Chasing coral

[Maacc]

The article to which you link only cites one published scientific paper. The paper's main argument appears to be that a well-respected deep ocean temperature model does not match the actual climate data from 1955 to 2011. However, the authors explicitly state that the variance they see could be explained entirely by small energy imbalances when they initialized their model. From the paper:

This suggests the possibility of energy conservation issues in the CMIP3 models (Gupta et al., 2012), although small energy imbalances at model initialization could also result in this behavior



How much data is acceptable then? How do we know that 40 years is enough data to prove that smoking causes lung cancer? How can we know that these people weren't simply predisposed to lung cancer, and that any number of other things (aside from smoking) could have caused the cancer? How do we know that genetically, these people wouldn't have just developed lung cancer anyway, even with no outside cause? You can't just look at a pile of lung cancer deaths and notice that they all smoked and say that one caused the other. You need the scientific process. You need to conduct studies, you need to collect data, and you need to prove causation. The scientific process is required to exclude all noise, to minimize all variables, and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the smoking actually caused the lung cancer. When the methodology used for research is sound and the results confirm the hypotheses, the scientific community tends to support such findings.

This is how consensus is formed. And this is my point. The scientific process is how we determine how our complex world works. The amount of time you have been observing data is not the only determining factor to how accurate your research is. Data alone are not enough. As I said to Maacc, if you have published peer-reviewed papers, I'd love to read your work. Please be sure to include your academic and scientific experience, as well as that of your co-authors, when you post your work.

Again, as stated previously, you do not have to be a climatologist nor produce peer reviewed work, to look at read and understand observable data, nor point out that the observable data does not coincide with previous predictive models. You are ignoring the chart in the article showing the predictive models temperatures vs the temperatures actually measured. As I said previously, the fact that the models are wrong do not mean that there is no warming nor that we are not in any way responsible. It does however indicate a flaw in the consensus which needs to be examined when creating policy.
One can mix ad hominem with argumentum ad verecundiam, but it doesn't change my point.
I think we might just need to agree to disagree.

 

[Henryt]

The article to which you link only cites one published scientific paper. The paper's main argument appears to be that a well-respected deep ocean temperature model does not match the actual climate data from 1955 to 2011. However, the authors explicitly state that the variance they see could be explained entirely by small energy imbalances when they initialized their model. From the paper:

This suggests the possibility of energy conservation issues in the CMIP3 models (Gupta et al., 2012), although small energy imbalances at model initialization could also result in this behavior



How much data is acceptable then? How do we know that 40 years is enough data to prove that smoking causes lung cancer? How can we know that these people weren't simply predisposed to lung cancer, and that any number of other things (aside from smoking) could have caused the cancer? How do we know that genetically, these people wouldn't have just developed lung cancer anyway, even with no outside cause? You can't just look at a pile of lung cancer deaths and notice that they all smoked and say that one caused the other. You need the scientific process. You need to conduct studies, you need to collect data, and you need to prove causation. The scientific process is required to exclude all noise, to minimize all variables, and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the smoking actually caused the lung cancer. When the methodology used for research is sound and the results confirm the hypotheses, the scientific community tends to support such findings.

This is how consensus is formed. And this is my point. The scientific process is how we determine how our complex world works. The amount of time you have been observing data is not the only determining factor to how accurate your research is. Data alone are not enough. As I said to Maacc, if you have published peer-reviewed papers, I'd love to read your work. Please be sure to include your academic and scientific experience, as well as that of your co-authors, when you post your work.

To challenge scientific consensus is what helps advance science. There are a lot of theories that are being proven wrong today that were deemed to have had Rock solid research and were undeniable back then. The case here is not about arguing that the earth is getting warmer (polar ice caps are melting, rising sea levels, etc). The point to argue is the cause.

We do not have enough data to look back every 100 years with accuracy to determine what was the cause.

Has anyone looked at earth's biomass?
The amount of endothermic creatures living now is at an all time high (humans producing about 30k btu each). Could this have repeated back in the dinosaur days? We all think they were exothermic but maybe they weren't. Sea levels were higher and so was the temperature. You cannot rule out any of these possibilities. Money and politics fuels modern day research.

Having a university in need of funds agree with a research project to further investigate the item keeps the cash flowing.

