11 ms·

Corals naturally suffer from many hazards, and they naturally recover. Climate change makes it worse. How much worse? I am not qualified to answer that. "...di

Corals naturally suffer from many hazards, and they naturally recover. Climate change makes it worse. How much worse? I am not qualified to answer that. "...disturbances such as bleaching, cyclones and crown-of-thorns outbreaks are occurring more often, are longer-lasting and more severe. This means coral reefs have less time to recover..." https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/reports-of-the-great-barrier-reefs-doom-are-exaggerated/news-story/500e73695109b027df6f5b4a8a398f80 https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/reports-of-the-gre...

ColanR 7y ago
> Climate change makes it worse. You should probably cite that.
- neuronexmachina 7y ago
  I'm not the original commenter, but here's a citation: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralreef-climate.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralreef-climate.html > As temperatures rise, mass coral bleaching events and infectious disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent. Additionally, carbon dioxide absorbed into the ocean from the atmosphere has already begun to reduce calcification rates in reef-building and reef-associated organisms by altering seawater chemistry through decreases in pH. This process is called ocean acidification.
- ehnto 7y ago
  Probably, but also a quick google finds dozens of supporting papers and articles. It isn't exactly a controversial opinion amongst people who believe in climate change. Here is a great summary from the Australian government, a government that is doing everything it can to worsen the situation yet at least acknowledges that it is something real and happening right now: http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/our-work/threats-to-the-reef/climate-change http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/our-work/threats-to-the-reef/climat...
  - tossAfterUsing 7y ago
    > Probably, but also a quick google finds dozens of supporting papers and articles. Disclaimer: I _believe_ in antropogenic warming, but i'm not qualified to judge One of the arguments that I find compelling, from individuals who would advocate for a less dramatic reading of the climate news, is that there's A LOT MORE MONEY available for researchers to find out how bad the situation is & not a lot of money (or encouragement from peers) available for folks who consistently find that there's less reason for alarm. Bit of a confirmation bias, there? Maybe.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      There's a lot more money in climate research than from the fossil fuel and other companies seeking to maintain the status quo? Colour me unconvinced. I suspect the Koch funded foundations and think tanks alone could eclipse most nation's science budgets.
      - repolfx 7y ago
        The government is a firehose of money, and only government (academic) research gets reported on by the media. So yes it's entirely possible for private sector research to simply disappear, relative to the output of academia, whose papers utterly dominate the conversation. How often do you see private sector studies be cited by the media? The sort of people who become journalists are the sort of people who immediately write off any study funded by industry without even bothering to read it. I can't actually remember the last time I saw an industry or thinktank funded study being cited in US media, other than maybe by Breitbart. These studies do exist: go read any climate skeptic blog and you'll find quite detailed surveys, meta-analyses and the sort of content you'd find in a published paper if these people were the sorts of people who published in academic journals (they're not). But the press normally just ignores them, and on the rare occasions they don't, it's only to paint them as science-hating bogeymen. For instance, I linked in another comment to a study on ocean acidification by Patrick Moore, who has a PhD in ecology and used to be a regional leader of Greepeace. This paper has all the same things you'd expect to find in a normal academic paper: citations, data and it says it was subject to double-blind peer review prior to publication. https://fcpp.org/sites/default/files/documents/Moore%20-%20Ocean%20Acidification%20Alarmism.pdf https://fcpp.org/sites/default/files/documents/Moore%20-%20O... And here's the Guardian commenting on Moore's work: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/apr/16/ask-the-real-experts-about-ocean-acidification-not-climate-science-deniers https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/apr/1... The piece is titled "Ask the real experts" and starts with 9 paragraphs of hate-filled invective that compares Moore and the scientists who support him to UFO believers, Elvis spotters, calls them "crazyballs", claims they're "blinded by beliefs and ideology", states that their views should never be allowed into national newspapers, falsely claims Moore has not written any peer reviewed publications (but e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128045886000136?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978012804...), and then cites as evidence three "actual experts" who, of course, all work in universities. The Guardian is a particularly extreme enclave of hard-left journalists who think only government-funded academics can understand a scientific topic, but the rest of the industry has similar biases. As another example, here's a rather detailed replication and peer review of Al Gore's famous CO2 in a bottle experiment: https://wattsupwiththat.com/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-... It discovers that the original experiment was fraudulent (this isn't stated to mean anything beyond Al Gore being a fraud; the author fully accepts that CO2 is a greenhouse gas).
- wklauss 7y ago
  When something goes against scientific stablished consensus, onus of the proof falls into the party that argues against it, not the one that states what is currently well known and accepted.
  - aldoushuxley001 7y ago
    Can you cite that that’s what is “currently well known and accepted”. Burden of proof is on whoever is making the statement.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      That's fine as long as you understand that the alternative is "I don't know if the claim is true", not "the claim is false".
      - aldoushuxley001 7y ago
        Yeah that's definitely the approach. It's simply an "unvalidated" statement either way, until evidence is provided to support it.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climat... https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/ https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-on-clima...
      - aldoushuxley001 7y ago
        Not actually a citation for the statement that 'Climate change makes coral reefs suffer more', so not terribly helpful in this context.
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        Those are easy to find, too. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralreef-climate.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralreef-climate.html
hannob 7y ago
The people who are qualified to answer say this: "Coral reefs, for example, are projected to decline by a further 70–90% at 1.5°C (high confidence) with larger losses (>99%) at 2ºC (very high confidence)." https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/ (We're on track for at least 3°C warming.) In other words: It is extremely unlikely coral reefs will survive at all.
- garmaine 7y ago
  TFA is about how reality isn't following these predictions.
  - rch 7y ago
    I read it differently: corals that die are more able to recover than expected, but only as temperatures fall back into a favorable range.

