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Coral Decline Warns of Ocean Changes: Australian Scientists
SYDNEY - A sharp slowdown in coral growth on Australia's Great Barrier Reef since 1990 is a warning sign that precipitous changes in the world's oceans may be imminent, scientists said Friday.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef. A sharp slowdown in coral growth on the reef since 1990 is a warning sign that precipitous changes in the world's oceans may be imminent, scientists said. (AFP/File/Ho) Strong evidence points to the cause being a combination of warmer seas and higher acidity from increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, Australian Institute of Marine Science researchers reported.
"The data suggest that this severe and sudden decline in calcification is unprecedented in at least 400 years," said Glenn De'ath, principal author of a paper published Friday in the international journal Science.
The research shows that corals on the reef have slowed their growth by more than 14 percent since the "tipping point" year of 1990 and on current trends the corals would stop growing altogether by 2050.
"It is cause for extreme concern that such changes are already evident, with the relatively modest climate changes observed to date, in the world's best protected and managed coral reef ecosystem," said co-author Janice Lough.
Coral skeletons form the backbone of reef ecosystems and provide the habitat for tens of thousands of plant and animal species and more acidic oceans will affect many sea creatures, not just coral, a statement on the report said.
"All calcifying organisms that are central to the function of marine ecosystems and food webs will be affected, and precipitous changes in the biodiversity and productivity of the world's oceans may be imminent," it added.
The findings are based on analyses of annual growth bands -- like rings on trees -- extending back in time up to 400 years.
Rising sea temperatures are blamed on global warming caused by the build-up in the atmosphere of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide -- which is also blamed for higher acidity in sea water.
A UN report warned in 2007 that the Great Barrier Reef, described as the world's largest living organism, could be killed by climate change within decades.
The World Heritage site and major tourist attraction, stretching over more than 345,000 square kilometres (133,000 sq miles) off Australia's east coast, could become "functionally extinct", the report said.
The journal Science is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Show AllSig?
Sig?
We need your reassurance to refute all these "scientists" and their "findings".
There's really no cause for alarm over any human activities on the Earth - right Sig? The atmosphere, the climate system - the increase in atmospheric carbon by 50% since the start if industrialism, the acidification of the oceans from the increase in carbon - humans can't really actually affect the living systems of the Earth, can we?
Sig?
It appears the skeptics/deniers are staying away from this issue. For the moment, anyway.
This might be one of the first geoengineering attempts. Adding pulverized calcium carbonate to key areas (upwelling areas?) of the oceans, or locally near endangered reefs, could adjust the pH and remove some CO2 from the atmosphere.
The oceans are already over fished. The collapse of the ocean food web would be an unparalleled disaster.
WELL, HERE'S A THEORY WITH A LITTLE FOR ALL SIDES.
I get this from an interpretation of IPCC/Gore's ice core data chart in his book. If the chart is accurate, we add a few facts and connect the dots. You have to have the chart or remember it from the movie to follow along.
Look at the last 3 cycles at the point of the spikes. Notice where we are. Note that co2 is well out of historical norms on this, our, cycle.
Humans have been around for several million yrs as tool weilders, and about 130,000 yrs as "modern" homosapiens, like us. We all are children of those who survived the last ice age. They must not have had the numbers or capacity to burn enough stuff to add excessive co2 to the atmosphere, but they still experienced a spike defeat and reversal and some lived through it.
The right half of the chart looks like an ekg of the earth's heart beat, no?
So, let's deduce that humans do not cause a spike, but are part of the wave of organic life that thrives as the temperature warms as the glaciers of the ice age melt back to the poles. Apparently, humans are getting smarter (I know that's the biggest stretch of this post) and have learned how to live longer and harvest deep oil and burn it without regard for the consequences. But ,we are too clever by half and have boosted the GHGs---a key actor in the scene--- way out of norms. And there is the rub. We have messed with a perfectly survivable cycle and must now PUNT the fossil-based energy choices and nukes and centralized gridwork, quickly get the GHGs that we HAVE added back down to normal, and prepare for the change.
The part that Al and the others, who have degrees and tenure to worry about, don't tell you is that we will get, are guaranteed to get, a spike defeat/reversal. How that plays out, we can chat about later.
Sorry that I don't know enough of navigating the web to have a URL for you with that chart. If anyone can find it, that would be great.
The climate change experts expect CO2 to remain at high levels, and decrease only very gradually over decades or even centuries, even after we go GHG neutral.
Then, I hope we have the time to clean up the CO2, so that we can have a normal cycle. Bottom line is we need a spike reversal to occur before the methane gets loose (read on). But before saying more, I want it understood that I do not wish for this to happen anytime soon. As I look into my grand-daughters' eyes, I pray that I am wrong, or off, if not by 100s of years, at least by time to prepare. Also, I must go on-record that I am not a scientist. (But I can read a chart and connect dots.-.-.).
If this turns out to be valid, it will not be popular, but our situation will be no less desperate.
Either the GHGs will stoke the temp rise to a tipping point resulting in the advertised, well-described scenario of rising sea level, grand storms, and general crises of a thermo-hyleine induced little ice age, or the following may occur:
It is possible that the tipping point has already been reached, in that enough temp rise has occurred to melt enough ice that the angular momentum of the planet will change as the melt water mass moves from the poles/remaining glaciers to the equatorial bulge. Factor in a little gravitational pull from the moon (tidal), and/or one of those "Age of Aquarius" planet line-ups, and unburdened land masses rising a little, it might be enough to put pressure on the tectonic plates.
