Piss-poor journalism
Last night I saw a TV show about climate change.
Propaganda isn't necessarily a bad thing, and these people certainly mean well, but they got most of their facts wrong and misrepresented a great many truths in order to make them support a particular conclusion.
In particular, they interviewed some woman whose primary claims to fame are (1) they interviewed her, and (2) she likes diving on the reef. This woman saw some bleached reef. Because she remembers it as once being vibrant with colour, she has concluded that the entire Barrier Reef is dying and that this is a consequence of global warming.
What a load of bollocks.
For starters, a small rise in temperature will extend the coral spawning season. Apart from that, the reef is not a single organism. When sections of reef thrive, this allows local macro and micro coral predator populations to boom. This kills the local reef, which dies and bleaches. The predators and diseases are starved out of the region, making it prime real estate for colonisation by coral spawn. The wheel of life turns, and the reef blooms again.
On a grander scale, some people also seem to think that because coral lives in a certain depth range, rising seas will kill the reef. This is also bollocks. I can explain why, but first I'll move this out of the realm of speculation and into the realm of verifiable fact:
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The age of the reef is easily measured, based on size and known rate of growth.
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The dates of major changes in global climate are equally easy to determine from changes in strata of known age.
From the age of the reef and the freeze/thaw dates of glacial cycles, it is trivial to show that the reef has survived at least five major global warmings and at least five ice ages. Several of those natural global warmings were quite significant, being sufficient to give Australia an inland sea. This entails a rise in sea level of more than ten metres over current levels. None of the above was considered. Presumably it was more important to keep the camera on an attractive woman rambling about her love of diving on the reef, so that women could fantasise about dolphins and men could fantasise about women in bikinis.
The dieback/recolonisation cycle is what causes the reef to grow. Growth is what allows it to rise with the rising waters. Reefs can ony grow, they can't shrink. So when the waters at last recede, the top of the reef pokes out of the water. This is called an "atoll" and there are loads of them, each documenting the height to which the sea rose (5-10m higher than the reef). Atolls are also "vital and threatened" parts of our "fragile" ecology. In order to make some new atolls we need global warming.
Quick, start your car! If we don't get some global warming the seas won't rise and the fragile ecology will be destroyed. Panic! The world is ending. Or not.