Reef Not transcript

Narrator:

Nothing says “tropical paradise” quite like a coral reef. And nothing says “climate alarmism” quite like a claim that the reefs are all about to die due to global warming. It’s one of the key predictions we’ve heard over and over again, including this item from the front page of the New York Times on August 8, 2024: “This generation will probably see the demise of the Great Barrier Reef unless humanity acts with far more urgency to rein in climate change, new research suggests.” But we’ve been hearing these warnings for a long time.

John Robson:

And yet somehow the coral is not only still with us, but in many places it’s clearly thriving. So let’s take a deep breath and plunge into the topic. For the Climate Discussion Nexus, I’m John Robson with a CDN Crystal Ball Check on the Coral Reef scare.

Coral is a classic poster child, or polyp, for the impact of climate change because it’s so beautiful. And yes its loss would be horrific aesthetically as well as ecologically.

For that reason, coral appears to have taken the place of the polar bear in alarmist mythology now that the latter has refused to die off on cue. When we at CDN get exasperated missives asking how we can “deny” climate change when its disastrous effects are all around us we reliably get dying coral reefs flung in our faces. And I don’t want anyone thinking that because here at CDN we argue for a rational, evidence-based approach to ecological issues, including global warming, that we’re indifferent to the natural world. Far from it.

I myself had the immense good fortune to grow up with a remote cottage on Georgian Bay without electricity or hot water, and as I mentioned in my 2017 documentary The Environment: A True Story, to this day I have nightmares of hiking behind that cottage and running into a road and condominiums. And to this day I also savour the call of the loon (though not in the social media comments section, just on the lake, I should specify).

I also had the great good fortune to visit the Caribbean with my parents several times. And I vividly remember the very first: after a long tiring day of travel, we reached our cabin after sundown, ditched our luggage, grabbed the underwater flashlights and rushed down to the beach.

I plunged into the glorious warm water, I turned on the light and I saw this dazzling panorama of coral and brilliant tropical fish. It’s one of the highlights of my life. Ever since I’ve said that if heaven doesn’t look like Georgian Bay, I expect that it will resemble the Caribbean.

So yes, to lose such natural wonders would be heartbreaking. But it doesn’t mean it’s fair to claim it’s happening when it’s not.

Narrator:

Predictions of the imminent demise of coral have been extremely common over the past decade, not just from environmentalists but from prestigious academic and government agencies.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says:

“Coral reefs are in decline in the U.S. and around the world. Many scientists now believe the very existence of coral reefs may be in jeopardy unless we intensify our efforts to protect them (Frieler et al. 2013).”

In 2021 PBS said: “increasing frequency of heat waves is a death knell for reefs.”

A 2018 paper in Trends in Ecology & Evolution warned:

“Even if the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement are achieved, coral reefs are likely to decline by 70-90% relative to their current abundance by midcentury.”

Global Issues magazine claimed in 2013:

“Coral Reefs Are Dying Around the World”.

A study in Frontiers in Marine Science also in 2018 started:

“Global climate change and localized anthropogenic stressors are driving rapid declines in coral reef health.”

The UN Environment Programme warned in 2017:

“Increasingly frequent severe coral bleaching is among the greatest threats to coral reefs posed by climate change…. Under a business as usual scenario, ASB [“Annual Severe Bleaching”] is projected to occur within this century for 99% of the world’s coral reefs.”

A “Center for Biological Diversity” pitch, undated and still current, says:

“In just a few decades, scientists warn, these ‘rainforests of the sea’ and all their rich biodiversity could disappear completely.”

Climate change isn’t the only threat. In 2016 two professors at Australia’s James Cook University said Australia’s spectacular Great Barrier Reef “would be in terminal condition within five years” largely due to water pollution, unless the government took immediate action.

John Robson:

You see the pattern. Show everyone pictures of beautiful, delicate coral and announce that something is going to wreck the reefs unless we take drastic measures. In the Australian case the claim was sharply critiqued by another James Cook University scientist, marine physicist Professor Peter Ridd, as far too pessimistic.

Ridd was shamefully driven from the University for saying so. But then 2021 came, and with it the news that coral coverage on the GBR had reached the highest level since detailed monitoring began in 1985. And according to the data, it’s still growing.

Now you might say that the media can’t be faulted for occasionally making wrong predictions. And that’s fair enough. But when it comes to climate change, one of our pet peeves at CDN is that so much climate “news” isn’t about what did happen but what they expect or want to see happen, and then if it doesn’t, they never follow up, let alone apologize.

For instance consider this classic from 2013 in The Guardian:

Narrator:

“A major survey of the coral reefs of the Caribbean is expected to reveal the extent to which one of the world’s biggest and most important reserves of coral has been degraded by climate change, pollution, overfishing and degradation…. As much as 80% of Caribbean coral is reckoned to have been lost in recent years, but the survey should give a more accurate picture of where the losses have had most effect and on the causes.”

