Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Coral Reefs

Pacific Island Rises Up Out of the Ocean

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There has been widespread concern that rising sea levels from global warming will swamp Pacific Islands. (Remember the blog post by Ian Mott lambasting the ABC for confusing sinking islands with rising sealevels?)

Then along comes a seismic jolt unleashing a tsunami and, acording to ABC news, an entire island is lifted three metres out of the sea:

“In an instant, the grinding of the Earth’s tectonic plates in the 8.0 magnitude earthquake on Monday forced the island of Ranongga up three metres.

Submerged reefs that once attracted scuba divers from around the globe lie exposed and dying after the quake raised the mountainous landmass, which is 32 kilometres long and eight kilometres wide.”

Read the complete article here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1892185.htm

Rising Sea Levels or Just Sinking Islands: A Note from Ian Mott

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Hello Jen,

Our national broadcaster, the ABC, has struck again with a new low in responsible journalism.

In ‘PNG – That Sinking Feeling’, broadcast last night as part of the ‘Foreign Correspondent’ program, reporter Steve Marshall has trashed any credibility the ABC had left on environmental reporting.

The unambiguous message in the documentary and all the introductory material was that here was firm “evidence” of rising sea levels producing climate refugees.

The most powerful scene was of one islander and the reporter standing waist deep in water where the islanders father had once had his veggie patch. The implication being that sea levels had risen by close to two metres over recent decades.

The only problem with this is that the Carteret Islands are only a short distance from Bougainville where no such sea level rise has been reported. Moreover, the area is only 500km from some very serious recent volcanic activity at Rabaul and form part of an active volcanic chain through the Solomon Islands.

The Islanders appear to have been convinced that they are the victims of rising sea levels and global warming, no doubt from a procession of publicly funded planet ponces.

But if Marshall and the program managers at ‘Foreign Correspondent’ had been able to deal with more than one variable at a time they would have drawn the inescapable conclusion that the islands are sinking.

Instead they appear to have manufactured a piece of green propaganda that neatly dovetails with Al Gore’s thoroughly discredited claim that Pacific Islanders are already being displaced by rising sea levels?

What I find most offensive is the way a group of islanders who are confronted by a serious problem appear to have been exploited.

If the ABC can get something this simple completely wrong, then what does that tell us about the veracity of their reporting on much more complex issues elsewhere?

Regards,
Ian Mott

Coral Reefs May Benefit From Global Warming

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ON Friday in Paris the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will launch a new report, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, with an up-to-date assessment of likely temperature rises because of global warming. Three related reports will be released later in the year, including a report on the likely effects of the rise in temperature. The report on impacts is likely to include a chapter on Australia and a warning that corals on the Great Barrier Reef could die as a consequence of global warming.

The idea that the Great Barrier Reef may be destroyed by global warming is not new, but it is a myth. The expected rise in sea level associated with global warming may benefit coral reefs and the Great Barrier Reef is likely to extend its range further south. Global threats to the coral reefs of the world include damaging fish practices and pollution, and the UN should work harder to address these issues.

Read the complete article here: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21144521-7583,00.html

Florida Corals Not At Risk of Global Warming: Gary Sharp

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Dr Gary Sharp, Scientific Director of the Center for Climate/Ocean Resource Study in Monterey Bay, California, makes a few good points regarding global warming and coral bleaching with particular reference to the Florida Keys in a recent article published by Tech Central Station titled, ‘Coral Bleaching: What (or Who) Dunnit?’:

1. Cold winters, not global warming, wiped out large areas of cold-sensitive corals in the Florida Keys in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

2. Coral reefs currently exists along a 6-7 degree temperature gradient so all the corals aren’t likely to die from a projected 2 degree celsius warming.

3. Sea surface temperatures are unlikely to increase by 2 degree celsius because the ocean responses to “excessive heating” through Deep Convection when the sea surface temperture exceeds about 27.5C.

Read the full article here:

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=042606B .

Coral Bleaching & The Reef: Walter Starck

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There is a widespread belief, cultivated at least in part by Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg that global warming has resulted in more coral bleaching.

Given the interest in the subject, I have copied the following comment from Dr Walter Starck, from yesterday’s rather long and tedious thread:

“Bleaching events result from extended periods of calm weather during which mixing from wave action ceases and surface water becomes exceptionally warm. Such warming is especially marked in very shallow water such as on reef flats. At the same time the absence of waves also eliminates the wave driven currents that normally flush the reef top. Bleaching conditions require at least a week or more of calm weather to develop and this may happen every few years, only once in a century, or never, depending on geographic location. On the outer GBR it is uncommon due to ocean swell and currents even in calm weather. In the mid-shelf and inshore areas it is much more common due to the absence of swell and reduced currents.

Characteristic bleaching scars and isotope temperature records from coral cores commonly show evidence of past bleaching events going back thousands of years. There is no evidence for a recent increase in frequency and/or severity of bleaching events and nothing to link extended periods of calm winds with global warming.

