Coral Reef Devastation Linked to Global Warming

[Anonymous]

http://www.livescience.com/environment/ ... coral.html

Coral Reef Devastation Linked to Global Warming

By LiveScience Staff
posted: 01 May 2007
03:57 pm ET

Coral disease outbreaks have struck the healthiest sections of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and a new study has conclusively linked disease severity to ocean temperature and climate change for the first time.

“With this study, speculation about the impacts of global warming on the spread of infectious disease among susceptible marine species has been brought to an end,” said Don Rice, director of the National Science Foundation’s Chemical Oceanography Program, which helped fund the research.

The study tracked an infection called white syndrome in the Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef system in the world.

Coral colonies live atop limestone scaffolding, which is built from the secretions of the coral creatures called polyps. The vivid colors of the coral come from the symbiotic algae that live in the polyps and supply them with much of their nutrients.

When disease or stressful environmental conditions, such as changes in ocean temperature, strike the reef, the polyps expel their algae, making them appear pale.

Corals are critical to the survival of some commercial marine species and help buffer low-lying coastal areas.

“More diseases are infecting more coral species every year, leading to the global loss of reef-building corals and the decline of other important species dependent on the reefs,” said study lead author John Bruno of the University of North Carolina.

The stressful rise in ocean temperatures due to global warming, coupled with the close living quarters of corals may make it easy for infection to spread, according to the study published in the May 1 online issue of the journal PLoS Biology.

“We’ve long suspected that climate change is driving disease outbreaks,” Bruno said. “Our results suggest that warmer temperatures are increasing the severity of disease in the ocean.”

 

[Anonymous]

It'll all even out.

 

[Anonymous]

Well what are we going to do about it?

 

[Anonymous]

Well what are we going to do about it?

They should issue large beach umbrellas to shade the earth from the sun.

 

[Anonymous]

You expect a bunch of reef keepers to care?

 

[Anonymous]

We got our reef to hell with the rest. Why should I have to suffer for Australia's dying reefs?

 

[Anonymous]

We got our reef to hell with the rest. Why should I have to suffer for Australia's dying reefs?

Hey, if we really gave a crap we wouldn't have reef tanks. :wink:

 

[Anonymous]

this should have stayed in the sump

 

[Anonymous]

Dammit!!! I posted outside of the sump. Tricky!

 

[Anonymous]

Coral disease outbreaks have struck the healthiest sections of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and a new study has conclusively linked disease severity to ocean temperature...

Should have stopped right here, then none of the anti-global warming advocates could say snot.

 

[trido]

It'll all even out.

Id bet there will be at least a few reefs left when we dumba** humans are long gone.

this should have stayed in the sump

I really am surprised to see all of you topside. :lol:

 

[LA-Lawman]

maye it is really "global cooling" that will do us in!

 

[Bubbashrimp]

Lets say that global warming does melt the ice, would this not create more low lying costal areas where reefs could take root?

 

[Anonymous]

Absolutely not. The weather models say that all change from warming will be very bad. No good can come of it.

 

[Bubbashrimp]

Well it happened in the past, right? The corals lived through that! I think most people have a short term outlook on weather, that is you are looking at a tree, but you are not seeing the whole forest. I fear that "global warming" is more of a political issue, and not an issue about the earth maintaining an equalibrium like it has always done in the past.

you said "The weather models say that all change from warming will be very bad."

Really, "very bad", come on, event the best of weather models is just that, a WEATHER model, are you telling me that meterologists can now predict entire bio-systems?

you said "No good can come of it."

Isnt that what they say about meteors. Moreover, isn't a meteor the reason why humans dominate the earth. Each spieces evolves and finds a niche, what make one spieces better than the other?

 

[Anonymous]

There have been greater shifts in temperature over the last million years yet the earth is still teeming with life. All of the climate models are geared to show that there will be complete devistation. There is nothing that you can do anyway as it is the sunspot activity that is heating up the earth not human's pumping out carbon dioxide which isn't even a powerful greenhouse gas.

 

[doughpat]

The science is clear that carbon emissions are raising the average temperature of the earth. There really is no question about that--the real question is: do we spend our resources trying to curb global warming, or do we use those resources to adapt to the inevitable changes that this warming will bring?

I say the latter. Even IF we could cut back on emissions (a huge, expensive sacrifice that nobody wants to make), we'd still see warming for a *long* time (i've read 30-200 years). So we'd spend all this money and still suffer some pretty major consequences.

Its sad, because we are going to see massive extinctions (more than has happened already from habitat destruction), but thats just the way it is. No real sense working against the inevitable, in my opinion.

 

[Bubbashrimp]

I still think that it is kind of sad when a spieces goes extinct even though extinction is a part of life. I believe extinction is viewed through the eyes of a biologist as neither good or bad, just a animal that could not deal with the coming change. I have also heard that all the animals in the world put out more co2 than human inventions, but I do not know the validity of this assertion. I think that we should do the best that we can inorder to disrupt human caused extinctions. I wonder how successful humans will be in trying to stop extinction, my guess is not good. I base this on how we as humans try to fix our own problems such as a cancer patient. There are a lot of people out their that need treatment and do not recieve it. How then can we help other species if we cannot even help ourselves.

 

[Anonymous]

It is not clear at all, you are being told crap by the goverment. Past rises in carbon do not coralate with the rise in temp. They occur anything upto a thousand years later, as the temp rises the ocean realises carb dioxide into the atmosphere, as it cools the carbon returns to the ocean again. If it was a caused by human activity, how come all the way through the seventies the temp was dropping. It was said by scientists then that we were about to enter an "ice age"? This is were the story of carbon causing global warming comes from, a scientists from Norway claimed that if an ice age occurred that the carbon produced by human activity could possibly cause a slight rise in temp which help to reduce the effects of an ice age. Humans were producing vast amounts of carbon yet the temp was still falling? Yet today the temp is rising and it is because of human activity? What has changed? Goverment policy, they use this against third world countries to stop them growing economically. The top scientists in this field do not agree with what is being said. Everything on this planet virtually produces carbon dioxide! Volcanoes alone produce more carbon dioxide than humans. The global temp is rising, however it is nothing to do with human activity, the earth is affected massively by the sun's activity, temp fluctuations corralate with sun spot activity.

 

[Bubbashrimp]

I wonder if the bubonic plague comes and goes with the warming of the climate as well? Maybe an extension can be made to coral reefs, they like humans suffer dieseases more in the peaks of "global warming", which is just a natural phenomenon.