How Bad Is Global Warming?

[smoking since 1879]

You're right, it is in fact almost completely dead. (And it's not coming back.)

and that 'blob' thing - of the west coast of america...

according to this lot it's climate related ... (could have something to do with it i suppose)


and not a whisper about fukushima ...

either way, that coast is toast

[Luther Blissett]

Why dead coral reefs could mark the beginning of ‘dangerous’ climate change

The island of Kiritimati is one of the world’s most remote places — one of several dozen atolls making up the tiny island nation of Kiribati, a speck in the Pacific Ocean more than a thousand miles south of Hawaii. But, isolated as it is, news of its devastated coral is turning heads around the world. A recent expedition has revealed that the reefs around Kiritimati have suffered a catastrophic mass die-off — an event that epitomizes what may be an ugly truth about the ability of coral reefs around the world to adapt to the growing threat of climate change.

The situation at Kiritimati came to light during an expedition last month headed by researchers Julia Baum from the University of Victoria and Kim Cobb of Georgia Tech. They expected bad news before they even arrived — after all, the island is in the part of the world most strongly affected by the past year’s unusually severe El Niño event. Abnormally warm water temperatures have plagued the region for months, and as recently as November, research expeditions had observed widespread coral bleaching, disease and even some coral death as a result.

But Baum, who has studied coral in the area for years, was not wholly prepared for the devastation she met with upon arrival. She and her team estimate that about 80 percent of all the coral around the island are now dead. Another 15 percent appear to be bleached, but still alive — and Baum estimates that only around 5 percent are actually healthy. Much of the dead coral has been covered over with a fuzzy, red algae, giving the reef a haunting appearance.

“It was a horror show,” Baum said. “Rationally I know what’s happened, but emotionally it’s very hard to accept it. It seems like it can’t possibly be real that this vibrant, healthy reef that I’ve been working on so long and studying so intensely — specifically because it was one of the healthiest reefs in the world — that it could just be dramatically transformed in a matter of months into this graveyard.”

Scientists believe that the mass die-off around Kiritimati — also known as Christmas Island — is one of the worst casualties in a larger coral bleaching event that’s taking place all over the world. And now, some experts are saying the events could signal an even more disturbing revelation — the idea that we’re reaching a point where many coral reef ecosystems may not be able to adapt to the relentless progression of climate change.

“Dangerous” climate change
A primary concern of world leaders is keeping global warming from climbing above a threshold that would constitute “dangerous” climate change — the point at which damaging and likely irreversible events would become widespread on Earth. That goal has been a global focus since the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was first established, with language calling for “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

But that’s not all the convention says. In the next sentence, it also says such stabilization should happen in a time frame “sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change.”

The recent deterioration of the world’s coral reefs suggest that this objective may have already been breached, notes Thomas Lovejoy, a conservationist and a professor at George Mason University. “Abrupt changes in ecosystems like tropical coral reefs show we are already beyond ecosystems adapting naturally,” he said in an email to The Washington Post.

Lovejoy isn’t the only scientist willing to make this point.

“From a global perspective, the level of warming is about to enter the danger zone for coral reefs and it is certainly arguable that it is already too late for some of these systems to ‘adapt naturally,'” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. Oppenheimer is one of many scientists who have in fact long pointed toward coral reefs as one of the first places that truly irreversible climate changes might manifest themselves.

“We and others thought coral reefs would be the first global indicator of emergence of dangerous warming and events have borne out that expectation,” Oppenheimer said.

Bleaching is a common reaction to environmental stress. While corals are living animals themselves, they survive by maintaining a symbiotic relationship with certain types of algae, which actually live inside the corals and are responsible for their brilliant colors. If a coral becomes stressed, though — for instance, if the surrounding water becomes too warm — it will expel its algae, bleaching a ghostly white in the process.

Bleaching doesn’t kill the corals right away — in fact, if the environment stabilizes in enough time, the corals can regrow their algae and return to business as usual. But bleaching does leave corals weakened and more susceptible to disease, and if the bleaching condition lasts long enough — or if too many bleaching events occur in a row — then the corals may die.

