Liberal attempts to scare us with....

[American Patriot]

Rate of Arctic summer sea ice loss is 50% higher than predicted

New satellite images show polar ice coverage dwindling in extent and thickness

• Robin McKie, science editor
  
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 11 August 2012 16.52 EDT

The view from a yacht’s mast. Summer pack ice is showing a rate of loss 50% higher than anticipated. Photograph: Mike Powell/Corbis



Sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected, according to data from the first purpose-built satellite launched to study the thickness of the Earth's polar caps.


Preliminary results from the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 probe indicate that 900 cubic kilometres of summer sea ice has disappeared from the Arctic ocean over the past year.


This rate of loss is 50% higher than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer, triggering a rush to exploit its fish stocks, oil, minerals and sea routes.


Using instruments on earlier satellites, scientists could see that the area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic has been dwindling rapidly. But the new measurements indicate that this ice has been thinning dramatically at the same time. For example, in regions north of Canada and Greenland, where ice thickness regularly stayed at around five to six metres in summer a decade ago, levels have dropped to one to three metres.


"Preliminary analysis of our data indicates that the rate of loss of sea ice volume in summer in the Arctic may be far larger than we had previously suspected," said Dr Seymour Laxon, of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London (UCL), where CryoSat-2 data is being analysed. "Very soon we may experience the iconic moment when, one day in the summer, we look at satellite images and see no sea ice coverage in the Arctic, just open water."


The consequences of losing the Arctic's ice coverage, even for only part of the year, could be profound. Without the cap's white brilliance to reflect sunlight back into space, the region will heat up even more than at present. As a result, ocean temperatures will rise and methane deposits on the ocean floor could melt, evaporate and bubble into the atmosphere.

Scientists have recently reported evidence that methane plumes are now appearing in many areas. Methane is a particularly powerful greenhouse gas and rising levels of it in the atmosphere are only likely to accelerate global warming. And with the disappearance of sea ice around the shores of Greenland, its glaciers could melt faster and raise sea levels even more rapidly than at present.


Professor Chris Rapley of UCL said: "With the temperature gradient between the Arctic and equator dropping, as is happening now, it is also possible that the jet stream in the upper atmosphere could become more unstable. That could mean increasing volatility in weather in lower latitudes, similar to that experienced this year."


CryoSat-2 is the world's first satellite to be built specifically to study sea-ice thickness and was launched on a Dniepr rocket from Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on 8 April, 2010. Previous Earth monitoring satellites had mapped the extent of sea-ice coverage in the Arctic. However, the thickness of that ice proved more difficult to measure.


The US probe ICESat made some important measurements of ice thickness but operated intermittently in only a few regions before it stopped working completely in 2009. CryoSat was designed specifically to tackle the issue of ice thickness, both in the Arctic and the Antarctic. It was fitted with radar that can see through clouds. (ICESat's lasers could not penetrate clouds.) CryoSat's orbit was also designed to give better coverage of the Arctic sea.


"Before CryoSat, we could see summer ice coverage was dropping markedly in the Arctic," said Rapley. "But we only had glimpses of what was happening to ice thickness. Obviously if it was dropping as well, the loss of summer ice was even more significant. We needed to know what was happening – and now CryoSat has given us the answer. It has shown that the Arctic sea cap is not only shrinking in area but is also thinning dramatically."


Sea-ice cover in the Arctic varies considerably throughout the year, reaching a maximum in March. By combining earlier results from ICESat and data from other studies, including measurements made by submarines travelling under the polar ice cap, Laxon said preliminary analysis now gave a clear indication of Arctic sea-ice loss over the past eight years, both in winter and in summer.


In winter 2004, the volume of sea ice in the central Arctic was approximately 17,000 cubic kilometres. This winter it was 14,000, according to CryoSat.


However, the summer figures provide the real shock. In 2004 there was about 13,000 cubic kilometres of sea ice in the Arctic. In 2012, there is 7,000 cubic kilometres, almost half the figure eight years ago. If the current annual loss of around 900 cubic kilometres continues, summer ice coverage could disappear in about a decade in the Arctic.


However, Laxon urged caution, saying: "First, this is based on preliminary studies of CryoSat figures, so we should take care before rushing to conclusions. In addition, the current rate of ice volume decline could change." Nevertheless, experts say computer models indicate rates of ice volume decline are only likely to increase over the next decade.


As to the accuracy of the measurements made by CryoSat, these have been calibrated by comparing them to measurements made on the ice surface by scientists including Laxon; by planes flying beneath the satellite's orbit; and by data supplied by underwater sonar stations that have analysed ice thickness at selected places in the Arctic. "We can now say with confidence that CryoSat's maps of ice thickness are correct to within 10cm," Laxon added.


