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In the last half decade the reef at port douglas has gone from "Straight out of finding nemo" to a ghostly wasteland (from personally diving there). It's a real

In the last half decade the reef at port douglas has gone from "Straight out of finding nemo" to a ghostly wasteland (from personally diving there). It's a real shame. There are still smaller good bits you can find, but overall it's no good at all.

artursapek 10y ago
Is it possible this has nothing to do with human activity, and naturally happens on its own? (Thinking along the lines of a forest fire)
- dmritard96 10y ago
  its possible that aliens wrote my code for me today and I was just a host, but possible and likely are important distinctions. When there is overwhelming consensus on man made climate change, ocean acidification, and we see bleaching that seems to be highly correlated with dissolved CO2 or ocean temps rising, its hard to imagine that this is just random chance. It could be, but it likely isn't.
  - lettergram 10y ago
    I don't argue that humans impact climate change... But I do want to mention that around 3000BC the world was roughly 2°C warmer, which is what most climatologist claim we will be at after we continue to burn fossil fuels (until we probably run out) Overall, this isn't "random chance", but it's also probably happened before within the span of human existence. The world changes and I am sure the world will adapt, and while that happens mass extinctions and horrible growing pains will likely occur
    - astrange 10y ago
      What's your point? You've written this as a disagreement but you still think everything will be bad.
    - scarmig 10y ago
      Sure, but atmospheric CO2 concentrations haven't been this high in anywhere from a million to twenty five million years. Coral reef death is as much related to ocean acidification as it is to temperature increase. And it's very easy to write off the effects of climate change as "horrible growing pains," but to be concrete about it: you're talking about the deaths of potentially millions of people. This is a moral issue on par with Auschwitz or the Gulag. And while you're free to shrug your shoulders with, "well, shit happens," it's silly to act as if people concerned about it are histrionic tree huggers.
      - dmix 10y ago
        How will climate change cause millions of people to die? Honest question. I thought most of the damage would be monetary via mass relocation. Are those deaths preventable outside of human behavioral change to keep temperatures lower?
        scarmig 10y ago
        You say mass relocation like it's a vacation to the French Riviera. Within developed countries, climate change will be costly but not particularly deadly. A few more heat exhaustion deaths, a few fewer cold-related deaths, and it all balances it. If anything, climate change will be good for mortality in developed countries, because cold kills a whole lot more people than heat now. Remediating the effects of climate change will be very expensive, on the other hand, and I buy the equation that throwing away money is throwing away lives, but let's leave that aside for now. The big issue is in developing countries. All of them are exceptionally vulnerable to climate change, since they're nearer the equator; all of them have severely resource-constrained economies; all of them have less stable political cultures and are more likely to go to war with nearby neighbors; most of them have megalopolises built in areas susceptible to climate change. Mass relocation just simply isn't in the cards for them. Dhaka is a couple meters above sea level on average: what happens when the sea level rises by a meter? I remind you that it's a city of around 20 million people, and the rich tend to live in higher elevations than the poorest, densest areas. Where do they go? Does Bangladesh go through a massive infrastructure project to build Netherlands-scale dikes? Who pays for it? Donald Trump? Or maybe the USA and Europe open their doors to millions of Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh alone? Dhaka is an extreme case, but this story replays itself all over. And there are other factors to account for: increase malaria prevalence by 10% and you've killed 50k/year. These things add up. And of course you can say, "well, sure, but you can use money to save these lives!" But if we're utterly unwilling to bear any costs of our pollution now, why would we be willing to in 2100? Our grandchildren might fairly say, well, it was our asshole grandparents who selfishly shat all over the world, why should we have to suffer exceptionally for it?
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      >>But I do want to mention that around 3000BC the world was roughly 2°C warmer The question you have to ask yourself isn't necessarily absolute temperature, but rather the rate at which such temperature fluctuations occurred in the past. Lots of species may be able to adapt to the planet becoming 2 degrees warmer over the course of 100,000 years. The overwhelming majority can't adapt if such changes occur over the course of 100 years - which is what we are seeing now.