This type of “single-species interaction,” according to Lovejoy — in this case, the reliance of coral on algae — is part of what makes ecosystems so vulnerable. “These responses are fairly hard to predict I would think, but suggest that ecosystems are far more sensitive to climate change than climate models can actually predict,” he noted. “In other words we are in for a lot of unpleasant surprises.”

The current bleaching event has affected reefs throughout the tropics — including much of the Pacific and parts of the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic and the Caribbean basin — and is largely thanks to the onset of a particularly severe El Niño event in 2015, which has resulted in unusually warm water temperatures in many regions.

So far, the corals at Christmas Island appear to have suffered the most worldwide, but severe bleaching has also been observed in Florida, Hawaii, American Samoa and Australia, among other places. Just last month, in fact, a new survey concluded that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef was experiencing its worst bleaching event in history.

There are likely several reasons this year’s bleaching is so severe. First, the recent El Niño has been unusually strong. But there’s also the fact that this is the third major bleaching event in the past couple of decades, with each one leaving the affected corals a little weaker.

The first of the last three events took place in 1998, corresponding with another unusually strong El Niño. The next event hit in 2010 in conjunction with another El Niño event, albeit a much more moderate one. And finally, last year, the third event struck.

“These bleaching events are coming more quickly, they are more severe and there are a number of coral reefs around the world that just are not being given enough time to truly recover between events,” said Mark Eakin, a coral reef specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “You’re looking at ecosystems that are being changed substantially.”

This is where climate change comes into play. It may appear that the last few El Niño events are to blame for all the bleaching events, but experts are increasingly certain that climate change is operating in combination with the effects of El Niño. And even after this year’s event abates, the oceans will continue warming, meaning it may not take such a strong El Niño event in the future to trigger these kinds of widespread bleachings.

Thus the major problem now is that these environmental changes are occurring too quickly for may reefs to catch up. Even when reefs recover — which can take years or even decades — their overall community structure is often different than it was before a bleaching event. Reefs that were once dominated by large, slow-growing species, for instance, may be repopulated after a bleaching event with different, faster-growing species.

“The ecosystems are being changed — they are not adapting in the sense that they’re not able to respond to these high temperature conditions and still be the same robust ecosystems they were,” Eakin said. “What’s happening is the ecosystems are being broken down in many ways and you’re being left with a coral reef that is not as diverse, that is not able to function as well, that basically is not as healthy as it was previously.”

When it comes to stabilizing emissions fast enough to “allow ecosystems to adapt naturally,” “generally I would say that we are at a point where we may already have breached that goal,” Eakin said.

A look ahead
It may look like a grim prognosis for many of the world’s corals, but experts aren’t predicting a death sentence for all the planet’s reefs. Depending on an ecosystem’s composition and the other environmental factors affecting it — fishing pressure and pollution, for instance — some will likely fare better than others. Furthermore, scientists believe that even some of the worst-affected places may actually hold clues that could help conservationists better protect reefs in the future.

At Christmas Island, Baum noticed that while a majority of the corals had died off, a few species — which she dubs “miracle corals” — seemed to fare better than others. A coral known as Porites, for instance, seemed to be among the most resilient.

“How is it that those 5 percent of the corals in the exact same conditions as all the other corals around them that have died — how is it that these ones have managed to survive?” Baum said. “That’s the million-dollar question.”

Baum and her team have taken hundreds of samples from the corals around Christmas Island and brought them to the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology for analysis. They hope that the samples may hold some clues to what makes some species so resilient. It’s possible that certain types of symbiotic algae are more heat-resistant than others, or that some of the hardier species of corals had more energy reserves built up before they bleached.

How the Christmas Island reefs will fare in the future remains uncertain. The area may repopulate with coral over a period of years or even decades, and Baum’s “miracle corals” will likely play a major role in this recovery if it’s successful.

