Where do you stand on the GW/AGW issue?

[Darth Rotor]

Think you've seen terrorism? You ain't seen nothin' yet. Check this out:

http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2007/1000733/index.html

Read between the lines: the climate changes in Australia and the Ukraine have affected grain production; farmers are selling out in Australia and moving to Tasmania where water is available. And looking to amortize the investment.

That ain't some hypothetical. That's the real world: people will be starving within the year if that doesn't get fixed. Guess what they're gonna do about it? Same thing they always do; and if they can't put together an army to do it, I guess the Taliban and Al Qaeda showed 'em how to get the bread sliced, didn't they?

If your whole village starved, and someone rescued you and showed you how to get revenge, and told you who to get it against, would you do it? How about if you didn't have any education except what your rescuers taught you, and that included a religion that says that anyone who believes differently than you deserves to be killed, or that their fate is unimportant?

Think about it. The science is all very well, but if this doesn't get fixed soon, there's gonna be the devil to pay and no pitch hot. Not to mention, we got our own problems with apocalyptic religions here in the US, and this is just gonna play right into that scenario, right? And like always, when things get dangerous, people are gonna look for a strong ruler- and that's gonna work out just the same way it always has.

Hope everybody on the "buttheresnoglobalwarming" side likes autocratic theocracies. Because that's where this is all going.

Here's the deal, as I see it.

Need more information, but I also think "waste not want not" and that the pH change, and its influence on coral, is one of the more significant markers pointing to the problem.

Humans have a profound influence on the environment, in some cases, due to concentrated effort. The Cod fisheries of Europe and North America are a fine example of how that concentrated influence can spin out of control. It took political solutions to counter that, but someone paid the price. Me, in having trouble finding cod, and the Canadian and American cod fishing communities, who can't make a living at it anymore.

Any policy that one tries to implement on a global basis is at risk for political cheating and loophole diving. No, I do not trust for a minute any global environmental rule, when Mexico, our trade partner in NAFTA, faces NO SANCTIONS for how they poison their land in pursuit of profits, for both Mexican and American interests and shareholders.

Therefore, when I see how Kyoto is crafted, as a penalty, or a "you have it good" tax, its political nature overcomes its value.

Carbon trading? Carbon credits?

Who assigns value? Who won't cheat to make a buck on that market? Every other market people participate is filled with cheaters, loophole divers, and chicanery.

My response is to reduce my foot print a bit. That I can do. I do not trust China and India to self stifle growth, and those two nations are The 800 pound gorillas for the next fifty years.

Far to many "Kyoto is the answer" woos are unwilling to admit how politicized any policy formation is. It took strong arming to get the unleaded gas rule applied. It took strong arming to get the harsher envirnomental rules passed in CA for the past 30 years, political strong arming.

Someone pays a price for that.

Schneibster, I agree with you in one respect: like the battles over water rights that led to range wars in the old American West, the scarcity management issue has immense potential for more, not less, war in the next generation. Some observers of the Sudan conflict at the moment point to the land not being able to support the growth in population, and the age old tension between farmers and pastoralists, herders and ranchers.

People will die, and kill, over this thing we call quality of life.

They always have.

Those in the ivory tower seem to me to be unwittingly setting the conditions for more conflict, some of which will be armed, not less.

DR

 

[Slimething]

Think you've seen terrorism? You ain't seen nothin' yet. Check this out:

*blither..blither*

Hope everybody on the "buttheresnoglobalwarming" side likes autocratic theocracies. Because that's where this is all going.

Like I said, nothing like a calm, analytical, well-reasoned approach to things.

 

[a_unique_person]

I'm already well familiar with the Arrhenius (etc.) arguments. I want a modern "proof of principle" using current, high-fidelity equipment. Why is this so hard to understand?

You want a pony, again. Why are you asking people on a forum on the internet? I am an interested amateur. I like to take part in the debate. I do not know much about this topic compared to an expert, and especially not a body of experts. Whenever someone asks for a medical opinion here,the first thing someone will say is "go and see a doctor".

