[Coral-List] #oceanoptimism, sort of

[Peter Sale]

Hi Doug, Steve, other listers,
Looks like we continue to agonize about how to discuss the 'coral reef problem' effectively.  Not too much doom and gloom; keep some optimism alive.  Will they all die?  Just some of them? Maybe most of them?  Does it matter?  Makes my latest blog post relevant to coral-list (the last third of it, anyway).  Title is: "Glaciers Are Melting, Coral Reefs Are Bleaching; We Are Watching the Clowns Take Over Governments Around the World"

I write practically nothing about the clowns, but talk about some recent studies showing that glacier melting in both Greenland and Antarctica is proceeding more rapidly than people expected, and the issue of how to communicate the global degradation of reefs, esp by mass bleaching events, to convey its true seriousness.  For that, I refer to Randy Olson's recent blog post, to Irus Braverman's article about reef scientist angst, and the recent van Hooidonk et al paper on time to first episodes of annual severe bleaching for reefs around the world.  I anticipate ruffling some feathers a tiny bit, among the community.  Or maybe not.  My bottom line is that the coral reef story is not about reefs at all, it's about us.  Find the post at http://wp.me/p5UInC-C0

The next post will appear later in January, and will deal entirely with reefs unless the Donald does something spectacularly stupid in his first weeks in office.  Its tentative title is 'Save a reef; use a condom".

Peter Sale
University of Windsor (Emeritus)