Like myself, Kirye moved from Colorado to Wyoming during May, 2020. Since then I have been helping her and her offspring document the climate crisis. We are expecting her to deliver some new team members in early June.
via Real Climate Science
May 20, 2023 at 05:52PM
Jennifer Marohasy
Full marks to David Mills, writing in the Courier Mail, for asking why the government tends to bury good news reports about the Great Barrier Reef.
There are a few other questions that I would like answered.
Key government ministers, marine scientists, and climate scientists have been unable to acknowledge:
Q1. Overall coral cover has been increasing since at least 2009 (14 years).
Q2. According to official underwater surveys – that are perimeter surveys – coral cover is at a record high.
I know Sky Television legend Rowan Dean has been in trouble with the press watchdog over this good news claim. But it seems pretty straightforward, quoting from the most recent relevant government report:
Widespread recovery has led to the highest coral cover recorded by the Long-Term Monitoring Program in the Northern and Central Great Barrier Reef …
Q3. These perimeter surveys under estimate coral cover, claiming it to be less than 40%, when coral cover is often more than 90% at the crest of the same reef.
Corals around the outside/perimeter of reefs are particularly susceptible to cyclone damage.
Q4. The number and intensity of cyclones has been decreasing since at least the 1970s. Something the Bureau of Meteorology is unable to acknowledge. Why?
Q5. When will the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) reconcile results from aerial surveys that report severe bleaching (30-60%) with underwater survey results that reported no (0%) bleaching – at the same coral reefs at the same time?
For example, aerial surveys of John Brewer Reef in March 2022 reported 60% bleaching. Coincidentally, at the same time this reef was being surveyed underwater. The results published online in August 2022 found no coral bleaching at this reef (o%).
It is impossible to reconcile 60% bleaching based on the official aerial survey with 0% bleaching based on the official underwater survey for John Brewer Reef, with both surveys undertaken in March 2022.
Results from underwater survey are here:
https://apps.aims.gov.au/reef-monitoring/reef/John%20Brewer%20Reef/manta
Results from aerial survey were here:
https://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/the-reef/reef-health
Since removed.
There never were any photographs from the aerial surveys, and the results have since been removed, without explanation.
I visited John Brewer reef in April 2022 after it made worldwide headlines as the centre of mass coral bleaching. I found a coral wonderland, with one of the underwater photographs from that visit featured at the top of this blog post. At the reef crest coral cover exceeded 100%, with corals growing onto of each other. Meanwhile, the official underwater survey stated coral cover to be just 21.8%.
To be clear, John Brewer Reef, that was being reported around the world as stark white, was, in reality, the most beautiful coral reef with over 100% coral cover at the crest, and an abundance of fish and other marine life including a friendly white tipped reef shark.
I detailed the extent of the contradiction in a series of blog posts, including ‘Stonewalling on Contradictory Results – Part 3: John Brewer Reef Fact Check’.
I also made a documentary film, entitled ‘Bleached Colourful – Part 1’ it shows the corals at John Brewer reef in April 2022 from both under-the-water and from an aerial drone survey.
The official aerial surveys are by Neal Cantin and/or Terry Hughes looking out an airplane window while flying at an altitude of 150 metres.
The film runs for just on 24 minutes, and explains how the official underwater perimeter surveys are undertaken, which is by Manta tow. It also shows how different the aerial perspective is, and includes a segment with Terry Hughes being interviewed by Fran Kelly explaining the political significance of his work/the aerial surveys.
David Mills, writing in the Courier Mail, is referring to a more recent ‘Snapshot report’ about the Great Barrier Reef that concludes:
ABOUT TEMPERATURES
While sea temperatures in spring were the hottest on record, summer sea temperatures were at or slightly above average.
Data on sea temperatures are theoretically available from approximately 80 Great Barrier Reef sites, 16 Coral Sea sites, 7 sites in Northwest Western Australia, 8 Queensland regional ports, 13 sites in the Solitary Islands, 4 sites in PNG and 10 sites in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Data are obtained from in-situ data loggers deployed on the reef. Data loggers instantaneously record sea temperatures every 30 minutes and are exchanged and downloaded approximately every 12 months. Except not one of these temperature series are ever shown by the Australian Institute of Marine Science so we can see the actual temperature data as a continuous time series – unadjusted.
ABOUT CORAL BLEACHING
Minor bleaching was seen in all three regions (northern, central and southern), however there was no mass coral bleaching.