If you really want the answer, go to an expert. I know a climate researcher, and he gave up on telling people on the internet years ago, because they ignore science, and stick with their prejudices, which is a perfectly logical stance to take, since any attempt to convince someone who doesn't want to be convinced is a complete waste of time. CO2 burners who committed to doing so are just like the alcoholic who doesn't want to give up, and gets very nasty when you try to convince them they should.

Again, with the continued false analogy with a closed system. Maybe this is the reason why so many people believe the AGW/CO2 arguments are plausible. That camp falsely believes that we're talking about such strict tolerances.

For the umpteenth time, I am just trying to say that a trace element can have a significant effect. Is that too hard to accept?

Well, you don't understand human research, apparently. For prospective research, there are IRB's and ethics committees and informed consent. When you are proposing something that may have a negative impact on human lives, you have to make sure you've ensured that every contingency is considered and there is a way to stop the study if it is clear that more harm than benefit is occurring.

The IPCC puts out information. People demand more research and information. Scientists like those in links I provided put their own time into trying to fill out the gaps. However, that becomes too much information, or there is always some other reason that it is not read. It's biased, it's the commies, it's not peer reviewed, it's too hard to understand, it's not exactly what I was asking for.

There are mountains of highly detailed information in research papers and specialist publications. I suggest you go and read them all.

Having said that, there are numerous examples where retrospective analysis and what was thought to be true was subsequently proven wrong when looked at prospectively in controlled settings. Take the case for the "miracles" of Vitamin E, for example.

Yes, there are many such examples, especially in medical research, where a team or two come up with wrong science. Further research then invalidates those findings. AGW has been heavily researched for over one hundred years now. There are many teams and hundreds of scientists poring over it right now. They still haven't found it to be incorrect. It's as sure as we are sure that smoking is bad for you.

Again, I want a "proof of principle" experiment using modern equipment. This is not a hard thing to do. I'm not asking for much.

-Dr. Imago

Did you read about the enhanced greenhouse effect? I gave you the link a few times. You won't get that in a lab. It involves an atmosphere that is kilometers high, for a start.

The greenhouse effect will in fact operate even if the absorption of radiation were totally saturated in the lower atmosphere. The planet's temperature is regulated by the thin upper layers where radiation does escape easily into space. Adding more greenhouse gas there will change the balance. Moreover, even a 1% change in that delicate balance would make a serious difference in the planet’s surface temperature. The logic is rather simple once it is grasped, but it takes a new way of looking at the atmosphere — not as a single slab, like the gas in Koch's tube (or the glass over a greenhouse), but as a set of interacting layers. (The full explanation is in the essay on Simple Models, use link at right.)

Not until the mid-20th century would scientists fully grasp, and calculate with some precision, just how the effect works. A rough explanation goes like this. Visible sunlight penetrates easily through the air and warms the Earth’s surface. When the surface emits invisible infrared heat radiation, this radiation too easily penetrates the main gases of the air. But as Tyndall found, even a trace of CO[SIZE=-1]2[/SIZE], no more than it took to fill a bottle in his laboratory, is almost opaque to heat radiation. Thus a good part of the radiation that rises from the surface is absorbed by CO[SIZE=-1]2[/SIZE] in the middle levels of the atmosphere. Its energy transfers into the air itself rather than escaping directly into space. Not only is the air thus warmed, but also some of the energy trapped there is radiated back to the surface, warming it further.