“The big question is how long is that going to take and will this reef look fundamentally different after this event than it did before,” said Kim Cobb, a professor at Georgia Tech who specializes in using coral samples to reconstruct climate patterns and who has also conducted work at Christmas Island for years. “And that’s a very important question that speaks to the longer-term evolution of coral reefs under continued temperature extremes.”

Meanwhile, because Christmas Island has suffered some of the worst impacts of this year’s El Niño event, it’s possible that its fate could also serve as a warning for what may await other reefs in less-affected parts of the world as the climate continues to change.

“This happens to be an example that, as a record-breaking El Niño on top of continued ocean warming related to climate change, I do think is an appropriate case study and a very important case study for understanding the long-term evolution of reefs under continued climate change,” Cobb said.

[Nordic]

http://www.theonion.com/article/exxonmo ... -any-52732

ExxonMobil CEO Relieved It Finally Too Late To Do Anything About Climate Change

‘We Really Dodged A Bullet There,’ Says Executive

Tillerson says things “could have gone really bad” for him if people had followed through on their vows to stop climate change.



April 13, 2016

IRVING, TX—Saying the multinational oil and gas conglomerate had “really dodged a bullet,” ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson told reporters Wednesday how relieved he was now that it was finally too late to do anything about climate change.

The 64-year-old petroleum executive, who acknowledged that throughout his career he had feared the public might take action to curb rising temperatures by imposing emissions restrictions or mandating a switch to alternative energy, said he was just happy that the window for avoiding the planet’s environmental destruction had closed, and that the entire industry was now free to carry on as usual.

“I was really worried for a while there that some kind of law would be passed to stop us from releasing all those hydrocarbons into the atmosphere, but I guess not,” said Tillerson, describing how he felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from his shoulders now that catastrophic climate change was an inescapable certainty. “Seriously, it’s a huge load off. There were a number of real tense years after the recycling movement picked up momentum when we thought people might all turn away from fossil fuels next. But it’s just so reassuring to know that we passed the point where it’s no longer possible to stop global warming through environmental regulation or green energy or anything like that.”

“Now I can finally just relax,” he continued. “This really makes things so much easier.”

The CEO remarked that, back when it was still possible to halt the devastating effects of climate change, he constantly feared that the energy industry would be forced to make costly concessions toward sustainability, perhaps investing in expensive technology that would reduce oil and gas companies’ environmental impact, and thereby severely harm his corporation’s bottom line.

Tillerson told reporters that growing public interest in wind and solar energy gave him “a pretty good scare” for a while, but noted how he eventually came to realize the public’s engagement was largely limited to vocalizing support for the initiatives rather than taking any substantive action to move the overall energy sector in those directions. He also admitted to losing sleep in 2009 when Congress considered regulating carbon emissions with a cap-and-trade system, although he said he now felt silly for ever believing that might actually happen.

While he became less worried about the possibility of government regulation after seeing the rapid melting of polar ice caps go completely unchecked, Tillerson stated that he was careful not to get his hopes up too high until humanity had blown through every last milestone for averting the worst effects of global warming, including atmospheric carbon dioxide surpassing 400 parts per million and average worldwide temperatures exceeding 1 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels.

“After scientists started saying we were in the middle of a global mass extinction event and still nobody at any level did anything to try to stop it—that’s when I knew we were in the clear,” said Tillerson, remarking that, by that point, he had become certain everyone would just keep driving their gas-powered vehicles and running their air conditioners 24 hours a day no matter what. “There’s just no way people are going to start switching over to renewables at this point. Hell, even if the whole world demanded new fuel-efficiency standards today, they’d be completely useless now that we’re beyond the point of no return, so really, why even bother?”

“And thank goodness,” he added. “Everyone’s complete hopelessness about the whole situation really is the best thing that could have happened to us.”

HA HA HA -- oh wait. This isn't even satire.

[Sounder]

This post is for Nordic.

The either/or context is threadbare. I did not trust BenD because he seemed to be baiting folk into an either/or dead end. Also, to me, Ben is an elitist, and to my mind at any rate, those folk are purpose and ends oriented rather than process oriented, so I do not relate.