      - WillPostForFood 10y ago
        If that was true then you'd expect an El Nino to cause mass extinction. You can get > 2 degree warming over massive areas of the globe during an El Nino year.
        flukus 10y ago
        2 Degrees warming over some areas. Global warming causes 2 degrees warming across the world on average, that means much more than 2 degree in many places. Not that that is the case here because 1. It's about ocean temperatures and 2. Coral reefs are highly susceptible to small changes.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - nickparker 10y ago
      Woah woah woah, the 2° C scenario is definitely not what happens if we burn all remaining fossil fuels. IPCC's A1FI scenario which more or less describes that 'plan' (A1FI actually still predicts an eventual transition to renewables...) has a predicted temperature increase of 2.4 - 6.4° C. 2°C is what the Paris Accords expect us to get with significant changes. We're already at 1.3° C.
      - lettergram 10y ago
        > We're already at 1.3° C You can't really make that claim yet. The sun is also at the peak of it's 30 year output cycle (and I believe there's also a greater cycle as well). We can't know the full effect for decades probably. Which is kind of the point of my statement. We can freak out all we want, but the world will survive and the world (probably humanity) has faced much harder times with much worse technology. Just trying to keep things in perspective.
    - flukus 10y ago
      >But I do want to mention that around 3000BC the world was roughly 2°C warmer Source? I can't find anything to back that up.
      - ant6n 10y ago
        according to xkcd, it's warmer now than in 3000BC: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
      - lettergram 10y ago
        Quickest thing I could find: http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall12/atmo336/lectures/sec5/holocene.html http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall12/atmo... Turns out the sun has more to do with global temperatures than just about anything. I don't know if it's in one of those lectures (it should be), but the sun had a pretty hot 1000 years there where it also released more radiation. This actually impacts radiocarbon dating.
        flukus 10y ago
        That's not 2 degrees and that graph is before 1950, not today.
        lettergram 10y ago
        You do realize that taking historic temperatures are pretty difficult and we can only get an approximation? Meaning, you may only get the historic average over a given 5, 10, 50 years when looking at historic data. Meaning some years may have been 5°c warmer on average, while others were 5°c lower on average. We simply can't know. Regarsless, the point of my comment is still relevant. This has happened before, it will happen again. We should try and minimize damage, but also keep the perspective that in the past tempratures have fluctuated more and faster. It's been warmer and colder on our planet, and everything will adapt.
        magicalist 10y ago
        > Meaning some years may have been 5°c warmer on average, while others were 5°c lower on average yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you haven't done a lot of research on this. Short of super volcano winter you aren't going to see more than a tenth of that in annual variation. > Regarsless, the point of my comment is still relevant No, it's really not. Not only was your initial claim wrong, but your point seems to just be that "changes happen", which is vacuous in and of itself. Some day we'll reach the heat death of the universe. Why do anything at all, am I right?
    - aplummer 10y ago
      "around 3000BC" the temperature change 2 degrees in < 200 years? Because it is definitely not just a temperature change, but a rapid temperature change that is the issue.
      - lettergram 10y ago
        Historically, there have been much larger and quicker changes in temperature, such as when a super volcano erupts. The whole point of my original comment was to point out that yes we (as humans) are causing issues and yes we should try to mitigate said issues, but at the same time keep a perspective. Based on what we know, this is not really rare in the history of our planet.
    - abandonliberty 10y ago
      Yes, it was warmer. Please see helpful chart: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - monkmartinez 10y ago
    I didn't know we had mapped the entire ocean floor and were measuring the dissolved gasses from all the sub-surface volcanoes. Can you share how they relate or correlate to that of human based emissions?
    - harwoodleon 10y ago
      I can't be sure why you are lying in the road struggling to breathe with multiple fractures. It could be that truck I heard go by that may have just hit you at 90 mph, i didn't see it so I can't be sure. Because I can't be absolutely sure why you are in the state you are in, best not to do anything.
