities and then placed under much brighter lighting.
I've also
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Because this reef is not bleaching due to cold water, excess sunlight, or disease. It's bleaching due to warm water and the article points that out.
It's like a news story about a man getting stabbed (which can be fatal), and someone pointing out that parenthesized information and stressing that diabetes can also kill people. That's true, but it makes them a troll.
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Because this reef is not bleaching due to cold water, excess sunlight, or disease. It's bleaching due to warm water and the article points that out.
I can't say I've read it, but did it mention fertilizer runoff in TFA? That was a major issue for the GBR for some time. What about current changes? Granted, that may be impacted by temperature changes, but it may not even be the temperature that is the root cause. It may be a combination of environmental changes, but the temperature is the simplest one for us to notice.
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...except the article is pretty much full of crap.
Sure, the scientists they interview claim it was warm water that caused the bleaching - but that warm water was a massive HALF A DEGREE above normal.
The daily variance in temperature in pretty much every coastal water in the world is several times that.
It's like a news story about a huge, complicated ecosystem that tries to pin the cause on one thing, when it was probably several things happening at about the same time. Or, to put it in your terms, "there we
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You have made some assumptions there. You assume that half a degree is not enough to cause problems with the corel. Sure, scientists have their laboratory tests and charts to back up their claims, but you trumped them with your CAPS LOCK key. Never mind that corel is particularly sensitive to temperature variation and so for them half a degree is actually massive.
You also assume that the daily variance in temperature stops as soon as it gets warm. Could it not possibly be that the variance continues, but th
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Not the largest organism (Score:3, Informative)
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It's a very irrational thing to say about a chain a reefs, that are each made up of many different species of coral.
If we accept roughly 2,300 square kilometers of mixed biology as "a living thing", then we must also accept roughly 5,500,000 square kilometers of mixed biology as "a living thing" which means that the Amazon Rainforest has this reef collection beat by three decimal places and a bit more.
But on your point, yes, that mega-shroom wins on more coherent definitions of "a living thing", and I remem
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I'll see your rainforest and raise you the boreal forest [wikipedia.org]
Natural selection (Score:4, Insightful)
They should just move further south to cooler waters. Unless they're lowlife corals who wont' get a job and are just leaching off the system, in which case they can rot in their dependency hell until the die and make room for more productive members of society to take over and turn the place into luxury flats.
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Ever wonder why Liberals the party of "science" and especially evolution are the ones who object the loudest of it being applied to people?
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Ever wonder why Liberals the party of "science" and especially evolution are the ones who object the loudest of it being applied to people?
I did notice that Social Darwinism seems to be the pet "science" of Conservatives.
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Come on, only the left tries to claim Hitler was far right, as they do with many things from their collective past that make them look bad. If you look at their policies, outside the race superiority non-sense, they look just like a liberal/socialist policy check list: Heavy government regulation of all things, strict economic controls, cradle to grave social programs, public schools, etc.
From a hard liberal view I can see how a Neo-Nazi looks "far right".
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Fixed that for you.
However, I have to admit that, if unicorns are green, the Moon is symphonic. You have taken a list of things that you project on Nazi Germany, many of which have nothing to do with socialism, and concluded that National Socialism was in some sense leftist or socialist. There was a socialist, possibly leftist, wing to the party, but that was eliminated in the 1930s. The party after that
Okay then what do they suggest. (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe if we act on carbon caps we can save some of what is still alive in the ocean.
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It doesn't matter... carbon caps or if we never became industrial the earth is going to get a lot warmer regardless just not as fast before we have another ice age then it'll be much colder unless we manage to learn how to control the climate.
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Maybe we could install a thermostat. Then we could fight over what temperature we should keep it on. I vote for 72 (Fahrenheit of course).
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The rate at which change happens matters; as to the geographic extent over which changes take place.
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That's kind of the point though, it's not the change that's the problem, it's the rate of change.
If it happens much more slowly then species can adapt through natural selection and evolution, the problem is right now that we're causing the change to happen too quickly for species to evolve, hence why this is regularly being referred to as a mass extinction event.
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Actually it doesn't take that long for Earth to trap that carbon again, trees and plant life can do that incredibly quickly and efficiently. The problem is that right now we're both pumping out way more than they can trap, and cutting the amount of carbon dioxide absorbing biomass that existing by destroying forest (and producing more carbon dioxide) too.
