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> Dr Emslie, who leads the ... monitoring, says the rise in coral cover was expected, given the relatively benign conditions Was it now. A Guardian news report

> Dr Emslie, who leads the ... monitoring, says the rise in coral cover was expected, given the relatively benign conditions Was it now. A Guardian news report featuring Dr Emslie in March 2019 has one of his colleagues saying this [1]: the preliminary results of the study, and the lack of observed improvement in previously surveyed reefs, showed how difficult it was for corals to rebound after mass bleaching. “That doesn’t surprise me because it takes 10 years for coral to rebound,” Hughes said. “There’s been some reports of magical recovery, but the ecological memory of the bleaching will be long-lasting. “The big unknown is when it will bleach again, but it will almost certainly be before those reefs have time to recover.” In 2019 it is being predicted to take 10 years to rebound, any reports of recovery are "magical" exceptions to the rule and the next bleaching will "almost certainly" be before the reefs have time to recover. In 2022 it is not only fully recovered but at record breaking levels, this was fully expected, the idea scientists misled people is "nonsense" and only those dastardly "conservatives" and "naysayers" have any issues with what's happened. Do you see the problem here? These people aren't behaving like scientists, they are behaving like political activists. They make assertions that they fully understand the corals and that their predictions are "almost certain", then when the corals do things that contradict their prior understanding they lash out and argue that only "conservatives" care about the confidence bounds of modelling predictions. Observe how wildly biased that is. In the world they inhabit anyone who is pointing out inconvenient facts can be immediately dismissed by saying they're not a part of the tribe, nothing else is needed! > "We have a limited amount of time to slow and stop the warming. There is no way this resilience can last forever" ... he said, fervently hoping that the reefs will just hurry up and die already so they can stop being shown up. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/04/some-great-barrier-reef-coral-suffering-lasting-effects-from-mass-bleaching-events https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/04/some-gre...

myshpa 3y ago
> In 2022 it is not only fully recovered but at record breaking levels No.
- revelio 3y ago
  The article you yourself cited is headlined, "Record coral cover doesn’t necessarily mean the Great Barrier Reef is in good health".
  - myshpa 3y ago
    Record coral cover !== fully recovered From the article: "Inferring that a reef has recovered by a person being towed behind a boat to obtain a rapid visual estimate of coral cover is like flying in a helicopter and saying a bushfire-hit forest has recovered because the canopy has grown back. It provides no information about diversity, or the abundance and health of other animals and plants that live in and among the trees, or coral."
    - revelio 3y ago
      Uh huh. They were happy to use those measurement techniques just three years ago when they were predicting doom. They didn't even start measuring fish species until the 2019 survey. Now the coral has unfortunately rebounded, their prior methods suddenly aren't good enough anymore. She isn't even saying there's a problem here, just that she doesn't have data to say! That's really desperate. She's also moving the goalposts, but her argument makes no sense. Now the coral is at record-breaking coverage the problem has become that it's the wrong type of coral - except the justification for it being the wrong type is that it consists mostly of the type of coral that grows the fastest. Which is obvious and circular: in any natural ecosystem that involves regular dieoffs and regrowths, some species will grow back faster. That's inherent to a diverse natural world, the exact thing she claims to be worried about losing. Putting corals aside for a moment, I hope we can find agreement on the underlying meta-scientific issue here. Scientists in whatever field should carefully study their domain and either come to fully understand it, or if they can't do that, at least understand their own level of understanding. What people need to see from universities is a recognition when they make confident predictions that are later falsified. Without the recognition that falsification has occurred, science cannot advance. In this case they're refusing to accept that falsification has happened, instead engaging in ad hominem attacks, goalpost shifting, circular reasoning and other fallacies. The approach of these biologists is summed up by this chef's kiss statement: "While there’s no data to prove or disprove it, it’s also probable ..." Literally "although we have no evidence, we know what's happening anyway". The scientific method has gone AWOL.

myshpa 3y ago

> In 2022 it is not only fully recovered but at record breaking levels No.

revelio 3y ago
The article you yourself cited is headlined, "Record coral cover doesn’t necessarily mean the Great Barrier Reef is in good health".
- myshpa 3y ago
  Record coral cover !== fully recovered From the article: "Inferring that a reef has recovered by a person being towed behind a boat to obtain a rapid visual estimate of coral cover is like flying in a helicopter and saying a bushfire-hit forest has recovered because the canopy has grown back. It provides no information about diversity, or the abundance and health of other animals and plants that live in and among the trees, or coral."
  - revelio 3y ago
    Uh huh. They were happy to use those measurement techniques just three years ago when they were predicting doom. They didn't even start measuring fish species until the 2019 survey. Now the coral has unfortunately rebounded, their prior methods suddenly aren't good enough anymore. She isn't even saying there's a problem here, just that she doesn't have data to say! That's really desperate. She's also moving the goalposts, but her argument makes no sense. Now the coral is at record-breaking coverage the problem has become that it's the wrong type of coral - except the justification for it being the wrong type is that it consists mostly of the type of coral that grows the fastest. Which is obvious and circular: in any natural ecosystem that involves regular dieoffs and regrowths, some species will grow back faster. That's inherent to a diverse natural world, the exact thing she claims to be worried about losing. Putting corals aside for a moment, I hope we can find agreement on the underlying meta-scientific issue here. Scientists in whatever field should carefully study their domain and either come to fully understand it, or if they can't do that, at least understand their own level of understanding. What people need to see from universities is a recognition when they make confident predictions that are later falsified. Without the recognition that falsification has occurred, science cannot advance. In this case they're refusing to accept that falsification has happened, instead engaging in ad hominem attacks, goalpost shifting, circular reasoning and other fallacies. The approach of these biologists is summed up by this chef's kiss statement: "While there’s no data to prove or disprove it, it’s also probable ..." Literally "although we have no evidence, we know what's happening anyway". The scientific method has gone AWOL.