=>CO2 greenhouse
That’s a shorthand way of explaining the greenhouse effect — seeing it from below, from "inside" the atmosphere. Unfortunately, shorthand arguments can be misleading if you push them too far. Fourier, Tyndall and most other scientists for nearly a century used this approach, looking at warming from ground level, so to speak, asking about the radiation that reaches and leaves the surface of the Earth. So they tended to think of the atmosphere overhead as a unit, as if it were a single sheet of glass. (Thus the "greenhouse" analogy.) But this is not how global warming actually works, if you look at the process in detail. What happens to infrared radiation emitted by the Earth's surface? As it moves up layer by layer through the atmosphere, some is stopped in each layer. (To be specific: a molecule of carbon dioxide, water vapor or some other greenhouse gas absorbs a bit of energy from the radiation. The molecule may radiate the energy back out again in a random direction. Or it may transfer the energy into velocity in collisions with other air molecules, so that the layer of air where it sits gets warmer.) The layer of air radiates some of the energy it has absorbed back toward the ground, and some upwards to higher layers. As you go higher, the atmosphere gets thinner and colder. Eventually the energy reaches a layer so thin that radiation can escape into space.
What happens if we add more carbon dioxide? In the layers so high and thin that much of the heat radiation from lower down slips through, adding more greenhouse gas means the layer will absorb more of the rays. So the place from which most of the heat energy finally leaves the Earth will shift to higher layers. Those are colder layers, so they do not radiate heat as well. The planet as a whole is now taking in more energy than it radiates (which is in fact our current situation). As the higher levels radiate some of the excess downwards, all the lower levels down to the surface warm up. The imbalance must continue until the high levels get warmer and radiate out more energy. As in Tyndall's analogy of a dam on a river, the barrier thrown across the outgoing radiation forces the level of temperature everywhere beneath it to rise until there is enough radiation pushing out to balance what the Sun sends in. While that may sound fairly simple once it is explained, the process is not obvious if you have started by thinking of the atmosphere from below as a single slab. The correct way of thinking eluded neary all scientists for more than a century after Fourier. Physicists learned only gradually how to describe the greenhouse effect. To do so, they had to make detailed calculations of a variety of processes in each layer of the atmosphere. (For more on absorption of infrared by gas molecules, follow the link at right to the essay on Basic Radiation Calculations.)

From the link I provided. You won't get that in a lab.

 

[mhaze]

Like I said, nothing like a calm, analytical, well-reasoned approach to things.

Too bad the Santa Barbara blue line got axed.

More GW comedy is needed.

 

[Ezekiel Crowe]

Having not read through most of the thread, I cannot comment on what's been said, but I'm not about to read through more than four pages of forum posts just to be "up to date" on what everyone's thinking.

But the very issue of whether or not it's happening isn't as important as people tend to think it is. Either it is happening or isn't, and I'm really not sure whether to stand on the right wing or the left wing on the matter. Consider this, then: If radical climate change is happening, and we continue to do nothing about it, what will happen? On the same token, what if we make the effort, discover that we worried for nothing, and ended up with an economic depression that made the 1930s look like a cakewalk?

That is what we need to ask ourselves.

 

[The Gnomon]

Like I said, nothing like a calm, analytical, well-reasoned approach to things.

Correct. It's nothing like a "calm, analytical approach."
Here's some scenarios:
1. Everybody buys into the CO2 hypothesis, and the world devotes available resources to decreasing CO2 in the atmosphere. (There's no shortage of suggested ideas to do this.)
1.a. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and the Earth cools off.
1.a.1 But the Ice caps continue to melt, and the coasts flood; or
1.a.2. And everything goes back to normal, or
1.b Warming continues, and
1.b.1 Nothing happens, or
1.b.2 Attempts to cope with rising water, climate changes, etc. are insufficient, because resources have been depleted in the CO2 reduction effort, and coasts flood, populations starve, governments collapse, and anarchy (image "Road Warrior) reigns.
2. CO2 continues to be ignored, and the levels rise, and
2.1 Nothing happens, or
2.2 The scenarios of 1.b occur, or
2.2 Something else happens
3. Intelligent, thoughtful persons investigate the global warming and make reasoned, experimentally-based determinations as to the best course of action to take, including atmosphere gas adjustment, changes in surface reflectivity, contingency plans for climate change, rainfall distribution, and water level changes. Plans are doable, flexible, and subject to continuous refinement as information, and the consequences of actions taken so far, are used to evaluate and assign priorities and to develop more innovative interventions (and discontinue those found to be ineffective).

