On 31st January there was a piece in The Age titled 'Scientists worried by reef bleaching' quoting Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg from the University of Queensland, with Don Henry from the Australian Conservation Foundation suggesting the problem of bleaching that Ove was so worried about, could be fixed if only the Australian government ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
I received an email from a reader of this blog a couple of weeks ago pointing out that expert, and academic, Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg keeps changing his tune on global warming and its impact on the reef. He wrote:
"Within a little over a month, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg's estimates have dropped from 50-60 percent to 1 percent of the reef bleached. That is simply an amazing change over a short period of time, particularly when you consider the amount of time required to do field work, analyse data etc. In the later article, Ove appears to be discrediting the scientists who made the initial estimates, when of course they were his!
I will be interested to see if Ove makes a statement also modiyfing his claims that the reef will be dead and barren within 30 to 50 years.
My feeling is that the initial claims were simply scaremongering and the disappointing thing is his willingness to go public with such claims with only preliminary data rather than any real published material."
Herald Sun Columnist Andrew Bolt also noticed the inconsistencies in the advice from Ove:
"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".
Click here to keep reading.
You don't need to be really clever to work out that global warming might not be so good for polar bears, but it is probably going to be OK for Nemo, as I've explained previously, click here.
But even the Australian Financial Review can't help but scaremonger. An article in the Review on Friday (BCA Warms to Climate Change Rethink, pg. 57) claimed a 1C temperature rise would result in 81 percent of the Great Barrier Reef bleaching. One degree was the extent of the temperature rise last year according to the Bureau of Meterology. The Review would have published the one degree temperature rise for last year, and is now publishing that a one degree rise will bleach most of the reef! How confused must editors and journalists be with all the global warming scaremongering?
Several commentators at this blog have been indignant about the letter from the 60 skeptics in which the scientists suggested there has been some exaggeration, and there could be more public consultation about climate change issues (see comments following the blog post here). They claim the letter ignores the science and seriousness of the issue and is just about playing politics. But these same commentators will ignore the more ridiculous claims from Ove and other 'believers' who spin stories that result in completely nonsense predictions.
On a brighter note, here is a little Nemo from The Great Barrier Reef:
Ian, Thanks for this. I note that Doherty also suggests we all read Jared Diamond's book Collapse ... yet it is full of errors, see http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=443 .
If you wish to read an unbiased opinion on climate change from a Nobel Laureate scientist (not a discredited journalist and an industry advocate), read Professor Peter Doherty’s article published today in the SMH. It can be found at: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/wake-up-while-you-can/2006/05/05/1146335930448.htmlhttp://www.smh.com.au/news/national/wake-up-while-you-can/2006/05/05/1146335930448.html
If you dont believe in global warming you are a self centered, resource destroyoing, capilitist idiot who will inevitably contibute nothing to this planet except co2
1. Johnnyboy, I'm not trailor park trash, you are. Tell me, are you one of those Brits with horribe teeth?
2. Bam Bam, Jonnyboy. It's well and good putting stuff up from RC and trying to ad hom your way through. However other than hurling abuse at MIT, the professor and me (the messenger) neither of you have refuted what he has said in the piece published the WSJ.
Let me give you the definition of the word refutation straight from the dictionary... are you ready?
1."Any evidence that helps to establish the falsity of something"
2.The act of determining that something is false
The definition gives Johnnyboy a starting point to go back to the piece I posted and refute it- provide eveidence that it is false.
Helpful hints>
1. going back to his work and telling us he was wrong is not really refuting what he has said in the WSJ. Moreover it looks more like a cop out.
2. attacking him and rubbishing me (and the Prof) is not really refuting the piece, is it.
So I guess you can't do it and despite your alleged degree from a place of higher learning that has a good rep. you find this chore a little too hard.
By the way, most people would forgive an error in confusing two magazines that carry very similar names both reporting on the same topics. If that's the only thing that set you off into abuse mode I would suggest that it is you needing medication for anxiety.
Can we move on?
No; joey must see this former course info from the No 1 in engineering – MIT
http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2006/teams/lele/climate.html
“Sixty-one current or former members of the MIT community have won the Nobel Prize
We are talking good physics here mate,
Cheers!
1.Jonnyboy was that Cambridge with an education in the classics? I have heard their standards fell some time ago.
2.Nice question to ask strangers.
3. I'm still waiting for you to refute the piece in your own words instead of sending people to do homework. But I guess that would be too hard.
Try, I promise I won't giggle.
Joey; one day you have to decide for yourself with your mate Lindzen and his stuff like this bit I grabbed from yes RC where they had it on toast.
1. If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature
differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less
difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical
storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion.
Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical
storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world
would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy
for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of
evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature
but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for
starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity,
not less -- hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.
So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about
this junk science?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/open-thread-on-lindzen-op-ed-in-wsj/#comment-11507
Now joey, you can believe me or not but that lot was crap based on my own practical experience where evaporation, due point, latent heat and dryness in artificial wet tropical conditions was our daily business. The only interpretation he probably got right was the models were suspect.
Warmer seas = stronger currents and more atmospheric energy in the form of large vortexes triggered by stronger updrafts.
Hotter lands = stronger drying winds, more bushfires, faster water runoff and more agricultural chemicals washed out to sea giving our coral reefs a good dash of slime.
Treating slime growth in hot wet humid conditions on weekly basis was our other job.
We used lots of acids, alkaline, organic mercury and plenty of Santobrite.
Can we move on?
Joe - you are indeed trailer park trash from the colonies. My dear colonial buffoon, I cannot believe you are so uneducated as to not to even know the difference between Sci Am and Science.
Iris clearly did not meet the standards of serious science. Something obviously as varlet to which you would be unaccustomed.
I notce now the chaps at RealClimate have taken a more severe view of Mr Lindzen with a more detailed critique. I commend it to you, unless of course, you have a propensity to fits of uncontrolled behaviour, to which treatment with simian sedatives is contraindicated.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/lindzen-point-by-point/
Oh - one normally gets one's education in a quality institution like Cambridge. But somehow I think yourself or your many random progeny are unlikely to ever attend. They have discerning taste and standards.
Are you, yourself, actually in employment, perhaps you are a shop keeper or on welfare?
bam bam
I really wish people knew what it is you're trying to convey.
i guess it must my insight, somewhere, somehow you're tring to convey this insightful understanding of some of the players on this thread.
My attempt wasn't to keep people off topic about DDT. I attempted to pour some scorn over someone who deserves quite a bit of it. The DDT thing is simply a side issue.
If you had bothered to read between the lines you would have got it. However seeing you're to busy analysing people's motives etc. you miss lots of things that aimed at your head.
Phil: Always keep your opponents off their pet topic like joe with his DDT
A thread or two back joe was lost on Santobrite, didn’t have a clue. Joe didn’t Google either it seems (where DDT is a pesticide, the other and its various trade names belong to a group of very long term fungicides).
Joe: This was about long term effects, observations and proper standards…….
Phil: There are a lot of contributors to the climate debate that haven’t got a handle on physics either; meantime they wait for some other goon to make their observations and interpretations.
Neil; When someone starts a thread with PhD, I go looking for a hammer literally, this relates partly to a time when a rather senior policeman reckoned I couldn’t sharpen a badly chipped axe on a bench grinder after a bushfire.
After working with an old fashioned blacksmith for a while you realize what academia misses. They can’t teach you how to wield a 14 pounded, round or over, bam, bam, bam!
Pinxi and Travis; an activist is someone we know who trusts we can both do better and tries to remain in themselves tireless, on and on.
Rog: A crusading hardliner goes way beyond and sometimes chills or burns on their way out.