November 11, 2012

Coral reef alarmists can't keep their story straight

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is an immense coral structure stretching over more than 1500 miles in a roughly North to South direction. Its corals and fish are beautiful and it is a "must see" for recreational divers.

Because it is so admirable, however, Warmists have long had their beady eyes on it.  If they can make a case that global warming is destroying it they see a propaganda victory.  It is however peskily resilient so far.  When bits get damaged they heal up again. (Diaz-Pulido, 2009; Bellwood, 2006)

But WHAT IF we do finally get the two or more degrees of warming that Warmists regularly predict?  Aha!  Then the reef will be in trouble, they say.

As I live in the Australian State where the reef is located, I hear rather a lot about the doom hanging over the GBR, with academics from both the University of Queensland and James Cook University huffing and puffing from time to time. Hoagy (Prof. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg) used to be the chief doomster but he mostly seems to be handing over to a younger generation these days.


Hoagy

And, hey presto!  Included in my local newpaper that I got yesterday (Nov. 11) was a colour magazine called "QWeekend" which included a big feature on coral.  I reproduce the attractive opening page below.



Magazines of this sort seem to be beyond the reach of Google so it is interesting to see what is slipping by the reach of internet users but still lodging in at least the local public consciousness.

And it's a lot of fun.  I reproduce below a couple of bits.  I rather like this bald assertion (end of excerpt) from a Dr. Matt  Lybolt, protege of Fra Pandolf himself:  "A sea-level rise is good for reefs".


p.28

WHAAT?  Panic stations!  That is the WRONG thing to say!  Any Warmist will tell you that global warming will lead to sea-level rise.  So will global warming be GOOD for reefs? Unthinkable!  Dr. Lybolt is a very bad boy,


p. 29

So we come to our next excerpt.  Lybolt is at it again:  "The Great Barrier Reef is not in trouble".  He qualifies that statement in a totally confusing way but he is obviously having trouble toeing the party line.  That he and his supervisor are Warmists, however, there is no doubt.

I have dealt with Fra Pandolf's nonsense about the effects of human settlement a couple of days ago -- JR

References:

Bellwood, D.R. et al. (2006) "Coral bleaching, reef fish community phase shifts and the resilience of coral reefs" Global Change Biology 12 (9), 1587-1594

Diaz-Pulido, G. et al. (2009) "Doom and Boom on a Resilient Reef: Climate Change, Algal Overgrowth and Coral Recovery"  PLoS ONE 4(4): e5239.




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