One can hope for Sc. 3. The most likely is Sc. 2.

Unquestionably, life will survive. It has survived much worse. Whether we, and/or "civilization" will survive, is another question entirely.

 

[mhaze]

Here's the deal, as I see it.
....the pH change, and its influence on coral, is one of the more significant markers pointing to the problem. DR

I would like to point you to this article, which discusses issues with the latest commentary by Donald Kennedy, editor of Science magazine, concerning coral reefs.

Donald Kennedy, editor of Science, has been a bad boy...

 

[Schneibster]

Here's the deal, as I see it.

Need more information, but I also think "waste not want not" and that the pH change, and its influence on coral, is one of the more significant markers pointing to the problem.

Humans have a profound influence on the environment, in some cases, due to concentrated effort. The Cod fisheries of Europe and North America are a fine example of how that concentrated influence can spin out of control. It took political solutions to counter that, but someone paid the price. Me, in having trouble finding cod, and the Canadian and American cod fishing communities, who can't make a living at it anymore.

We disagree on whether more information is needed to start making decisions and taking actions, but we don't disagree in general on whether more information is needed.

It's relatively obvious (unless you ignore the majority (vast majority?) of climate science professionals' professionally stated opinion) that the amount of heat coming in to Earth's surface hasn't changed substantially, the amount of heat going out has decreased, and the amount of heat staying has increased. All three propositions are supported by extensive satellite evidence, and in addition that heat has to go somewhere, and we measure rising temperatures. Ignoring all the nonsense that the woos introduce at the instigation of the real players to cast doubt and delay action by another few months of profits, simple heat balance arguments based on satellite data tell us it's getting warmer, and when we measure it, that's what we find. All the best information we have says it's CO2, and if we reduce CO2, we'll reduce other pollutants that have serious health and environment effects along with CO2. If it turns out it's not CO2 but some other pollutant, then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but we won't have hurt anything in the system by decreasing it, and we will have mitigated the impact of whatever that something else might be; we KNOW CO2 is a GWG, so decreasing it can only help it get cooler.

We can and have had major environmental impact; we are currently in the midst of what paleontologists describe as a mass extinction event, and as far as we can tell, it's us. At base, it's because we eat everything we come across if we can; it's more complicated than that, but it starts there. From that standpoint, GW is just one more in a series of catastrophes reaching back a hundred thousand years that we're implicated in causing various ways. A hundred thousand years is a blink of an eye to a paleontologist; the Permian Extinction took ten to fifty times that long, and they call that one the Great Dying.

There's a lot of whining about all the economic impact it will have, but the fact of the matter is, the economic impact of doing something is mostly going to be on the people currently rolling in wealth and can spare it, whereas the impact of doing nothing is going to be on the poorest, who will die in droves. If the rich try to screw up everybody else's lives so they can make another fifty million to add to the ten billion they already have, I predict it's gonna get ugly. You would think anyone could look at what happened in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, or in the US and France in the 18th, and figure how that was gonna go, but the average IQ is, after all, 100, and it doesn't seem to matter how rich you are.

Personally, if we start doing something pretty quick, I think we can save the situation; if we don't, I think we're in deep ****. Since I'm predicting terrorism, and since I'm pretty rich on the scale of most of the Third World, I figure I'm a target, and I ain't gettin' any of that money those *******s are makin' pumpin' all that CO2 out; basically, I get to pay for their greed, as if I wasn't already for health care and oil and the declining price of my property and the relatively ****** job I have to work at because they stole all the money out of the stock market. Gotta keep your eye on which side of the bread the butter's on, ya know? So screw 'em, they've already made enough messes, they got their friggin' money, they should now go piss off and let the rest of us clean up their mess AGAIN. Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. Don't be lookin' for any favors later on, either, if you ain't helpin'. (Not you personally, Darth.)

