[Coral-List] I could not stand by on Earth Day

[Steve Mussman]

“. . . the reef science community has been doing its best to get the seriousness of the situation out there. BUT, the media are NOT conveying that message”.

As an objective observer (not a member of either faction) I have to say that the coral science community has been off message for some time. You, Peter, are among the outliers and thank you for that, but as a whole, the reef science community has not conveyed the right message. The prevailing message over the last decade has been one of hopefulness through restoration. Can’t blame the media (or the public) for being skeptical and confused if suddenly the mood becomes more ominous. And even now, as we are confronted with the fourth global bleaching event on record, with few exceptions, I have yet to see convincing evidence of a clear and consistent shift in that message.

Regards,

Steve Mussman

On 4/22/24, 10:27 PM, Peter Sale via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

Hi,

I watched And scanned numerous media reports on the current global bleaching event. Finally, on Earth Day, I realized I could not stand idly by. The real message from the 2024 global bleaching event is NOT that corals are once again bleaching around the world. It is that this has been happening since the 1980s and the reef science community has been doing its best to get the seriousness of the situation out there. BUT, the media are NOT conveying that message. They are stuck on bleaching events as a series of one-off events that are terribly sad, but just another nature story.

Over the last 30 years, we have failed to rein in our use of fossil fuels and the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is much higher than before. For all our talk, and even after reef scientists got IPCC to project a 99% loss of reef corals by 2100 if we ONLY kept warming to +2.0C instead of +1.5C, the world continues to refuse to get the point. We are trashing the planet and coral reefs will be likely the first ecosystem to be erased.

The short post is at https://www.petersalebooks.com/?p=3515

Happy Earth Day listers.

Peter Sale

University of Windsor

sale at uwindsor.ca

www.petersalebooks.com

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