[Coral-List] Coral reefs in the UN Convention on Climate Change
Esther Peters
esther.peters at verizon.net
Sun Jan 13 16:34:02 EST 2008
Tom,
I didn't see other comments on your post of over a week ago (perhaps it
was just too depressing for most to read), but I wanted to thank you for
sending this information, and in particular, the link to the New York
Times comment on the aftermath of Bali:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/voices-on-bali-and-beyond/
Reading those 100 commentaries gives one an excellent education on what
is happening in the world! I am glad the coral-list is continuing this
discussion and for all who are contributing insights.
Esther Peters
Thomas Goreau wrote:
> To those seriously concerned about climate change and the future of
> coral reefs:
>
> Climate change has been a minor subject on the coral list server
> until recently, when a flurry of postings, focusing largely on the
> merits of different cars rather than impacts on corals, appeared in
> response to a recent Science article. According to press reports,
> this article makes predictions, based on models, that climate change
> might begin to affect reefs in 50-70 years.
>
> This is overly optimistic! In fact we could lose most of what is left
> in the next extreme hot year that exceeds 1998, and this could come
> at any time. Statistically, based on the Global Coral Reef Alliance
> database of global coral reef satellite sea surface temperatures
> since 1982, it is due this year. But we can't be exactly certain
> because of the noise in the climate system (I published many papers
> on this with Ray Hayes since 1990, none cited in the Science paper).
> The real news is that we have ALREADY passed the tipping point. And
> that what emerged from Bali was cynical abandonment of coral reefs
> and countries that depend on them. The oil and coal burners chose to
> sacrifice reefs because they don't want to be inconvenienced by
> changing their polluting ways, and they don't care what happens to
> coral reefs, island nations, low lying coasts, or even the future of
> their own children. But they can't say that they weren't warned what
> was happening.
>
> These opinions are based on empirical data, not on models (like the
> Science paper) that are only general qualitative descriptions of
> reality. If this seems like just another outrageous personal opinion,
> bear in mind that I am the only coral reef scientist with degrees in
> atmospheric physics and chemistry from MIT, Caltech, and Harvard. As
> a teenager I wrote computer programs that correctly predicted zonal
> wind speeds on Saturn decades before space probes confirmed them and
> was asked to do my PhD writing general circulation models to predict
> the climatic effects of CO2 increase. I refused to get back to coral
> reefs and warm water. I set up the first labs in the Amazon to
> measure greenhouse gases at high precision, made the first
> measurements of tropical jungle deforestation effects on atmospheric
> chemistry, and in the 1980s published half a dozen papers on
> stabilization of atmospheric CO2. When these were ignored, I went
> back to restoring coral reefs, the most financially unrewarding
> activity that I know.
>
> Paleoclimatic data clearly shows that the IPCC projections for future
> climate change have seriously underestimated the sensitivity of
> temperature and sea level to CO2. The last time in earth history when
> global temperatures were 1 degree C above today's, sea levels were 7
> meters higher than now, and hippopotamuses and crocodiles flourished
> in London, England. Because CO2 was then one third lower than today's
> value, the conditions then greatly UNDERESTIMATE what will happen
> when temperature and sea level eventually equilibrate with TODAY'S
> level of CO2, even if we never burn another gram of coal or oil or
> natural gas starting immediately. I showed this in briefings to
> delegates at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, predicting
> that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (and the later
> Kyoto Protocol to FCCC) was so weak that it was guaranteed to kill
> coral reefs. I warned that we would lose most corals to heat shock in
> the next decades if negotiators failed to stop global warming then
> and there. I showed that the IPCC had systematically underestimated
> the impacts for two very simple reasons: 1) the models they use fail
> to include the vast bulk of the positive feedback mechanisms that the
> empirical data proves exists in the Earth Climate System, and 2) the
> time horizon for their predictions was 1 to 2 orders of magnitude
> shorter than the response time of the system, so they only covered
> the initial effects, and missed the bulk of the total response.