Any policy that one tries to implement on a global basis is at risk for political cheating and loophole diving. No, I do not trust for a minute any global environmental rule, when Mexico, our trade partner in NAFTA, faces NO SANCTIONS for how they poison their land in pursuit of profits, for both Mexican and American interests and shareholders.

Therefore, when I see how Kyoto is crafted, as a penalty, or a "you have it good" tax, its political nature overcomes its value.

I see it just the opposite way; it's flawed, but it's better than nothing. If people start dying of starvation and terrorism escalates, or wars start over food, which it's looking increasingly like is getting ready to get ramped up, it's going to be a generation or more of the same crap we already had; whatever the latest one is, it'll be "worse than 9/11" or whatever the place and/or date of the detonation of the first terror-built nuclear weapon or whatever awful thing these *******s dream up to do. Being a member of the target class with not just a whole lot of real good options for preventing or even responding to such things other than yelling about it on an Internet forum if I don't exercise my franchise next year has a way of focusing my attention. I suspect a lot of our countrymen think the same. I sure hope so, because the last six years have been a real MCF.

The main point is, DO SOMETHING. Get off the schneid. Stop sitting around playing the same games the anti-evilution and homeopathic "medicine" crowd does. If the character of the games doesn't make it obvious what's really going on, I don't know what else to cite; the evidence is all out there, and the main body of it is available in threads here on this forum, and it's pretty clear. I argued on it until I became convinced that there was no more point than there is in arguing with some idiot who doesn't think the theory of relativity is right, or thinks fossils are all a plot by the Devil and/or a conspiracy involving ten million biologists. So I put 'em on ignore and I turned and walked away.

Is Kyoto the answer? Hell, no. But it's a START, which is better than we've made so far. Think it's not right? Fine, come up with something better. But the alternative is not doing nothing; that's not going to help. We did that for two decades and it's worse, not better. It's not going away on its own. Like I said, lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

Carbon trading? Carbon credits?

Who assigns value? Who won't cheat to make a buck on that market? Every other market people participate is filled with cheaters, loophole divers, and chicanery.

My response is to reduce my foot print a bit. That I can do. I do not trust China and India to self stifle growth, and those two nations are The 800 pound gorillas for the next fifty years.

Way too true for my liking. China at least is a signatory to Kyoto, and if they want to keep doing business with the US and Europe, as far as I'm concerned they'd better sign whatever comes along next, and it better have teeth for them, because otherwise my personal boycott of Chinese and Indian products will continue, and I don't think I'm alone (in fact, I know I'm not).

Far to many "Kyoto is the answer" woos are unwilling to admit how politicized any policy formation is. It took strong arming to get the unleaded gas rule applied. It took strong arming to get the harsher envirnomental rules passed in CA for the past 30 years, political strong arming.

Someone pays a price for that.

Sure, as long as it's not someone's life. And LA is a better place than it would be with ten million cars without catalytic converters farting out toxic waste into the atmosphere, no? I mean, I'm glad I don't have to live there, but there are people who don't have a choice.

The auto companies fought that tooth and nail, and they still are. Don't think a single damn thing has changed there. The ONLY reason they're making hybrids is because the market demanded it; the current administration sure as hell didn't, nor did their pet congresscritters for a few congresses back. Again, is it perfect? Hell, no. But we got off the schneid, and we got something done.

What I don't get is why it has to be all one way or all the other. Whatever happened to how industry gets things made being a matter of concern? We used to have subsidies for this stuff; you get the carrot, the subsidy, and the stick, the law. Take them both out, and let's get to work. Of course, we'd have a hell of a lot better chance if we hadn't spent every damn nickel on Iraq, but that's water over the dam; supposedly the US is the land of innovation, where the hell is the government? And you and I both know the answer to that question.