In past geologic periods when global climate was warmer than at present corals enjoyed greater latitudinal distribution. The most likely effect of a warming climate on reefs would seem to be an expansion of their geographic distribution and there is some evidence this is already happening. In Florida recent growth of coral has occurred farther north than it did a few decades ago and in the same areas sub-fossil corals indicate previous such advances in the recent geologic past.

Hoegh-Guldberg has found an attractive GW niche in the well established guild of GBR doomscryers. It has provided notoriety, acclaim and generous research support. Whether his prophesies will stand up to the reality test remains to be seen. Based on the track record of science based doomscrying his odds don’t look too good. In fact sheep’s entrails and tea leaves seem to produce better results, probably because they at least incorporate some element of intuitive judgment.”

Last year Walter wrote a review titled ‘Threats to the Great Barrier Reef’, published by the IPA, it can be downloaded by clicking here.

This picture was taken at the Great Barrier Reef by Roger Steene:
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Global Warming & The Reef: Andrew Bolt &

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On 31st January there was a piece in The Age titled ‘Scientists worried by reef bleaching’ quoting Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg from the University of Queensland, with Don Henry from the Australian Conservation Foundation suggesting the problem of bleaching that Ove was so worried about, could be fixed if only the Australian government ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

I received an email from a reader of this blog a couple of weeks ago pointing out that expert, and academic, Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg keeps changing his tune on global warming and its impact on the reef. He wrote:

“Within a little over a month, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg’s estimates have dropped from 50-60 percent to 1 percent of the reef bleached. That is simply an amazing change over a short period of time, particularly when you consider the amount of time required to do field work, analyse data etc. In the later article, Ove appears to be discrediting the scientists who made the initial estimates, when of course they were his!

I will be interested to see if Ove makes a statement also modiyfing his claims that the reef will be dead and barren within 30 to 50 years.

My feeling is that the initial claims were simply scaremongering and the disappointing thing is his willingness to go public with such claims with only preliminary data rather than any real published material.”

Herald Sun Columnist Andrew Bolt also noticed the inconsistencies in the advice from Ove:

“How many times must the experts be wrong about Barrier Reef devastation before we disbelieve their scares?

HOW many times must the Great Barrier Reef “survive” before we figure it’s not really dying?

Actually, the real question is a bit ruder.

As in: How many times can global-warming alarmists such as Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg be wrong about the reef’s “devastation” before we learn to ignore their scares?

The trouble is our reef is so well-loved that green militants, desperate that we back their theory of man-made global warming, consider it the perfect hostage.

No month goes by without one screaming: “Freeze! Out of the car, or the reef gets it!”

And Hoegh-Guldberg, head of Queensland University’s Centre for Marine Studies, has threatened us more often than most.

Just three months ago he was at it again, issuing a press release with a grim warning: High temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef could die within a month”.

Just four paragraphs on he upped the ante, warning that the warm seas “may result in greater damage” still — to more than 60 per cent of the reef — and we “have to rapidly reduce the rate of global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.”

You heard him, jerk. Get out of your car.

But as anyone who’s seen the reef lately knows, it’s still there and still beautiful.

Ask — hey! — Hoegh-Guldberg himself. He’s just back from a trip out to the outer reef and reports that, um, the bleaching, er, has had, well, “quite a minimal impact”, after all. In fact, just 1 per cent was affected.

And history tells us even that little bit will recover.

What history? The history of an earlier Hoegh-Guldberg scare.

In 1999, Hoegh-Guldberg was commissioned by Greenpeace — warning — to find out why bits of the reef had just turned white.

Global warming was to blame, he concluded, which pleased Greenpeace awfully.

More, it moaned, and the professor obliged: Warming seas meant “coral reefs could be eliminated from most areas of the world by 2100”.

Click here to keep reading.

You don’t need to be really clever to work out that global warming might not be so good for polar bears, but it is probably going to be OK for Nemo, as I’ve explained previously, click here.

But even the Australian Financial Review can’t help but scaremonger. An article in the Review on Friday (BCA Warms to Climate Change Rethink, pg. 57) claimed a 1C temperature rise would result in 81 percent of the Great Barrier Reef bleaching. One degree was the extent of the temperature rise last year according to the Bureau of Meterology. The Review would have published the one degree temperature rise for last year, and is now publishing that a one degree rise will bleach most of the reef! How confused must editors and journalists be with all the global warming scaremongering?

Several commentators at this blog have been indignant about the letter from the 60 skeptics in which the scientists suggested there has been some exaggeration, and there could be more public consultation about climate change issues (see comments following the blog post here). They claim the letter ignores the science and seriousness of the issue and is just about playing politics. But these same commentators will ignore the more ridiculous claims from Ove and other ‘believers’ who spin stories that result in completely nonsense predictions.

On a brighter note, here is a little Nemo from The Great Barrier Reef:
Reef Dave 016 blog2.JPG