Remember the old saying "if you look for something hard enough, with enough time and money you will find it.

 

[Maacc]

St

You are right, let's put cfc's back in the mix, see what happens... cause you know, the other half of that change (if those numbers are valid) just isn't good enough... if we can't immediately solve the WHOLE problem, let's throw our hands up and enjoy watching it burn.
The idea that you refuse the data, or are confused by it, simply does not invalidate it.

Perhaps an unintentional straw man, my goal isn't to do nothing, or to put cfc's back into the atmosphere. However, it does seem eminently reasonable to examine theories, costs consequences and policy when the observed results and the predictive models do not coincide when those models were used to prescribe actions and policies, unless of course we are no longer going to keep examining subsequent evidence because it contradicts our faith in the consensus.

 

[Henryt]

It doesn't matter, because we ARE contributing to it. The data on that is in no way in question. So, we have choices. We can curb our contributions and hope its enough, or we can argue about things that aren't worth our breath.
When your grandkids ask you what coral reefs used to look like, which choice would you like to say you made?

Well how do we know what reefs looked like in the 1200'? What temperature they thrived in? I have seen corals thriving in 85f water in nature. And others dying? Could bleaching be caused by an unknown virus, bacteria or genetic mutation?

What about the nuclear waste from Fukushima meltdown?

 

[spieszak]

Have less kids, tey to drive a fuel efficient car, live closer to where you work. Eat less meat
Lots of things add up to minimizing your impact

 

[Brad Shook]

I really wish they would have documented water parameters at the same time. Calcium, alk, Mag etc. It would be nice to know if there were any other events contributing to the bleaching. I've lost an entire sps tank to bleaching and the temp never fluctuated outside 76-78.

 

[dankreef]

Well how do we know what reefs looked like in the 1200'? What temperature they thrived in? I have seen corals thriving in 85f water in nature. And others dying? Could bleaching be caused by an unknown virus, bacteria or genetic mutation?

What about the nuclear waste from Fukushima meltdown?

Nuclear waste is dumping in the oceans and there like its because you drove your corvette on Labor Day

 

[spieszak]

Well how do we know what reefs looked like in the 1200'? What temperature they thrived in? I have seen corals thriving in 85f water in nature. And others dying? Could bleaching be caused by an unknown virus, bacteria or genetic mutation?

What about the nuclear waste from Fukushima meltdown?

Fukishima is a blip on the radar, the science says so.
What does it matter what the reefs looked like in 1200? What do you want them to look like tomorrow?

 

[spieszak]

Nuclear waste is dumping in the oceans and there like its because you drove your corvette on Labor Day

Have you actually looked at the data? Have you looked at how isolated and small that event was?

"They" would like you to be responsible for you, rather than just pointing at things you can't control as an argument as to why you won't be.

 

[PSLReefer]

I really wish they would have documented water parameters at the same time. Calcium, alk, Mag etc. It would be nice to know if there were any other events contributing to the bleaching. I've lost an entire sps tank to bleaching and the temp never fluctuated outside 76-78.

Uh ok

 

[Bow69]

I love the reefs, I love fish and all of the living creatures that exist within them, but to suggest "All because of the decisions that humanity is making on a day to day basis"...I just don't understand that mentality. What is the Earth, 4 billion years old...and we've been keeping records for what? A couple hundred years?

Is it sad, of course, but to suggest that people are responsible for ANY change (warming or cooling...they've been blamed for both), when change has been occuring for billions of years, just seems like a giant leep to me.

Ikr, I agree 100%.

 

[ShinyRobot]

I really wish they would have documented water parameters at the same time. Calcium, alk, Mag etc. It would be nice to know if there were any other events contributing to the bleaching. I've lost an entire sps tank to bleaching and the temp never fluctuated outside 76-78.

You have a great point here. There are so many factors that contribute to a healthy coral that I think it's incredibly irresponsible to try and promote or "prove" a political cause by pointing to just one of millions of possible contributing factors. We're still figuring out all of the various trace elements and parameters that make up "ideal" ocean sea water. The argument that a fraction of a degree might cause corals to die off seems rather juvenile to me, knowing what we now know about temperature fluctuations not being as harmful to corals as we once thought.

