We’re publishing a guest post by journalist Chris Morrison about one of the great global warming myths – that coral around the world is rapidly disappearing thanks to man made climate change. In fact, it’s in rude good health.
Corals occupy an exalted place in the climate tablets of doom. These photogenic little critters find themselves on the science obit pages on an almost daily basis. In fact, their demise has been grossly exaggerated for political purposes. There may not be too much certitude in climate projections, but at least we can hang our hat on one scientific prediction – the little fellows will be around for another 500 million years.
Their demise of course is projected from the bleaching that occurs when they expel symbiotic algae in reaction to sudden changes in water temperature. The changes occur due to natural weather oscillations, often around the El Nino event. These occur on a regular basis and once localised conditions have been stabilised, the coral usually recovers. Tropical coral grows in temperatures between 24C and 32C and sometimes grows quicker in warmer waters. Cold water coral is also abundant and grows in latitudes up to 65 degrees above and below the equator, often in deep water and at temperatures as low as 4C. The one event all this coral is unlikely to be affected by is climate warming, or cooling, which occurs over a much longer period.
The mythology around Corals represent one of the more obvious misinterpretations of data that seek to suggest local and temporary weather-related events are connected to long term changes in the climate. Needless to say, there is not a scintilla of scientific proof to make the connection in the case of coral. Professor Peter Ridd, an authority on the Great Barrier Reef who has spent 40 years observing it, noted recently that the reef was in “robust health”. Coral growth rates have, if anything, “increased over the last 100 years”. Fired from his post in 2018 at James Cook University in Queensland for “uncollegial” activities, i.e., questioning global warming dogma, Professor Ridd went on to note that “somehow, our science organisations have convinced the world that the reef is on its last leg”. The BBC rarely needs much convincing of coral catastrophe: “Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half of its corals since 1995 due to warmer seas driven by climate change”, it reported in October 2020.
Of course, corals need environmental protection. It is not a good idea to drench them in untreated sewage, smash up their habitat with reckless fishing, dump litter on them or douse them with toxic chemicals. But these are mundane planet-keeping measures, nothing like as exciting as ‘save the world’ political posturing in aid of the net zero project.
Corals are the second most successful animal on the planet after their close cnidarian cousin the jellyfish. They have been around for 500 million years (reef building ones for 400 million) having survived five major extinction events including the Permian-Triassic Event, which wiped out 96% of marine life. They have survived C02 levels as high as 2,240 parts per million (ppm) in the Ordovician period, to the more modest 400 ppm we know today. During their time on Earth they have survived massive temperature changes such as the Permian period when global temperatures rose by around 10C and the Ordovician period when they dropped by 8C. And of course they are happy to live almost anywhere. Even in Scotland, where the Darwin Mound remained untouched by the recent massive expulsion of greenhouse gases by the COP26 private jets.
Corals, like polar bears (numbers rising nicely), are just too valuable a propaganda tool for the climate change and net zero green zealots to relinquish. Too pretty. It was surely not a coincidence that in the run up to COP26, one of Prince William’s £1 million Earthshot gifts was handed out to a small Bahamian company called Coral Vita that says it grows coral to replant in the ocean. How did coral survive so long just left to its own evolutionary devises? But thanks to this company’s good offices, you can now “sponsor” or “gift” a coral, gaining “discount codes for our Coral Vita shop”.
The second danger to corals, it is suggested, is posed by higher levels of CO2 dissolved in the ocean. This is often said to make the ocean more acidic, although the correct scientific term is less alkaline. The ‘acid’ will then attack the calcium carbonate skeletons of the corals, it is said.
It is possible to plot average temperatures and atmospheric levels of CO2 over the last 600 million years since complex life began to evolve. Temperatures vary greatly, as do CO2 levels, although the latter have trended downwards to our current low point. It would take a much larger brain than your correspondent possesses to make any connection between the two, although it may not be beyond the ability of a number of self-identifying IPCC scientists. Compared to the geological record, current CO2 levels are very low – some scientists even suggest dangerously low – and temperatures could do with being a little warmer. Corals, as has been observed, have put up with huge variations in temperatures and CO2 levels in the past.
In 2015 the noted physicists Dr. Roger Cohen and Professor William Happer of Princeton wrote a short note looking at ocean ph. They found that doubling atmospheric CO2 from 400 to 800 ppm only decreases the ph of ocean water from about 8.2 to 7.9. They went on to note: “This is well within the day-night fluctuations that already occur because of photosynthesis by plankton and less than the ph decreases with depth that occur because of the biological pump and the dissolution of carbonate precipitates below the lysocline.”
