Coral reef bleaching: More old wine in new bottles, half-truths, falsehoods, and utter nonsense
Yet another example of how old truths are ignored and distorted and outright fiction is generated and disseminated in the popular press about coral bleaching and global warming:
Coral Reefs Generate Half of Earth’s Oxygen — and They Could All Die Off by 2050
Dahr Jamail, Truthout: The second mass bleaching event in the last two years on the Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral ecosystem on Earth, is a sign of the new normal for global coral. The days of vibrant flourishing coral reefs — homes to the most diverse ecosystems on the planet — are over:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40579-coral-reefs-generate-half-of-earth-s-oxygen-and-they-could-all-die-off-by-2050
“One crucial function we do know we’re losing: While coral reefs only cover 0.0025 percent of the oceanic floor, absorb nearly one-third of the carbon dioxide generated from burning fossil fuels.”
1) Old wine in new bottles
Since 1989 we have been able to accurately predict mass bleaching events from Satellite Sea Surface Temperature data alone using the Goreau-Hayes HotSpot method assessing thermal anomaly intensity and duration (Goreau, 1990, Goreau & Hayes 1994, Goreau et al, 2000, 2005 a, b, c). The GBR events last year and this, and many, many more events not reported, are typical.
Peter Glynn correctly concluded the same based on the 1982-1983 bleaching in Panama and Galapagos. At first we thought there might be something exceptional about the thermal sensitivity of these unusual coral communities, but we soon found out that they were typical.
There has been no change in the bleaching thresholds for 35 years and therefore no signs of temperature adaptation or so-called “resilience”, however there are now far less corals left to bleach, especially those with the most sensitive symbiotic algae Symbiodinium species.
Nearly 30 years ago I warned the Australians that GBR corals would die when they reached these temperatures, but they deliberately chose to ignore and suppress the information (the details of this history are so complex that a book is needed to outline it).
Now suddenly all of this old knowledge is an “astonishing” “unexpected” “new” “discovery” that “nobody expected”!
All of this was known nearly 30 years ago, but ignored see:
https://www.globalcoral.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/coral_bleaching_articles.pdf
Three decades of unnecessary accelerating coral death from bleaching has been directly caused by the deliberate and systematic denial and suppression of the scientific data on coral bleaching by the American and Australian governments, funding, and research institutions, and their efforts to confuse and obscure the causes for political reasons.
We’ve always said that the methods they use to identify coral decline were so poor that it was only when the last corals died in the GBR that they would admit the truth. Sadly, that is exactly what has happened. It could have been avoided if they had respected the science, instead of being driven by politics.
2) Half truths and falsehoods
The article ignores known solutions, especially the only method that saves corals from high temperatures when almost all around them die, Biorock electrical stimulation, which causes greatly increased coral (and all marine organism) settlement, growth, survival, resistance to temperature, pollution, and sediment stress, by directly stimulating their natural energy generating mechanisms:
The claim that the only thing we can do is emissions reductions is ridiculous, no amount of emissions reductions can remove the dangerous excess of CO2 in the atmosphere, only increased sinks can:
http://www.soilcarbonalliance.org
3) Outright fiction and utter nonsense
The claims that coral reefs provide half the oxygen in the atmosphere and bury one-third of fossil fuel emissions are utterly false!
These absolutely incredible and absurd falsehoods seem to be based on newspaper interviews with Australian scientists with no understanding of the carbon and oxygen cycles.
What is true in this article is that we are very close to the end for coral reefs, as we predicted nearly 30 years ago, a lot closer than they say, for most it is just a couple of years away, unless we have a huge high-sulfur volcanic eruption or a very big asteroid impact imminently.
Biorock electrical marine ecosystem restoration methods to restore coral reefs against global warming, shores against sea level rise, and regenerative development to reverse climate change are now our only hopes to sustain coral reef ecosystems in the future.
We remain committed to working directly with local island fishing communities in the Caribbean, Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Southeast Asia to help them restore their coral reefs, and not with those whose deceptions and obfuscation about the causes generated this crisis.
– Tom Goreau