rssAnother Price of Progress: The Death of the Great Barrier Reef?
Wednesday, September 02, 2009 at 2:52 pm
- 2 Comments
That’s the warning coming from the Australian government. In a report released Wednesday, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority found that the chances of the 345,000 square-foot natural wonder surviving in threats of global warming, pollution and other human-related scourges are “poor.” From Reuters:
“Even with the recent management initiatives to improve resilience, the overall outlook for the Great Barrier Reef is poor and catastrophic damage to the ecosystem may not be averted,” a government reef management body said in the report.
The five-yearly reef outlook report, aimed at benchmarking the health of the reef, found climate change, declining water quality from coastal runoff, development and illegal fishing were the biggest dangers to the reef.
The report is another warning, as if any were needed, that the United States probably shouldn’t wait much longer to rein our own greenhouse emissions. The recent announcement that the Senate climate bill has been delayed, however, doesn’t forecast a quick resolution to that proposal.
2 Comments
Comment posted September 3, 2009 @ 4:39 am
Masiri, Nunez, and Weller, International Journal of Remote Sensing, Volume 29 , Issue 15 (August 2008): ABSTRACT
A 10-year solar radiation climatology is developed for the Great Barrier Reef region using data from the Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS). The method uses a look-up table based on the STREAMER radiative transfer model for a tropical atmosphere. One outstanding feature appears in the summer and autumn climatologies which exhibit distinct maxima in the southern end of the study area, between latitudes 18° S and 26° S. There is a small but statistically significant increase in solar radiation over the 10-year study period, with maximum values of just under 1% per decade. The radiation climatology was used to examine previous coral bleaching episodes, and in particular the largest mass bleaching episode that occurred in 2002. Results show that the area of maximum bleaching corresponded closely to the area of maximum solar insolation. Sea surface temperature and solar radiation were used in a variance analysis to discriminate bleached from unbleached reefs. Solar radiation is a better discriminator for inshore areas, but temperature is better at discriminating offshore reefs. Possible reasons for this difference are discussed.
Comment posted September 3, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
Sadly, I don't think there is any climate bill anywhere on ANY table, domestic or international, that would change anything enough to have much impact on the reef's survival. Unless Bill Gates can invent a climate-fixing machine, and we also crack down on untreated nitrate/phosphate runoff worldwide, it may already be too late.
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