The scientists noted that “scare stories about dissolving carbonate shells are nonsense”. Regarding their own paper, the authors concluded: “This minimalist discussion already shows how hard it is to scare informed people with ocean acidification, but, alas, many people are not informed.”
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I have a niggling worry about the entire conflict. I’ve mentioned this before, but why hasn’t Putin made public The Great Reset? He certainly has nothing to lose. I see only three possible reasons:
1. He doesn’t know about it
2. It doesn’t exist
3. He is complicit
1) is virtually impossible given his surveillance network and close connections with the WEF. 2) is virtually impossible given everything that’s happened and everything we know. So that leaves 3) and that is a deeply disturbing thought.
I agree and maybe your analysis is correct. Without a doubt something is niggling me about this war and it all stems from the timing. Just as most countries necessarily were easing up on the Scamdemic along comes this war to provide the plebs with another distraction.
Something is not right.
How about a fourth possibility, that – having been comprehensively briefed on it – Putin considers The Great Reset irrelevant because very unlikely to succeed ?
A) Ukraine was neither a member of NATO nor in the direct process of joining it when the Russian Federation invaded.
B) In any case the Putin regime never genuinely believed that NATO represented any sort of military threat to Russia.
If it did it clearly would not have invaded the NATO-aligned Ukraine, thus offering the alliance the perfect excuse to go to Ukraine’s defence / enter into a war with Russia under UN Article 51.
C) This Russian claim has no more legitimacy than if the similarly tyrannical and expansionist Nazi regime had stated in the late 1930s that if Poland even thought about entering into a defensive pact with Britain and France then Germany had a right to invade.
Like all of the Russian propagandist stories regarding its naked act of unilateral military aggression on 24 February 2022, the NATO excuse collapses upon the briefest of examinations.
And all you are left with is indeed early modern Tsarist or USSR style imperialism.
Regarding A), I will quote a previous article of mine:
Plus, I already noted that “whether Ukraine eventually joined NATO is less important than the fact it was in a close military alliance with the US”.
Regarding B), Putin did believe NATO represented a threat to Russia. In his Feburary 21st speech, he explicitly states, “Ukraine joining NATO is a direct threat to Russia’s security”. This comports with the memo William Burns sent to Condoleezza Rice in 2008:
Regarding C), whether Russia’s claims have “legitimacy” is a matter of judgement. If you believe that powerful states should never be able to make demands of their neighbours, you will regard it as illegitimate. And that’s a perfectly reasonable viewpoint. Of course, it implies that a lot of Western foreign policy is illegitimate too. However, it’s also kind of irrelevant.
The thing that matters is what you do when a powerful state makes demands of its neighbours. The West could have gone to war with Russia over Ukraine, just as it went to war with Hitler when he invaded Poland. (Although note that we didn’t go to war when the Soviet Union invaded Finland.) This might have led to Russia withdrawing or being decisively defeated. However, it could just as easily have led to a major conflict involving China, or even nuclear war. I think the proposal outlined by John Mearsheimer – of turning Ukraine into a prosperous, neutral country – made much more sense.
I think the proposal outlined by John Mearsheimer – of turning Ukraine into a prosperous, neutral country – made much more sense.
In 2014, Putin used the so-called Russian separatists as cover for the annexation of the Krim. Now, he’s in the process of permanently disconnecting these two provinces (and – if possible – an unrelated swathe of Ukrainian territory in the north) from Ukraine. Unless he dies before this happens and a future Russian government changes coures, the remaining parts of Ukraine will follow in due course. That’s the exact strategy the tsars already used to conquer this (enormously huge and mostly empty) area: Occupy it piece by piece until nothing is left.
The whole ‘NATO threat’ excuse is most likely to be pure deception.
Actions speak louder than words, and by progressively attacking Ukraine – beginning with the annexation of Crimea then intervention in the Donbass civil war and culminating in the outright invasion of February 2022 – Russia knew that it was positively inviting a military response from the US and UK (legal guarantors of Ukraine’s security via the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, ironically like the Russia Federation itself) plus any other combination of the world’s armed forces (including the whole of NATO) through UN Article 51.
Not exactly the behaviour of a fearful nation.
