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No, quite a lot of scientists have made such claims about coral reefs over time. Not all and some have refuted those claims too, so the media is certainly to bl

No, quite a lot of scientists have made such claims about coral reefs over time. Not all and some have refuted those claims too, so the media is certainly to blame for presenting a false consensus. But for example: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/03/expert-scientists-exaggerated-coral-bleaching-story/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/03/expert-scientists-exa... (original is paywalled) Activist scientists and lobby groups have distorted surveys, maps and data to misrepresent the extent and impact of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, according to the chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Russell Reichelt. A former head of Greenpeace Canada famously turned on his old employers and started arguing that coral bleaching predictions related to climate change (ocean acidification, back then) were wrong: https://fcpp.org/sites/default/files/documents/Moore%20-%20Ocean%20Acidification%20Alarmism.pdf https://fcpp.org/sites/default/files/documents/Moore%20-%20O... Many papers on ocean acidification, said to be caused by rising man-made CO2 levels in the atmosphere, predict that it will result in the mass extinction of marine species that employ calcification, including corals, shellfish and many species of plankton, and that this, in turn, will result in the extinction of many other marine species. It cites some examples: Even scientists one might expect would be more moderate in their tone employ alarmist language. An example from the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution: The anthropogenic rise in atmospheric CO2 is driving fundamental and unprecedented changes in the chemistry of the oceans. … We argue that ocean conditions are already more extreme than those experienced by marine organisms and ecosystems for millions of years, emphasising the urgent need to adopt policies that drastically reduce CO2 emissions So it's not really the case that scientists are pure-white victims of the press, here. Many scientists have made terrifying predictions about the health of the oceans and been happy to milk the resulting press coverage.

throwaway5752 7y ago
I don't know what to tell you. Wattsupwiththat is not a scientific website, it's a political website. It is a source of misinformation You can just with your own two eyes at bleaching events in the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Pacific, and Caribbean if you don't want to believe the scientific community. You're cherry-picking counterexamples to make your case, which is not valid. Reality is bad. You are misreading the data. You are also conflating acidification with temperature change. Coral is going to die because of the heat well before aragonite and calcite dependent populations collapse because of pH changes.
- justsubmit 7y ago
  I don't know what to tell you, either. The IPCC is not a scientific body, it's a political body. It's a source of misinformation. Your posts are also full of cherry-picking. Some throwaway.
- repolfx 7y ago
  Look, if you want to try and shoot the messenger, do so but do it properly. Otherwise you just look foolish. The webpage I linked to on that site is not "politics". It's a copy of a paywalled Australian newspaper article discussing scientists who disagree with the supposed consensus - deeply relevant to the points at hand. If I'd been able to link to the original I would have done, and then you wouldn't be talking about Wattsupwiththat at all, but that wasn't possible so I had to link to a duplicate. If you believe that Australian newspaper is also a "politics website" that is a "source of misinformation" then justify that. Or better, stop messenger shooting and tackle the actual arguments being made by the chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. Now, in your rush to condemn you've missed the point being made here, and missed it very badly indeed. So I'll spell it out again. My "case" is nothing to do with corals or reefs. I don't care about corals or reefs, to put it bluntly. I care about the state of debate and its relation to science, or lack of it. So reread and you'll see I was responding to this statement: Yet again, someone falsely ascribes views to scientists that they never had. I keep track of this stuff, and I don't know what forecasts you are talking about. That's a strong claim: that scientists are having views ascribed to them by the media that they never actually had (views of impending coral doom), and thus this discovery that the corals aren't dead after all shouldn't affect our perceived reliability of scientists. The article in the Australian clearly shows that this view is false: an authority no less than the chairman of an Australian authority devoted to the Great Barrier Reef has said explicitly that "activist scientists" were working to "misrepresent the extent and impact of coral bleaching". Clearly this is more complicated than scientists (all of them) being ascribed views they don't have by journalists.
  - kirrent 7y ago
    > If you believe that Australian newspaper is also a "politics website" that is a "source of misinformation" then justify that. I don't want to jump in on the rest of your conversation but I saw this and thought I could chime in. The Australian is our only national broadsheet with a long history of fairly good reporting, good commentary from all sides of politics, but a definite conservative editorial slant. Unfortunately over the last few years its reporting in general and environmental reporting in particular, have veered away from good quality conservative aligned journalism towards the more typical Newscorp produce. On reef issues in particular Graham Lloyd is well known for cherry picking sources even if they have little expertise in the area or have already had their views discredited in the scientific community. https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/muddying-the-waters-on-the-great-barrier-reef/9972936 https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/muddying-the-wate... https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/great-barrier-grief-missing-from-the-australian/9972734 https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/great-barrier-gri... So to answer that statement, the Australian is definitely a source of misinformation on environmental issues and if its not a politics website, it has a strong political agenda.

