Coral Reef Recovery Disappoints Climate Alarmists

Worldwide recovery blunts fearmongering, real threats revealed

Tuco’s Child Preface

Short- and long-term climate changes are normal planet Earth cycles. In the short term, heating and cooling plus/minus a few degrees is “noise” that is superimposed on the curve lines of longer term 10,000-year ice age cycles. The normal short term temperature ups and downs can be described as measurable blips on the sinusoidal ice age cycles, per the article below:

We are Exiting an Ice Age: Global Warming Explained in 4 Minutes

Climate alarmists, backstopped by junk science, politics and corrupted monetary resources have produced climate change hysteria worldwide, trumpeting in panic that mankind is responsible for global warming, and intentionally neglect to mention the reality of normal climate change cycles that have occurred over the millennia and by cherry picking data.

Another ex. derived from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

Given that we are exiting an ice age, and entering a new period of normal planetary warming, it is even more difficult to extract mankind’s so-called contribution to planetary warming. It is forced upon us that mankind’s contribution over the last 200 years has caused dangerous and anomalous global warming due to the industrial revolution and concomitant burning of fossil fuels, which have released heat, CO2 and water vapor by-products, among others. However, the earth is a complex equilibrium system that shifts in response to stimuli, mostly the sun’s enormous input. The sun’s energy that impinges upon the planet dominates and drives every aspect of life, weather, ocean currents, etc., therefore it is hard to decipher if mankind’s input over a fractional sliver of planetary time can affect the earth’s cycles. Geological forces play a role as well, but are not in force or active like the sun's unrelenting radiation.

Notably, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. “Modern Man” has been burning fossil fuels 200 years or so, a tiny fraction of the earth’s tumultuous history.

It is further noted that the oceans cover 75 % of the planet and have a massive capacity to soak up or absorb CO2 gas, due to CO2’s high affinity for water and thus high solubility in water. Thermodynamic and chemical driving forces influence the CO2 and water marriage, such as the carbonic acid, bicarbonate and carbonate cycles. For example, carbonic acid and carbonates from CO2 are distributed through out the ocean water column, sea bottom, and in reefs, mollusks and other creatures. CO2 also plays a vital role in plankton photosynthesis, similar to terrestrial photosynthesis. There are untold billions of tons of CO2 and/or carbon sequestered in the oceans in various forms.

Simple representation of ocean CO2 cycle, 1

Importantly, CO2 gas solubility in water is inversely proportional to temperature and proportional to pressure, so more CO2 is found in cold deep waters vs. warm shallow waters, where coral grows. Plankton also use CO2 for photosynthesis and some use CO2 derived carbonates to built their skeletons. If oceans warm, which is not an easy thing (due to high heat capacity of water), more CO2 is outgassed. This outgassed CO2 can be absorbed by plants on land. In brief, these equilibria and their relationships to each other are complex and difficult to deconvolute unless a scientist puts reasonable boundaries or limits on the experiments. Unfortunately, this is another reason why there are such diverse and conflicting theories, data, and opinions on “climate change”.

Simple representation of ocean CO2 cycle, 2

With regards to coral reefs, they are actually rebounding again within their normal deterioration and recovery cycles as they have for millennia, and now represent an “inconvenient truth” for the vast throng of uneducated and co-opted Klimate Kastastrophe Kooks. Descriptions of the ocean chemistry around the CO2 cycles and the effect on coral reefs can be found in many peer reviewed publications, but many now unfortunately depend on and are influenced by the agenda of funding agencies and “academics” that feed off the funds to support their research and write the articles.

One review article from the once proud American Chemical Society is entitled: “Climate change is destroying our coral reefs. Here’s how scientists plan to save them”. One will note that the article sways back and forth from human caused or inferred climate change and the reality of what is observed and the normal cycles of degradation and recovery. A reasonable and logical quote from the article is:

“Corals, which emerged over 500 million years ago, have been on Earth for a long time, the University of Rhode Island’s Putnam points out. The Great Barrier Reef itself is about 500,000 years old and survived the end of the last ice age as well as fluctuations in sea level and multiple bleaching events”.

We also note here that paradoxically, the Great Woke CNN recently published a hopeful article entitled “Parts of Great Barrier Reef record highest amount of coral in 36 years”. The title says it all, and is a pleasant surprise, given CNN’s unrelenting drumbeat of climate catastrophe.

The Greatest Threats to Coral Reefs

The greatest threats to marine life and coral reefs are contamination from man-made toxic industrial effluents, contaminated rain run-off, silt, and sewage. Soil erosion and the suffocation of reefs from silt and other particulate matter are much more serious and measurable threats to the oceans and marine life vs. so-called climate change or warming due to man’s activities. And lest we forget 3rd World dynamite fishing and the savage stripping and over-harvesting of fish and other reef flora and fauna!

