Corals show current sea levels are LOW, not high, by historical standards

A paper published today in Quaternary Research finds sea levels on the island of Curaçao [southern Caribbean] during the last interglacial were up to 9 meters higher than the present, and that during another interglacial period 400,000 years ago sea levels were up to 20 meters higher than the present. According to the paper, these significantly higher sea levels during prior interglacials "require major ice sheet loss from Greenland and Antarctica." The authors determine sea levels by dating fossilized reefs that are presently located high above current sea levels [photo below]. The paper also shows sea levels in the Red Sea were up to ~8 meters higher than the present within the past 5,000 years of the current interglacial, and up to ~12 meters higher than the present during the last interglacial. This and many other papers debunk claims by climate alarmists that recent sea level rise is unprecedented, unnatural, or accelerated.

Sea-level history of past interglacial periods from uranium-series dating of corals, Curaçao, Leeward Antilles islands

By Daniel R. Muhsa et al.

Abstract

Curaçao has reef terraces with the potential to provide sea-level histories of interglacial periods. Ages of the Hato (upper) unit of the “Lower Terrace” indicate that this reef dates to the last interglacial period, Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5.5. On Curaçao, this high sea stand lasted at least 8000 yr (~ 126 to ~ 118 ka). Elevations and age of this reef show that late Quaternary uplift rates on Curaçao are low, 0.026–0.054 m/ka, consistent with its tectonic setting. Ages of ~ 200 ka for corals from the older Cortalein unit of the Lower Terrace correlate this reef to MIS 7, with paleo-sea level estimates ranging from − 3.3 m to + 2.3 m. The estimates are in agreement with those for MIS 7 made from other localities and indicate that the penultimate interglacial period was a time of significant warmth, on a par with the present interglacial period. The ~ 400 ka (MIS 11) Middle Terrace I on Curaçao, dated by others, may have formed from a paleo-sea level of + 8.3 to + 10.0 m, or (less likely) + 17 m to + 20 m. The lower estimates are conservative compared to previous studies, but still require major ice sheet loss from Greenland and Antarctica

SOURCE

Forget the doom: coral reefs found to be much more robust and resilient than alarmists claim

Hoagy is astounded.  Has his life's work of alarmism just fallen apart?

A WIDESPREAD belief that the world's coral reefs face a calamitous future due to climate change is proving less resilient than the natural wonders themselves.

Rising sea temperatures, storm damage and ocean acidification have grabbed the headlines as looming threats to reef survival.

But as each concern is more thoroughly investigated, scientists are finding nature better equipped to cope than they had imagined.

The latest research, published in Nature: Climate Change today, blows away the theory that reefs were doomed due to rising ocean acidification caused by the higher take-up of carbon dioxide in the seas.

Researchers have found a common coralline algae that grows at the leading edge of coral reefs is not nearly as susceptible to changing ph levels as coral because it contains high levels of dolomite.  In fact, the dolomite-laden algae has a rate of dissolution six to 10 times lower than coral's.

The good news is that dolomite-rich coralline algae is common in shallow coral reefs across the world.  "Our research suggests it is likely they will continue to provide protection for coral reef frameworks as carbon dioxide rises," the paper says.

Lead author Merinda Nash, a PhD candidate with the Australian research school of physics and engineering, says the phenomenon has been overlooked because research to date has been on coral, not coralline algae. "It is not very sexy so it has not got a lot of attention," she said.

"What the research demonstrates is there is a lot we have yet to understand about coral reefs."

This is a sentiment echoed by James Brown of the Kimberley Coral Research Station, who believes the hot water corals of the Kimberley coast hold a treasure trove of answers for marine biologists.

Mr Brown has questioned why the Kimberley coral reefs were thriving in water temperatures and at acidification levels well outside of the limits that conventional science said should be inhospitable for their survival.

"Measurements of dissolved carbon dioxide have shown levels of up to 50 parts per million compared with the average of 28 parts per million," Mr Brown said.  "This is the outer limit of what scientists had believed would be habitable for corals.  Water temperatures are also at the top end of what coral biologists say it is possible for corals to survive in.

"The more we find out about the Kimberley, the more it rewrites the book on coral biology."

Further counter-intuitive results on coral survival have come from an extended project on the Great Barrier Reef to measure the health of deep corals.

The Catlin Seaview Survey has found the damage to coral reefs is literally skin deep, with corals located in deeper water below even the worst impacted sites thriving and in pristine condition. The findings raise the possibility that damaged corals may have an increased opportunity for recovery by recruiting new corals both from adjoining reefs and those located immediately below.

The early findings from the survey have astounded the scientists involved, including Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a leading global figure in raising concerns about crown of thorns starfish, coral bleaching and ocean acidification.

"The survey has shown that deeper reefs may be protected to an extent from some of the perils of climate-driven events such as mass coral bleaching and storms," he said. "These deeper corals may be important refuges if we get big changes in the shallows."

SOURCE

Australia: Greenies using lies about Great Barrier Reef to attack industry

REEF experts believe the loss of half the coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef is a "national crisis" worthy of a rescue package similar to the $12 billion plan to save the Murray Darling Basin.

They blame Queensland's biggest industries, coal and sugar cane, for the rapid decline and question the fate of the $5 billion tourism icon given mining, farming and port developments.

But leading tourism identities warn the state's tourist trade and international reputation is being damaged as scientists send a "skewed" and "misleading" message that the Reef "is half-dead".

Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke and Industry Minister Martin Ferguson met with state counterparts Andrew Powell and Andrew Cripps to discuss the Reef in Brisbane yesterday.

Professor Terry Hughes, director of the Townsville-based ARC Centre of Excellence Coral Reef Studies, said the talks failed to reveal how officials would handle the show-cause notice by UNESCO on the Reef becoming an "at risk" World Heritage site.

Prof Hughes said authorities had to impose a cap on dredging and stop farm run-off.

"It is a national crisis and it needs a rescue package response equivalent to that in the Murray Darling Basin," he said. "We need to ask: 'Do we need to have a sugar industry or a coal industry?' "

Mike Ball, a veteran dive industry figure, said much of the outer and northern Reef system was still pristine and figures from coastal reefs sent a skewed message overseas.

Canegrowers chief executive Steve Greenwood said it was irresponsible for scientists to suggest the end of the state's $2 billion sugar industry.

Mr Powell said: "Our target is to see a 50 per cent reduction in nutrients run-off by 2013 and a 20 per cent reduction in sediment by 2020."

SOURCE

Misguided PBS spreads acid ocean alarm

On December 5, the PBS News Hour showed a segment titled “Endangered Coral Reefs Die as Ocean Temperatures Rise and Water Turns Acidic,” with Hari Sreenivasan reporting. The story discussed the recent loss of Florida coral reefs and the possible impact on recreation and tourism if reef degradation continues. But PBS wrongly told viewers that reef degradation was due to warmer ocean temperatures and “ocean acidification,” both allegedly caused by human carbon dioxide emissions. Sreenivasan concluded with, “Time that maybe is running out for coral reefs in Florida and elsewhere.”

Scientists, environmental groups, and the United Nations promote the fear of ocean acidification. According to claims, man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are absorbed by the oceans and converted into carbonic acid, thereby changing the chemical balance of the oceans. The basic concept of acidification is correct, but hugely exaggerated.

The PBS segment is wrong in several ways. First, while today’s temperatures are the warmest in the last 400 years, oceans were warmer still during the Medieval Warm Period ten centuries ago. Peer-reviewed studies found that both the Gulf of Mexico and nearby Sargasso Sea were warmer about 1000 AD than at present. These warm temperatures were due to natural climatic changes of Earth―not man-made emissions. Caribbean reefs adapted to these warm seas to remain with us today.

Second, the segment paints a misleading picture of carbon dioxide entering the oceans, without providing perspective for the viewer. Sreenivasan interviews scientist Chris Landon who states, “And it’s enough railroad cars stacked end to end to wrap around the earth seven times. That’s how much carbon is going into the ocean every single year.” This sounds alarming, unless you know that the oceans absorb and release about 90 times that amount of CO2 every year from the atmosphere naturally. In addition, carbon dioxide is absorbed by vast deposits of limestone rock in the ocean floor, removing it from sea water.

Third, the oceans are alkaline, not acidic. We’re discussing a reduction in alkalinity. Solutions are measured as acidic or alkaline (basic) on a logarithmic 14-point scale, called the pH Scale. Battery acid has a pH of about one, while the base lye has a pH as high as thirteen. Milk is slightly acidic, as are most of the foods we eat.

Measured in the open ocean, sea water is alkaline, with a pH of about 8.2. According to computer models, doubling of atmospheric CO2 would decrease ocean pH to about 7.9, still basic, but less so. The concern is that this change would destroy the coral reefs by dissolving the carbonate shells and skeletons of reef creatures. Sreenivasan states, “Acidification acts a lot like osteoporosis does in humans. But in marine animals, it makes their shells and skeletons brittle. The more acidic the water, the harder it is for corals to grow their skeletons.”

But, empirical evidence does not show it harder for today’s marine animals to grow their shells. A study of corals at the Great Barrier Reef shows that shell calcium growth rates today are about 25 percent higher than 300‒400 years ago when both ocean temperatures and levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide were lower.

Scientists still know little about the alkalinity of today’s ocean or the oceans of past centuries. Ocean pH varies by depth, becoming less basic as one goes deeper. It varies by latitude from the equator to the poles. It varies by location, such as the open ocean, coral reef, or kelp bed.

But the PBS segment ignores this uncertainty and implies that the rate of change in ocean pH is alarming. Dr. Langdon states, “What’s really and completely unique about what’s going on now is the rate of change. And that’s what is so difficult for organisms.”

However, evidence shows that a high rate of change in ocean alkalinity is natural. A 2011 study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography found large variations in ocean pH by day, week, and month. Changes in some locations were as high as 0.35 units over the course of a day, higher than computer models are predicting for the next century.

Scuba divers know that reef creatures already experience acidic conditions near CO2 vents in the ocean floor. These vents bubble CO2 gas amidst coral reefs and grassy ocean pastures in millions of locations. Fish and reefs appear to be doing quite well near these CO2 vents.

The coral reefs in the Caribbean and other seas may be endangered due overfishing, chemical pollution, and human abuse. But let’s not blame reef degradation on misguided fears about global warming.

SOURCE

Coral reef alarmists can't keep their story straight

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is an immense coral structure stretching over more than 1500 miles in a roughly North to South direction. Its corals and fish are beautiful and it is a "must see" for recreational divers.