The thing that matters is what you do when a powerful state makes demands of its neighbours. The West could have gone to war with Russia over Ukraine, just as it went to war with Hitler when he invaded Poland. (Although note that we didn’t go to war when the Soviet Union invaded Finland.) This might have led to Russia withdrawing or being decisively defeated. However, it could just as easily have led to a major conflict involving China, or even nuclear war. I think the proposal outlined by John Mearsheimer – of turning Ukraine into a prosperous, neutral country – made much more sense.
I was purely challenging Russia’s false excuses for the invasion, not pointing to possible solutions.
Ultimately we need to work towards a disarmed and cooperative world, which in turn means the dismantling of the inherently violent and conflict-prone nation-state system (with totalitarian and non-democratic systems such as Russia and China representing the greatest barrier to this sort of progress). And to pre-empt a frequent misinterpretation of this approach it is most certainly not a call for world government, quite the opposite – violence and coercion based governance is the problem, not solution.
If you can bear it, I’d highly recommend Oliver Stone’s Putin Interviews. This was 2017, and Putin explains exactly why from a strategic and security viewpoint, Russia cannot allow NATO to operate in Ukraine. They feel encircled. I know this wouldn’t change your mind about the legitimacy of the intervention, but it does show that security, rather than imperial ambitions are the motivating factor. Also, why did Russia decline DPR and LPR in their attempts to join the Federation?
I think the author makes some good points but the problem seems to be Putin himself. He is keen to show that he has maintained his physical fitness regardless of advancing age and he is at a point in his life where he wants to leave a legacy – male ego.
Is this invasion part of his personal ambition or is it a reaction to having a possible NATO aligned country in Russia’s underbelly in much the way that Cuba in 1962 was in the USA’s underbelly?
I know these two notions are not seemingly huge when viewed from a distance but to Putin and his potential legacy, it may be a significant issue to be gained at any cost ….. and he can!
I have already watched this interview in which Oliver Stone allowed President Putin to present his propagandist world view and agenda (including regarding ‘NATO encirclement’) with no serious challenges.
There is another very revealing video in which Stone himself is interviewed by Lex Fridman, who really pushed the film director as to why he is default sceptical about US / Western leaders’ claims, but took those of Vladimir Putin on face value. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov567pDEMEM
Mr Stone replied that he did try to check out some of the Russian President’s statements when he got back to America, but found that all the books about him were negatively biased and hence unreliable.
In other words he made the basic journalistic, academic and general research error of turning to opinion pieces rather than primary sources, which are the only route toward genuine fact checking.
If Oliver Stone had even glanced at original documents, film footage etc he would have found that (as just one example) the claim that there was a US-led violent coup in Ukraine in 2014 is a complete fabrication.
Quite the opposite, it was the Russian-backed President Yanukovich who attempted to violently overthrow the democratic Ukrainian constitution by denying both his own and the Parliament’s overwhelming democratic mandate to form an economic partnership with the EU then brutally suppressing (at least originally) entirely peaceful protest.
He was then legally and constitutionally removed from office by a vote of 328 to 0 by Ukrainian MPs and fled to Russia.
No coup (again other than a failed Russian one).
Ukraine used to be part of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth which got eliminated in the course of the three Polish partitions. Consequently, almost all of Poland is exactly as Russian as Ukraine. Poland actually reconquered some parts of it after the first world war. This was later again corrected by Stalin who – as per his usual policy – also made sure he got rid of the Poles living there. Consequently, if there’s anybody who currently has a historic claim to this territory, it would be Poland.
As far as I’m aware the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth didn’t hold any territory adjacent to the Black Sea, and certainly never Crimea, which strikes me as very clearly both historically and demographically Russian rather than Ukrainian.
That’s because Crimea was part of another country Russia annexed around the time of the 3rd Polish partition (Crimean Chanate). It’s nowadays demographically Russian because – who would have guessed that! – Stalin deported the original inhabitants so there’s basically nothing left except a huge, Russian naval base and the supporting civilian infrastructure (mirroring the situation in the northern half of East Prussia, by the way).
I thought they bought Crimea from the Ottomans.
Are you claiming that the population of Crimea wasn’t majority Russian well before Stalin’s time?
But I’m glad you accept that the P-L Commonwealth never had Black Sea territory and that Crimea isn’t in any way Ukrainian.
I never wrote that Crimea was part of the Polish-Ukrainian commonwealth, hence, I didn’t accept the opposite of it. Apart from that, for reasonably undisputed history, Wikipedia is a great source of information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Khanate
Noah Carl under the impression he can determine imponderables again. Look Noah, you simply can’t know the motives of men for sure. You are not Putin and you do not know it is because he was concerned about NATO expansion. You can never, ever, ever be proven right or wrong so it gets a bit tedious that you get so het up about it and it says more about you than any surety or knowledge in the matter.
