I’m back in Yeppoon. This afternoon I was at Wreck Point, and in the distance, over my left shoulder, you can see Great Keppel Island. According to the New York Times there is mass coral bleaching there (CLICK HERE). A photograph of the corals at Monkey Beach reef featured in an article in that newspaper just yesterday. It was apparently taken on March 5, 2024.
(I’m hoping to see these corals for myself this weekend. To be sure to know what I find out, to be sure to see the photographs I'm hoping to take, consider subscribing for my free email updates (CLICK HERE).)
The New York Times attributes the bleaching to extraordinarily warm ocean temperatures. Of course, there is no chart, no data – no information on actual ocean temperatures.
It is exceedingly rare for any newspaper to ever publish location specific temperature data. In fact, that is the only real type of temperature data: location specific data. Everything else is a construct – a contrived statistic.
The picture of the bleached corals at Great Keppel Island, published in the New York Times, was apparently provided by AIMS (Australian Institute of Marine Sciences). Of course, they also have temperature data. One of their key weather stations is at Square Rocks just to the northwest of Great Keppel Island. There is data for the period December 19, 2009, through to February 19, 2024. This data, consistent with the information I have previously published for the central region does not suggest that ocean temperatures have been particularly warm this last summer.
AIMS water temperature data for Square Rock just to the northwest of Great Keppel Island measured at 2.9 and 7.9 metres depths.
(There is very little difference in the two temperature profiles at the different depths so there is much overlap in the above chart. For clarity I will also now post these times series separately.
There is sea level data for Rosslyn Bay, just across a little further to the east from Great Keppel Island. (I will be catching the ferry to Great Keppel Island from Rosslyn Bay marina at the end of the week, weather permitting and passing Square Rock.)
This sea level data indicates monthly averages are towards the low end of their annual cycle, and have stalled. This is consistent with an El Nino event and the water sloshing over to the other side of the Pacific Ocean, you can read more about the phenomenon at the NOAA website (CLICK HERE).
Monthly sea levels at Rosslyn Bay Marina, more information https://psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/1760.php
Could it be that the bleaching at Great Keppel Island has more to do with lower-than-average sea levels for this time of year, rather than unusually warm water? I'm just asking the question. (It is perhaps better to have questions that cannot be answered, rather than answers that cannot be questioned.)
Square Rock also has air temperature data, and, of course, the two move somewhat in unison except that the air is consistently a little cooler. This is the air that has all the greenhouse gases, that is meant to be warming the ocean.
AIMS air temperature and water temperature data for Square Rock, just to the northwest of Great Keppel Island.
Of course, only someone who believes the nonsense from the experts and who can’t read a chart could believe that the air warms the ocean!
The sun warms the ocean that warms the atmosphere. That is what happens in the tropics at least, which is where I live.
It has been a very wet summer and so my much neglected garden is doing well. It can get very dry here. Usually drier summers are hotter summers.
MORE INFORMATION. UPDATE 17TH APRIL 2024
Water temperature data for Rosslyn Bay can be downloaded at http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/projects/abslmp/data/monthly.shtml
Good one Con, words, numbers, analysis, statistics are obviously well beyond your standard of education. Sit down.
Kev, that's a 30 second read; you're still fixated on the effect not the cause: CO2 CANNOT heat the oceans; whatever is causing the bleaching isn't anything to do with humans. Cause and effect kev; you're all effect and no cause.
Con, here's an update, there's some big words so take your time.
More than coral: the unseen casualties of record-breaking heat on the Great Barrier Reef
24 April 2024
Extreme heat is threatening our coral reef ecosystems, writes Professor Emma Johnston and her co-authors about the damage they're seeing on the Great Barrier Reef.
In past bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef, the southern region has sometimes been spared worst of the bleaching. Not this time. This year’s intense underwater heat has triggered the most severe heat stress ever seen on record. Only 3% of surveyed southern reefs have not bleached at all. It’s shaping up to be the most severe and widespread bleaching of the southern reef, while mass bleaching has hit other areas of the reef in the fifth mass bleaching event in eight years.
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2024/04/24/the-unseen-casualties-of-record-breaking-heat-on-the-great-barrier-reef.html#:~:text=Only%203%25%20of%20surveyed%20southern,of%20stark%20white%20coral%20skeletons.
"Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature
Mark Lynas, Benjamin Z Houlton, Simon Perry
Environmental Research Letters 16 (11), 114005, 2021"
This is the mob who tried to tidy up the Cook debacle. This Lynas debacle was eviscerated here:
https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/11/11/215
Kev is a bit exhausted no doubt so here is a synopsis of the rebuttal of Lynas consensus garbage:
https://notrickszone.com/2023/11/30/new-study-68-of-scientific-papers-can-be-said-to-reject-the-agw-hypothesis/
Kev, I know nothing will change your mind (sic) but can you do better with your links then this drivel.
"scientific consensus" - Too funny!
Consensus will always be obtained when the only funding available is for those prepared to endorse the consensus.
Now you're suggesting science is done by surveys and a show of hands.
There was 100% consensus that stomach alcers were caused by stress. Every doctor, ever scientific body, every scientist will 'agreed' this was the case. It took an Australian physician by the name of Barry Marshall to prove them all wrong.
When you can't get funding to look into an alternative view, you'll always end up with a result that's not worth the paper it's written on. This is why there is such a replication crisis in science today with as much as 90% of the papers being totally wrong.
Here you go Con...