Because it is so admirable, however, Warmists have long had their beady eyes on it.  If they can make a case that global warming is destroying it they see a propaganda victory.  It is however peskily resilient so far.  When bits get damaged they heal up again. (Diaz-Pulido, 2009; Bellwood, 2006)

But WHAT IF we do finally get the two or more degrees of warming that Warmists regularly predict?  Aha!  Then the reef will be in trouble, they say.

As I live in the Australian State where the reef is located, I hear rather a lot about the doom hanging over the GBR, with academics from both the University of Queensland and James Cook University huffing and puffing from time to time. Hoagy (Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg) used to be the chief doomster but he mostly seems to be handing over to a younger generation these days.


Hoagy

And, hey presto!  Included in my local newpaper that I got yesterday (Nov. 11) was a colour magazine called "QWeekend" which included a big feature on coral.  I reproduce the attractive opening page below. 



Magazines of this sort seem to be beyond the reach of Google so it is interesting to see what is slipping by the reach of internet users but still lodging in at least the local public consciousness.

And it's a lot of fun.  I reproduce below a couple of bits.  I rather like this bald assertion (end of excerpt) from a Dr. Matt  Lybolt, protege of Fra Pandolf himself:  "A sea-level rise is good for reefs".


p.28

WHAAT?  Panic stations!  That is the WRONG thing to say!  Any Warmist will tell you that global warming will lead to sea-level rise.  So will global warming be GOOD for reefs? Unthinkable!  Dr. Lybolt is a very bad boy,


p. 29

So we come to our next excerpt.  Lybolt is at it again:  "The Great Barrier Reef is not in trouble".  He qualifies that statement in a totally confusing way but he is obviously having trouble toeing the party line.  That he and his supervisor are Warmists, however, there is no doubt.

I have dealt with Fra Pandolf's nonsense about the effects of human settlement a couple of days ago -- JR

References:

Bellwood, D.R. et al. (2006) "Coral bleaching, reef fish community phase shifts and the resilience of coral reefs" Global Change Biology 12 (9), 1587-1594

Diaz-Pulido, G. et al. (2009) "Doom and Boom on a Resilient Reef: Climate Change, Algal Overgrowth and Coral Recovery"  PLoS ONE 4(4): e5239.

Tell me the old old story about wicked mankind and coral reefs

I have been hearing the story at the bottom of this post all my life (and I am now in my 70th year) but it has remained just theory.  At least global warming gets a rest this time, I suppose.

If someone measured agricultural runoff and correlated coral damage with it, I might believe it  -- but there are no such studies. And I think I know why.  At least a third of the Great Barrier Reef runs alongside Cape York Peninsula, which has no significant agriculture  -- and there are changes in the reef there too.

Note that the data for the study below was from one small island  -- while the reef is 1500 miles long!  They don't call it the "Great" barrier reef for nothing.  And Pelorus is actually a popular diving spot for coral reef exploration so is anything but  blighted!  I shouldn't laugh.

I wonder what Hoagy (Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg), Australia's no.1 coral doomster, has got to say about this?  He seemed to fall into a depression for a couple of years when his own research showed that coral reefs bounce back rapidly from damage but he has started squeaking up again lately.  But his evasiveness shows what slime he is.

While I am talking about it, I might as well mention another recent bit of alarmism headed "Coral recovery may not herald the return of fishes on damaged coral reefs" by Bellwood et al.  That sounds pretty alarming, does it not?   In fact it's just Bellwood's attempt to ingratiate himself with the alarmists.   The paper is essentially a reprise of an earlier paper with some awkward findings.    Let me quote:

"We found no decrease in diversity, richness or abundance in reef fishes over the 12-year study period. Indeed, as in most previous studies,  the three main metrics, species richness, diversity (H0) and total abundance showed no response to a major disturbance (in this case the 1998 coral bleaching event).

So what gives? What Bellwood actually found was that a disturbance altered the *makeup* of the fish community.  Some species became relatively more abundant and other species less so. And overall there were MORE fish! Not quite what you might expect from his more recent heading! 

You have to feel rather sorry for scientists who are under such pressure to be "correct" but it is a pity that truth tends to get lost in the process

The influx of Europeans to Australia had a catastrophic effect on the Great Barrier Reef as far back as 90 years ago, before tourism and climate change made an impact, new research claims.

A study found that run-off of pesticides and fertiliser from farms near the Queensland coast clouded the waters of the reef, killing off its natural coral and drastically changing its ecology.

The change was disastrous for many of the animal species that lived in the reef, and for the nearby coastline since the native species had weakened the surf as it came crashing in from the Pacific Ocean.

The study, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, suggests that humans had disrupted the ecology of the Great Barrier Reef decades before climate change and reef tourism.

'There was a very significant shift in the coral community composition that was associated with the colonisation of Queensland,' study co-author John Pandolfi of the University of Queensland told LiveScience.

The European colonisation of Queensland began in the 1860s, with settlers hacking down forests to make space for farming. By the Twenties, rivers were pouring huge quantities of fertiliser and pesticides into the ocean.

To find out the impact that this early European colonisation had on the Great Barrier Reef, Professor Pandolfi's team drilled sediment cores 6.5 to 16.5ft deep into the reef off Pelorus Island, off the Queensland coast.

The professor told LiveScience that when coral dies, new coral sprouts on the skeletons and ocean sediments eventually bury them in place. The story of the reef can thus be reconstructed by dating the sediment layers.

The team found that for a millenium prior to the arrival of the European colonists, the reef was dominated by the massive, three-dimensional Acropora coral.

