A Call for Giant Coral Sightings

[Rick Murchison]

Global warming is not happening.

I for one would be very surprised if it isn't happening. Geologically we're still just on the tail end of an ice-age, several degrees and 200+ feet of sea level below the between-the-ice-ages average, so I expect we're headed for warmer and deeper.
But to think human activity is causing it or that human activity can slow or arrest it is the height of arrogance. The only real question is how long we'll wait and how much money we'll waste before the inevitable retreat from today's shoreline. New Orleans is instructive...
Rick

 

[Nemrod]

The last 650,000 years, lol, that was yesterday on a planet approx 5 billion years old. Your studies are limited. No,I don't believe a bunch of scientist or grad students running around poking holes in corals will help solve whatever problemyou suppose we have. Further, I don't read science fiction as science so I don't care what Michale Cireton thinks.
Here is something, the scientific method in it's purest form does not asume an outcome and then run an experiment to prove that outcome and exclude contradictory evidence. You already have your outcome--you have decided human activity is at fault completely-- and your just looking to find supporting evidence and ignore anything that does not support. That, as a science trained person myself, we call that junk science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age -- just an interesting link for temperaure graphs for this interglacial. Now, if you want to run this back further you need the similar temperature graphs for the glacial/interglacial perids previous. I will let you do your own research so as not to bias you, it will take a few weeks and more than a few abstracts to wade through to get the data, the results are interesting. N

 

[isurus]

On the subject of coring I will always remember a story I read of some of the really old bristlecone pines being cored by a young scientist who broke a corer off in one of the oldest pines in the world and then got permission to chop it down to get the corer back!

 

[MSilvia]

...and then got permission to chop it down to get the corer back!

If true, that's obscene.

 

[Hank49]

I for one would be very surprised if it isn't happening. Geologically we're still just on the tail end of an ice-age, several degrees and 200+ feet of sea level below the between-the-ice-ages average, so I expect we're headed for warmer and deeper.
But to think human activity is causing it or that human activity can slow or arrest it is the height of arrogance. The only real question is how long we'll wait and how much money we'll waste before the inevitable retreat from today's shoreline. New Orleans is instructive...
Rick

I agree. Also, does Earth follow warm and cool "trends" in predictable cycles? Or are these often reversed by a catastrophic event like a collision with an asteroid, meteor...or a huge volcanic eruption? Or, are there no "cycles? It's always just random based on the most recent cataclismic event?

 

[csaenger]

Glacial-interglacial cycles largely follow changes in the ammount of radiation we get from the sun. The ammount of solar energy we receive changes because Earth's orbit isn't fixed but wobbles around a bit, causing 100,000, 41,000 and 18,000-21,000 year forcing of glacial interglacial cycles. These cycles are slightly modulated by things like volcanic eruptions and sun spot intensity. As was pointed out, the positioning of the Earth and Sun was such that we got the most energy from the sun around 6,000 years ago. Since then we've been receiving less energy.

Interestingly, global temperature across glacial-interglacial cycles has always correlated with the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere, and CO2 is now increasing at an unprecidented rate. As Nemrod points out, we only know about CO2 for about 650,000...a small part of Earth's history, but it's the best we can do right now. If anyone has a suggestion as to how the CO2 concentration of the Earth could be reconstructed for 6 billion years, I would love to hear it. Furthermore, my opinioin that humans are influencing climate is not based on assumed results, nor is it based on junk science, but rather on over 40 years of climate research which I have read extensively. Nemrod, if you subscribe to the scientific method, I would like to know what research your opinion is based on? I am familiar with the Little Ice Age and the Medeival Warm Period. I understand that there are natural climate variabilities on a variety of scales. I also know the graph included on your link shows an anomalous spike at exactly the point we started putting more CO2 into the atmosphere (industrial revolution). Ironically, this figure is partially based on coral studies, and I can find the original paper if you're interested. The spike at 1850 has been statistically proven to be distinct from the rest of the climate record. Could the change in climate and change in CO2 be a coincidence? Yes, but based on all the evidence we have it's not. Considering the known link between CO2 and climate, I think we are bound to change things as we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere. The laws of physics and chemistry assure that increased CO2 will make the oceans more acidic, and tougher for corals to grow in.

