By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
HERE WE GO AGAIN!!!!
Hundreds of sites across most of the Great Barrier Reef are turning white from heat stress in the fifth mass coral bleaching event in eight years.
Aerial surveys over two-thirds of the reef have confirmed ‘widespread’ bleaching, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said on Friday.
Climate change is the biggest threat to tropical reefs worldwide, and coral bleaching is caused by heat stress.
It’s not always fatal but corals are likely to die if temperatures remain higher than normal for too long.
Reef Authority chief scientist Roger Beeden said bleaching had been recorded at 300 sites from Cape Melville north of Cooktown to just north of Bundaberg.
‘The results are consistent with what we have seen with above average sea surface temperatures across the marine park for an extended period of time,’ Dr Beeden said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13171743/Great-Barrier-Reef-coral-bleaching.html#newcomment
It was only a year ago that Australia’s leading reef expert, Dr Peter Ridd, reported that coral cover was at record highs:
London, 8 February – A new paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation refutes alarmist claims about the state of the world’s coral reefs.
According to the author, eminent reef scientist Peter Ridd, the official data show no signs of any long-term trends in reef health. Indeed, the best records – for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – suggest that coral cover is at record highs.
Dr Ridd said:
“The public are constantly told that reefs are being irreparably damaged by global warming, but bleaching events, about which there is so much doom-mongering, are simply corals’ natural response to changes in the environment. They are an extraordinarily adaptable lifeform, and bleaching events are almost always followed by rapid recovery.”
Dr Ridd suggests that rather than being seen as under threat from climate change, corals should actually be recognised as one of the organisms least likely to suffer harm in a warming world.
“Corals get energy from a symbiotic relationship with various species of algae. When environmental conditions change, they can rapidly switch to a different species that is better suited to the new conditions. This shapeshifting means that most setbacks they suffer will be short-lived.”
Dr Ridd says that the real risks to reefs come from overfishing and pollution.
The GWPF invited responses to this paper from authors likely to dissent from its conclusions. None of the authors who were contacted accepted this invitation.
Peter Ridd: Coral in a Warming World: Causes for Optimism (pdf)
As Peter Ridd’s report noted, it only in the last two or three decades that the GBR has really been systematically surveyed. Yet there is plenty of evidence that similar bleaching events have frequently occurred in the past, particularly during El Nino events. They were just never observed.
Whereas it was natural to assume that coral reefs would die off after bleaching, Ridd shows that they actually recover very quickly. Bleaching, far from being fatal, is actually a remarkable
adaptive response to changing temperature, because having expelled the microscopic algae, which gives it its colour as well as energy, it reabsorbs another strain of algae which thrives in warmer water. The opposite happens when the seas cool.
Ridd concluded:
The Mail report includes this comment, which exposes the thing as a scam:
Australia’s emissions of CO2 are just 1% of the world’s, so calling on the Federal Government to reduce emissions will make no difference whatsoever to the reef. Instead they are using the reef as an excuse to force through their left wing political agenda.