This species grows up to 16ft high and 65ft across, forming a labyrinthine network of nooks and crannies for marine life to inhabit, Professor Pandolfi said.  'They're like the big buildings in the city, they house a lot of the biodiversity,' he told LiveScience.

However, from the Twenties onwards, the impact of humans on the environment began to stifle the Acropora and sometime before the mid-Fifties it had stopped growing altogether - replaced by a slow-growing, spindly coral called Pavona.

The University of Queensland team believes that the polluted run-off from the new farms over time clouded the pristine waters off the coast, poisoning the native species. They also believe that same pollution fed an algae that smothered the native coral species' attempts to regenerate.

Several recent studies have shown that climate change and snorkellers have proved catastrophic for coral, with one finding that half the Great Barrier Reef has died off in the past 50 years.

But Professor Pandolfi and his colleagues' findings suggest that man has been damaging that reef and others for much longer than previously thought. The professor, however, says his work also suggests that the problem has a straightforward solution - reduce polluted run-off into the ocean.

'Any kind of measures that are going to improve the water quality should help those reefs to recover,' he added.

SOURCE

Corals show Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature As Warm In 1775 As Today

Another piece of research using climate proxies has cast some light on the recent evolution of sea surface temperature in a region of the Atlantic.

The researchers, from the National University of Mexico and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the USA, writing in the journal Paleoceanography, point out that accurate low-latitude sea surface temperature records that predate the instrumental era (post-1850) are needed to put recent warming in the context of natural climate variability and to understand what they describe as the possible influence of anthropogenic climate change on this variability.

They obtain a most interesting 235-year-long sea surface temperature reconstruction based on annual growth rates of coral (Atlantic coral Siderastrea sidereal) at three sites in Mexico located within the Atlantic Warm Pool (AWP). The point out that AWP surface temperatures vary in concert the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) – a basin-wide, quasiperiodic (60–80 years) oscillation of North Atlantic sea surface temperatures.

They find that the annual growth rates of all colonies are significantly, inversely correlated to regional sea surface temperatures. The temperature data they obtain shows an additional multidecadal sea surface temperature cycle prior to instrumental record that suggests that AWP multidecadal variability, and likely AMO variability, persisted since at least 1775 AD with an amplitude comparable to that of the instrumental era.

The sea surface temperature reconstruction shows that it remained within 1 deg C of recent values during the past 225 years, consistent with previous reconstructions.

The graph they produce is fascinating. It shows a decline in sea surface temperature from 1773 to 1860, then a peak at 1880 which then declines to 1910. The year 1910 is a significant one for those studying rises in sea level as it is from 1910 that the gradient of recent sea level rise changes and persists that that rate of increase to the present day.



The rise in sea surface temperature since 1910 is qualitatively the same as the rise in global surface temperature over this period, a rise between 1910 – 40, a slight decline to about 1980 and a rise thereafter.

SOURCE  (See the original for links)

Reef Alarmists Jump The Shark

The Great Barrier Reef is doomed again. A recent widely publicised scientific study reports the dramatic finding that it has lost half its coral in the last 27 years. Forty-eight precent of the loss is attributed to storm damage, with bleaching and crown-of-thorns starfish being responsible for 10% and 42% respectively. The average annual rate of coral loss over the 27-year period was estimated to be 3.38% and growth was put at 2.85%, leaving a net decline of 0.53% per year. Further effort and research on starfish control is suggested to be the most promising means of reversing the decline. Elimination of the loss due to starfish would leave a net gain of 0.89%.

While the news reports present the appearance of scientific precision and certainty, examination of the study itself reveals a number of doubtful assumptions, undisclosed conditions and instances where strong conflicting evidence is unmentioned. Examples of this include:

*    The margin of error in visual surveys of coral cover is high and unassessed; yet, they are presented to hundredths of a precent without any qualifying explanation, as if they are precisely accurate. Coral cover is highly variable between reefs and over different areas or at different years on the same reef. Visual estimates of the percentage of coral cover can differ significantly, depending on  where, when  and by whom  the observations were made. Also, many of the observers doing the surveys upon which this study is based were inexperienced students primed by learned expectations of threats to the reef.
    
 *   The reef is vast and in any given year surveys sample only a small portion. The reported sudden decline in coral cover in the last couple of years is almost certain to have been exaggerated by surveys made to assess the damage from severe cyclones crossing the reef in 2009 and 2011, with few or no surveys in unaffected areas in those years.
    
*    The study states, “Cyclone intensities are increasing with warming ocean temperatures….”

This statement is unsubstantiated and contrary to available evidence. The most definitive recent studies find no increase in tropical cyclone frequency or intensity. On the GBR severe cyclone activity for the past century has also been well below the level for the preceding century. The study also states:

“The recent frequency and intensity of mass coral bleaching are of major concern, and are directly attributable to rising atmospheric greenhouse gases.”

No evidence exists for this claim. The mass-bleaching events of recent decades have coincided with surface water warming resulting from periods of extended calm associated with strong El Niño events. This impedes normal evaporative cooling as well as wave driven mixing. There is no evidence of any increase in the frequency or strength of El Niño events, and climate models project increased wind speeds from warming, not more calms. The report further states:

“Water quality is a key environmental driver for the GBR. Central and southern rivers now carry five- to ninefold higher nutrient and sediment loads from cleared, fertilized, and urbanized catchments into the GBR compared with pre-European settlement.”

