[Coral-List] Evidence that ocean warming has caused most Caribbean coral loss

[Douglas Fenner]

As we watch large numbers and proportions of coral populations be killed by
mass bleaching caused directly by high temperatures and not CO2, in places
like the Northern Great Barrier Reef and Chagos archipelago last year, and
the Central Great Barrier Reef this year, and so much bleaching and coral
mortality in the El Nino high temperature spike in 1998, particularly in
the Indian Ocean but some other areas as well that 16 percent of the word's
coral was estimated to have died in one year, two corals in Pacific Panama
driven to regional extinction (Millepora boschmai and M. intricata) and
ocean temperatures continue to rise and we have not had the third world
wide bleaching event due to high water temperatures having just happened,
it may appear to geologists that CO2 is the main threat in the longer run
of the next few thousand years, to biologists and ecologists watching all
this high temperature coral mortality, it is high temperatures that appear
to threaten corals in the "near future" between now and 2100.  CO2 so far
hasn't caused any large, widespread coral mortality events, has it???
   Cheers,  Doug

On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 3:44 AM, Ulf Erlingsson <ceo at lindorm.com> wrote:

> Thanks Hal for that lecture, and your conclusion that it is CO2 and not
> changes in temperature or sea level that the geological record points its
> finger at. The CO2 today is caused by pollution, and we don't have to take
> the detour over temperature or ice sheets melting, it's more straight
> forward than that. We need to address pollution especially from fossil fuel.
>
> Ulf Erlingsson
>
> > On 2017-05-02, at 11:30 , Lescinsky, Halard <hlescinsky at otterbein.edu>
> wrote:
> >
> >  Geologic data suggest that a pulse of CO2 did trigger extinctions in
> the past, and we simply don’t have the coral abundance data to say exactly
> how well or poorly coral did in reacting to climate change at particular
> times in the past.  This is why ongoing climate change is viewed by the
> vast majority of the geoscience community as a principle factor in reef
> demise.
> > Hal Lescinsky
> > Otterbein University
>
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-- 
Douglas Fenner
Contractor for NOAA NMFS, and consultant
"have regulator, will travel"
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

phone 1 684 622-7084

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"Belief in climate change is optional, participation is not."- Jim Beever.
  "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts."-
Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Study: Stopping global warming only way to save coral reefs.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/study-stopping-global-warming-only-way-save-coral-180833431.html

'Extreme and unusual' climate trends continue after record 2016.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-3932

A roadmap for rapid decarbonization
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6331/1269?utm_campaign=toc_sci-mag_2017-03-23&et_rid=17045989&et_cid=1233226