I was recently diving off Cairns and there was absolutely no bleaching. Ace underwater photographer Stuart Ireland is continually filming above and below the water and he can report that the reef is in magnificent condition. He regularly posts video at https://www.calypsoproductions.com.au/reef-today/
ABOUT CYCLONES
No cyclones entered the Marine Park. Large swells from TC Gabrielle which tracked outside the Reef in February may have caused some damage to some reefs on the outer edge.
ABOUT STARFISH
Crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks continue on reefs in the southern region, particularly in the Swains reefs.
The Swain Reefs include about 400 individual reefs covering an area of 16,900 square kilometres (4 million acres), that is about 120 nautical miles off shore (about 220 kms).
The Swain Reefs have historically sustained high numbers of these starfish, and regular outbreaks, probably for thousands of years.
Natural predators of crown-of-thorns star fish include the giant Triton snail and Titan Trigger fish. They gobble up the star fish, that are native to the Great Barrier Reef.
Triton snails are particularly efficient at devouring crown-of-thorns starfish never mind the sharp spines, as shown in this video courtesy of the Australian Academy of Sciences.
I have been diving and snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef for more than 50 years, and one of my favourite fish is the Titan Trigger Fish, that I recently photographed lying across a bed of soft corals at Saxon Reef off Cairns.
I’ve seen these fish, that have large teeth, flip crown-of-thorns starfish onto their backs before eating out their soft underbelly, as shown in this YouTube.
How gorgeous is this turtle, filmed with my TG6 Olympus underwater camera, free diving to about 7 metres.
I’m hoping to be on Outsiders with Rowan, Rita and James tomorrow morning talking about all of this.
I’m grateful to David Mills for generating some interest in all of this, and here’s the article he wrote. Can someone please send him a link to this blog post.
Mills-‘False picture’: Little-known fact about the Reef
And just three more pictures, from John Brewer last April. It is unbelievable that this reef was making newspaper headlines around the world as badly bleached at the same time I was seeing with my own eyes all this beauty.
The most common coral colour, at reefs around the world, is beige.
via Watts Up With That?
May 20, 2023 at 04:23PM
By Paul Homewood
It’s hard to think of anything more damning about the King’s obsession with climate change:
A care home charity backed by the King is being forced to shut down properties because of Government net zero rules.
Martin Green, chief executive of the country’s leading social care body Care England, said on Friday that the Government had “slapped another fee” on chronically underfunded care homes by introducing legislation which will force providers to meet new energy efficiency standards at great cost.
He warned care providers across the country faced closure due to the prohibitive expense of installing more energy efficient double glazing, insulation and heating systems, expected to cost social care providers hundreds of thousands of pounds.
He said: “The Government needs to see that, without help, care homes will not be able to deliver on this without losing beds.”
It came as the 60-year-old care home provider Abbeyfield, of which the King has been a patron for more than 40 years, confirmed 43 of its homes face closure because of the unmanageable costs of improving their Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating to C by 2030.
In a letter seen by this newspaper, residents were this week told an extensive review had concluded the cost of upgrading its properties under government net zero plans was “too great” for the charity to meet, saying it had identified a number of homes “which can no longer be operated sustainably”.
Residents of an Abbeyfield home in Cornwall told local news reporters it was “one of the worst things I have heard in my life” and that the prospect of losing their home was keeping them up a night, while a 76-year-old resident of a care home in Wiltshire said she “didn’t know why this was happening”.
Charities have warned elderly residents’ lives were at risk, due to the shock of the prospect of losing their homes.
The upgrades are necessary because of the Government’s efforts to meet its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Full story
This fiasco lies at King Charles’ door as much as the political establishment’s.
It is all very well for Charles to pontificate and issue warnings of X months to save the planet. But we are now seeing the practical outworkings of his incessant political campaign, which he began years ago.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
May 20, 2023 at 01:35PM
By Paul Homewood
If only we had more guys like David Frost with a bit of common sense:
With 800,000 British car-making jobs on the line because we’re not making enough batteries for electric vehicles, leading motor manufacturers are demanding renegotiated trade rules with the EU to give us more time to catch up.
Lord Frost, Britain’s chief negotiator for Brexit from 2019 to 2021, is clear where the fault is.
“The underlying problem is that we’re rushing at electrification of cars far too fast for the technologies we’ve got,” he insists.
“What it shows is that the expectation we had in the trade agreement when we negotiated it was that things would have moved by 2024, and that is not true.”
Vauxhall’s parent company, Stellantis, told MPs earlier this week that it would be unable to keep a commitment to make electric vehicles in the UK without changes to the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU.
From next year, under the agreement, 45 percent of an electric vehicle’s parts should originate in the UK or EU to qualify for tariff-free trade between the two.