No actual measurements of pre-European sedimentation rates exist. These are only estimates and extrapolations from unverified proxies which may or may not represent what is claimed. What is certain is that the inshore areas of the GBR are heavily blanketed in sediments that have accumulated over thousands of years and turbidity in coastal waters is overwhelmingly governed by re-suspension of these sediments through wave action, not by current day runoff from the land.

The most widely cited study purporting to show a large increase in sedimentation after European settlement was based on an increase in barium in coral skeletons just after 60,000 head of cattle were introduced into the Burdekin area in 1870. This was attributed to an increase in erosion caused by the cattle. But this period also coincided with the ending of an extended period of extreme drought and no explanation has ever been offered for why the barium level has subsequently decreased despite the million head of cattle now in the same catchment.

The assumption that levels of turbidity in flood runoff events are almost entirely attributable to farming and grazing is unwarranted, and it is readily observable that runoff turbidity from crop and grazing areas is often markedly less than from undisturbed natural areas. Crops and grasses are simply better at retaining soil than is either the rainforest or open eucalypt woodland they have replaced. Sediment-trapping by dams and cessation of the widespread annual burning practiced by the pre-European inhabitants of the area can also be expected to have reduced sediment outflows.

There is good reason to expect that agriculture and grazing may well have resulted in a net reduction in levels of sediment discharge, compared to pre-European condition. The claims of multi-fold increases in sedimentation are simply speculation wrapped in techno-waffle and presented as fact.....

The core claim is that the reef has lost half of its coral in the past 27 years and that: “Without significant changes to the rates of disturbance and coral growth, coral cover in the central and southern regions of the GBR is likely to decline to 5–10% by 2022.”

If this is true, the implications for future research and management are profound. It means that the current condition of the GBR is essentially no better than that of the heavily exploited and effectively unmanaged reefs of the Caribbean or SE Asia. It means all the money and effort that has gone into management and research has been an abject failure. It means that the promised “resilience” to environmental impacts that was the major justification for greatly expanded green zones and sundry other stringent and costly restrictions on productive usage have achieved nothing, and that the vaunted resilience has been just another theoretical academic fantasy. It means that the claims of having the best managed reefs in the world have been only a self-serving delusion. It means that all the past assertions of successful management have been untrue and the research supposedly supporting it has been either grossly incompetent or a deliberate misrepresentation.

Worse still, this all took place when, for nearly three decades the reef,  was supposedly dying off in clear view of all the experts and they even had the surveys to confirm it. Were they too slack to look at their data until now or did they hide it because it didn’t suit their agenda at the time? If they were that incompetent or dishonest in the past, why should we now believe them now? 

On the other hand, if the whole business of threats to the reef has simply been grossly exaggerated then it is also time to end the charade. In addition to rent-seekers there is abundant evidence of a variety of other unhealthy influences being involved as well. These include media sensationalism, political pandering for green votes, postmodern scientific corruption, “noble cause” corruption, ill-informed eco-evangelism and bureaucratic empire building.  

Regardless of the reef-salvation industry’s industry’s motives, its efforts can only be viewed as either honest but incompetent or duplicitous and self-serving. It is time to severely cut the funding for this elaborate and costly farce. By their own reckoning the reef saviours have failed miserably and we can no longer afford them.

Personally, I suspect that the surest way to save the reef would be to cut funding for management and research by half and link future cuts or increases to the balance of economic and environmental outcomes. I have little doubt that would soon effect a miraculous recovery.

Much more HERE

Ho Hum! The ocean "acidification" scare again

The Warmist claim below  -- from an alleged "Science" magazine -- that CO2 Pollution could erase Coral Reefs ignores the Warmists' own  theory that CO2 causes warming!   A warmer ocean would hold LESS CO2 and there would therefore be LESS "acidification"!  Basic physics indeed.  You can demonstrate it in a school science lab using nothing more than two cans of Coke, one warm and one cold.

It's hard to get more more dishonest or impervious to facts  than these ocean acidifiers but for what it is worth, there are some additional facts on their nonsense following the excerpt below

Coral reefs, nature’s most lively architecture, could come tumbling down and it could take millions of years for them to return, if carbon dioxide emissions aren’t cut quickly, scientists warned today.

The world’s oceans have absorbed 40 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions produced by humans in the industrial age, but that buffering is changing the chemistry of the oceans. Already, the acidity of ocean waters, which are generally basic, has shifted about 0.1 on the pH scale, or 10 percent, since pre-industrial times, and could get far more acidic by mid-century.

In a editorial in the journal Science, the researchers also noted that unlike CO2′s climate impacts, which vary between models to some extent, ocean acidification is based on basic chemistry and is nearly sure to occur if we continue burning fossil fuels, with disastrous consequences for some marine life.

"What we’re doing in the next decade could mean that for the next two million years, there are no coral reefs in the ocean," said Ken Caldeira, a Stanford professor, and recent Wired profilee.

While most of the attention on the impacts of carbon dioxide emissions has focused on its ability to act as a greenhouse gas, that warms the earth’s climate, the changes CO2 emissions will bring to the world’s oceans are receiving increasing attention. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more of it that dissolves into surface ocean water. That small chemistry change could cause huge changes in marine biology.

Marine organisms, like coral, that build skeletons out of calcium could find themselves unable to do so. If current emissions trends continue over the next decade, the world’s marine creatures will be dealing with what’s essentially an alien ocean. The last time ocean conditions like those predicted for mid-century existed was long before humans walked the earth.