Laxon also pointed out that the rate of ice loss in winter was much slower than that in summer. "That suggests that, as winter starts, ice is growing more rapidly than it did in the past and that this effect is compensating, partially, for the loss of summer ice." Overall, the trend for ice coverage in Arctic is definitely downwards, particularly in summer, however – a point recently backed by Professor Peter Wadham, who this year used aircraft and submarine surveys of ice sheets to make estimates of ice volume loss. These also suggest major reductions in the volume of summer sea ice, around 70% over the past 30 years.


"The Arctic is particularly vulnerable to the impact of global warming," said Rapley. "Temperatures there are rising far faster than they are at the equator. Hence the shrinking of sea-ice coverage we have observed. It is telling us that something highly significant is happening to Earth. The weather systems of the planet are interconnected so what happens in the high latitudes affects us all."

[American Patriot]

Get out the seal clubs.... They even ADMIT it's a "scare" now....

Next Scare: Seal Flu?: DNews Nuggets

Analysis by Amanda Onion
Tue Jul 31, 2012 07:53 AM ET

Seal Virus: Caught From Birds?: Last year scientists were puzzled by the deaths of 163 harbor seals around the coast of New England -- how did they die?


Now researchers have the answer and it's disturbing.


Autopsies on five of the marine mammals indicate they harbored a new viral strain of influenza that could potentially affect other animals -- and humans.


Since it's similar to the bird flu virus that has devastated U.S. avian populations, scientists suspect the seals may have caught the virus from birds. Once inside an affected seal, the virus then evolved to become the H3N8 flu. This new version of the strain has the ability to target a protein found in the human respiratory tract, say the researchers who published their report in the journal of the American Society for Microbiology.


The infected seals highlight how a pandemic flu can jump to a new species and become more deadly.


"The seals are acting as an intermediary -- they have receptors for both bird flu viruses and well as mammalian flu viruses, so you have a host in which this virus can adapt, evolve and become more mammalian in phenotype and more capable of causing disease in mammals," explained Ian Lipkin, a virus-hunter from Columbia University.


"That's when we really need to be concerned that it's going to be spreading into humans." via BBC

[American Patriot]

Skin cancer in fish triggers ozone scare

Published on Thursday 2 August 2012 00:00

SKIN cancer in wild marine fish has been discovered for the first time, new research has revealed.
The study, conducted by Newcastle University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, found cases of melanoma in coral trout on the Great Barrier Reef, directly below the world’s largest hole in the ozone layer. The research team, led by Newcastle University’s Dr Michael Sweet, said this is the first time cancer has been found in wild fish and it is almost identical to that found in humans.
Dr Sweet said: “The individuals we looked at had extensive surface melanomas, which means the cancer had not spread any deeper than the skin so apart from the surface lesions the fish were basically healthy.
“Further work needs to be carried out to establish the exact cause of the cancer but having eliminated other likely factors such as microbial pathogens and marine pollution, UV radiation appears to be the likely cause.”
He added that the findings are “strongly linked” to UV. “It’s too much of a coincidence for it not to be linked to the hole in the ozone layer,” Dr Sweet said.
Up until this discovery melanoma in fish had only been seen under laboratory conditions.

[American Patriot]

22 July 2012 Last updated at 19:33 ET Reducing salt 'would cut cancer'

Comments (299)
Salt is in many foods, such as bread.


Cutting back on salty foods such as bacon, bread and breakfast cereals may reduce people's risk of developing stomach cancer, according to the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF).


It wants people to eat less salt and for the content of food to be labelled more clearly.
In the UK, the WCRF said one-in-seven stomach cancers would be prevented if people kept to daily guidelines.
Cancer Research UK said this figure could be even higher.


Too much salt is bad for blood pressure and can lead to heart disease and stroke, but it can also cause cancer.
The recommended daily limit is 6g, about a level teaspoonful, but the World Cancer Research Fund said people were eating 8.6g a day.


Undetected There are around 6,000 cases of stomach cancer every year in the UK. The WCRF estimated that 14% of cases, around 800, could be avoided if everyone stuck to their 6g a day.


Kate Mendoza, head of health information at WCRF, said: "Stomach cancer is difficult to treat successfully because most cases are not caught until the disease is well-established.


Katharine Jenner from Consensus Action on Salt and Health, says eating less than six grammes of salt could prevent stroke and cancer deaths



"This places even greater emphasis on making lifestyle choices to prevent the disease occurring in the first place - such as cutting down on salt intake and eating more fruit and vegetables."


Eating too much salt is not all about sprinkling it over fish and chips or Sunday lunch, the vast majority is already inside food.


It is why the WCRF has called for a "traffic-light" system for food labelling - red for high, amber for medium and green for low.


However, this has proved controversial with many food manufacturers and supermarkets preferring other ways of labelling food.


Lucy Boyd, from Cancer Research UK, said: "This research confirms what a recently published report from Cancer Research UK has shown - too much salt also contributes considerably to the number of people getting stomach cancer in the UK.


"On average people in Britain eat too much salt and intake is highest in men.