ColanR 7y ago

> Climate change makes it worse. You should probably cite that.

neuronexmachina 7y ago
I'm not the original commenter, but here's a citation: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralreef-climate.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralreef-climate.html > As temperatures rise, mass coral bleaching events and infectious disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent. Additionally, carbon dioxide absorbed into the ocean from the atmosphere has already begun to reduce calcification rates in reef-building and reef-associated organisms by altering seawater chemistry through decreases in pH. This process is called ocean acidification.
ehnto 7y ago
Probably, but also a quick google finds dozens of supporting papers and articles. It isn't exactly a controversial opinion amongst people who believe in climate change. Here is a great summary from the Australian government, a government that is doing everything it can to worsen the situation yet at least acknowledges that it is something real and happening right now: http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/our-work/threats-to-the-reef/climate-change http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/our-work/threats-to-the-reef/climat...
- tossAfterUsing 7y ago
  > Probably, but also a quick google finds dozens of supporting papers and articles. Disclaimer: I _believe_ in antropogenic warming, but i'm not qualified to judge One of the arguments that I find compelling, from individuals who would advocate for a less dramatic reading of the climate news, is that there's A LOT MORE MONEY available for researchers to find out how bad the situation is & not a lot of money (or encouragement from peers) available for folks who consistently find that there's less reason for alarm. Bit of a confirmation bias, there? Maybe.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    There's a lot more money in climate research than from the fossil fuel and other companies seeking to maintain the status quo? Colour me unconvinced. I suspect the Koch funded foundations and think tanks alone could eclipse most nation's science budgets.
    - repolfx 7y ago
      The government is a firehose of money, and only government (academic) research gets reported on by the media. So yes it's entirely possible for private sector research to simply disappear, relative to the output of academia, whose papers utterly dominate the conversation. How often do you see private sector studies be cited by the media? The sort of people who become journalists are the sort of people who immediately write off any study funded by industry without even bothering to read it. I can't actually remember the last time I saw an industry or thinktank funded study being cited in US media, other than maybe by Breitbart. These studies do exist: go read any climate skeptic blog and you'll find quite detailed surveys, meta-analyses and the sort of content you'd find in a published paper if these people were the sorts of people who published in academic journals (they're not). But the press normally just ignores them, and on the rare occasions they don't, it's only to paint them as science-hating bogeymen. For instance, I linked in another comment to a study on ocean acidification by Patrick Moore, who has a PhD in ecology and used to be a regional leader of Greepeace. This paper has all the same things you'd expect to find in a normal academic paper: citations, data and it says it was subject to double-blind peer review prior to publication. https://fcpp.org/sites/default/files/documents/Moore%20-%20Ocean%20Acidification%20Alarmism.pdf https://fcpp.org/sites/default/files/documents/Moore%20-%20O... And here's the Guardian commenting on Moore's work: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/apr/16/ask-the-real-experts-about-ocean-acidification-not-climate-science-deniers https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/apr/1... The piece is titled "Ask the real experts" and starts with 9 paragraphs of hate-filled invective that compares Moore and the scientists who support him to UFO believers, Elvis spotters, calls them "crazyballs", claims they're "blinded by beliefs and ideology", states that their views should never be allowed into national newspapers, falsely claims Moore has not written any peer reviewed publications (but e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128045886000136?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978012804...), and then cites as evidence three "actual experts" who, of course, all work in universities. The Guardian is a particularly extreme enclave of hard-left journalists who think only government-funded academics can understand a scientific topic, but the rest of the industry has similar biases. As another example, here's a rather detailed replication and peer review of Al Gore's famous CO2 in a bottle experiment: https://wattsupwiththat.com/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-... It discovers that the original experiment was fraudulent (this isn't stated to mean anything beyond Al Gore being a fraud; the author fully accepts that CO2 is a greenhouse gas).
wklauss 7y ago
When something goes against scientific stablished consensus, onus of the proof falls into the party that argues against it, not the one that states what is currently well known and accepted.
- aldoushuxley001 7y ago
  Can you cite that that’s what is “currently well known and accepted”. Burden of proof is on whoever is making the statement.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    That's fine as long as you understand that the alternative is "I don't know if the claim is true", not "the claim is false".
    - aldoushuxley001 7y ago
      Yeah that's definitely the approach. It's simply an "unvalidated" statement either way, until evidence is provided to support it.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climat... https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/ https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-on-clima...
    - aldoushuxley001 7y ago
      Not actually a citation for the statement that 'Climate change makes coral reefs suffer more', so not terribly helpful in this context.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        Those are easy to find, too. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralreef-climate.html https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coralreef-climate.html

hannob 7y ago

The people who are qualified to answer say this: "Coral reefs, for example, are projected to decline by a further 70–90% at 1.5°C (high confidence) with larger losses (>99%) at 2ºC (very high confidence)." https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/ (We're on track for at least 3°C warming.) In other words: It is extremely unlikely coral reefs will survive at all.

garmaine 7y ago
TFA is about how reality isn't following these predictions.
- rch 7y ago
  I read it differently: corals that die are more able to recover than expected, but only as temperatures fall back into a favorable range.