More HERE




Coral reef history

Corals evolved during the Cambrian Era, when CO2 levels were eight to twenty times higher than today. The great coral reefs of the Permian era formed when CO2 was as high as 3,000 ppm CO2.



Obviously corals like high levels of CO2.

SOURCE

Scientists agree the Great Barrier Reef is fast deteriorating

I have been hearing this claim every year for at least the last 50 years, long before global warming was thought of

A diving expedition to the Great Barrier Reef towards the end of this century is likely to be a weird and disappointing experience, for anyone who had seen footage of the reef thriving in our time.

It will be paler, smaller and emptier. Many of the thousands of species of fish, turtles, dolphins and sea birds will have dispersed, and everywhere the crumbling bones of dead coral will be peeking through.

"It's going to be very boring out there," a James Cook University scientist, Janice Lough, told reporters in Queensland this week, at the world's largest gathering of coral researchers.

The bleak vision isn't an exaggeration designed to shock, but the logical consequence of processes that are unfolding now, scientists explained in their daily briefings.

This edition of the four-yearly conference was remarkable for the unified message presented by the 2500 researchers. A statement, said to represent the participants, called for action on pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, which are making the world's oceans more acidic as they absorb extra carbon dioxide from the air.

"This combined change in temperature and ocean chemistry has not occurred since the last reef crisis 55 million years ago," it said. "A concerted effort to preserve reefs for the future demands action at global levels, but also will benefit hugely from continued local protection."

Reefs are caught in a pincer between local pollution and overfishing on the one hand, and rising temperatures and ocean acidification on the other. Dealing with the local threats would put corals in a stronger position to stave off the global problems of heat and acidifcation, which are expected to intensity later this century, said Jeremy Jackson, a senior scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

"Of course, how long this will work, we don't really know," Professor Jackson said. "Climate change is inexorable and we're seeing progressive effects. So, how long local protection will serve to increase resilience is anybody's guess."

Reef decline is worldwide, though some reefs are adapting better than others and those remote from human activity are holding up the best, he said. "If you think about this, the Great Barrier Reef is the best-protected reef system in the world, and still we're seeing these aggressive declines."

Dr Lough, who studies the massive coral skeletons beneath reefs, said warming of the water was contributing to a huge stunting of coral growth in many reefs.

Although corals thrive in tropical waters, their level of tolerance for temperature change can be very small. As global air temperatures have crept up about 0.7 degrees over the past 100 years, water temperatures near the surface have also risen by half a degree, on average. This has driven a global epidemic of coral bleaching and coral diseases, while the higher carbonic acid content of the water means coral structures are often weaker.

"Tropical coral reef waters are already significantly warmer than they were and the rate of warming is accelerating," Dr Lough said. "With or without drastic curtailment of greenhouse gas emissions we are facing, for the foreseeable future, changes in the physical environment of present-day coral reefs."

The change in reef habitat is likely to have a corresponding effect on fish. A coral expert from James Cook University, Philip Munday, described a recent experiment where fish in tanks were exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide. Of the exposed fish, some adjusted to the changes over time, but others showed neurological changes that made them less effective at escaping predators.

"Like coral, there will be winners and losers and the communities of fish we see on reefs in the future are likely to be different to those of today," he said.

The research director of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Peter Doherty, said Australia appeared to be "losing the war" to save the Great Barrier Reef.

It remains to be seen whether the statement endorsed by the reef research community has any lasting effect, but at least policy makers cannot be accused of having unambiguous advice before them, researchers said.

"The reef consensus statement is just the beginning," said Steve Palumbi, a professor of biological sciences at Stanford University.

"With only the consensus statement there will be no change - it's political leaders that change the world, it's people that change the world. The turning of the corner from science to policy is really difficult to do. That's where we are right now, and that's why we're reaching out to the political leaders of the world."

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Ravaged Reefs Bounce Back

In a new study of coral reefs off the Pacific coast of Panama, a team of scientists has discovered something shocking: those seemingly thriving, permanent reefs have undergone widespread devastation in the past. Even more shocking was the realization that, despite this natural destruction of coral reefs, the reefs bounced back—after laying dormant for 2,500 years. We have been told that the oh so sensitive coral reefs of the world are all going to die if the world's temperature rises due to that horrible man-made scourge, global warming. Yet it seems that nature has been happily wiping out and re-establishing reefs across all the oceans of the world since before the rise of human civilization. Once again the warmists' scare tactics founder on the reefs of actual science.

A team led by Richard Aronson, Professor and Biological Sciences Department Head at Florida Institute of Technology, studied coral reefs off the Pacific coast of Panama. The reefs in this part of the ocean are relatively untouched by the bleaching seen in other ocean locations, thriving and home to hundreds of ocean species. Just as land based researchers use tree rings to establish cronology and climatic conditions, the FIT team took core samples from a number of reefs to determine their lifespan and past health.

“We jammed 17-foot-long irrigation pipes down into the reef and pulled out a history, a section of the reef, that told us what the ups and downs of the reef had been,” Aronson said in an interview heard on America's National Public Radio and other popular news outlets. The data they gathered, along with data from other studies from around the world, were reported in a paper in Science entitled “ENSO Drove 2500-Year Collapse of Eastern Pacific Coral Reefs.” Here is the paper's abstract:

    Cores of coral reef frameworks along an upwelling gradient in Panamá show that reef ecosystems in the tropical eastern Pacific collapsed for 2500 years, representing as much as 40% of their history, beginning about 4000 years ago. The principal cause of this millennial-scale hiatus in reef growth was increased variability of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and its coupling with the Intertropical Convergence Zone. The hiatus was a Pacific-wide phenomenon with an underlying climatology similar to probable scenarios for the next century. Global climate change is probably driving eastern Pacific reefs toward another regional collapse.