I recall a time when the US government was involved in basic research that led to innovations that changed the world. New industries opened up, new technologies burgeoned, everybody made a potful of money, and the future was so bright we all had to wear shades. But the old rich got frozen out of the party, so they took half their money and screwed everything up, and now they're buying everything they can up to prevent it happening again. It's not like they don't have enough; it's that they don't have control over it, so they wanna screw it up for everyone else to prove they're in charge. This is gonna get ugly if it keeps up, and I'm surprised more of them haven't figured that out. The last pack of old rich who screwed things up wound up playing the lead role in le grand guignol called The Terror in France in the 1790s. It can go down that way again, and it will, mark my words, if they don't get some respect for the quarter billion people they're screwing. You can screw some folks for a while without them noticing, but after a while they notice, and then they get mad, and it gets ugly.

Schneibster, I agree with you in one respect: like the battles over water rights that led to range wars in the old American West, the scarcity management issue has immense potential for more, not less, war in the next generation. Some observers of the Sudan conflict at the moment point to the land not being able to support the growth in population, and the age old tension between farmers and pastoralists, herders and ranchers.

Precisely. It's an excellent example. Everyone makes it out to be some religious thing or something, but the truth is, the religious stuff is just a good excuse for following their own interests. It usually works that way. Won't be any different in the current case, either, just more widespread, and the tactics will be different. But the underlying reality will be what it always has been when resources are short. Humans are self-justification machines, and religion has always piggy-backed on that.

People will die, and kill, over this thing we call quality of life.

They always have.

Those in the ivory tower seem to me to be unwittingly setting the conditions for more conflict, some of which will be armed, not less.

DR

Now that I disagree with; seems to me there's a difference between how many people will discard everything over quality of life if they aren't starving vs. if they are. It's a question of how big the recruiting pool is, you see. And the ones most fearsome are always the ones who have nothing to lose; that hasn't changed. What's changed is the damage they can do, and in two decades, that damage may be more than the Earth can sustain. Have you ever heard the term, mataglap nano? You should look it up and consider its potential as a terror weapon.

 

[bobdroege7]

I would like to point you to this article, which discusses issues with the latest commentary by Donald Kennedy, editor of Science magazine, concerning coral reefs.

Donald Kennedy, editor of Science, has been a bad boy...

Kennedy may be an irresponsible thief, but the author of the article you cited is as AUP would say "a nutter"

It's easy to imagine ways to fix coral reefs. For one thing, we could strip mine them if the ocean level drops, so that the top of the reefs will stay immersed in seawater. Or we can take blocks of the dead part of a reef (which is most of it), and spread them on top of the coral layer cake if the water level rises. We do that kind of thing all the time in dredging rivers and harbors. So we can keep adjust coral reefs to the heigh to sea water if that ever changes.

 

[mhaze]

Kennedy may be an irresponsible thief, but the author of the article you cited is as AUP would say "a nutter"

But how about the effects of GW/AGW on coral reefs? That is a subject unexplored here. Is it also unsubstantiated, as most or all other "effects" turn out on examination to be?

 

[bobdroege7]

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/is_george_bush.php

House has 25,000 gallons of rainwater storage, gray water collection from sinks and showers for irrigation, passive solar, geothermal heating and cooling.

the url gives it away, but who's house do you think this is?

sometimes we need to follow our leaders by doing what they do and not what they say.

 

[bobdroege7]

But how about the effects of GW/AGW on coral reefs? That is a subject unexplored here. Is it also unsubstantiated, as most or all other "effects" turn out on examination to be?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/warming-coral.html

explore away, from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

The study, in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, predicts that isolated reef ecosystems like that around the Seychelles will suffer the most from global warming-caused bleaching events.

peer reviewed enough?

 

[a_unique_person]

I would like to point you to this article, which discusses issues with the latest commentary by Donald Kennedy, editor of Science magazine, concerning coral reefs.

Donald Kennedy, editor of Science, has been a bad boy...

