Monday
Apr182011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Another false prediction
Apr 18, 2011 Climate: WG2 Hot on the heels of Anthony Watts' discovery that the predictions of climate refugees have turned out to be nonsense, here's a story about a prediction made by ABC television about corals.
According to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, 10 per cent of the world's reefs were lost by 1992. 27 per cent were lost by the year 2000. And it's expected 40 per cent will be gone by 2010.
Guess what has happened to corals since...
(H/T SPPI)
Reader Comments (20)
Would this be because the oceans got hotter/colder and more/less acidic all at the same time?
"Guess what has happened to corals since..."
They've all been eaten by the beast that lurks under the stairs?
They've been kidnapped by little green men in a flying saucer?
They've retired to the Cote d'Azure?
They're hiding in Argentina?
Well, anything's likelier than that the prediction came true.
And, of course, if the sea level increases by 1cm, the corals will grow, and mop up about 1.5 billion tons of CO2 - and which of the climate change/sea level doomsters takes THAT into account?
UN revised estimate: 40% gone by 2020. Honest Injun.
Comment about dynamite and cyanide fishing on coral reefs:
If you are not familiar with dynamite fishing, that’s when fisherman drop dynamite on reefs in the hope of gathering the dead fish which float to the surface. I really thought that dynamite fishing was as dumb as it gets, but I was wrong. The waters around El Nido introduced me to a new asinine way to trash your own food supply.
While snorkeling along the walls of Tapiutan Island, we came across entire sections of the reef which were dead. I had never seen anything like it before, all the coral was intact, but it was clearly dead. I had never witnessed such large scale destruction before without signs of dynamite blasts. I was stumped.
It turns out, we were seeing the results of cyanide fishing, a practice I had never even heard of before. Fisherman pour cyanide into the water to stun the fish so they can be collected and sold alive, which apparently commands a higher price at the market. (Yummmmm, cyanide flavored fish!) Of course, the cyanide kills all the coral as well.
Or this from GWPF
Coral Reefs Expand As the Oceans Warm
(GWPF article)
Saturday, 19 February 2011 07:21 World Climate Report
(this is just a small part of the report)
A hot-off-the-presses paper in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters by a team of Japanese scientists finds that warming oceans expand the range of tropical corals northward along the coast of Japan. At the same time, the corals are remaining stable at the southern end of their ranges.
That’s right. Corals are adapting to climate change and expanding, not contracting.
But, you don’t have to take our word for it. Here is the news, straight from the authors:
We show the first large-scale evidence of the poleward range expansion of modern corals, based on 80 years of national records from the temperate areas of Japan, where century-long measurements of in situ sea-surface temperatures have shown statistically significant rises. Four major coral species categories, including two key species for reef formation in tropical areas, showed poleward range expansions since the 1930s, whereas no species demonstrated southward range shrinkage or local extinction. The speed of these expansions reached up to 14 km/year, which is far greater than that for other species. Our results, in combination with recent findings suggesting range expansions of tropical coral-reef associated organisms, strongly suggest that rapid, fundamental modifications of temperate coastal ecosystems could be in progress.
So, on one hand the coral is being destroyed in some places by lunatic fishermen, and on the other, a proper scientific study over 80 years confirms that coral is actually expanding.
Peter Walsh
The source of the claims appears to be a 2002 report by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network under the title "Status of coral Reefs of the world 2002". The first two claims appear to be from a table on page 8. The last claim predicting 40% gone by 2010 does not actually appear to be in the executive summary (I searched for "2010" "40%" "60%") so presumably 4 Corners got it from somewhere else. My guess would be the press release for the 2002 report.
It seems that the GCRMN do not account for regrowth of corals after bleaching events!
the 2002 report available from...
http://www.reefbase.org/download/gcrmn_download.aspx?type=10&docid=379
No, not the media release...http://www.aims.gov.au/news/pages/media-release-20021217.html
Current 2008 report states...Estimates assembled through the expert opinions of 372 coral reef scientists and managers from 96 countries are that the world has effectively lost 19% of the original area of coral reefs; 15% are seriously threatened with loss within the next 10–20 years; and 20% are under threat of loss in 20–40 years.
from page 5
http://www.reefbase.org/download/gcrmn_download.aspx?type=10&docid=13311
When the present proved irritatingly reluctant to warm up, the useful idiots in the climate psyence fraternity contrived to get it to fall in the past.
I think we'll see something similar with coral reefs. It can't be long before we fund a study whereby someone "proves" coral reefs were bigger 1,000 years ago.
Recent estimates appear pretty flaky. The reported estimates in a 1997 paper "New estimates of global and regional coral reef areas" range from 112,000 to 3,930,000 km2. Surprisingly it's not that precise a science.
see...http://www.springerlink.com/content/ccxb165016ma8792/
Where is zebede when these things happen?
She could 'debunk' the 'misinformation' or prove that 'one small error' does not refute the 'vast body of evidence supporting AGW spanning disciplines' or something along those lines.
I still miss my little Zebede, sigh..!
In other news John Hirst, head of the Met Office, has been getting death threats from sceptics. What can I say? He'll be getting one from me if this coming bank holiday weekend is a washout!
Robinson
In other news John Hirst, head of the Met Office, has been getting death threats from sceptics.
Interesting read, especially:
Perhaps if he did a little scientific work on predicting the weather, instead of pushing a left wing political agenda, people will be less angry. I find the second part of the quotation hilarious -- "Just keep on dancing -- maybe they will not notice!" Totally pathetic.
Hey Robinson, good joke and all that but ... is it really a good joke? "He'll be getting a [death threat] from me," says sceptic on Bishop Hill. That's what you said mate. OK, I left out the conditional - but then they would, wouldn't they. I don't think death threats are funny, as an idea or as a reality - or as anything in between. Sorry to be po-faced about that. I speak from some experience a decade ago, which was far from pleasant. I wish John Hirst and anyone else committed to AGW, making money from it even, well. It's the only way I know to approach these things.
Death threats are not a good subject for humour. But if the person making the 'joke' isn't known - and I don't know if the real name of the person signing himself as 'Robinson' is known around here - it makes it even less funny and certainly less brave. (Dorothy Parker was right I think to say that humour depends on boldness, speaking in praise of SJ Perelman.) Note to BH: I'd keep the comment, otherwise I wouldn't have invested the time in this. But you might also be right to delete it. No problems if so.
On the subject of scares, forget coral, the Arctic coastline is being eroded. You're not going to believe this but
1) It's caused by global warming
2) It's even worse than we thought.
I read that earlier, somewhere or other. You sceptics, you're always behind the curve. The evidence is MASSIVE. And it's never going to end. When are you going to realise?
Bishop
Sometime ago, somebody suggested that you get the name of the contributor on the top of the posting so that we will not waste time reading the idle rantings of someone we already know to be -- well, frankly, a waste of our time.
I would like to renew that request. While ZDB was sorta interesting to read, there are a few new trolls showing up who are just plain pathetic. Let them post, but at least forewarn us.
@ shub
Zebedee presumably would argue that the sight of one black swan does not undermine the vast body of evidence and observation that has all swans being white.
Troll warning!
See how you believe a warmist when it suits you :-)
So we believe the scientists when they tell us about reef coverage but not about global temps?
And news workers in misunderstanding science shocker? Get a grip!
Andykn
Thank you for your warning. It was most considerate.
OK, so there may have been an element (and some!) of overstating the problem, but could it also be possible that focussing on the loss and necessary protection/remedial measures has made recovery more likely?