First and foremost the decline to reefs over the last few decades has been from Land use issues, pollution, run off from said land use issues, fishing, mass fishing like trawling cyclical oceanic events like the 97/98 El Nino. What is happen now is the over use of CO2 as the devil for everything when in reality there are many things we can do to help clean, save, what every your preference for the reefs. The turn to making CO2 the main concentration of study and prevention as opposed to real time issues that can be fixed with half the money being spent on the unfounded accusations of CO2. When the science is not settled never has been but pushed by the media and those that stand to make billions of carbon trading as such. So lets say that we spend billions of dollars to stop CO2 output, but in the mean time we do not concentrate on issues that can be dealt with like how land use effects coastal reefs, how run off from this poor land use effects the over all environment of the waters surrounding the reefs, effects of trawling, over fishing, the poor economic state of countries the seem to surround these reefs.
The push for sustainable fishing, the decline in trawling that destroys the reefs. The garbage being dumped by poor countries out in the oceans on the reef because they don't have the infrastructure to deal with it properly. This can be dealt with in real time right now terms. Cap and tax schemes will only continue these countries being poor and not have the ability to use land and the by products of the use of land in a proper way. It will also cause them to continue to be uneducated as well which an uneducated populace is a controlled populace.
So let's say 25 years from now and trillions of dollars have been spent on CO2 and said reef continue to die because grants and funding have been pushed to the single topic of CO2....What then?
Will the same people come on threads like this and say" Well we were wrong to concentrate only on CO2"? Nope it will fall by the way side and they will find another boogeyman to draw out attention and a new found cause for the deaths. The IPCC has come under fire the last 4 months due to false reports that they used in AR4 to show the apocalyptic scenario that they are pushing for one purpose only, money and control. No one on here or skeptics will tell you that we should pollute as much as we want, the idea that this is the case is a fallacy and only pushed by one side of the issue. I have been on many skeptic sites and I have never not once heard them say this. Should we pollute less? Yes. Is CO2 a pollutant? NO, it is a foundation to life, with out it trees would die, forest would die. rain forest would die as I am afraid, so would we.
Yes the reefs are dying firstly, and mainly due to human influence by the way we use the land and sea.
The problem in Climate science is if you do not have something in your request for a grant about CO2 you will not get that grant. Should we continue to figure out what the possible outcomes of higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere effect on the oceans and land environments? Yes, but the dogma of AGW has become far from science but a cult of religion. Anyone ever wonder why every time a new research paper is released that the apocalyptic scenario is worse and worse? Each time it becomes more shrill in tone and how bad humans are? When money get mixed into any scenario one has to ask questions about those doing the research and why.
If I offered any one here $30 million in research grant money but you have to show how and why the effects of CO2 are and will be, what do you think the outcome of said research paper will be?
Here is an article for all to read.....If CO2 is such a problem and causing the "acidification" of the ocean then tell me why the reefs around Cuba show no signs of AGW and the dogma of CO2.
Scientists Work To Protect Cuba's Unspoiled Reefs : NPR
Here is a quote from AIMs on Cuban reefs
"Numerous fringing and bank-barrier reefs border much of Cuba’s 3200 km-long shelf margin, although over 50% are separated from the mainland by cays or by broad, shallow lagoons that contain many patch reefs. Most of the Cuban reefs are in relatively good condition, excepting those near large population and industrial centres (along less than 3% of the shoreline), where the seawater is conspicuously polluted. There has been some localized death of Acropora from white-band disease. Sediment in runoff may affect some nearshore reefs along 30% of the mainland coast. Increases in large, fleshy algae on some offshore reefs since the die-off of Diadema antillarum are probably related to high concentrations of phosphate in effluents from the sugar industry and other wastewaters.
Stocks of most reef fishes in Cuba are in comparatively good condition (larger fish sizes, high biomass), and artificial shelters for spiny lobsters have been used sustainably for several decades. However, Nassau grouper (Epinephelus striatus) and sharks are overfished. There is limited, illegal harvesting of several species of gorgonians, black coral, spiny lobster, and turtles.
There are no marine protected areas in Cuba, but tourist operators are informally protecting the reefs near some resorts. Only a few commercial dive sites have mooring buoys. In 1997, anchoring, erecting structures, dredging, dumping sediments and solid wastes, using explosives, and unauthorized collection of all corals, were prohibited by a joint resolution of the Ministries of Fisheries Industry and of Science, Technology and Environment."
The key is direct human influence where there are issues, the areas with no or very little direct influence the reefs are the best in the Caribbean. I guess we all have to give some amount of respect to the communist in Cuba in the way they keep people way from the marine life.....
Will the reefs disappear? No not if we can figure out a way to reduce our direct influence on them and get past this CO2 is the devil mentality. get to fixing the things that can be fixed real time and not based on subjective computer models which have become the spine of Climate research.