throwaway5752 7y ago

I don't know what to tell you. Wattsupwiththat is not a scientific website, it's a political website. It is a source of misinformation You can just with your own two eyes at bleaching events in the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Pacific, and Caribbean if you don't want to believe the scientific community. You're cherry-picking counterexamples to make your case, which is not valid. Reality is bad. You are misreading the data. You are also conflating acidification with temperature change. Coral is going to die because of the heat well before aragonite and calcite dependent populations collapse because of pH changes.

justsubmit 7y ago
I don't know what to tell you, either. The IPCC is not a scientific body, it's a political body. It's a source of misinformation. Your posts are also full of cherry-picking. Some throwaway.
repolfx 7y ago
Look, if you want to try and shoot the messenger, do so but do it properly. Otherwise you just look foolish. The webpage I linked to on that site is not "politics". It's a copy of a paywalled Australian newspaper article discussing scientists who disagree with the supposed consensus - deeply relevant to the points at hand. If I'd been able to link to the original I would have done, and then you wouldn't be talking about Wattsupwiththat at all, but that wasn't possible so I had to link to a duplicate. If you believe that Australian newspaper is also a "politics website" that is a "source of misinformation" then justify that. Or better, stop messenger shooting and tackle the actual arguments being made by the chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. Now, in your rush to condemn you've missed the point being made here, and missed it very badly indeed. So I'll spell it out again. My "case" is nothing to do with corals or reefs. I don't care about corals or reefs, to put it bluntly. I care about the state of debate and its relation to science, or lack of it. So reread and you'll see I was responding to this statement: Yet again, someone falsely ascribes views to scientists that they never had. I keep track of this stuff, and I don't know what forecasts you are talking about. That's a strong claim: that scientists are having views ascribed to them by the media that they never actually had (views of impending coral doom), and thus this discovery that the corals aren't dead after all shouldn't affect our perceived reliability of scientists. The article in the Australian clearly shows that this view is false: an authority no less than the chairman of an Australian authority devoted to the Great Barrier Reef has said explicitly that "activist scientists" were working to "misrepresent the extent and impact of coral bleaching". Clearly this is more complicated than scientists (all of them) being ascribed views they don't have by journalists.
- kirrent 7y ago
  > If you believe that Australian newspaper is also a "politics website" that is a "source of misinformation" then justify that. I don't want to jump in on the rest of your conversation but I saw this and thought I could chime in. The Australian is our only national broadsheet with a long history of fairly good reporting, good commentary from all sides of politics, but a definite conservative editorial slant. Unfortunately over the last few years its reporting in general and environmental reporting in particular, have veered away from good quality conservative aligned journalism towards the more typical Newscorp produce. On reef issues in particular Graham Lloyd is well known for cherry picking sources even if they have little expertise in the area or have already had their views discredited in the scientific community. https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/muddying-the-waters-on-the-great-barrier-reef/9972936 https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/muddying-the-wate... https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/great-barrier-grief-missing-from-the-australian/9972734 https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/great-barrier-gri... So to answer that statement, the Australian is definitely a source of misinformation on environmental issues and if its not a politics website, it has a strong political agenda.