Still, the cultural conditioning does get obvious to some when wars, migration and everything in the kitchen sink gets attributed to Climate Change. Whatever, go for it guys, but it is only a defensive reaction and it doesn’t mean diddly as far ‘proving’ the dastardly implications of Climate Change.


There are real underlying problems, that provide the hook with any large scale scam, (read; social engineering project if you like). With the drug war, drugs were said to be the problem, and one was put at social risk if one cared to dispute this. Yes, drugs are a problem, but that is more a lack of context issue rather than a problem with the drugs themselves.

Or the war on cancer, yes cancer is a problem. But what is, or has happened because of that war? The early stages of that ‘war’ revealed the objective. Smoking became a large boogey man. RJR was given an Afgan drug route or two, the deal was made, and the JohnQ was insistently fed a line that minimized the impact of the many new and novel chemicals that were creating a rise in cancer, while using smoking as the scapegoat.

Or, consider the ‘green revolution’ as it relates to JBS and their contribution in mapping the area as missionaries , with funds provided by, you know who, whom the folk that went to mapping swore, before, during and after, an enduring hatred for. For the JBS’ers the problem was ‘primitive southerners’, for the liberals, the manufactured problem was ‘feeding the world’, but then again when liberal really means ‘western exceptionalist’, what can we expect.


I often wonder why people do not take more advantage of context when sussing stuff out.

Ah whatever, who needs context if the shit is already figured out.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

From SRP essay...

Which kind of undercuts Corbett's argument that the Rockefellers are perpetrating a fraud by propagandizing against the dangers of climate change: the scientific research proves the Rockefellers in reality have perpetrated actual climate change. Again, I must cite the excellent book by Charlotte Dennett and Gerard Colby, Thy Will Be Done, which documents not only the genocide I mentioned, but the Rockefeller ties to eugenics that Corbett mentioned.

That is an excellent book. It also shows how Rockefeller used his ideological enemies to achieve his own objectives. Very slick.

But I do not see how Corbett's account is undercut here. Fraudsters that are guilty of a crime are often times the most strident in condemning crimes, as it seems to still provide good cover.

Thanks Sounder, I appreciate your substantive reply.

As I understand Corbett's position from seeing numerous videos on his youtube channel and website, global warming is a phony story. It's not happening. So if the scientific research proves that the Rockefellers are responsible for perpetrating actual climate change, it undercuts Corbett's argument that the Rockefellers' propagandizing against climate change is a fraud. Yes, the Rockefellers are guilty of the crime for which they condemn others, but that doesn't buttress Corbett's point that global warming isn't happening. I believe this cuts to the core of Nordic's point. Just put Maurice Strong in the same category as the Rockefellers: they're all con men of the highest order. Doesn't mean the scientific theory of greenhouse gases is bunk.

[Sounder]

Gotcha, I think that James Corbitt suffers from the same reliance on the either/or dichotomy that many on this site also depend.

I cannot count how many times I have been called a 'denialist', as if there is no difference between critical assessment and denial.

This is not at all rigorous, intuitive or rational. It is emotive and serves to justify ones decision to not listen.

And that sort of thing is not likely to build the better world we dream of.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Gotcha, I think that James Corbitt suffers from the same reliance on the either/or dichotomy that many on this site also depend.

I cannot count how many times I have been called a 'denialist', as if there is no difference between critical assessment and denial.

This is not at all rigorous, intuitive or rational. It is emotive and serves to justify ones decision to not listen.

And that sort of thing is not likely to build the better world we dream of.

Sounder, you are 100% correct. I may not agree with you all the time, but I have always found you to be thoughtful and respectful and coming from an intelligent and rational place. We need more people like you to build that better world that blasts through the BS of the either/or dichotomy. Thanks!

[Sounder]

Sounder, you are 100% correct. I may not agree with you all the time, but I have always found you to be thoughtful and respectful and coming from an intelligent and rational place. We need more people like you to build that better world that blasts through the BS of the either/or dichotomy. Thanks!

Well I do dream of becoming better able to ‘blast through the BS of the either/or dichotomy’, but being social animals as we are, a larger model of reality will have to be considered before any serious blasting can occur.

