Quite a few coral/ reef biologists (a vast majority, I'd say, including myself) as well as this community strongly disagree with you on that. Bleaching has been documented in the past, but not what we're seeing now.
Really? How much bleaching was there during the 1800s for example? You have no idea. Bleaching was first recorded in 1930 by Charles Maurice Yonge during the first major scientific study of the GBR. There are 26 records of bleaching before 1982 (Oliver et al 2009). It wasn’t until the 1960s that the phenomenon was discovered by scientists at the newly established Australian institute of marine science & James Cook University.
Crown of thorns starfish (COTS) plagues destroying the GBR were first discovered in the 1960s & claimed to be a modern phenomenon caused by > human activities. It is now known the geological evidence suggests that COTS outbreaks have occurred over millennia. If a mass bleaching event or COTS event occurred on the GBR in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, who would have noticed?
Contrast that to today. These events are now documented by hundreds of scientists who have been waiting & preparing for such events for years. They monitor the reef with satellites images, giving them time to prepare massive aerial surveys of the reef with military precision. And then there’s the global media campaigns to focus attention onto their specific field of study to attract government funding.
This will likely just start an argument, but you can't just say the opinion of most of the scientific community involved is alarmist or propaganda.
And is the opinion of the scientific community who disagree with their narrow view presented? NO! It is a global warming propaganda doco, scare ****, made by Exposure Labs, a bunch of environmental activists who quote “only work with people we like”, & who agree with their narrow views. Their propagandists, extreme alarmists – activists. Scare ****, with one narrow opinion presented without any alternate view. Over dramatized & exaggerated. It’s this type of propaganda that researches love because it’s a tool to direct, & vastly increase, limited funding towards their field. Coral reefs, like no other ecosystem, are used to illustrate the
claim of environmental disaster from modest warming > by human activity.
And its aim is to push for 100% renewable energy as the remedy.
Corals are warm water animals. Bleaching is one of their defence mechanisms & should be regarded as a strategy for survival rather than a death sentence. Bleaching indicates that corals
have adapted to periods of unusually high temperatures in the past.
Most corals that bleach fully recover (Marshall & Schuttenberg 2006).
In the 1960s it was claimed that the GBR was being destroyed by plagues of Crown of thorns starfish (COTS). The cause of the plagues, suggested by some of being a modern phenomon, was attributed to > human activity. It is now known that, just like bleaching, coral reefs recover from COTS outbreaks within ten years, & the geological evidence suggests that COTS outbreaks have occurred over millennia.
The 2015/16 GBR bleaching event was caused by record low local sea levels causing record low tides (which first appeared just north in the indonesia coral triangle & bleached coral), & an El nino. Natural events. The area reported as damaged was terribly exagerated by the media, & much of what was damaged has already started to recover.