Obviously from other's view on this thread, my thoughts are not the only ones out there, and there remains a doubt as to whether recent changes are anthropogenic or not. If they are, I feel we should enact policy to reduce greenhouse emissions. If they are, well then I suppose we should hunker down and prepare for the worst. My research focuses on understanding how climate has behaved since the Little Ice Age (~1500-1850) in the Caribbean. On it's own it will likely not be a groundbreaking study, but when it is coupled with all the researching going on in the world, I believe we will arrive at the correct (not the assumed) cause of climate change and allow us to plan accordingly.

I've found this dialog insightful and informative, but frankly too exhausting to continue. Thanks for voicing your opinions. If anyone sees merit in my cause, I encourage you to share accounts of large coral sightings, and I will continue to check this post. Finally, if any of you are ever in Massachusetts, and want a first hand look our research, I encouage you to look me up.
Cheers,
Casey Saenger

 

[archman]

Global warming would benefit coral growth more likely than hinder it unless there is some other factors involved--which there are many such as clarity, salinity, ph and on and on and some how I don't think your study will answer a darn thing.

Yeah, it's the confounding factors which destroy the coral. As csaenger ststed, seawater pH is on a RAPID shift lately, and oceanographers are scrambling to study the long term affects. Reports on this are popping up like gangbusters in every relevant journal; they're hot news. The pH imbalance inhibits CaCO3 uptake in organisms which use the stuff (i.e. coccolithophores, forams, corals) in their skeletons. Coccolithophores, in particular, are critical components of oceanic primary production.

Hermatypic corals have very narrow thermal tolerances. When sea temperatures stray even a few degrees higher than their maxima, polyps start expelling their zooxanthellae. This is the primary cause for coral bleaching worldwide. It was normally thought confined to El Nino events, but now we're seeing it every dang summer. If anyone keep tabs on coral reef reports, they'll recall that the last announcement stated that something like 20% of coral was recently dead or dying in both the Caribbean and Pacific.

Elevated sea temperatures also enhance prevalence of bacterial and viral pathogens. Loosley following the Q10 effect, poikilothermic metabolism spikes with elevated temperatures, and smaller critters can outgrow and outcompete larger ones. Coral growth is overshadowed by disease agents and fliamentous algal flora; the effects of this are now seen on reefs globally.

There's also the clear linkage between elevated sea temperatures and heightened hurricane number/intensity. Equatorial and subtropical ecosystems tend to exist as environmentally stable biomes; they are not adapted to deal with larger ratios of physical disturbance, which are more typical for higher latitudes.

Taking coral cores from exceptionally old colonies certainly has merit in the scientific community. One of the primary arguments against global warming is our limited ability to make inferences about environmental conditions in the past. The slow growth rate of coral and it's retention of previous skeletal material makes it a superb study. Expect to see this being done in the near future, if it's not already being done. The work is fuly endorsed by virtually all the relevant parties... the only real hangups are by resource managers that want to make sure the coring is done as cleanly as possible.

 

[Hank49]

I've monitored pH in seawater in at least 15 locations in 5 different tropical countries on the last 20 years and it's always right around 8.

 

[DavidPT40]

Thats the dilemma. Studying an organism can be quite hazardous to its health. I have read a couple books by Alan Rabinowitz, who studies large cats. Even when he was being very cautious, he was still accidentaly killing many of the rare species he was studying.

Another example was fish in the Caribbean that had some sort of radio or gps markers attached to them. A big grouper ended up eating most of them.

 

[archman]

I've monitored pH in seawater in at least 15 locations in 5 different tropical countries on the last 20 years and it's always right around 8.

And it still is "right around 8". You''ll need an instrument with a higher sensitivity. Currently average oceanic pH is down by at least 0.1 compared to the mid-20th century, with near-term forecasts of a 0.4 drop by the end of this upcoming century. A .8 drop is an ecological apocolypse.

Oceanic pH isn't supposed to significantly change on decadal time scales, nor anywhere close to that. A 0.1 change within 50 years is highly significant. There is a great deal of new research studying this right now. It's the #1 global warming threat in the oceanographic community, at present.