John Robson:

Notice the study hasn’t even started but they’ve already announced what the conclusions will be.

Narrator:

“The Caribbean was chosen to launch the global mission because it is at the frontline of risk. Over the last 50 years 80% of the corals have been lost due mainly to coastal development and pollution. They now are also threatened by invasive species, global warming and the early effects of ocean acidification — it’s the perfect storm.”

John Robson:

But despite the gloomy outlook, according to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, after 2013 coral cover went up, not down:

 

But of course you didn’t read about that in The Guardian.

Now, again to be fair, pollution, coastal development and hurricanes can destroy coral reefs. But what about global warming? Here we have to point out the unmistakable reality that coral prefers warm water.

It’s blindingly obvious. Georgian Bay, for instance, has glorious Canadian shield vistas of wind-swept pines that inspired members of the Group of Seven. But one thing it doesn’t have is coral. Not a frond.

As this Wikipedia image of “Locations of coral reefs around the world” illustrates, despite a few lonely instances of cold-water coral it is overwhelmingly concentrated in the tropics. Life likes warmth and coral especially likes it.

In fact, partisan as we are toward Canada’s lakes, we do concede that when it comes to underwater scenery the True North Strong and Free is also, well, monochrome.

And not just the lakes. Also the oceans. If you go scuba diving off Nova Scotia or British Columbia just as if you go swimming in our lakes be ready for 50 shades of green. Whereas from Bonaire to Kiribati, the tropics are a riot of colour.

Well enough pseudo-lyrical travelogue prose. The point is, if the oceans really are warming, corals won’t sit there and helplessly die. What they’ll do is spread into formerly cooler water through those famous adaptive mechanisms that a guy named Darwin talked about. Indeed as the Wikipedia article on the GBR admitted in an unguarded moment, “until about 25 million years ago, northern Queensland was still in temperate waters south of the tropics – too cool to support coral growth.”

Likewise, a 2022 study of coral reefs on Weizhou Island, on “the northern border of the tropics” meaning near the edge of the warm friendly zone, found that “The warm periods are conducive to coral growth and otherwise coral reefs growth would slow down as cold periods came.” Yeah, no duh.

It also therefore found that corals did better during the Medieval Warm Period and Roman Warm Period than during the Little Ice Age. Again, no duh. Indeed a 2021 paper on reconstruction of local temperatures based on both living and fossilized coral, by John Abbot for the IPA, showed yet again that contrary to Mann’s hockey stick, there was indeed a robust Medieval Warm Period and a dismal protracted Little Ice Age. Based on the obvious fact that coral prefers warmth to cold which is, again, why it is currently concentrated in the tropics.

And another thing. If corals couldn’t survive warming they wouldn’t exist because, and again oddly this point is not even remotely controversial but it is generally ignored and its implications are disregarded, we know that the Earth has been anomalously cold for the last 2.5 million years or so, but coral has existed and flourished for literally hundreds of millions of years meaning it does very well in much warmer conditions.

Narrator:

Corals first appeared during the Cambrian Explosion of multi-celled life, in this case around 535 million years ago. According to Wikipedia:

“Rugose or horn corals became dominant by the middle of the Silurian period, and during the Devonian, corals flourished with more than 200 genera.”

Many corals, along with the majority of other species, died out during various severe extinction events in the intervening years. But many survived; as Wikipedia also notes, “The currently ubiquitous stony corals, Scleractinia, appeared in the Middle Triassic.”

Since the Triassic was about 250 to 200 million years ago, corals have survived a long time, and have been through a lot.

John Robson:

Including the huge extinction event at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary that wiped out 55% of marine genera, and the Cretaceous-Paleogene thought to have killed some 75% of species worldwide.

But not coral.

Oh, and it also somehow didn’t just survive but flourished in conditions that were typically 10°C warmer than today. In which, given current warnings of “runaway” greenhouse conditions and a howling wasteland of drought, fire, hurricanes and floods, the long warm Jurassic-Cretaceous span saw not mass extinction but the magnificent, unequaled size and variety of the dinosaurs.

The key point here isn’t just that dinosaurs are cool. It’s that any species, genus, or family that has been around for more than 2.5 million years, and especially more than 15 million years, the ongoing cooling recently, has proven beyond the reach of even the most hysterical rhetoric that it does not die in the presence of warmth.

Coral has been around for half a billion years. And if you think the reefs are spectacular now, just imagine what they looked like in the Eocene or the Cretaceous when the planet was warmer. And if you don’t think they’re spectacular now, well, like Rick going to Casablanca for the waters, you have been misinformed.

