Can we just have a moment of happiness? Of optimism?
Optimism, no. I live in the area. We are going through a record cold snap, as in literally the lowest every temperatures recorded in some areas. And yes, the coral loves the respite. It's been accompanied by record floods, doing a record amount of damage. Which is to be expected - it's the La Nina pattern.
But record low temperatures, in a time when the base temperature is up 1C? That means the "other prediction" of climate change is coming true. The extremes are getting more extreme. And it's not the warming that's hurting us or the coral really, it's the extremes - just a few continuous days in a year when the temperature is +5C. That's what kills the coral - not the 1C average rise.
The reef isn't shrinking because the temperature gets so high it can't survive. That's always happened periodically. Once it gets that high it doesn't matter whether it's 1C over what the coral can tolerate, or 10C, or lasts for a couple of days or a month, the outcome is the same - the coral is dead. But if the high temperature is followed by 5 years or continuous growth, the coral re-colonises the area. What's been happening is we have been hitting extreme temperatures (both low and high) more often, and because the highs are more frequent the coral doesn't get a chance to grow back.
Remember those bush fires Australia has a few years ago - they were the worst we've even seen. Now we are laying down another fuel load. And it looks like the La Nina will persist for 3 years - another rare event, so the size of this fuel load will be another extreme. This cold snap will be followed by another record hot period, and we will move from losing billions to floods to losing billions to fire, again.
I'm not optimistic. I'm fearful.
If we have a oil palm monocultures, "technically" we have a forest. We have an area covered by trees, but this is not the same as having a mature rainforest, that play in a much upper level and a totally different league.
Acropora dominated reefs are the equivalent to really young forests composed mostly with 2m trees. Yes, a poor reef is better than nothing, but we must understand that they sustain a much lower Shannon index than a mature reef and that we should keep protecting it for a long, long time.
On the 10-20 year window, its a damaged, diminished ecosystem and it will need decades to recover. There is room for hope, it has to be tempered.
The legislated 43% target is largely symbolic and is a floor not a ceiling. It is not by itself going to change anything. What will change things are concrete steps like our Environment Minister stating that she will stop the Palmer coal mine from going ahead.
The Green party certainly have their issues - subjugation and subversion most of all - but to lump the damage on the Greens is an inexcusable farce.
Until Australians realize that their political system is beholden to Big Coal, nothing will change. Australia has a long history, as a nation, of being run by the corporations that provide food to the populace, and Big Coal know this better than most, with their billion-dollar social engineering programs.
Hum, compared to whom?
It is legitimate to be critical of the position they took as well as the other parties.
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-court-physicist-intellectual-f...
>Australia's highest court Wednesday dismissed an intellectual freedom claim by a university physicist who was fired in part over his public statements that scientists exaggerated damage to the Great Barrier Reef caused by climate change.
Looks like it went back in forth in court for a few years, with the university ultimately winning on appeal that he was fired for cause (posting confidential info).
https://sterlinglawqld.com/peter-ridd-loses-high-court-appea...
http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/HCA//...
“There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment.”
(And yes, I’m aware that one can tag Crichton with a thought-terminating label such as “climate denier.”)
Start being real, Aussies: Our nation is ruled by corporate fascists who want nothing more than to extract its resources, whatever the cost, and build their new world order with it. Those avocadoes don't smash themselves!
A better response to this news, emotionally, is to drop the hubris and self-congratulatory tone and use it as a means of informing the stupidly gleeful in your environment that there is a BIG situation behind this story, and we better start paying more attention to it than whats on telly.