>
> As Senior Scientific Affairs Officer for global climate change and
> biodiversity at the United Nations Centre for Science and Technology
> for Development, I had a lot of input into the draft of the Framework
> Convention on Climate Change. At that point it was already clear that
> coral reefs were the most temperature sensitive ecosystem, and we had
> already developed the Goreau-Hayes HotSpot method for predicting the
> location, timing, and intensity of bleaching from satellite data
> alone before it could be seen in the field. Unfortunately this was
> widely denied and ridiculed by our colleagues, who later copied our
> data-based conclusions word for word as "common knowledge" without
> bothering to cite the sources (there is a word for this that I'm too
> polite to use here). I personally inserted the words "coral reefs"
> every place in the original draft UN Framework Convention on Climate
> Change where they belonged, insisted explicitly on COMPLETE
> accounting of all greenhouse gas sources and sinks, and added that
> one of the goals of the convention was to protect Earth's most
> temperature-sensitive ecosystems. What the UN sent out to governments
> was vastly better than what they got back! Governments made
> scientific nonsense of the treaty by confusing net with gross fluxes,
> rewarding bogus carbon sinks while ignoring the real ones, failing to
> identify the most climatically sensitive ecosystems and requiring
> that they be monitored for signs of temperature stress, and failing
> to establlish trigger mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
> if such stress was in fact shown. Minutes after the Convention was
> passed in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, I passed out leaflets describing it
> as a death sentence for coral reefs.
>
> I was the only coral reef researcher at the UN Convention on Climate
> Change in Bali, on the delegation of Jamaica, on the delegation of
> the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (an Inter-Governmental
> Organization representing almost all Caribbean States), as
> Coordinator of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable
> Development Partnership in New Technologies for Small Island
> Developing States, as President of the Global Coral Reef Alliance,
> and as Science Advisor to Yayasan Karang Lestari (Foundation for
> Protected Corals, an Indonesian Non Governmental Organization that
> runs the world's largest coral reef and fisheries habitat restoration
> projects).
>
> My briefings to the 41 member states of the Association of Small
> Island States (the island nations of the Pacific, Caribbean, and
> Indian Ocean) and to the Indonesian Government (the host country and
> home to the largest and richest coral reefs in the world), also
> passed out to all of the nearly 200 governments present, pointed out
> that: 1) the impacts of climate change had been seriously and
> systematically underestimated, and the threat was much worse and more
> imminent than recognized, with coral reefs and island nations being
> the first and worst victims 2) that we could lose most remaining
> corals in the next extreme hot year, 3) that the EU proposal to allow
> CO2 to rise to 450 ppm and temperature to rise by 2 degrees C
> (blocked by the US, Canada, Japan, the Arab oil producing states,
> China, India, and Russia for their own reasons) was unacceptable to
> small island developing states because it meant sacrificing coral
> reefs, fisheries, and shore protection against rising sea level, 4)
> that what was needed was to REDUCE atmospheric CO2 by AT LEAST one
> third BELOW today's levels, and 5) that the technologies to do so
> were proven and in hand, but were not being funded or even discussed.
> These technologies will be covered in detail in a book I am editing
> on Underutilized Technologies for Sustainable Development and
> Reversing Global Warming, which will be published in May 2008 at the
> United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.
>
> There is precious little time now left to act, thanks to decades of
> denial and obfuscation by governments and by many coral reef
> professionals, long after the heat shock cause of mass coral reef
> bleaching was thoroughly established by 1990. What Bali gave us is
> another two wasted years of talking while temperatures continue to
> rise without control, and corals and people die from extreme
> temperature events. That is why further delay is a capital crime
> against the environment. We must ensure that what climate treaties
> emerge two years from now deal with the real problems, not avoiding
> them, and promote the real solutions, not fake ones. While this may
> seem merely academic to those from rich countries, it is a matter of
> life and death for the island nations, especially the low lying ones,
> and for coral reefs.
>
> For more information on the problems and the solutions, please see:
>
> 1) The first New York Times comment on the aftermath of Bali
>
> http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/voices-on-bali-and-beyond/
>
> 2) The briefing to island nation delegations
>
> http://www.globalcoral.org/Global%20Warming%20Coral%20Reefs%20and%
> 20Tropical%20Islands.1.pdf
>
> The latter link may not work in all browsers. If clicking it says
> that the page can't be found, just copy and paste it into your
> browser window and it should work.
>
> Best wishes,
> Tom
>
> Thomas J. Goreau, PhD
> President
> Global Coral Reef Alliance
> 37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge MA 02139
> 617-864-4226
> goreau at bestweb.net
> http://www.globalcoral.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>
>
More information about the Coral-List
mailing list