A nice attack article, what has it got to do with science.

[FONT=times new roman,times]But global warming is a popular hypothesis, Dr. Kennedy. It's not established. You remember the difference.

Obviously hasn't read the AR4 yet.
[/FONT]

 

[mhaze]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/warming-coral.html

explore away, from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

peer reviewed enough?

No. It's a science news report and highly biased, not a peer reviewed article. Let's explore the bias.

"Bleaching is a global issue, and it's driven by global warming," Graham said. "So the onus is on all of us, really." "We need to reduce greenhouse gases and take these issues seriously."​

Now some actual peer reviewed articles. From worldclimatereport.com (longest running climate blog) -

Corals have a symbiotic relationship with certain photosynthetic algae in the genus Symbiodinium. The algae get nutrients from the corals and the corals acquire photosynthetic products from the algae. There are different groups (or clades) of Symbiodinium that vary genetically and that can benefit corals in different ways.

When bleaching occurs, corals essentially reject the Symbiodinium and thus lose their color. One of several potential causes of coral bleaching is high water temperatures. After bleaching occurs, large numbers of corals die. So it may seem that bleaching is not a very good evolutionary strategy.
But some corals manage to survive these bleaching events, which allows them to acquire new Symbiodinium that are potentially better adapted to their new environment....

...Andrew Baker proposed that bleaching may be an excellent strategy employed by corals that sacrifices short-term benefits for longer-term gains. That line of thinking would account for corals surviving for millions of years through much harsher climate changes than those that have been experienced over the last few decades.

Now, two new papers in Science add further evidence that corals must not be as “fragile” as certain senators might hope. Cynthia Lewis and Mary Coffroth of SUNY-Buffalo bleached Caribbean corals and exposed them to certain Symbiodinium genotypes for six weeks. The corals not only re-established symbiotic relationships with the algae, but in some cases they changed algae species, giving the corals a unique opportunity to select symbionts based upon the environmental conditions.

The second Science paper, by Angela Little and two coauthors from Townsville, Australia, looked at changing symbiotic relationships over the lifetime of the corals......

So death is not the corals’ only response to change. The ability of corals to shuffle symbionts is an effective adaptive strategy for dealing with environmental changes, such as changes water temperatures and light levels.... coral bleaching appears to be mass suicide to uninformed senators, it could actually be an excellent adaptive strategy that has allowed the species to survive for millions of years.​

References:
Little, A.F., M.J.H. van Oppen, and B.L. Willis, 2004. Flexibility in algal endosymbioses shapes growth in reef corals. Science, 304, 1492–1494.
Lewis, C.L., and M.A. Coffroth, 2004. The acquisition of exogenous algal symbionts by an octocoral after bleaching. Science, 304, 1490–1492.
Baker, A.C., 2001. Reef corals bleach to survive change. Nature, 411, 765 –766.

 

[mhaze]

Kennedy may be an irresponsible thief, but the author of the article you cited is as AUP would say "a nutter"

Whomever AUP insults should be read. From the writer.

Humans are the fastest-learning creatures ever known. In the last hundred years we have gone from choo-choo trains to scramjets. Give us another century, and who knows what we will do? Colonize Mars? Solarize energy? Double our life span? Human history gives lots of grounds for hope, and much less for despair.

It's easy to imagine ways to fix coral reefs. For one thing, we could strip mine them if the ocean level drops, so that the top of the reefs will stay immersed in seawater. Or we can take blocks of the dead part of a reef (which is most of it), and spread them on top of the coral layer cake if the water level rises. We do that kind of thing all the time in dredging rivers and harbors. So we can keep adjust coral reefs to the heigh to sea water if that ever changes.

My real worry is --- will we ever fix politicized science? Because if we allow the search for truth to be so easily twisted by political fads, we may be in really deep doo-doo.
​

 

[a_unique_person]

If we are so powerful, why can't we just find an alternative to fossil fuels?

