Posted on 04/10/2006 11:43:38 AM PDT by baldeagle390
Stuck on a reef
07apr06
How many times must the experts be wrong about Barrier Reef devastation before we disbelieve their scares?
HOW many times must the Great Barrier Reef "survive" before we figure it's not really dying? Actually, the real question is a bit ruder.
As in: How many times can global-warming alarmists such as Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg be wrong about the reef's "devastation" before we learn to ignore their scares?
The trouble is our reef is so well-loved that green militants, desperate that we back their theory of man-made global warming, consider it the perfect hostage.
No month goes by without one screaming: "Freeze! Out of the car, or the reef gets it!"
And Hoegh-Guldberg, head of Queensland University's Centre for Marine Studies, has threatened us more often than most.
Just three months ago he was at it again, issuing a press release with a grim warning: High temperatures meant "between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland's Great Barrier Reef could die within a month".
Just four paragraphs on he upped the ante, warning that the warm seas "may result in greater damage" still -- to more than 60 per cent of the reef -- and we "have to rapidly reduce the rate of global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions."
You heard him, jerk. Get out of your car.
But as anyone who's seen the reef lately knows, it's still there and still beautiful.
Ask -- hey! -- Hoegh-Guldberg himself. He's just back from a trip out to the outer reef and reports that, um, the bleaching, er, has had, well, "quite a minimal impact", after all. In fact, just 1 per cent was affected.
And history tells us even that little bit will recover.
What history? The history of an earlier Hoegh-Guldberg scare.
In 1999, Hoegh-Guldberg was commissioned by Greenpeace -- warning -- to find out why bits of the reef had just turned white.
Global warming was to blame, he concluded, which pleased Greenpeace awfully.
More, it moaned, and the professor obliged: Warming seas meant "coral reefs could be eliminated from most areas of the world by 2100".
Our own reef "looks to be under pressure within, say, the next 30 years".
Note well: I'm certain Hoegh-Guldberg believed this booga booga, based on his understanding of the science. Yet how lucky for him that he did.
He was promptly awarded the Eureka Prize for scientific research by the green-worshipping Australian Museum, and journalists who'd credulously reported his claims were shortlisted for top media awards.
Soon the ABC's 7.30 Report, to name one of many, was claiming the "once-spectacular reef" was being "bleached bone white" -- proving host Kerry O'Brien hadn't bought goggles and Speedos to check this unlikely claim with his own eyes.
Actually, I can't resist naming a second offender: The ABC's Four Corners added that "across the world, coral reefs are turning into marine deserts".
Except, of course, our reef (and others) recovered from the bleaching of 1998, something which Hoegh-Guldberg conceded was "surprising". It recovered from the bleaching of 2002, as well, just as it's done after other bleachings in its immense life.
Not that this has stopped Hoegh-Guldberg from issuing yet more death notices.
Last November, for instance, he claimed the reef's coral could disappear within just 20 years. Last month he warned: "The climate is changing so quickly that coral reefs don't keep up."
I repeat: I'd agree Hoegh-Guldberg is honest and says all this because that's what the science tells him, and other scientists back him. But again he's found this doom-preaching has its perks. He now chairs a $20 million global warming study funded by the World Bank.
I asked another scientist, Dr Peter Ridd of James Cook University's department of physical sciences, if he'd noticed how the big institutional money seemed to go to the ones who say the scariest stuff on global warming.
"Yes," he said shortly.
But silly Ridd, formerly with the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences, won't play by those rules.
He instead points out the "most of the supposed threats to the reef, whether from global warming or agricultural run-off, have in fact been grossly overstated". Most of the reef does not get bleached, and almost every bit that does recovers.
Boring, Peter. Boring.
Speaking about global warming preachers generally rather than Hoegh-Guldberg, Ridd even warns: "I think the media have been manipulated . . . and scientists are rapidly getting the same reputation as used-car salesmen and real estate agents."
Actually, Ridd is far too easy on the media. I suspect many journalists much prefer green hype to sober hope.
Ask Dr Ben McNeil, an oceanographer of the University of New South Wales, who with colleagues from CSIRO and AIMS calculated that global warming could in fact be good for coral reefs, because warmer water helped red algae calcify faster.
Even allowing for more acidic seas, says McNeil, "our analysis suggests that ocean warming will foster considerably faster future rates of coral reef growth". Fancy that. Not dying reefs, but growing. But only if we keep pumping out gas.
Such good news, yet only one daily newspaper in the country published it -- and then in just four paragraphs.
Still, I'm sure you've learned by now not to trust one more global warming scare. You need only take a Captain Cook at the reef to see why you're right to question even a professor as admired as Hoegh-Guldberg.
Speaking of the greater man, Prof Bob Carter of James Cook University's Marine Geophysical Laboratory, points out: "Should the ghost of Captain Cook sail north along the shelf again today . . . equipped with modern measuring equipment, he would be unable to detect any changes to the reef from when he first observed it in 1770."
Time the global warming scaremongers found some other hostage. They've squeezed this reef dry.
Follow the money.
If you scream "The world will end tomorrow!" everyday, eventually it will become truth. Free Beer, tomorrow........
If ice bergs melt and cold water causes cooling, woundn't that then STOP the ice bergs from melting and cause warming again which would cause cooling again and then warming and on and on. We would have the perfect feedback loop that would not only prevent run away warming but stop the next ice age from happening! Go all you car drivers put out that CO2 and make that feedback loop work!
Maybe I can get a grant for a study on this phonomenon, how much do you think I could get?
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