    - dmritard96 10y ago
      "Warm seas around Australia's Great Barrier Reef have killed two-thirds of a 700-km (435 miles) stretch of coral in the past nine months, the worst die-off ever recorded on the World Heritage site, scientists who surveyed the reef said on Tuesday." ""The coral is essentially cooked," professor Andrew Baird, a researcher at James Cook University who was part of the reef surveys, told Reuters by telephone from Townsville in Australia's tropical north." "While bleaching occurs naturally, scientists are concerned that rising sea temperatures caused by global warming magnifies the damage, leaving sensitive underwater ecosystems unable to recover." http://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-environment-idUSKBN13O059 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-environment-idUS...
      - refurb 10y ago
        "While bleaching occurs naturally, scientists are concerned that rising sea temperatures caused by global warming magnifies the damage, leaving sensitive underwater ecosystems unable to recover." This seems to indicate they're not sure how much impact global warming is having. Is it 10%? 90%? Would be good to know.
        manarth 10y ago
        Is it 10%? 90%? Would be good to know. It would be good to know, and it would be very good to know whilst the effect is still reversible. It would be a great shame to discover that our fears about man-made climate change were correct, but it's too late for any changes to have a meaningful effect.
  - artursapek 10y ago
    What a stupid, dismissive response. I am not doubting human activity has impacted the change in climate. I'm just curious to know more about this specific symptom. Do coral reefs go through the same kind of cycles that forests do? Or have these reefs been around for thousands of years uninterrupted?
    - abandonliberty 10y ago
      You feeling ok? Discourse here is usually a bit more civilized.
- monkmartinez 10y ago
  I really wish you were taken more seriously. I worked at AFWA (Offutt AFB) from 2002 to 2004. I worked at the Global Wx and Event desk where we tracked hurricanes, volcanic activity, haboob's and more! I am no Phd scientist, but thoroughly enjoyed the conversations|discussions|arguments on "climate change." I would stare at a large monitor and pick out a volcanic plume easily while the city of Quito was not even recognizable. I would really have to hunt for LA or San Francisco in comparison to a giant haboob in the ME. Your standard cold front is more recognizable than any major city from the satellites we used (30m, 15m, 10m mostly). Pondering how often these volcanoes erupt and send horrific gases aloft, it is hard to say; "Humans are doing it ALL!" Not to mention the thousands (tens, or hundreds of thousands?) of underwater volcanoes that emit all sorts of horribleness. Then you contemplate that the Earth has been here for 4 billion years + or - a few million... How much hubris do we have to measure for a couple hundred years and say unequivocally; "Humans DID this!!!" It seems a bit...
  - harwoodleon 10y ago
    Seems a bit what? I really wish I could take you more seriously. There is undoubted, undeniable evidence that human factors caused this bleaching effect. Yes humans are doing it ALL. It is not up for debate.
    - monkmartinez 10y ago
      It is up for debate. Whether you like it or not, people think differently. People that have actually worked in the field and have Phd's in climatology. I worked with several of them as an airman in the USAF. Get over yourself.
      - Oletros 10y ago
        > Whether you like it or not, people think differently. Yes, everybody can think what they want, they are free to be wrong against all the evidence > People that have actually worked in the field and have Phd's in climatology. Where are the papers from those "people with Phd's in climatology"?
- aplummer 10y ago
  No, a huge part of the damage to the reef is from literally digging a port within the reef and the runoff from that. And not dealing with crown of thorns. And then climate change, which is obviously humans are by far the largest contributor (the evidence for that is actually stronger than the physical port)
vacri 10y ago
Did you see recently that Pauline Hanson took some of her mob to a still-vibrant part of the reef to prove 'it's all lies, what they say about the dying reef'? What can you do to convince the wilfully ignorant, I wonder?
- kirrent 10y ago
  Puzzlingly she didn't go to the reef but went to the coral around Keppel Island. I've been up and down the coast a few times and I don't know if the coral at Keppel could ever have been called vibrant. It seemed like a pretty strange choice of location to me.
wallace_f 10y ago
I did a diving trip nearby there just last summer (winter in Australia), and it was not what I imagined it would be. A couple on our boat said they had been there 15 years ago and it was nothing like what they remembered. It was still beautiful, and if you just happen to be there I wouldn't recommend skipping it, but seriously don't go out of your way to take a trip there.