Gregory Bateson did excellent work in this regard.

As to agreement; I would be horrified if people agreed with me all the time. Each one of us knows relatively little of what can be known and all of us seem to have quirks in our individual information processing habits.

My quirk is being less connected to social conditioning forces than most folk and this is disconcerting to many. So I take flack but I don’t take it personal because that is the gig I signed up for.

Also, historically, much of our great works grew out of disagreements between teacher and student. It can be a good thing as it can really get the juices flowing. In that context however, it may work because there is respect along with the challenge.

Unfortunately in this intertubes context respect seems easily lost to the interests of the challenge.

Thanks for your kind words stillrobertpaulsen.

And thank-you Dr Evil for your assessment. My wife had a good laugh and concurs that I do indeed suffer from compulsive narrative disorder.

[Luther Blissett]

I don't subscribe to the either/or false dichotomy either because I fear that even those of us that observe the "either" - that humans are critically destroying the planet - are probably underestimating the extent to which we made developmental errors going all the way back. We'll be dead long before we know the answer to these secrets. Fuck a carbon tax - more advanced civilizations know that we never should have started combusting the fossilized remains of dead plants and dinosaurs. And they certainly know that we should have never started circulating 1 trillion bags per year made from synthetic organics that themselves take centuries to break down in the environment and when they do, choke and poison living creatures.

[Sounder]

Luther Blisset wrote…

I don't subscribe to the either/or false dichotomy either because I fear that even those of us that observe the "either" - that humans are critically destroying the planet - are probably underestimating the extent to which we made developmental errors going all the way back. We'll be dead long before we know the answer to these secrets.

Well, me being a Guerrilla Ontologist an all, the nature of our developmental errors is a special point of focus. But apparently I’m still quite lacking in communication abilities. That’s OK though because there are others that have done excellent studies on our developmental errors. Gregory Bateson for example talks about how by raising the relative value of rational consciousness, we changed from an ethics of optima to an ethics of maxima. Peter Kingsley provides perspective on Parmenides and Plato, where Plato ‘killed the father’, turning wisdom into a commentary on wisdom.

This is to say that the secrets are not secrets, but rather they are information elements that increase cognitive dissonance and as such they have limited appeal.

Fuck a carbon tax - more advanced civilizations know that we never should have started combusting the fossilized remains of dead plants and dinosaurs.

Yeah well, shoulda, woulda, coulda. Maybe those advanced civilizations know that because they made similar mistakes, escaped by the skin of their teeth and LEARNED.

And they certainly know that we should have never started circulating 1 trillion bags per year made from synthetic organics that themselves take centuries to break down in the environment and when they do, choke and poison living creatures.

Yep, but again by learning from similar mistakes. In their case oddly enough, they got rid of their debt based money system where the creditors had all the say as to what has ‘value’. After folk actually got their head out their asses, clean-up and remediation proceeded quickly and effectively.

[Agent Orange Cooper]

Sounder, are you as skeptical as I am of the idea that the trillions of barrels worth of oil in the ground is liquefied plant and animal matter? The more I think about it the more absurd it seems.

[Sounder]

Are you trying to get me in trouble? I don't see it as being real important and my thoughts are only opinion, but yes that idea has always struck me as not making much sense.

[Agent Orange Cooper]

Hah. Trying to soften the blow on myself I guess.

It's pretty important though. There may be an occult/ritualistic aspect to the burning of 'fossil fuels' about which we're totally in the dark.

[Burnt Hill]

Hah. Trying to soften the blow on myself I guess.

It's pretty important though. There may be an occult/ritualistic aspect to the burning of 'fossil fuels' about which we're totally in the dark.

AOC are you riffin on "black goo" which is appearing on the "smart dust" thread?

[Agent Orange Cooper]

yeah I was thinking of that, though I hadn't actually been following that thread. I'm going to go read it now!

I most recently made that connection when I saw the trailer for the upcoming Deepwater Horizon movie, which, seen in the Black Goo context, seemed fraught with significance.