[Coral-List] What do coral reef scientists perceive are the major, threats to Caribbean coral reefs?

[Douglas Fenner]

One correction, Gene.  If you read the so-called "non-governmental climate
change report", you will read that they say that say that acidification is
not a problem.  If you understand that this report which was cleverly named
to try to fool you into thinking that it was a counterpart to the IPCC
report (but which was produced by one small group of people called the
"Heartland Institute" in one country (the US) which does the bidding of the
fossil fuel industry and is no doubt funded by them), and you look up the
Heartland Institute, and you read up a bit on the subject in general,
you'll realize that statement is highly debatable, to say the least, and
designed to mislead the readership.  The fact that they say it, doesn't
make it true.

    Cheers,  Doug

On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 3:24 AM, Eugene Shinn <eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>wrote:

> Alina, I agree that Caribbean Coral death continued into the late 1980s
> and 1990s however, the peak year of /Acropora/ death was 1983. That was
> the year both A. /palmata/ and /cervicornis/ died at San Salvador. Thats
> way out east of the Bahamas and surrounded by deep clear blue water.
> Telephone pole reef at San Salvador, (almost entirely a staghorn
> thicket) died in 1983  over a very short period (2 or 3 months). It was
> disease that was not preceded by bleaching. Death of that reef put the
> nearby resort devoted to underwater photographers out of business. This
> was all observed by the director and scientists at the nearby Finger
> Lakes lab at San Salvador. My 52-year serial photographs of the same
> sites in the Florida Keys confirm that coral death peaked in 1983. They
> were showing signs of sickness in the late 1970s but the peak time of
> demise was 1983. Summer water temperature in the Keys was no higher in
> 1983 than previous years and wide-spread bleaching in the Keys did not
> start until 1986. As you know the peak year for African dust flux into
> the Caribbean was 1983. I might add the second peak year was 1998 but by
> then disease and bleaching was rampant everywhere in the Caribbean. That
> world wide El Nino even killed corals in the Persian Gulf where corals
> had long been adapted to extreme temperature changes.  Before you
> mention "correlation is not causation" I remind you that correlation is
> causation when when people correlate sewage/people (the usual suspects)
> with coral death. It seems to depend on what is being correlated. If you
> really want to get stirred up read the coral section in the recently
> released Non Governmental Climate Change report. There you will find
> that acidification is not a problem. I certainly agree with you about
> over population but you have to be realistic. That ain't gonna change
> voluntarily. You may be interested to know that in the current IPCC
> massive report on page 1106 chapter 12 there is a Frequently Asked
> Question (FAQ)  12.3, "*What would happen to future climate if we
> stopped emissions today?*"  as part of a longer sentence the answer
> given is, "Much of the warming would persist for centuries after
> greenhouse gas emissions stopped." So if green house gasses are the
> ultimate cause none of us will ever see the reefs recover. Very
> depressing. Gene
>
> --
>
>
> No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
> ------------------------------------ -----------------------------------
> E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
> University of South Florida
> College of Marine Science Room 221A
> 140 Seventh Avenue South
> St. Petersburg, FL 33701
> <eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
> Tel 727 553-1158
> ---------------------------------- -----------------------------------
>
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-- 
 Douglas Fenner
Contractor with Ocean Associates, Inc.
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

phone 1 684 622-7084