artursapek 10y ago

Is it possible this has nothing to do with human activity, and naturally happens on its own? (Thinking along the lines of a forest fire)

dmritard96 10y ago
its possible that aliens wrote my code for me today and I was just a host, but possible and likely are important distinctions. When there is overwhelming consensus on man made climate change, ocean acidification, and we see bleaching that seems to be highly correlated with dissolved CO2 or ocean temps rising, its hard to imagine that this is just random chance. It could be, but it likely isn't.
- lettergram 10y ago
  I don't argue that humans impact climate change... But I do want to mention that around 3000BC the world was roughly 2°C warmer, which is what most climatologist claim we will be at after we continue to burn fossil fuels (until we probably run out) Overall, this isn't "random chance", but it's also probably happened before within the span of human existence. The world changes and I am sure the world will adapt, and while that happens mass extinctions and horrible growing pains will likely occur
  - astrange 10y ago
    What's your point? You've written this as a disagreement but you still think everything will be bad.
  - scarmig 10y ago
    Sure, but atmospheric CO2 concentrations haven't been this high in anywhere from a million to twenty five million years. Coral reef death is as much related to ocean acidification as it is to temperature increase. And it's very easy to write off the effects of climate change as "horrible growing pains," but to be concrete about it: you're talking about the deaths of potentially millions of people. This is a moral issue on par with Auschwitz or the Gulag. And while you're free to shrug your shoulders with, "well, shit happens," it's silly to act as if people concerned about it are histrionic tree huggers.
    - dmix 10y ago
      How will climate change cause millions of people to die? Honest question. I thought most of the damage would be monetary via mass relocation. Are those deaths preventable outside of human behavioral change to keep temperatures lower?
      - scarmig 10y ago
        You say mass relocation like it's a vacation to the French Riviera. Within developed countries, climate change will be costly but not particularly deadly. A few more heat exhaustion deaths, a few fewer cold-related deaths, and it all balances it. If anything, climate change will be good for mortality in developed countries, because cold kills a whole lot more people than heat now. Remediating the effects of climate change will be very expensive, on the other hand, and I buy the equation that throwing away money is throwing away lives, but let's leave that aside for now. The big issue is in developing countries. All of them are exceptionally vulnerable to climate change, since they're nearer the equator; all of them have severely resource-constrained economies; all of them have less stable political cultures and are more likely to go to war with nearby neighbors; most of them have megalopolises built in areas susceptible to climate change. Mass relocation just simply isn't in the cards for them. Dhaka is a couple meters above sea level on average: what happens when the sea level rises by a meter? I remind you that it's a city of around 20 million people, and the rich tend to live in higher elevations than the poorest, densest areas. Where do they go? Does Bangladesh go through a massive infrastructure project to build Netherlands-scale dikes? Who pays for it? Donald Trump? Or maybe the USA and Europe open their doors to millions of Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh alone? Dhaka is an extreme case, but this story replays itself all over. And there are other factors to account for: increase malaria prevalence by 10% and you've killed 50k/year. These things add up. And of course you can say, "well, sure, but you can use money to save these lives!" But if we're utterly unwilling to bear any costs of our pollution now, why would we be willing to in 2100? Our grandchildren might fairly say, well, it was our asshole grandparents who selfishly shat all over the world, why should we have to suffer exceptionally for it?
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>But I do want to mention that around 3000BC the world was roughly 2°C warmer The question you have to ask yourself isn't necessarily absolute temperature, but rather the rate at which such temperature fluctuations occurred in the past. Lots of species may be able to adapt to the planet becoming 2 degrees warmer over the course of 100,000 years. The overwhelming majority can't adapt if such changes occur over the course of 100 years - which is what we are seeing now.
    - WillPostForFood 10y ago
      If that was true then you'd expect an El Nino to cause mass extinction. You can get > 2 degree warming over massive areas of the globe during an El Nino year.