 

[mhaze]

If we are so powerful, why can't we just find an alternative to fossil fuels?

That is a valid statement only inside the closed minds of radical environmentalists whom refuse to admit the existence of nuclear power.

 

[bobdroege7]

No. It's a science news report and highly biased, not a peer reviewed article. Let's explore the bias.

"Bleaching is a global issue, and it's driven by global warming," Graham said. "So the onus is on all of us, really." "We need to reduce greenhouse gases and take these issues seriously."​

Now some actual peer reviewed articles. From worldclimatereport.com (longest running climate blog) -

Corals have a symbiotic relationship with certain photosynthetic algae in the genus Symbiodinium. The algae get nutrients from the corals and the corals acquire photosynthetic products from the algae. There are different groups (or clades) of Symbiodinium that vary genetically and that can benefit corals in different ways.

When bleaching occurs, corals essentially reject the Symbiodinium and thus lose their color. One of several potential causes of coral bleaching is high water temperatures. After bleaching occurs, large numbers of corals die. So it may seem that bleaching is not a very good evolutionary strategy.
But some corals manage to survive these bleaching events, which allows them to acquire new Symbiodinium that are potentially better adapted to their new environment....

...Andrew Baker proposed that bleaching may be an excellent strategy employed by corals that sacrifices short-term benefits for longer-term gains. That line of thinking would account for corals surviving for millions of years through much harsher climate changes than those that have been experienced over the last few decades.

Now, two new papers in Science add further evidence that corals must not be as “fragile” as certain senators might hope. Cynthia Lewis and Mary Coffroth of SUNY-Buffalo bleached Caribbean corals and exposed them to certain Symbiodinium genotypes for six weeks. The corals not only re-established symbiotic relationships with the algae, but in some cases they changed algae species, giving the corals a unique opportunity to select symbionts based upon the environmental conditions.

The second Science paper, by Angela Little and two coauthors from Townsville, Australia, looked at changing symbiotic relationships over the lifetime of the corals......

So death is not the corals’ only response to change. The ability of corals to shuffle symbionts is an effective adaptive strategy for dealing with environmental changes, such as changes water temperatures and light levels.... coral bleaching appears to be mass suicide to uninformed senators, it could actually be an excellent adaptive strategy that has allowed the species to survive for millions of years.​

References:
Little, A.F., M.J.H. van Oppen, and B.L. Willis, 2004. Flexibility in algal endosymbioses shapes growth in reef corals. Science, 304, 1492–1494.
Lewis, C.L., and M.A. Coffroth, 2004. The acquisition of exogenous algal symbionts by an octocoral after bleaching. Science, 304, 1490–1492.
Baker, A.C., 2001. Reef corals bleach to survive change. Nature, 411, 765 –766.

Ah, but it is peer reviewed and here is a link to the NAS artlice

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abs...=1/1/2006&tdate=12/31/2006&resourcetype=HWCIT

and how about a link to the two science articles you quoted, you know you are quoting other peoples work without the proper citation as those quotes are not to be found through the worldclimatereport link.

 

[bobdroege7]

Whomever AUP insults should be read. From the writer.

Humans are the fastest-learning creatures ever known. In the last hundred years we have gone from choo-choo trains to scramjets. Give us another century, and who knows what we will do? Colonize Mars? Solarize energy? Double our life span? Human history gives lots of grounds for hope, and much less for despair.

It's easy to imagine ways to fix coral reefs. For one thing, we could strip mine them if the ocean level drops, so that the top of the reefs will stay immersed in seawater. Or we can take blocks of the dead part of a reef (which is most of it), and spread them on top of the coral layer cake if the water level rises. We do that kind of thing all the time in dredging rivers and harbors. So we can keep adjust coral reefs to the heigh to sea water if that ever changes.

My real worry is --- will we ever fix politicized science? Because if we allow the search for truth to be so easily twisted by political fads, we may be in really deep doo-doo.
​

And you know AUP did not insult this author, right?