Without meeting the requirements, cars made in the UK would face a 10 percent tariff if sold in the EU – rendering them uncompetitive. Electric car batteries are mainly sourced from Asia and can be up to 50 percent of a car’s value.
But it’s not only car manufacturing, Lord Frost believes, but that is also under intense pressure from the rush to achieve net zero – a government commitment to ensure the UK reduces its greenhouse gas emissions by 100 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Express, Lord Frost insists: “Everyone can see we’re not ready. The [electricity supply] grid is not ready, the costs are too high; all we’re doing is needlessly causing problems for our own industry.”
Not only that but the poorest are hit hardest by the transformation.
“We are told constantly that net zero 2050 is not only something that must be done, but it’s also something that’s going to be good for you and is going to increase economic growth and everyone’s going to be better off,” he says.
“I don’t think that is true. We are replacing a lot of perfectly good ways of generating electricity with gas and nuclear for bad ways of generating it with wind and solar, so why would you not expect costs to go up?
“If we’re requiring poor technologies like heat pumps to be installed then that’s going to hit the poorest worst. If it’s good technology, people will install it anyway.
“If it’s bad and expensive technology, the Government has got to make people do it.”
Once dubbed the “greatest Frost since the Great Frost of 1709” by Boris Johnson, the 58-year-old is considered by many Tories to be a leading voice of common sense and even a potential future party leader.
A former diplomat, civil servant and Minister for State, he will be giving the annual lecture next week at the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
He strongly believes the Government’s policy of net zero going too fast will cause considerable damage to the UK economy, making us all poorer, especially the less well-off.
Lord Frost does not dispute that climate change is happening. Nor is he repudiating the need for green policies to combat global warming.
“But that’s not the same as saying we’re in climate crisis or emergency, and it’s not the same as saying the only choice we have is to do net zero by 2050,” he says.
“Those are political choices – they’re not scientific choices. And with all political choices, you’ve got to weigh up the pros and cons; the costs against the benefits. And that’s what we’re not doing. You don’t have to deny science to say we need to look at the way we’re going about this and whether it makes sense.”
Lord Frost says what’s especially frustrating about this debate is that many people assume if you’re sceptical about net zero then you’re not interested in protecting the environment. “They’re not the same thing at all,” he insists.
“We all want a cleaner environment. That has nothing to do with the net zero ideology. When this country was first industrialising, the environment was much more polluted than it is now. What has enabled us to improve the environment is economic growth; more efficient ways of doing things. When we get richer, we can spend on clearing up pollution.”
With China set to dominate the electric car market in Europe, and the US supplying us with shale gas, the former minister is incensed we are making other countries richer while making ourselves poorer.
“It obviously makes no sense as a policy,” he says. “As a country, we’re [responsible for] about two per cent of global emissions. We could shut down the British economy tomorrow and it would make no difference to the nature of the problem.
“We are helping [China] by off-shoring our own production and making energy more expensive. We’re going along with that and making ourselves weaker. It makes no sense in a world that’s got more dangerous.”
Energy security has to be a prime concern for Britain, especially as we import so much of our energy from unreliable foreign nations.
“More than ever now, since the Ukraine War, we need an energy system that is productive,” says Frost. “One that we can rely on and we have control over. We’re going in the other direction. We’re installing unreliable technology that has to be backed up. The wind doesn’t blow all the time so you need a back-up to fill the gap. Well, why would that not be more expensive?
“Why not just have the back-up and forget about the wind farms? With our current state of technology, the idea that renewables are going to make us more secure seems to be a total fallacy.”
He stresses how it’s all the more frustrating when we know what the solution is.
“It’s gas, moving to nuclear – that’s the way of reducing emissions in a way that powers the economy,” Lord Frost adds.
“It isn’t reducing our capacity to produce energy, crushing the economy, and making people live in a different way. I don’t think people are going to put up with that.”
Lord Frost is exasperated by the current moratorium on shale gas exploration.
“We have so much shale gas in this country that we could be tapping. A shale gas facility that’s about the size of Parliament Square can produce the same amount of power as a wind farm 10 times the size of Hyde Park.
“This is not a disruptive technology unless your vision of the future is that we don’t have any industry. All of us politicians have to care about voters but I think, in the interest of the country, you have to take on the argument.”
There’s a suggestion that we have removed the shackles of the EU, only to replace them with net zero.
“Yes, a lot of the net zero legislation is inherited through the EU and it is now in our hands to change it, but we don’t seem anxious to do so,” Frost says.
"I think people have got captured by this ideology. They believe the messaging without thinking about it rigorously.”
Full interview
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
May 20, 2023 at 01:26PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 