      - flukus 10y ago
        2 Degrees warming over some areas. Global warming causes 2 degrees warming across the world on average, that means much more than 2 degree in many places. Not that that is the case here because 1. It's about ocean temperatures and 2. Coral reefs are highly susceptible to small changes.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - nickparker 10y ago
    Woah woah woah, the 2° C scenario is definitely not what happens if we burn all remaining fossil fuels. IPCC's A1FI scenario which more or less describes that 'plan' (A1FI actually still predicts an eventual transition to renewables...) has a predicted temperature increase of 2.4 - 6.4° C. 2°C is what the Paris Accords expect us to get with significant changes. We're already at 1.3° C.
    - lettergram 10y ago
      > We're already at 1.3° C You can't really make that claim yet. The sun is also at the peak of it's 30 year output cycle (and I believe there's also a greater cycle as well). We can't know the full effect for decades probably. Which is kind of the point of my statement. We can freak out all we want, but the world will survive and the world (probably humanity) has faced much harder times with much worse technology. Just trying to keep things in perspective.
  - flukus 10y ago
    >But I do want to mention that around 3000BC the world was roughly 2°C warmer Source? I can't find anything to back that up.
    - ant6n 10y ago
      according to xkcd, it's warmer now than in 3000BC: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
    - lettergram 10y ago
      Quickest thing I could find: http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall12/atmo336/lectures/sec5/holocene.html http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/fall12/atmo... Turns out the sun has more to do with global temperatures than just about anything. I don't know if it's in one of those lectures (it should be), but the sun had a pretty hot 1000 years there where it also released more radiation. This actually impacts radiocarbon dating.
      - flukus 10y ago
        That's not 2 degrees and that graph is before 1950, not today.
        lettergram 10y ago
        You do realize that taking historic temperatures are pretty difficult and we can only get an approximation? Meaning, you may only get the historic average over a given 5, 10, 50 years when looking at historic data. Meaning some years may have been 5°c warmer on average, while others were 5°c lower on average. We simply can't know. Regarsless, the point of my comment is still relevant. This has happened before, it will happen again. We should try and minimize damage, but also keep the perspective that in the past tempratures have fluctuated more and faster. It's been warmer and colder on our planet, and everything will adapt.
        magicalist 10y ago
        > Meaning some years may have been 5°c warmer on average, while others were 5°c lower on average yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you haven't done a lot of research on this. Short of super volcano winter you aren't going to see more than a tenth of that in annual variation. > Regarsless, the point of my comment is still relevant No, it's really not. Not only was your initial claim wrong, but your point seems to just be that "changes happen", which is vacuous in and of itself. Some day we'll reach the heat death of the universe. Why do anything at all, am I right?
  - aplummer 10y ago
    "around 3000BC" the temperature change 2 degrees in < 200 years? Because it is definitely not just a temperature change, but a rapid temperature change that is the issue.
    - lettergram 10y ago
      Historically, there have been much larger and quicker changes in temperature, such as when a super volcano erupts. The whole point of my original comment was to point out that yes we (as humans) are causing issues and yes we should try to mitigate said issues, but at the same time keep a perspective. Based on what we know, this is not really rare in the history of our planet.
  - abandonliberty 10y ago
    Yes, it was warmer. Please see helpful chart: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- monkmartinez 10y ago
  I didn't know we had mapped the entire ocean floor and were measuring the dissolved gasses from all the sub-surface volcanoes. Can you share how they relate or correlate to that of human based emissions?
  - harwoodleon 10y ago
    I can't be sure why you are lying in the road struggling to breathe with multiple fractures. It could be that truck I heard go by that may have just hit you at 90 mph, i didn't see it so I can't be sure. Because I can't be absolutely sure why you are in the state you are in, best not to do anything.