The solution is to reduce the amount we churn out, and stop destroying Earth's natural sink in such a ridiculously unsustainable manner. Do that and we're
Queue Monty Python (Score:4, Funny)
Great Barrier Reef: I'm not quite dead yet!
Global Warming: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Science: Yes he is
Great Barrier Reef: I'm not
Science: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill
Great Barrier Reef: I'm getting better
Science: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
How is it that no one beat me to this post here on slashdot?
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Great Barrier Reef: I'm not quite dead yet!
Global Warming: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
News Outlets: Yes he is
Great Barrier Reef: I'm not
News Outlets: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill
Great Barrier Reef: I'm getting better
News Outlets: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
Fixed it for you. Sensational stories drive clicks.....
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Oh come on, you're seriously fact-checking a Monty Python reference?
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Some people just suck the joy out of everything.
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I'd like to say that it's because all Slashdot users (yourself apart) know that one waits in the stage wings to hear your CUE to come on stage (as the director would have said a couple of seconds before the "I wish to make a complaint" hit the film/ tape in 1969, "and CUE Cleese..."), while you form an orderly QUEUE of one person behind the other to use the street-corner suicide booths in Futurama.
Unfortunately we both know that's not true. Slashd
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No, I meant that I figured there would be so many people wanting to make this monty python reference that there would be a queue to do so. How did I end up first in the queue? Why would anyone need to wait for a cue to make a Monty Python reference on slashdot?
No go back to eating your donuts (or doughnuts, if you prefer) grammar police.
Coral reefs (Score:4, Informative)
1. The mineral structure, the big rocky stuff that sinks pirate ships that run afoul the reef, IS...NOT...ALIVE... Never has been, never will be. It is merely the mineral deposits that corals deposit on things to use as a base on which to grow. So when they go on an on about it being thousands of years old and being the largest organism on the planet, they are either woefully ignorant or blatantly lying. It's like saying the human race is the biggest organism on the planet because we build cities and have people everywhere. Scratch off the top inch of a reef and you have hit the dead stuff.
2. Corals do not take thousands of years to grow. They take days, weeks, and sometimes months to grow. Many spawn free swimming and drifting larva every lunar cycle or so (full moon).
3. That's right boys and like the 2 girls here, corals are not plants, they are animals that cultivate algae inside themselves to use as a food source. That is the dreaded "bleaching" they are always worried about. Bleaching does not always equal death to a coral, nor is it always cause by a change in temperature. Disease, stress, salinity, water chemistry, water clarity, sand settling, and people (touching, nets, poisons, boats etc.) all cause that. Sometimes the corals dump the algae in order to get a more productive local algae to grow. Corals also catch and eat various things, hence why the bleaching is not a death sentence.
4. Coral reefs are not static. They move over time. When they spawn they dump millions of larvae into the currents which spread everywhere. If they find a spot that is favorable they will start a new reef. Storms break up the reefs and the chunks can go on to form new reefs or end up in dead spots on the old reef and patch the holes. So when they go on about parts of a reef dying, yep it probably is. Is that normal? Depends on why. A reef being smothered by runoff silt, probably not. Water temps changing, yep happens all the time. Currents and regional temps have never been static, they move and change with time. The reef will die off during the change. Temperature tolerant organism will take over, and when the temperature shifts back they too will move on or die and the corals will take over again....growing right back on top of the "dead" reef" like nothing ever happened..
5. Coral reefs can be replaced at an time in locations they find favorable by the average person. They'd like you to think that only dedicated government certified highly trained scientists are the ones capable of dealing with the problem. Not even remotely true. There is an entire cottage industry in the aquarium trade of people who grow corals in their homes. Those same techniques are used often to repopulate areas that have been damaged much in the same way you would replant trees after a hurricane. I personally have been kicking the idea around for years of building my own patch reef offshore for fun and profit down here in Florida away from the well known dive spots loved to death by tourists.
I love the ocean and spend is much time in it as I can, but I grow weary of the shrill land lubbers claiming to know what is best, if only we would just put them in charge. Fuck that. If the government was in charge of the ocean there would be a shortage of sand within 10 years.