Ever since the sandwich-board prophet George Monbiot told readers of the Guardian in 1999 that all coral in the Indian Ocean could die within the year, the fate of the world’s coral reefs has been a poster scare for climate Armageddon enthusiasts. The story has had to be nuanced slightly in recent times following news that coral has been at record levels for the last two years on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Even more careful handling of this global warming scare now seems likely. This is because a group of scientists has published dramatic new evidence showing that coral has demonstrated an “innate ecological resilience to climate change” in recent years. It was found that the heat tolerance of coral can change over time leading to less dangerous bleaching over multiple generations.
While these findings are a welcome dose of science reality, none of them should be a cause for surprise. Tropical coral has been around for hundreds of millions of years, and has survived many changes in global temperature. It thrives happily in waters from 24°C to 32°C, and in fact often grows more quickly in warmer waters nearer the equator. Bleaching can occur when local water temperatures spike for a short time and coral expels symbiotic algae. It is becoming increasingly obvious that this is a natural and recurring process, and the recent experience on the GBR suggests recovery can be very fast.
In a paper published by Nature in May, the seven scientists, drawn from a number of ecology fields, looked at recent records at a remote Pacific coral reef system called Palau. Over a 40-year period it was found that the heat tolerance of coral can change, with individual reefs showing higher bleaching resistance in later thermal events. The researchers suggest a growing heat tolerance for coral of 0.1°C a decade. “Genetic adaptation can improve species heat stress resistance over multiple generations through natural selection, increasing the frequency of genes that provide higher heat resistance and improve overall fitness,” they observe.
This is valuable and useful work, but it was published in a major climate science journal, so the usual windbag political message is obligatory. The results are said to indicate a “potential ecological resilience” to climate change, “but still highlight the need for reducing carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement commitments to preserve coral reefs”.
Professor Peter Ridd has studied the GBR for over 40 years and is recognised in sceptical science circles as a coral authority. From his own observations he has concluded that bleaching is a largely natural event. Furthermore, he observes: “An uncharitable observer might conclude that periodic mass coral mortality events, which are largely completely natural, are exploited by some organisations with an ideological agenda and a financial interest.” He added that this included “many scientific organisations”.
Perhaps to no great surprise, the coral scare featured as one of the five climate “tipping points” in a recent study funded by the Bezos Earth Fund that attracted worldwide headlines. Timed to coincide with COP28, it painted a picture of a world careering towards disaster in the next decade with five natural systems said to be at risk of crossing ‘tipping points’ that could cause catastrophic global changes. One of the ‘tipping points’ identified was the “degradation of warm-water coral reefs”, something that could materialise in the coming decades, “and at lower levels of global warming than previously thought”. The main author, Professor Tim Lenton, is a green political activist of long-standing, and is Head of Geography at the University of Exeter. Inevitably, the political messaging is part of the package. The Lenton group calls for laws to phase out fossil fuel and land-use emissions, and “Government mandates” in other high emissions sectors. In other words, drastic reductions in meat and dairy, massive cuts in food production by restricting nitrogen fertilisers, and dystopian cuts in personal transport, building materials and home heating.
So-called climate ‘tipping points’, which are little more than the product of opinions fed into computer models, made a number of highly publicised appearances at COP28. Britain’s supposed constitutional-neutral monarch, King Charles, claimed that “we are seeing alarming tipping points being reached”. In the absence of much long-term global warming these days, this political sloganising scares the young and impressionable and complements the ‘join the dots’ of recent bad weather anomalies. Needless to say, both scare tactics are bereft of any plausible scientific validation.
Meanwhile, curiously missing from discussions at COP28 was the damage done to coral by human activities, most notably the mining of reefs by many Pacific islanders. The same ‘nothing-to-do-with-me, guv’ islanders, it might be noted, asking the developed world for financial handouts to protect them from climate change. In the past, the reefs have been used for cheap construction materials to build ports, airports and resort developments. Diversity of ocean life is lost, and islands often left less protected from storm waves that can flow directly to the shorelines.
First in line for climate damage handouts is the Maldives, a particularly bad mining offender. In a recent essay written by a group of scientists and economists, it is noted that the growth of tourism in the Maldives saw GDP rising from one of the lowest in the world in the 1970s to the level of upper-middle income countries in the 2010s. “While coral reefs are a major factor in the Maldives’ appeal as a tourist destination, coral mining has resulted in massive degradation of shallow reef-flat areas, with important negative impacts on coastal protection,” they noted.
It is not immediately clear why taxpayers in countries with a similar upper-middle income GDP should bail out the ecological depredations of countries like the Maldives. But we can be fairly certain that this tricky dilemma will not be considered at COP29 next year, as the collecting plate for climate ‘reparations’ is passed around.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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