Russian Orthodox Church SANCTIONED as Rightwing Converts SURGE!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCfeRdCM21Y
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A interesting debate for all of us sitting many miles from the action.
But how are we to know the real motivations of “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,”?
The truth is that, particularly from this distance, comfortably seated, we cannot know
We can only infer.
But what do those close to the action say?
The Baltic states are in no doubt as to Russia’s long term goals, that they are on Russia’s ‘little list’.
Finland and Sweden are also in no doubt, moving from age old neutrality towards membership of NATO.
We also have the example of the invasion of Crimea. What was the motivation for that? To keep NATO at bay? Clearly not. It was simply the beginning of an extended drama still playing out in front of our disbelieving eyes, and set to run and run.
Russian motivations for the invasion of Crimea? The federalisation of Ukraine. Why? So that the Russian satellite regions can veto EU membership. How do we know this? Because Russia has used that model in Moldova; border disputes, Russian troops in Transnistria, preventing Moldovan membership of the EU, even though Moldova has already committed itself to not joining NATO.
And what can we infer from Putin’s utterances themselves?
”It’s impossible — Do you understand? — impossible to build a fence around a country like Russia. And we do not intend to build that fence.’ 10 June 22
We have also been told of Russia’s intention to secure a route through Ukraine to Transnistria by Russia’s Central Military District Commander, Maj. Gen. Rustam Minnekaev 27 Apr 22
And, before that, Putin set out, in his own newspaper, RIA Novosti, 04 April 22, the real reason for his invasion of Ukraine:
‘….the denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization.’
‘Nazi Ukraine will be eradicated, but including, and above all, Western totalitarianism, the imposed programs of civilizational degradation and disintegration’
Putin is, quite simply, a totalitarian dictator intent on subjugating a neighbouring capitalist democracy whose liberal values appear a great deal more attractive to the youth of his nation than his own stifling organs, agencies, of autocratic, plutocratic, state control.
A thriving Ukraine, once it becomes a member of the European Union, threatens Putin’s vision of a reconstituted USSR
We can infer this from what his planning documents tell us, plain as day:
‘While the 9th Directorate of the FSB’s Fifth Service Department for Operational Information prepared for the occupation of Ukraine from July 2021, the 11th Unit of the Department for Operational Information, responsible for Moldova, was assessing plans for the next round of operations under the direction of Major General Dmitry Milyutin. In November 2020, the FSB’s strategic objective in Moldova was to bring about ‘The full restoration of the strategic partnership between Moldova and the Russian Federation’.
And from what Putin himself has said:
‘When President Putin set out his reasons for invading Ukraine in a televised address, he described how the Soviet Union had been broken up by ‘a truly fatal document, the so-called ethnic policy of the party in modern conditions’. Putin described how by empowering the constituent nationalities of the USSR, ‘It is now that radicals and nationalists, including and primarily those in Ukraine, are taking credit for having gained independence. As we can see, this is absolutely wrong. The disintegration of our united country was brought about by the historic, strategic mistakes on the part of the Bolshevik leaders and the CPSU leadership…’ As hinted at here by Putin, the consequence of this mistake – which his policy in Ukraine aimed to correct – was not restricted to Ukraine but also encompassed Belarus, Moldova and the Baltic states.’
RUSI: ‘The death throes of an imperial delusion’
So there you have it, fall out from the Great War of 1914/18 still rocking our world in 2022, NATO only relevant in the sense that it too is a product of that conflict, or perhaps what history may very well judge to have been part two of that conflict, and the invasion of Ukraine part four or five or part think of your favourite number……..to be continued…….
This article is plain wrong headed on many levels. Fundamentally it does not consider the fundamental elephant in the room that Putin is a dictator and power through violence and expansion is his driving force.
read the article by Sasha Lensky in The Spectator to see what Russians dreamed of in the early nineties but had it all taken away by the drunkard Yeltsin leaving Putin in charge.
NATO is merely the military alliance of The West required still because of Putin. No Putin, no NATO.
NATO countries do not want to conquer Russia or China or Colonise anywhere. Rather we dream as indeed do enlightened citizens of Russia and China et al of a world of free speech, libertarian countries, trading and visiting each other at Will with democratically elected and accountable governments.
Thats all.