Behind the Science The coral reef may be growing
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25 July 2010
One reason I am turned off by the Global Warming crowd is their instant science. Climatology has been around only 50 years and yet we are supposed to stop and turn the world on a dime because of something they have been studying for 5 minutes. Computer models? Computers run by GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out.
Here is a stunning example of why it pays to be a skeptic.
Friom Der Spiegel: “The Maldives have become a symbol of the dangers of global warming, amid fears the low-lying nation could disappear as a result of rising sea levels. But one team of scientists believes the truth is more complicated. The Maldives coral islands, they postulate, may be growing with the rising waters.”
So global warming is helpful?
Or maybe it is not global warming at all.
Or maybe we should just sit quietly and observe for a few years before coming up with a theory.
From Der Spiegel: “The geomorphologists compared old aerial photographs taken in World War II with current satellite images. To their surprise, they found that most of the atolls they were studying had either grown or remained unchanged in the last few decades, even though the sea level has already risen by 12 centimeters (about 5 inches).”
Hmm.
From Der Spiegel: “But will the islands also survive the future rise in sea level, which is likely to occur more rapidly than in the past? As global warming continues, the sea level could rise by more than half a centimeter a year. According to the IPCC, the world’s oceans could rise to levels more than half a meter higher than at the beginning of industrialization.”
Oh no. A foot a century! Poca will be flooded in 12,000 years. We must stop all human activity immediately.
Comments
Coral must float!
Proof indeed that coral does float
Link here
wattsupwiththat.com/.../...
It is entirely unreasonable to think they could not adapt to changing sea level in the future no matter which way it goes.
The living part of the coral animal looks rather like an upside down jellyfish, the latter being their free swimming relative.
hello-maldives.com/corals.htm
Notice that the growth rate is currently 5-28 mm/yr for the stony corals. The sea level rise rate is averaging about 2mm/yr at the moment, according to the Jason satellite data. So the corals can easily outgrow the sea level rise.
So what does it take to kill a reef? According to Webster, J.M. et al. (2004) a sea level rise of 35m in 500 years (70mm/yr), such as happened around Hawaii ca. 14,700 years ago, MAY have been enough to drown the reef there. Maybe.
What is intriguing is why the scientists declared themselves baffled. All this coral reef growth theory has been known since Darwin's time. The 12 cm rise since WWII equates to about 2mm/yr, which is easily within the growth rate of the corals.
Corals have known what to do - i.e., react to ever changing sea levels - for hundreds of millions of years.
Unless the water rise was very drastic they would adapt with ease to any changes.
geophysics.esci.keele.ac.uk/earthlearningidea/PDF/63_Darwin_atoll.pdf
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