Ignoring for the moment the gratuitous last sentence (an obvious allusion to anthropogenic global warming) we should pause for a moment and consider what this means. The first point of interest is that nature, acting without human interference, has caused long periods of reef damage, lasting for extended periods. Aronson and his colleagues, including researchers from an array of institutions, believe that natural climate change was responsible for killing off the coral. Yet nowadays any reef that shows signs of ill health is automatically a victim of human activity. Also note, this was not some small, localized disaster either.

The second point is that this phenomenon was global, or at least “Pacific-wide,” which is near global enough. This period came a thousand years after the Holocene Climate Optimum, a period of global warming that scientists think may have led to ice free summers in the Arctic—something that now fills eco-alarmists, Hollywood airheads and media news manikins with dread. Here is more proof that climate is always changing.

Third and lastly, the reefs that had been so laid to waste have bounced back to abundant, glorious life. The standard line from the green lobby is that when the world's fragile reefs die they will never (ever!) recover. Humanity's failed stewardship of nature will be written in dead coral reefs and lifeless oceans. I guess that has been proven conclusively wrong.

To be fair, most greens have extraordinarily short attention spans, witness the agitation they exhibit when temperatures turn hot or the weather nasty. Every summer high is the hottest temperature ever, every new hurricane is the most powerful humanity has seen, every outbreak of tornadoes unprecedented. This is because they have no sense of time, even on a decade to decade scale. Nature, not being limited by faulty human memories or even ephemeral human lifespans, continues to vary on time scales of decades, centuries, millennia and longer.

It is unsurprising that reefs have come and gone, with nature the proximate cause for the waxing and waning. Instead of running to their keyboards and microphones, the chattering simpletons of the news media would be better off to spend a few moments doing research. Now that everyone has Internet access there is no excuse for such uninformed reporting on maters scientific. Reefs die, reefs will continue to die, and reefs will bounce back as environmental conditions change.

Conceptual model of reef collapse.

But what of cries that AGW induced change, unlike “natural” change, is too sudden for nature to deal with? Or that recovery, if any, will be slow and laborious? “It seemed to be fairly instantaneous,” Aronson said of the gap his team discovered in the Panama reef's history. “About 2,000 years ago or so, some corals that are not the main reef-building corals started up, and then maybe 500 years later, around 1,500 years ago, the main coral started growing again very rapidly.” I guess nature didn't read all those news releases from Greenpeace and the IPCC.

Do human activities have an impact on the world's reefs? Undoubtedly. But it is not an irreversible, unprecedented or even abnormal impact in most cases. So despite the obligatory verbal genuflecting by study's authors, paying obeisance to the gods of Political Correctness, there is precocious little difference between natural and man-made change—in either its form or impact. So remember the next time some ecological blatherskite starts going on about the death of the ocean reefs—the reefs, like Earth itself, are more resilient than we know.

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Australia: Hoagy is back! With straight-out, unproven Warmist propaganda

Danish Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg was a great prophet of doom about the Great Barrier Reef until his own research showed the reef was in no danger.  He fell silent for a few years after that.  But we see below that he has now managed  the usual Greenie trick of ignoring the facts and is back at his old stall

For the record, the ocean is  very alkaline. There would have to  be huge changes for it to become acidic. And the claim that warming would cause acidity goes against Henry's law, anyway. A warmer ocean would outgas CO2 and hence reduce the incidence of carbonic acid.   The laboratory studies reported below therefore have no real-world significance

NEMO the clown fish, high on "acid", heads from the safety of home with no fear and no sense of smell, straight into the jaws of a predator.

No, it's not a dark sequel to the Pixar animated movie hit, but a reality facing one of the Great Barrier Reef's signature species clown fish.

The International Coral Reef symposium in Cairns yesterday heard disturbing new evidence that burning fossil fuels was not only pushing up global temperatures, but also ocean acidity that in turn could send the brains of some fish species haywire.

"It shows the next Hollywood release will not be so pretty," University of Queensland's Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said. "Nemo does not get so lucky next time."

About 2500 of the world's top reef scientists yesterday shared the latest research into coral growth and fish behaviour under climate change.

Townsville-based James Cook University researcher Phillip Munday and his team found clown fish, made famous in the movie Finding Nemo, as well as damsel fish and open-water predators like tuna and spanish mackerel, suffered adverse effects under high acidity.

They said laboratory studies showed increased acid levels affected the main neuro-transmitters in fish brains, causing a malfunction in the sense of smell, hearing and perception of risk, and an increased tendency to stray from safe reef areas.

"We're not talking about extinction (if acidity continues to rise) but changes in abundance," Mr Munday said.

Other dire predictions yesterday included a warning that bleaching could leave many reefs a white "stumpy" mass dominated by only a few coral species covered in a "brown scuzz" or "green, slimy sludge".

"Within 20 years, some coral species will have been nailed into the coffin," Prof Hoegh-Guldberg said. "It sounds like alarmism, but that is what the biology tells us."