Greater than 99% consensus on human caused climate change in the peer-reviewed scientific literature
Mark Lynas, Benjamin Z Houlton, Simon Perry
Environmental Research Letters 16 (11), 114005, 2021
While controls over the Earth's climate system have undergone rigorous hypothesis-testing since the 1800s, questions over the scientific consensus of the role of human activities in modern climate change continue to arise in public settings. We update previous efforts to quantify the scientific consensus on climate change by searching the recent literature for papers sceptical of anthropogenic-caused global warming. From a dataset of 88125 climate-related papers published since 2012, when this question was last addressed comprehensively, we examine a randomized subset of 3000 such publications. We also use a second sample-weighted approach that was specifically biased with keywords to help identify any sceptical peer-reviewed papers in the whole dataset. We identify four sceptical papers out of the sub-set of 3000, as evidenced by abstracts that were rated as implicitly or explicitly sceptical of human-caused global warming. In our sample utilizing pre-identified sceptical keywords we found 28 papers that were implicitly or explicitly sceptical. We conclude with high statistical confidence that the scientific consensus on human-caused contemporary climate change—expressed as a proportion of the total publications—exceeds 99% in the peer reviewed scientific literature.
"I’m proud to be part of the 97 percent."
Is that IQ?
But seriously, John Cook's 97% paper is an absolute load of junk:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
I'll explain why kev.
The first 2 categories of Table 2 in the paper are:
1. Explicit endorsement with quantification. Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming. The global warming during the 20th century is caused mainly by increasing greenhouse gas concentration especially since the late 1980s'.
2. Explicit endorsement without quantification. Explicitly states humans are causing global warming or refers to anthropogenic global warming/climate change as a known fact. Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change.
Now I would think that category 1 is a more definitive support of AGW since it is based on quantification, which I gather to mean statistical proof whereas category 2 has explicit support without such proof.
Strangely however category 6 is a stronger rejection of AGW then category 7 which is why I compared it with category 1 which appears to be the strongest support. Category 6 states:
(6) Explicit rejection without quantification. Explicitly minimizes or rejects that humans are causing global warming'...the global temperature record provides little support for the catastrophic view of the greenhouse effect.
Category 7: (7) Explicit rejection with quantification. Explicitly states that humans are causing less than half of global warming. The human contribution to the CO2 content in the atmosphere and the increase in temperature is negligible in comparison with other sources of carbon dioxide emission.
Category 7 requires quantification it is true but that quantification still allows for AGW to cause 50% of global warming whereas category 6 rejects AGW 100%. The rest of the categories are also as interchangeable. The point is who and by what criteria made the allocation of the Abstracts into the respective categories. These scientists whose papers were put into categories strongly reject that categorisation:
In Cook's paper he defines the consensus position as being:
"That humans are causing global warming."
That consensus position is defined in Cook's categories by category 1 of Table 2 which I have already quoted. The rest of your categories reflect varying degrees of lessor support for AGW [categories 2 and 3], or indifference to AGW [categories 4a and 4b] or active opposition to AGW [categories 5 to 7].
Only the first 3 categories could be defined as giving support for AGW. However, on the basis of the categories 1-3, of the original 11944 Abstracts from papers on climate selected the paper DISCARDED 8048 papers or 67.4% because they had no position.
Of the remaining 4014 papers or 32.6% of papers 3973 or 99% of the remaining abstracts fell into categories 2 and 3. Only 41 or 1% expressed support for Cook's definition of the expressed support for Cook's definition of the consensus that: "Humans are causing global warming."
That’s 1% not 97%.
Now Cook says he had the authors of the papers rate their papers according to his criteria; Cook said: "1200 scientists rated their own papers, resulting in over 2000 papers being categorised by the papers' own authors. Among papers that were self-rated as stating a position on human-caused global warming, 97.2% endorsed the consensus."
The author’s self-rating is shown by Table 4 from Cook's paper. In fact 2142 papers received self-ratings from 1189 authors. Cook's paper says of those 2142 self-ratings 1342 are described as Endorsing AGW. That is confirming the consensus position or category 1 of Cook's 7 categories. The caption to Table 4 says: "Self-rated papers that endorse AGW have an average endorsement rating less than 4." But that would include categories 2 and 3 which are LESS than the consensus position. So the question remains exactly how many self-rated Abstracts actually conform to Cook's definition of the consensus as defined only in category 1.
In addition, the self-referencing shows that 761 scientists have no position on AGW which as the caption to Table 4 says conforms to categories 4a and 4b of Cook's categories which is 761/2142 X 100 = 35.52%. That is much less than Cook's paper’s initial selection and discard of 67.4% of the 11,944 papers because the Abstract had no position on AGW. Maybe the only scientists who responded to the invitation to self-rate were those who initially had a position on AGW. If so 35.52% of them changed their minds from being in categories 1-3 to being in categories 4a and 4b!
Any way you look at this the % actually supporting the consensus, as defined in your paper, is less than the claimed 97%.
What do you think kev since you're one of the 97%?
Scientists don't believe, they measure, analyse, think... Concepts beyond deniers like cohenite. I'm proud to be part of the 97 percent.
"It’s all connected."
Yep, it's the great web of life: greenies, grifters and assorted useful idiots are all over it.
"Scientists refer to it as climate change."
I could be wrong but I believe 97% of all scientists are true believers.
You still haven't looked at the non-existent OHC increase around the Pacific islands. Is the warming only affecting the GBR? Maybe it's all the bloody scientists up there looking for bleaching and warming.
Actually the climate today is as good as this planet can offer. A bit more CO2 in the atmosphere would be good though; you know so the poor trees can photosynthesize better. I'm sure you agree since you appear to be a tree hugger, sorry, lover.