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Now what follows is an article recently published on planet warming and coral reefs by CHRIS MORRISON of the Daily Skeptic

15 DECEMBER 2023 7:00 AM

Coral Lets the Climate Alarmists Down Again

Ever since the sandwich-board prophet George Monbiot told readers of the Guardian in 1999 that all coral in the Indian Ocean could die within the year, the fate of the world’s coral reefs has been a poster scare for climate Armageddon enthusiasts. The story has had to be nuanced slightly in recent times following news that coral has been at record levels for the last two years on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Even more careful handling of this global warming scare now seems likely. This is because a group of scientists has published dramatic new evidence showing that coral has demonstrated an “innate ecological resilience to climate change” in recent years. It was found that the heat tolerance of coral can change over time leading to less dangerous bleaching over multiple generations.

While these findings are a welcome dose of science reality, none of them should be a cause for surprise. Tropical coral has been around for hundreds of millions of years, and has survived many changes in global temperature. It thrives happily in waters from 24°C to 32°C, and in fact often grows more quickly in warmer waters nearer the equator. Bleaching can occur when local water temperatures spike for a short time and coral expels symbiotic algae. It is becoming increasingly obvious that this is a natural and recurring process, and the recent experience on the GBR suggests recovery can be very fast.

In a paper published by Nature in May, the seven scientists, drawn from a number of ecology fields, looked at recent records at a remote Pacific coral reef system called Palau. Over a 40-year period it was found that the heat tolerance of coral can change, with individual reefs showing higher bleaching resistance in later thermal events. The researchers suggest a growing heat tolerance for coral of 0.1°C a decade. “Genetic adaptation can improve species heat stress resistance over multiple generations through natural selection, increasing the frequency of genes that provide higher heat resistance and improve overall fitness,” they observe.

This is valuable and useful work, but it was published in a major climate science journal, so the usual windbag political message is obligatory. The results are said to indicate a “potential ecological resilience” to climate change, “but still highlight the need for reducing carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement commitments to preserve coral reefs”.

Professor Peter Ridd has studied the GBR for over 40 years and is recognised in sceptical science circles as a coral authority. From his own observations he has concluded that bleaching is a largely natural event. Furthermore, he observes: “An uncharitable observer might conclude that periodic mass coral mortality events, which are largely completely natural, are exploited by some organisations with an ideological agenda and a financial interest.” He added that this included “many scientific organisations”.

Perhaps to no great surprise, the coral scare featured as one of the five climate “tipping points” in a recent study funded by the Bezos Earth Fund that attracted worldwide headlines. Timed to coincide with COP28, it painted a picture of a world careering towards disaster in the next decade with five natural systems said to be at risk of crossing ‘tipping points’ that could cause catastrophic global changes. One of the ‘tipping points’ identified was the “degradation of warm-water coral reefs”, something that could materialise in the coming decades, “and at lower levels of global warming than previously thought”. The main author, Professor Tim Lenton, is a green political activist of long-standing, and is Head of Geography at the University of Exeter. Inevitably, the political messaging is part of the package. The Lenton group calls for laws to phase out fossil fuel and land-use emissions, and “Government mandates” in other high emissions sectors. In other words, drastic reductions in meat and dairy, massive cuts in food production by restricting nitrogen fertilisers, and dystopian cuts in personal transport, building materials and home heating.

King Charles, self appointed climate expert

So-called climate ‘tipping points’, which are little more than the product of opinions fed into computer models, made a number of highly publicised appearances at COP28. Britain’s supposed constitutional-neutral monarch, King Charles, claimed that “we are seeing alarming tipping points being reached”. In the absence of much long-term global warming these days, this political sloganising scares the young and impressionable and complements the ‘join the dots’ of recent bad weather anomalies. Needless to say, both scare tactics are bereft of any plausible scientific validation.

Meanwhile, curiously missing from discussions at COP28 was the damage done to coral by human activities, most notably the mining of reefs by many Pacific islanders. The same ‘nothing-to-do-with-me, guv’ islanders, it might be noted, asking the developed world for financial handouts to protect them from climate change. In the past, the reefs have been used for cheap construction materials to build ports, airports and resort developments. Diversity of ocean life is lost, and islands often left less protected from storm waves that can flow directly to the shorelines.

First in line for climate damage handouts is the Maldives, a particularly bad mining offender. In a recent essay written by a group of scientists and economists, it is noted that the growth of tourism in the Maldives saw GDP rising from one of the lowest in the world in the 1970s to the level of upper-middle income countries in the 2010s. “While coral reefs are a major factor in the Maldives’ appeal as a tourist destination, coral mining has resulted  in massive degradation of shallow reef-flat areas, with important negative impacts on coastal protection,” they noted.

It is not immediately clear why taxpayers in countries with a similar upper-middle income GDP should bail out the ecological depredations of countries like the Maldives. But we can be fairly certain that this tricky dilemma will not be considered at COP29 next year, as the collecting plate for climate ‘reparations’ is passed around.