SOURCE

Natural Climate Shifts stopped Coral Reef growth for 2500 years

My heading above reflects what was actually found.  The original screeching headline was "Natural Climate Shifts Drove Coral Reefs to a Total Ecosystem Collapse Lasting 2,500 Years"

The authors go on to speculate that man-made global warming could have similar effects but we will worry about that when we actually see some of that fabled man-made global warming  -- or any global warming at all, for that matter

Climate change drove coral reefs to a total ecosystem collapse lasting thousands of years, according to a paper published this week in Science. The paper shows how natural climatic shifts stopped reef growth in the eastern Pacific for 2,500 years.

The reef shutdown, which began 4,000 years ago, corresponds to a period of dramatic swings in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

Doctoral student Lauren Toth and Aronson, her adviser at Florida Tech, led the study of how past episodes of climate change influenced tropical reefs of the eastern Pacific. Toth, Aronson and a multi-institutional research team drove 17-foot, small-bore aluminum pipes deep into the dead frameworks of coral reefs along the Pacific coast of Panama and pulled out cross-sections of the reefs. By analyzing the corals in the cores, they were able to reconstruct the history of the reefs over the past 6,000 years.

"We were shocked to find that 2,500 years of reef growth were missing from the frameworks," said Toth. "That gap represents the collapse of reef ecosystems for 40 percent of their total history." When Toth and Aronson examined reef records from other studies across the Pacific, they discovered the same gap in reefs as far away as Australia and Japan.

Toth linked the coral-reef collapse to changes in ENSO. ENSO is the climate cycle responsible for the weather conditions every few years known as El Niño and La Niña events. The timing of the shutdown in reef growth corresponds to a period of wild swings in ENSO. "Coral reefs are resilient ecosystems," said Toth. "For Pacific reefs to have collapsed for such a long time and over such a large geographic scale, they must have experienced a major climatic disturbance. That disturbance was an intensified ENSO regime."

SOURCE

Scientists call for action to "save" coral reefs

There have been headlines in Australia like the one above for at least 50 years.  Like all natural phenomena, nothing stays the same over time on the reef and there have always been attention-seekers trying to create panic over the changes they observe

Thousands of scientists have signed a statement calling for immediate action on climate change to save the world's remaining coral reefs.  ["Remaining"?  The Great Barrier reef is the biggest reef in the world and is as extensive and as diverse as ever.  This call is plain dishonest]

MORE than 2500 marine researchers signed the consensus statement from the International Coral Reef Symposium in Cairns, which calls for global action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The statement calls for action to prevent rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification  [There is no acidification.  There is a possible reduction in  alkalinity but that is a long way from acidification], overfishing [Fishing is now banned in most of the reef area] and pollution from the land  [Unproven theory].

"The international Coral Reef Science Community calls on all governments to ensure the future of coral reefs, through global action to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and via improved local protection of coral reefs," the statement says.

Professor Terry Hughes, convener of the symposium and director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said Australia's Great Barrier Reef was a prime example of a reef in need of protection.

"Unfortunately in Queensland, the rush to get as much fossil fuel out of the ground as quickly as possible ... has pushed environmental concerns far into the background," he said.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) recently released a report that was highly critical of Australia's management of the Great Barrier Reef.

It said the reef could be listed as a World Heritage site in danger unless high-risk coastal developments including new ports in Queensland are shelved.

SOURCE

Study finds coral reef growth thrives in warmer waters

A GOVERNMENT-RUN research body has found in an extensive study of corals spanning more than 1000km of Australia's coastline that the past 110 years of ocean warming has been good for their growth.

The findings undermine blanket predictions that global warming will devastate coral reefs, and add to a growing body of evidence showing corals are more resilient than previously thought, up to a certain point.

The study by the commonwealth-funded Australian Institute of Marine Science, peer-reviewed findings of which are published in the leading journal Science today, examined 27 samples from six locations from the West Australian coast off Geraldton to offshore from Darwin.

At each site, scientists took cores from massive porites corals - similar to a biopsy in humans - and counted back to record their age in much the same way tree rings are counted. Although some cores extended back to the 18th century, they focused on the period from 1900 to 2010.

The researchers found that, contrary to their expectations, warmer waters had not negatively affected coral growth. Quite the opposite, in fact: for their southern samples, where ocean temperatures are the coolest but have warmed the most, coral growth increased most significantly over the past 110 years. For their northern samples, where waters are the warmest and have changed the least, coral growth still increased, but not by as much.

"Those reefs have actually been able to take advantage of the warmer conditions," said Janice Lough, a senior AIMS research scientist and one of the study's authors.

Maria Byrne, a professor of marine biology at Sydney University, said after reading the paper that its findings "made perfect sense". "Temperature rules metabolism, so it's a no-brainer that if you get more temperature you will get more metabolism."

She compared the findings to studies of sea urchins, where higher temperatures had been shown to offset the negative effects of ocean acidification, and to commercial aquaculture farms, in which some organisms are deliberately raised in warmer water to increase their growth rate.

The key question is how warm the water can get before the positive effects are reversed.

Lab studies have typically measured the effect of short-term, rapid changes in temperature and water chemistry; these mimic, for example, coral-bleaching events that are known to be devastating. Much harder to measure are the long-term effects of gradual warming, such as is caused by climate change.

A recent paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, reported in The Australian, showed Zooxanthellae - the symbiotic organisms that live inside corals - can adapt much better to warming water than was previously thought. It is also known corals can, to a degree, change their Zooxanthellae with changing conditions.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/study-finds-coral-reef-growth-thrives-in-warmer-waters/story-e6frg8y6-1226261278615