Long story short, the TRIGGER point for the commencement of the spike defeat/reversals of this scenario would be SEISMIC. It may be that the last 2 degrees of temp necessary to start the storms (that produce a BIG ice age) come from undersea volcanism at the plate boundaries. That would account for a sudden change, and provide the energy necessary to move water mass back to the poles via the grand storm mechanism. It would also account for the fact that, as per the chart, temp deviation doesn't tank to its minimum right away---what it looks like on the chart for previous reversals is that the temp/dev 100 yrs after the reversal is at about the same level as it was 100 yrs before.
I think there's a way to check this out, but it requires the help of the gov't. The Navy or USGS may have records of the "magnetic striping" along the mid-Atlantic ridge that would reveal if seismic activity coincides with climate change. I've neither seen nor heard anyone pipe up about that.
We'd be lucky to get a nice, natural reversal in just the nick of time.
We'd also be lucky if the chart was somehow bogus, but I kind of doubt that.
Check out the chart, It'd be great to get further feedback.
(Saturday's AOL article/intro page has earthquakes as a topic. They highlight Yellowstone caldera which last popped 70kya)
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html [see it and follow these 10 (!) year old leads...]
sny,
Thanks for the link, it is so useful to see this sort of scientific synopsis of various possible contributors to global climate change at different historical and pre-historical moments. Much more useful than the one-sided blasts we get from our friend sig...
It also makes me think, no matter what one thinks of CO2 in the atmosphere, we humans have made so many major changes to the surface of the Earth with our agriculture and our "development" that the Earth's climate is inevitably in for disruption.
And the consideration of the likelihood of a tectonic-influenced mega-volcanic event...
Folks should read this paper.
Just Wonderful.
The Bushmonkey's "Unclean Coal" is going to be coming full on line with a vengence to put the last nails in the marine coffin.
Fish as a food source is getting inedible anyway. Most of it has got mercury in it from coal fallout. A lot of it has plastic particles. Many big cities contract waste management to local mafias and there can be little doubt that for decades they have been dumping it off shore. An Island of plastic twice the size of the U.S. is rotating in the high pressure area north of hawaii. It slowly grinds into bite size peices that fish mistake for food.
It's really hard to concieve of a worse president than bush. The good news is that we've got no where to go but up!
I'll be crowding 90 by 2050. By then I expect greenland's icecap to disinigrate flooding both the White House on the Potomic and all the water front vacation homes of congress in florida. (talk about poetic justice!)
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of neo-CON climate change deniers!
Yes, I am wondering too, where is sigurd when You need him?
Without getting into it too much, I have collected sea surface temperature data since
it was first available in the mid nineties. Unfortunately I don't know how to implement
images into the comment field, even though somebody did it a couple a days ago
with a gif animation about bar code decoding.
Anyways, here is the latest SST Anomaly from our Military friends at Fleet Numerical.
But I warn You, if You are able to draw the right conclusions, it is very disturbing.
https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/ncoda_web/dynamic/ncoda_1440x721_global_anom.gif
Then there is the Godae Server. (Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment).
You will be able to access almost any data set in regards to Oceanography and
Climatology. This Link will send You already to the data set index, so You don't have
to look for it.
http://www.usgodae.org/cgi-bin/datalist.pl?generate=summary
Pick any data set to get the information You want. But again, some data sets are
more than depressing.
May All Beings Be Blessed.
Some Restrictions And Limitations May Apply.
I witnessed the decline in the coral reefs of the Mexican Caribbean and Belize through the years of 1988 and 2000. The reefs went from a healthy and colorful beauty to a bleached white, covered in algae in a short time frame in the 1990s.
I lived on my sail boat in that period and spent almost every day in the water with a mask and snorkel.
I remember around 1994 being on the beach in Placencia, Belize talking with North American tourists about their trip to the reef that day. They were disappointed by the pathetic condition of the coral and when I asked why they thought it was so replied that they blamed the Belizeans for dumping their garbage in the sea.
I asked them where they lived. “Oh, were from Toronto.” “And, how do you get to work?” “We drive,” was their reply. I said, “Perhaps you need to look no further than your own back yard,” I said.
This little story is just a microcosm of the way the developed world looks to their poor neighbors to blame the environments degradation that largely comes from our over consumption.
We have at least come to be more aware of the cause of this damage, so that is progress. But we have a long way to go and a short time to do it.
Check this out. Aragonite (form of CaCO3) concentration in Caribbean. Click on time series to view change since 1990. Coral growth slows as CO2 increases and Aragonite decreases. (Might stop completely at Aragonite value at 3.0, hopefully at CO2 well above 450 ppm!)
http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/oa/index.html
Gosh......I was missed!
Sorry, can't help you on this one. The dropping ph of the ocean is of huge concern and will only get worse as we enter a long term cold phase of our weather and burn more fossil fuels to stay warm.
Just have to get more wind/solar steam/nuclear on board as fast as we can.
Will be hard to do, and potentially not economically possible, as during cold spells economic activity goes down and the dollars just won't be there.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/23sep_solarwind.htm
Thanks for that lead. It just gets curiouser and curiouser...