Australia's Great Barrier Reef Will Survive if Warming Kept To 1.5 Degrees (reuters.com) 52
A study released on Friday by an Australian university looking at multiple catastrophes hitting the Great Barrier Reef has found for the first time that only 2% of its area has escaped bleaching since 1998, then the world's hottest year on record. From a report: If global warming is kept to 1.5 degrees, the maximum rise in average global temperature that was the focus of the COP26 United Nations climate conference, the mix of corals on the Barrier Reef will change but it could still thrive, said the study's lead author Professor Terry Hughes, of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. "If we can hold global warming to 1.5 degrees global average warming then I think we'll still have a vibrant Great Barrier Reef," he said. Bleaching is a stress response by overheated corals during heat waves, where they lose their colour and many struggle to survive. Eighty percent of the World Heritage-listed wonder has been bleached severely at least once since 2016, the study by James Cook University in Australia's Queensland state found. "Even the most remote, most pristine parts of the Great Barrier Reef have now bleached severely at least once," Hughes said.
1.5 degrees (Score:2)
They are going to die [nbcnews.com].
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Ideally we shouldn't kill them off faster than new corals can evolve.
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Ideally we shouldn't kill them off faster than new corals can evolve.
They have survived global extinction events. They will still be here long after the blip that is us.
It will move (Score:1)
A tree is a tree ... a fish is a fish .... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think we will keep the warming down to 1.5 degrees. If we can't them wear a mask or take the vaccine to save their own cancer survivor mom, you think they will be kind to some fish in some strange part of the world they are never going to even visit? Anyway they have paid 10$ a month to Disney to watch Finding Nemo and they probably count that as their contribution to the greens ....
Re: A tree is a tree ... a fish is a fish .... (Score:3)
Come on man, it is not good to make fun of people who were exhibiting Alzheimerâ(TM)s and dementia symptoms.
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A lot of people seem to think that the 1.5C means we don't exceed 1.5C. In fact it means we overshoot and get it back down to 1.5C by the end of the century. At this point it's almost impossible to avoid reaching 1.5C.
If all the current pledges are met we are on target for 1.9C by 2100. If past performance is a guide to keeping pledges we are looking at about 2.5C.
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Republicans are very good with sound bites and quickies.
They must be great quickies since almost 35 years after Reagan's presidency ended, people just like you are still using them.
It sounds like someone is still a little upset from Tuesday's results in Virginia and beyond.
1.5 degrees (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of hysteria around 1.5 degrees. Unfortunately, it's not attainable even if everything changed today. From an interview with Andrew Weaver, a prominent Canadian climate scientist[1]:
Interviewer: Let's get to the COP26 meeting in Glasgow. This meeting is meant to build on the Paris agreement of 2015, when the world's nations committed to keeping climate change to not more than two degrees---ideally 1.5 degrees. How are we doing on that?
Weaver: Let's be very clear: one and a half degrees is unattainable---it's not possible. The world has warmed by 1.1 degrees already. We know that there's a permafrost carbon feedback that will add maybe another 0.2 on that. We know that if we do nothing but keep existing levels of greenhouse gases fixed at the present values, we've got a 0.6 degree warming. Really, two degrees is unlikely and it's all hands on deck for three.
But there's nothing magic about one and a half degrees. And one of the things that I was most troubled about was when we started to see this narrative develop, 'We have 12 years left, we have 10 years left, we have eight years left.' And why that was troubling to me is I know many youth for which that message has been alarming and caused great angst and suffering and panic about their future. In fact, there's no scientific reason or rationale for 1.5 versus 2 vs 2.5. We know that the greater the warming, the worse it'll get. But let's not get hung up about 1.5.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirk... [www.cbc.ca]
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Climate scientists have been admitting this in private for a long time. But if anyone who says it in public, the "liberal" media immediately pounces on them as a doomsayer killjoy debbie downer who should be igno
Re: 1.5 degrees (Score:1)
Re: Child Abuse (Score:3)
We're in the middle of a mass extinction. No, we don't have the technology to survive that.
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No one ever told you that gw will cause the extinction of the human race so no need for such catastrophizing!
We'll do just fine. 100,000 years before agriculture, and before textiles, metallurgy, and the wheel, we humans began migrating to the ends of the earth using technology no better than stone tools and dug-out canoes, wearing animal furs and skins to keep warm, and having no written language.
Re: Child Abuse (Score:1)
No one ever told you that gw will cause the extinction of the human race so no need for such catastrophizing!
Are you dense or are you trolling?
This has been public knowledge for so long that it even has its own fucking Wikipedia page. [wikipedia.org]
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He is not the only expert with such calculations. The problem is that around 3C it gets really, really bad. And there may be yet undiscovered other booster effects for the change.
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Sorry but that is nonsense. 1.5C was chosen because the best climate science says that 1.5C will be catastrophic but somewhat manageable, i.e. there won't be mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people, or major wars over resources and emissions.
