[Coral-List] political arguments on coral-list

Douglas Fenner douglasfennertassi at gmail.com
Sun May 25 21:02:53 EDT 2014


There is no question that being aware of the fact that over the hundreds of
millions of years that temperatures have gone up and down a lot, and carbon
dioxide has gone up and down a lot, and coral reefs have grown and have
disappeared, and it has all happened without humans (unless you subscribe
to the view that the earth is only a few thousand years old and there were
people riding dinosaurs and eating trilobites and stromatoliths), give you
the perspective that large changes can happen naturally, and there are long
cycles (long like 100,000 years), so indeed sooner or later ice ages are
coming, and will go, and maybe even carboniferous ages will lay down huge
layers of coal, and sea levels rise to cover large parts of North America,
and then recede.
     I agree, geology provides deep-time perspective that ecology doesn't.
 And everyday life doesn't.
     That does NOT prove that present climate changes are not being caused
largely by humans.  Just because lightning happens in nature without humans
doesn't mean that a large spark in a laboratory was produced by clouds
without human assistance.
      Second, while reefs will come back someday, that could be 10,000 or
30 million years away.  Coral reefs provide huge ecosystem benefits to
humans, such as shoreline protection, food, and tourism, many 10's or
hundreds of billions of dollars a year.  Entire tropical country economies
depend on the tourism, and many tens of millions of people depend on reef
fish for food, without them their family goes hungry.  Can we afford to
just say, lightly, "oh, well, too, bad, we'll loose the reefs.  They'll
come back some day."  in 10,000 years or 30 million seems just a tad late
for the people who need dinner tonight or the country that needs income.
 The world doesn't need those 10's or 100's of billions of dollars?
       Personally, I tend to think reefs would come back surprisingly fast,
if humans quit abusing them.  But to expect them to come back when we
continue to damage them, isn't realistic.  As human populations grow, and
economies grow, the damage continues to increase, not decrease.
       And there will be more great, natural, extinction events that wipe
out most of the world's species.  In the millions and hundreds of millions
of years in the future.  Kind of like is happening today as humans drive
species to extinction at a rate as high or higher than the great extinction
events in the fossil record.  We didn't need those species?  Not to worry,
new species will evolve, might take a few millions or tens of millions of
years, but we got plenty of time.  Don't we?

Here's a geologist in Miami in the news who doesn't think climate change is
a hoax or trivial.

"University of Miami geologist in trenches of climate change":

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/24/4136597/university-of-miami-geologist.html

What do the major geological societies say?

  I know that the US National Academy of Sciences, representing the most
prestigious scientists in the country, many Nobel prizewinners, and also
many top scientists from other countries, says clearly that climate change
is real, and that presently it is mostly caused by people.  Most other
national academies of science do as well, such as the Royal Society of the
UK.  But I'm sure Pat Sajak (TV game show host who recently tweeted that
'people who think climate change is real are unpatriotic racists' as a
joke) knows best.  He's the REAL expert.

Cheers,  Doug


On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 5:38 AM, Ulf Erlingsson <ceo at lindorm.com> wrote:

> Great comment. I wonder if it's something in the geological timescale that
> sets geologists apart...?
>
> Ulf Erlingsson, Ph.D.
> President and CEO
> Lindorm, Inc.
> 10699 NW 123 St Rd
> Medley, FL 33178
>
> http://lindorm.com
> ceo at lindorm.com
> +1-305 888 0762 office
> +1-305 308 6334 mobile
> BB PIN 2B2744E7
>
>
>
>
> On 2014-05-20, at 11:29, Dennis Hubbard wrote:
>
> Doug, Steve and others:
>
> I apologize for a long post. However, If I add up all the short, bulleted
> submissions I've read on this one topic I'd challenge an encyclopedia
> volume.
>
>
>


-- 
Douglas Fenner
Contractor with Ocean Associates, Inc.
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

phone 1 684 622-7084

"belief in climate change is optional, participation is not."

website:  http://independent.academia.edu/DouglasFenner

Blog:
http://cctus.org/conservation-science/2014-expedition-scholar/2014-expedition-scholar-douglas-fenner-ph-d/2014-expedition-scholar-blog/


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