Here we might interject that even the polar bear, the previous poster child for extinction due to climate change, is basically a snow-camo grizzly. (Yes, the two are so closely related that they can interbreed, though you wouldn’t want to be there when it happened.) But at least polar bears actually do like chilly environments. Coral clings to the tropics on our relatively cool planet.

So the idea that warming would kill coral is and was ridiculous. But apparently coral was so picturesque that it was irresistible anyway. So let’s look at the evidence.

Narrator:

Coral reefs certainly can be harmed by human activities. Wikipedia notes that:

“Coral reefs are under stress around the world. In particular, coral mining, agricultural and urban runoff, pollution (organic and inorganic), overfishing, blast fishing, disease, and the digging of canals and access into islands and bays are localized threats to coral ecosystems.”

John Robson:

So far, so reasonable. But what else do they say?

Narrator:

“Broader threats are sea temperature rise, sea level rise and pH changes from ocean acidification, all associated with greenhouse gas emissions. In 1998, 16% of the world’s reefs died as a result of increased water temperature.”

John Robson:

Oh really? One in six reefs died in a single year, a quarter-century ago? Gosh. They don’t seem to have stayed dead for long, do they?

Nor do they stay colourless after a so-called bleaching event. Bleaching is a reaction not to heat but to stress of any kind including cooling, and it’s not a swan song, it’s an adaptive mechanism. Coral itself is mostly white, since it’s a skeletal structure composed of calcium carbonate. The vivid colours are actually created by the algae that lives inside the coral polyps. During a bleaching event the polyps expel the algae, leaving behind the colourless skeleton. But the algae eventually returns and so does the colour.

Which brings us to the question of what helps coral reefs recover from a bleaching event. The answer, surprise surprise, appears to be warmth.

Narrator:

A news item from December 2020 about a study from the University of Victoria began with the usual jargon about how “Climate change threatens the world’s coral reefs” but then goes on to note that a series of reefs around Kiritimati, near Christmas Island, were recovering from bleaching during a heatwave.

“‘Observing corals recovering from bleaching while still baking in hot waters is a game changer,’ says [lead author Julia] Baum.”

John Robson:

Almost as though coral were a warm-water organism, we say again. And others occasionally mumble it too. For instance the U.S. governmental agency NOAA, which said on October 29, 2013 that “New study suggests coral reefs may be able to adapt to moderate climate change”.

May be able to adapt? An organism? Weird.

And here we must again raise the issue of journalists apparently not having Google on their computers because, as we noted, bleaching is a reaction not to heat but to stress of any kind including cooling and, again, it is not a swan song it’s an adaptive mechanism.

As Jim Steele has observed, “in January 2010 along the Florida Keys, cold weather killed 11.5 percent of the coral, which was 20 times worse than the 2005 warm weather mortality.” Though naturally Wikipedia’s “List of triggers” starts “increased water temperature (marine heatwaves, most commonly due to global warming), or reduced water temperatures”.

Still, in the wacky world of climate, all news is bad news. Hence this assessment from Bar-Ilan University, via EurekAlert! in 2021:

Narrator:

“In the northern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba corals also have exceptionally high tolerance to increasing seawater temperatures, now occurring as a consequence of global warming. This characteristic led coral reef scientists to designate this region as a potential coral reef refuge in the face of climate change – a reef where corals may survive longer than others that are being lost at an alarming rate due to human pressures.”

John Robson:

Hmmmn. Exceptionally high tolerance to rising temperatures… almost like they benefit from it. And it gets better.

Narrator:

“However, global climate change will also result in more variable weather patterns, including extreme cold periods. Some researchers predict that the Red Sea region is entering a cooling phase…. they demonstrate that a winter even 1°C cooler than average results in a physiological stress response similar to that seen in other corals under heat stress. This result shows for the first time how perilously close Gulf of Aqaba corals live to their lower temperature threshold.”

John Robson:

Oh my. Lower temperature threshold. As in, cooling would be the enemy, not warming. Still, the key point apparently is that since warming causes cooling it’s warming that will kill the corals if it gets too cold for them.

Besides, since we can’t have good news, now can we, New Scientist in 2021 found a study that managed to argue that, even if some coral species can swap their algae for more heat-resistant strains and thereby resist bleaching, this is no comfort because

“this was only the case in scenarios in which greenhouse gas emissions are kept low and ocean warming is restricted to below 2°C.”

Whatever did they do in the Eocene? Inquiring minds want to know. (As they want to know whether this exercise in hypocalypse used RCP 8.5 Why yes. It did. Good guess)

Narrator:

Likewise a few months later National Geographic conceded grudgingly that:

“Two of the world’s most ubiquitous species of reef-building corals seem surprisingly able to survive and even cope well with climate change, according to a new study – at least so long as global warming is kept below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the target set by the Paris Agreement.”