At 2.0C you would expect to see states failing and their populations trying to move somewhere else due to climate change. Even in developed nations there will be massive disruption and many areas will become uninhabitable. We are talking major changes to every
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But there's nothing magic about one and a half degrees. And one of the things that I was most troubled about was when we started to see this narrative develop, 'We have 12 years left, we have 10 years left, we have eight years left.' And why that was troubling to me is I know many youth for which that message has been alarming and caused great angst and suffering and panic about their future.
Then you have completely missed the point about the narrative. The point *was* to alarm. If I told you don't stand on the road you'll get hit by a car in 1.5 seconds, you're less likely to stand on the road.
The world is fucked. With all the panic we can't achieve a target. What do you think would happen if the target were instead far higher?
But let's not get hung up about 1.5.
No, let's. Like really, let's focus on this. It's close. Keep it people's minds. The world should be based on achievement, not on participation awards.
Oh no, it's 1.51 degrees (Score:3, Funny)
Reef died!
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Notice that it's worded is very carefully. They didn't say that the reef will die if the temperature goes over 1.5 degrees. They didn't say the reef will die at all.
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They didn't say the reef will die at all.
They don't have to, because that's already the general assumption. And since we expect to exceed 1.5 degrees warming, this statement is worthless.
Re:Evolution (Score:4, Informative)
If it gets colder that might be a bigger problem
Colder means more oxygene.
And the temperature increase is not the only problem, but the acidation of the water, to which corals are very sensitive.
Pretty sure that the coral will evolve and adapt too so it can likely go higher than 1.5 degrees.
That is not how evolution works. It works by chance, not by willfull "oh, we have to evolve and adapt or we are doomed".
Re:Evolution (Score:4, Informative)
The Dinosaurs died off because the world cooled too much.
No, they died because an asteroid impact killed them. In the long run only animals as small as your fist survived (do you actually learn nothing in school?)
Modern humans have technology like Dykes, air conditioners, sunscreen to survive a much hotter world.
Yes, because the future 13 billion people will be magically growing food in deserts.
World has been much warmer
Yes.
in the past and much greener.
No.
CO2 rich atmosphere support much more plant life and Megafauna which survive on it.
Nope. We had a O2 rich atmosphere once, when super big insects and spiders thrived.
CO2 level was rarely ever at the level it is now. And certainly not during the previous 5 million years during which mankind - if you want to call early humans mankind - existed.
You could read a book about it. But I guess it does not really interest you. Otherwise you would not parrot completely false bullshit here.
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Comet impact couldnt kill all the dinosaurs as it only impacted a small location. What killed them off was that the dust cloud from that impact blocked the sun and reduced the temperature of the world.
Global Warming increases rainfall. The Sahara and the Australian outback will be Green in a warmer world. So where are you getting the deserts from. Arabia is al
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Umm no. There is zero evidence that global warming is increasing rainfall in the Sahara. Quite the opposite in fact. The Sahara is growing and threatening the homes and livelihood of millions of people. I can find no references in the scientific literature about the Sahara shrinking, whatever the cause.
As a farmer in the Canadian prairies, I can attest that global warming is changing our weather patterns here and it's making growing food more challenging. Sometimes we are getting more rainfall, but ofte
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Pretty sure that the coral will evolve
Of course it will. All we need to do is really slowly raise the temperature over the course of a thousand years by 1.5deg and the coral will adapt.
Coral doesn't have a high reproductive / growth rate. Once seeded by larvae a coral reef takes literally several millennia to grow. It's an incredibly frigging slow growing organism. It needs time, time that we're not giving it.
1.5C since when? last year? (Score:2)
What is the ref point? 1.5C since 1998? Or pre 1800s? BC?
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1st, 1970 at UTC, obviously.
What else date would you pick? Or do you know the average planetary temperature of the year 1800?
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Hand back your geek card - or if you consider yourself a nerd: your nerd card.
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However, it doesn't really matter. Until unregulated industrialization massively disrupted it, earth's mean temperature had been within +-0.5*C of the same value for nearly 11000 years, and within a quarter degree for nearly 4000. So all of those values are essentially the same.
Earth's surface temperature has increased by as much in the last 80 years as it did every 1000+ years during the end of the
Remarkable great barrier reef recovery in 2020/202 (Score:1)
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What about the Great Siberian Coral reef? (Score:1)
Re: What about the Great Siberian Coral reef? (Score:2)
Oh, you mean the Speculative Siberian Coral Reef? Might get cancelled.
In other words: It is dead (Score:4, Insightful)
The human race will never succeed in limiting warming to 1.5C. Most people and the "leadership" we have _still_ have not understood what is going on.
Won't happen (Score:2)
Scott "Big Banana" Morrison still burns coal like there was no tomorrow and that way, there won't be one.
I suppose it's irrelevant (Score:2)
...that most GBR bleaching has been found to be the result of agricultural runoff?
We're trying to top the Permian / Triassic (Score:2)
Come on, guys. Let's get on with the New Great Dying! Humanity has finally found its true purpose!
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I'm too busy burning tires and leaving my vehicles running in the driveway 24/7 to read that.
Anecdote Ahead (Score:3)
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it is like burning down a forest
No, it's far worse than that. If you go to a burnt down forest a year later you'll find it teeming with new growth and life. A reef takes literally millennia to form.