  - dmritard96 10y ago
    "Warm seas around Australia's Great Barrier Reef have killed two-thirds of a 700-km (435 miles) stretch of coral in the past nine months, the worst die-off ever recorded on the World Heritage site, scientists who surveyed the reef said on Tuesday." ""The coral is essentially cooked," professor Andrew Baird, a researcher at James Cook University who was part of the reef surveys, told Reuters by telephone from Townsville in Australia's tropical north." "While bleaching occurs naturally, scientists are concerned that rising sea temperatures caused by global warming magnifies the damage, leaving sensitive underwater ecosystems unable to recover." http://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-environment-idUSKBN13O059 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-environment-idUS...
    - refurb 10y ago
      "While bleaching occurs naturally, scientists are concerned that rising sea temperatures caused by global warming magnifies the damage, leaving sensitive underwater ecosystems unable to recover." This seems to indicate they're not sure how much impact global warming is having. Is it 10%? 90%? Would be good to know.
      - manarth 10y ago
        Is it 10%? 90%? Would be good to know. It would be good to know, and it would be very good to know whilst the effect is still reversible. It would be a great shame to discover that our fears about man-made climate change were correct, but it's too late for any changes to have a meaningful effect.
- artursapek 10y ago
  What a stupid, dismissive response. I am not doubting human activity has impacted the change in climate. I'm just curious to know more about this specific symptom. Do coral reefs go through the same kind of cycles that forests do? Or have these reefs been around for thousands of years uninterrupted?
  - abandonliberty 10y ago
    You feeling ok? Discourse here is usually a bit more civilized.
monkmartinez 10y ago
I really wish you were taken more seriously. I worked at AFWA (Offutt AFB) from 2002 to 2004. I worked at the Global Wx and Event desk where we tracked hurricanes, volcanic activity, haboob's and more! I am no Phd scientist, but thoroughly enjoyed the conversations|discussions|arguments on "climate change." I would stare at a large monitor and pick out a volcanic plume easily while the city of Quito was not even recognizable. I would really have to hunt for LA or San Francisco in comparison to a giant haboob in the ME. Your standard cold front is more recognizable than any major city from the satellites we used (30m, 15m, 10m mostly). Pondering how often these volcanoes erupt and send horrific gases aloft, it is hard to say; "Humans are doing it ALL!" Not to mention the thousands (tens, or hundreds of thousands?) of underwater volcanoes that emit all sorts of horribleness. Then you contemplate that the Earth has been here for 4 billion years + or - a few million... How much hubris do we have to measure for a couple hundred years and say unequivocally; "Humans DID this!!!" It seems a bit...
- harwoodleon 10y ago
  Seems a bit what? I really wish I could take you more seriously. There is undoubted, undeniable evidence that human factors caused this bleaching effect. Yes humans are doing it ALL. It is not up for debate.
  - monkmartinez 10y ago
    It is up for debate. Whether you like it or not, people think differently. People that have actually worked in the field and have Phd's in climatology. I worked with several of them as an airman in the USAF. Get over yourself.
    - Oletros 10y ago
      > Whether you like it or not, people think differently. Yes, everybody can think what they want, they are free to be wrong against all the evidence > People that have actually worked in the field and have Phd's in climatology. Where are the papers from those "people with Phd's in climatology"?
aplummer 10y ago
No, a huge part of the damage to the reef is from literally digging a port within the reef and the runoff from that. And not dealing with crown of thorns. And then climate change, which is obviously humans are by far the largest contributor (the evidence for that is actually stronger than the physical port)

vacri 10y ago

Did you see recently that Pauline Hanson took some of her mob to a still-vibrant part of the reef to prove 'it's all lies, what they say about the dying reef'? What can you do to convince the wilfully ignorant, I wonder?

kirrent 10y ago
Puzzlingly she didn't go to the reef but went to the coral around Keppel Island. I've been up and down the coast a few times and I don't know if the coral at Keppel could ever have been called vibrant. It seemed like a pretty strange choice of location to me.

wallace_f 10y ago

I did a diving trip nearby there just last summer (winter in Australia), and it was not what I imagined it would be. A couple on our boat said they had been there 15 years ago and it was nothing like what they remembered. It was still beautiful, and if you just happen to be there I wouldn't recommend skipping it, but seriously don't go out of your way to take a trip there.