John Robson:

That same article tried to keep the doom going by saying:

“Coral reefs have already suffered mass fatalities. The Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest reef system, is currently in ‘crisis,’ a recently published UN report said.”

Except, as we already showed you, it’s not. Despite which UNESCO actually tried to list the GBR as “endangered” in 2022.

Narrator:

And in March 2022, a Washington Post news advocacy warned that

“Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its sixth massive bleaching event as climate change has warmed the ocean, raising concerns over whether one of the world’s natural wonders is nearing a tipping point.”

John Robson:

Yes. Apparently it is, toward unprecedented coral health and extent. But the herd of independent minds stampeded on in unison.

One reason why is that these warnings sure are lucrative. Back in 2018 the Australian government suddenly gave nearly half a billion dollars to a private outfit with just six employees to, er, uh, fix the reef or something.

So on to the next failed prediction, that yes, corals like warmth, but only a teeny tiny bit and we’re about to hit one of those dreaded tipping points that lurk everywhere. So, also in 2022, a piece in Phys.Org blared

Narrator:

“Coral reefs that anchor a quarter of marine wildlife and the livelihoods of more than half-a-billion people will most likely be wiped out even if global warming is capped within Paris climate goals, researchers said Tuesday.”

John Robson:

Here we go again.

Narrator:

“An average increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels would see more than 99 percent of the world’s coral reefs unable to recover from ever more frequent marine heat waves… At two degrees of warming, mortality will be 100 percent according to the study, which used a new generation of climate models with an unprecedented resolution of one square kilometre.”

John Robson:

Bosh. According to alarmists the world breached the 1.5 degree limit in 2023, so where’s the mass death? Or the common sense?

Narrator:

“‘The stark reality is that there is no safe limit of global warming for coral reefs,’ lead author Adele Dixon, a researcher at the University of Leeds’ School of Biology, told AFP. ‘1.5C is still too much warming for the ecosystems on the frontline of climate change.’”

John Robson:

No safe limit? Does this person really not know that during most of the history of coral life on Earth, even including the Holocene Climatic Optimum, the planet was well above that limit?

Maybe not. Because the degree of historical ignorance is astounding. Still, despite the usual flood of alarmism, the truth is occasionally surfacing. We mentioned earlier that study from Kiritimati, one of the “Line Islands” that are part of the Republic of Kiribati.

Narrator:

And writing in 2023 the Daily Digest said:

“There were a lot of amazing news stories in 2022 showing just how well nature was adapting to our planet’s changing climate. But no story was as impressive as the news that coral reefs just might be able to regenerate after suffering massive die-offs. This is the story of how the coral reef surrounding Kirabati’s Line Islands changed our understanding of marine biology.”

A researcher, Enric Sala, thought that the 2015-16 El Nino would have destroyed the coral, but when he went to look he said:

“The bottom was covered with live, gorgeous corals, all the way down to 100 feet… we were back in paradise.”

John Robson:

Yay. So maybe heaven will resemble the tropical Pacific as well. And yay that National Geographic also had this story. And yay that the Associated Press in November 2023 wrote predictably that “Climate change is hurting coral worldwide” but then immediately added “But these reefs off the Texas coast are thriving”.

And yay that, as Peter Ridd wrote in The Australian in 2022:

Narrator:

“The latest data on coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef, produced by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, should be a cause for celebration. Church bells should be ringing and children given a day off school. AIMS says two of the three main regions of the reef are at record-breaking high levels. The other region is at record-equalling levels (once uncertainty margins are taken into account)…. the reef as a whole is at record high levels.”

John Robson:

Still, in the face of all this surfacing evidence, the degree of dogma is remarkable.

Narrator:

As Chris Morrison just wrote on The Daily Skeptic:

“Massive increases in coral across the Australian Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been reported for 2023-24 making it the third record year in a row of heavy growth. Across almost all parts of the 1,500 mile long reef, from the warmer northern waters to the cooler conditions in the south, coral is now at its highest level since detailed observations began. The inconvenient news has been ignored in mainstream media which, curiously, have focused on a non-story in Nature that claimed ‘climate change’ poses an ‘existential threat’ to the GBR.”

John Robson:

Well, they would, wouldn’t they? And they did. Again, we’re not saying to ignore real threats to coral, from pollution to overfishing. But stop already with the lunatic claims that a warm water organism with half a billion years of successful adaptation, on a warmer planet, is going to die if it gets a fraction of a degree warmer. It’s not science, it’s not happening, and it’s not helpful.

For CDN, I’m John Robson, and that’s our “Crystal Ball” look at predictions of the imminent demise of coral due to favourable conditions.