 

[spieszak]

I really wish they would have documented water parameters at the same time. Calcium, alk, Mag etc. It would be nice to know if there were any other events contributing to the bleaching. I've lost an entire sps tank to bleaching and the temp never fluctuated outside 76-78.

It seems valid to me that they ignored these since there isn't any real evidence that these numbers are changing.
According to the folks that are studing tbr GBR and are the longest running organization to do so, here are the major threats.
https://www.barrierreef.org/the-reef/the-threats

 

[A Toadstool Leather]

Cfc were banned in most developed countries but continued to spew from multiple sources. It could very well been due to the reduction (but not elimination) of cfc. The bottom line people are still trying to figure it out.

Why because science uses models built on hypotheses to predict earth's changes.

Want to see a good place where lots of really smart people put a lot of proven science to correctly predict earth?....
Look at hurricane models. There are multiple models by all different countries and using the most powerful super computers they cannot predict where a hurricane lands.

It's why our models cannot predict earthquakes or very accurate weather activity. So we are to assume that all of the models based on hypotheses are correct?

Once again no one wants to address the elegant in the room:

Could this very well be a warming trend that naturally occurs?

You cannot deny our effect on the climate. This warm period is far more intense than the medieval warm period and started around the industrial age. Seems to be a bit too much of a coincidence when an unprecedented warming period starts as greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane are released into the atmosphere at an increasing rate. The fact that models have been inaccurate in other fields of science does not discredit models made in the field of climate science.

 

[A Toadstool Leather]

You have a great point here. There are so many factors that contribute to a healthy coral that I think it's incredibly irresponsible to try and promote or "prove" a political cause by pointing to just one of millions of possible contributing factors. We're still figuring out all of the various trace elements and parameters that make up "ideal" ocean sea water. The argument that a fraction of a degree might cause corals to die off seems rather juvenile to me, knowing what we now know about temperature fluctuations not being as harmful to corals as we once thought.

Although pH and alkalinity are linked im not sure if a decrease in pH could affect other parameters. You can have low than natural pH and normal alkalinity like most reefers here have. It would be nice to have data on other parameters aside from temp and pH though. However the main cause of bleaching tends to be coral stress induced by temperature swings.

 

[dankreef]

Yes I have looked at the data that Says it's currently floating around the Pacific . All joking aside no one is against clean planet here . It's China they have no regulations and don't care at all. Have you ever been there you can't even breath it's crazy . There's nothing we can do here that will stop what they are doing . You need to go to China and protest there so they get the message. It doesn't matter anyway haven't you heard of Ibana vanka (sp?) everything's done in ocean in 2045 .

 

[Rufus’ goofs]

I believe that Ocean acidification and the rise in temperature are very closely related.

The theory is that CO2 causes temperature rise by insulating our atmosphere from escaping heat. Ocean acidification happens from Increased dissolved CO2 in the ocean.
We all have tanks, we know how gas exchange works.
We also understand how evaporative cooling works.

One of the pieces in the documentary that really struck home with me, was the analysis from the coral core's recording atmospheric O2 levels along with modern records to show that the oceans had retained 93% of our temperature rise.

Anyone else have the urge to make their tanks nurseries for some of the more threatened corals? I don't mean go harvesting, I mean the ones already in the trade.
But still. I feel the need help grow, propagate and ideally recover our oceans foundation corals.

 

[Heath Biggers]

One of the first things I noticed was the guy doing the documentary has a ten-year background in New York advertising. He seemed to have very little knowledge of corals in general. So his main job is presenting things to people in a convincing manner. I know there are extreme political persuasions on both sides of the global warming issue so it's very hard for me to see the truth

 

[Deinonych]

Have less kids, tey to drive a fuel efficient car, live closer to where you work. Eat less meat
Lots of things add up to minimizing your impact

Exactly. http://grist.org/briefly/groundbreaking-study-outlines-what-you-can-do-about-climate-change/

 

[aquadog]

The documentary made me feel really sad and basically helpless to really do anything that is going to matter. I'm really glad that the documentary was made and I hope lots of people will end up watching it. Because it's true, the "out of sight, out of mind" thing plays a huge role here. Nobody is going to do anything about something they don't see. Anyway, I'm really worried.