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Coral makes comeback on Great Barrier Reef

hawkesburygazette.com.au

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Re: Coral makes comeback on Great Barrier Reef

#81

Post by pvaldes »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #31
pabs3 wrote: post #16

This is apparently only for one particular kind of fast-growing coral, which means coral diversity is lower and that makes the reef more vulnerable to damage and less supportive of the wider ecosystem: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-04/great-barrier-reef-re...

Can we just have a moment of happiness? Of optimism?

We should not lie to ourselves about the real situation just for feelgood purposes. It looks nice, but is empty. We are still missing thousands of species here that can't return until much later.

If we have a oil palm monocultures, "technically" we have a forest. We have an area covered by trees, but this is not the same as having a mature rainforest, that play in a much upper level and a totally different league.

Acropora dominated reefs are the equivalent to really young forests composed mostly with 2m trees. Yes, a poor reef is better than nothing, but we must understand that they sustain a much lower Shannon index than a mature reef and that we should keep protecting it for a long, long time.

Re: Coral makes comeback on Great Barrier Reef

#82

Post by stephen_g »

rr888 wrote: post #11

I've seen this reported a lot with lots of climate change deniers triumphing. I'm not really sure what is going on. The AJ article has more detail including: “While the coral cover is similar to what it was in the 1980s, people should not believe in any way that that means conditions on the reef are the same as they were in the 1980s,” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/4/parts-of-australias-...

We have had an unusually cold summer and winter here in Queensland this year, I expect due to the La Niña weather pattern. Unfortunately, once that breaks, we’ll probably be back to the more and more frequent bleaching events again.

I’m surprised the deniers haven’t started trumpeting “global cooling” again like last time we had a couple of unusually cool outlier years…

Re: Coral makes comeback on Great Barrier Reef

#83

Post by pvaldes »

threeseed wrote: post #66
stubish wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really sorry. Climate policy in Australia is going through Parliament right now (and while much more progressive than the previous government, the result still have the Greens stating the targets are not aggressive enough and will doom the reef).

Greens have little credibility when it comes to the environment. Instead of comprising and getting an emissions trading system passed they were stubborn and Australia ended up with a decade of inaction. For me that's inexcusable and the damage it caused was immense. The legislated 43% target is largely symbolic and is a floor not a ceiling. It is not by itself going to change anything. What will change things are con…

> Greens have little credibility when it comes to the environment.

Hum, compared to whom?

Re: Coral makes comeback on Great Barrier Reef

#84

Post by threeseed »

pvaldes wrote: post #83
threeseed wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greens have little credibility when it comes to the environment. Instead of comprising and getting an emissions trading system passed they were stubborn and Australia ended up with a decade of inaction. For me that's inexcusable and the damage it caused was immense. The legislated 43% target is largely symbolic and is a floor not a ceiling. It is not by itself going to change anything. What will change things are con…

> Greens have little credibility when it comes to the environment. Hum, compared to whom?

Credibility is not a competition nor is it defined in relation to others.

It is legitimate to be critical of the position they took as well as the other parties.

Re: Coral makes comeback on Great Barrier Reef

#85

Post by [deleted] »

threeseed wrote: post #84
pvaldes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Greens have little credibility when it comes to the environment. Hum, compared to whom?

Credibility is not a competition nor is it defined in relation to others. It is legitimate to be critical of the position they took as well as the other parties.

[deleted]

Re: Coral makes comeback on Great Barrier Reef

#86

Post by math-dev »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #77
throwaway5959 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we just have a moment of happiness? Of optimism?

Happiness - sure. It's nice to see the reef do well. Optimism, no. I live in the area. We are going through a record cold snap, as in literally the lowest every temperatures recorded in some areas. And yes, the coral loves the respite. It's been accompanied by record floods, doing a record amount of damage. Which is to be expected - it's the La Nina pattern. But record low temperatures, in a time when the base temper…

Thank you, this was a very informative post

Re: Coral makes comeback on Great Barrier Reef

#87

Post by boffinAudio »

somishere wrote: post #80
boffinAudio wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do you not see how the water issues are actually related? The catchments that do abut the GBR are not kept clean by regular water flow - meaning that when there is a major flood or storm, materials that would normally be absorbed by a green environment, are instead dumped - en masse during a flooding event - directly into our oceans. We've had a few major flooding events-worth of nutrient dumping in the last 20 y…

I'm sorry but I'm not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that the nutrients that get washed out via catchments in NSW end up on the GBR? I didn't realise this. Certainly water quality is a massive issue, and the current mess going on in the Murray-Darling is highly concerning in a general way. Also regards the nutrients, yes we have exactly the same issue with e.g. sugar, bananas, graziers up here.

The issue is that we've screwed with the water systems in the region so much, that when there is a flood event in areas that have had their natural water flows completely altered, nutrients that have built up in the system that would normally 'trickle-release' slowly are instead dumped en mass into our ocean. Don't forget that for 9 months of the year, the ocean water currents draw waters from the southern coast towards the north... reversing during summer (drought), but when the rainy season hits, and washes the stored nutrients out, the currents pull that artificially nutrient-rich waters directly onto the reef.

Its a mess of epic proportions, but unfortunately the cotton profits are too damned high.

Re: Coral makes comeback on Great Barrier Reef

#88

Post by snickmy »

BariumBlue wrote: post #26
pabs3 wrote: post #16

This is apparently only for one particular kind of fast-growing coral, which means coral diversity is lower and that makes the reef more vulnerable to damage and less supportive of the wider ecosystem: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-04/great-barrier-reef-re...

I wonder if, like forests, corals tend to colonize an area first with fast growing species, which then get slowly replaced by longer lived species (forest succession). I understand that it takes a while for a forest to go from clean-field to a fully matured forest though.

TIL : https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/2016/04/forest-succession-and....

Re: Coral makes comeback on Great Barrier Reef

#89

Post by darkerside »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #55
darkerside wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us will, and it'll suck for the rest. You know evolution is made of dying, right?

> You know evolution is made of dying, right? Not true in the slightest; evolution is solely driven by differential reproduction rates. You'll see evolutionary dynamics even if every organism you study is immortal and invulnerable. Dying is just one of many things that affect your ability to reproduce.

In theory, sure. But in practice, it's driven by dying.

Re: Coral makes comeback on Great Barrier Reef

#90

Post by pvaldes »

threeseed wrote: post #84
pvaldes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Greens have little credibility when it comes to the environment. Hum, compared to whom?

Credibility is not a competition nor is it defined in relation to others. It is legitimate to be critical of the position they took as well as the other parties.

If you must choose from a limited pool of options, yes, how the others behave matter.
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