"Improved labelling - such as traffic light labelling - could be a useful step to help consumers cut down."


A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We already know too much salt can lead to conditions such as heart disease and stroke. That is why we are taking action through the 'Responsibility Deal' to help reduce the salt in people's diets. And we are looking at clearer... labelling on foods as part of our consultation on front-of-pack labelling.


"We keep these findings under review alongside other emerging research in the field."

[American Patriot]

How "Policy By Panic" Can Backfire for Environmentalists

Saying that droughts are caused by global warming leads to public distrust and disengagement when the rain starts to fall.

By Bjørn Lomborg|Posted Friday, Aug. 17, 2012, at 7:15 AM ET

We don't know whether global warming is causing the droughts seen around much of the United States this summer

Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images.




“Everyone knows” that you should drink eight glasses of water a day. After all, this is the advice of a multitude of health writers, not to mention authorities like Britain’s National Health Service. Healthy living now means carrying water bottles with us, sipping at all times, trying to drink our daily quota to ensure that we stay hydrated and healthy.



Indeed, often we drink without being thirsty, but that is how it should be: As the beverage maker Gatorade reminds us, “your brain may know a lot, but it doesn’t know when your body is thirsty.” Sure, drinking this much does not feel comfortable, but Powerade offers this sage counsel: “You may be able to train your gut to tolerate more fluid if you build your fluid intake gradually.”



Now the British Medical Journal reports that these claims are “not only nonsense, but thoroughly debunked nonsense.” This has been common knowledge in the medical profession at least since 2002, when Heinz Valtin, a professor of physiology and neurobiology at Dartmouth Medical School, published the first critical review of the evidence for drinking lots of water. He concluded that “not only is there no scientific evidence that we need to drink that much, but the recommendation could be harmful, both in precipitating potentially dangerous hyponatremia and exposure to pollutants and also in making many people feel guilty for not drinking enough.”


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The drink-more-water story is curiously similar to how “everyone knows” that global warming only makes climate more extreme. A hot, dry summer (in some places) has triggered another barrage of such claims. And, while many interests are at work, one of the players that benefits the most from this story are the media: the notion of “extreme” climate simply makes for more compelling news.



Consider Paul Krugman, writing breathlessly in the New York Times about the “rising incidence of extreme events” and how “large-scale damage from climate change is … happening now.” He claims that global warming caused the current drought in America’s Midwest, and that supposedly record-high corn prices could cause a global food crisis.



But the United Nations climate panel’s latest assessment tells us precisely the opposite: For “North America, there is medium confidencethat there has been an overall slight tendency toward less dryness (wetting trend with more soil moisture and runoff).” Moreover, there is no way that Krugman could have identified this drought as being caused by global warming without a time machine: Climate models estimate that such detection will be possible by 2048, at the earliest.



And, fortunately, this year’s drought appears unlikely to cause a food crisis. According to the Economist, “price increases in corn and soybeans are not thought likely to trigger a food crisis, as they did in 2007-08, as global rice and wheat supplies remain plentiful.” Moreover, Krugman overlooks inflation: Prices have increased six-fold since 1969, so, while corn futures did set a record of about $8 per bushel in late July, the inflation-adjusted price of corn was higher throughout most of the 1970s, reaching a whopping $16 in 1974.



Finally, Krugman conveniently forgets that concerns about global warming are the main reason that corn prices have skyrocketed since 2005. Nowadays 40 percent of corn grown in the United States is used to produce ethanol, which does absolutely nothing for the climate, but certainly distorts the price of corn—at the expense of many of the world’s poorest people.



Bill McKibben similarly frets in The Guardian and The Daily Beast about the Midwest drought and corn prices. Moreover, he confidently tells us that raging wildfires from New Mexico and Colorado to Siberia are “exactly” what the early stages of global warming look like.



In fact, the latest overview of global wildfire incidence suggests that, because humans have suppressed fire and decreased vegetation density, fire intensity has declined over the past 70 years and is now close to its preindustrial level.



When well-meaning campaigners want us to pay attention to global warming, they often end up pitching beyond the facts.

And, while this may seem justified by a noble goal, such “policy by panic” tactics rarely work, and often backfire.



Remember how, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore (and many others) claimed that we were in store for ever more devastating hurricanes? Since then, hurricane incidence has dropped off the charts; indeed, by one measure, global accumulated cyclone energy has decreased to its lowest levels since the late 1970’s. Exaggerated claims merely fuel public distrust and disengagement.



That is unfortunate, because global warming is a real problem, and we do need to address it. Warming will increase some extremes (it is likely that both droughts and fires will become worse toward the end of the century). But warming will also decrease other extremes, for example, leading to fewer deaths from cold and less water scarcity.



Similarly, there are real health problems—and many of them. But focusing on the wrong ones—like drinking a lot of water—diverts our attention from more important issues. Telling tall tales may benefit those with a stake in the telling, but it leaves us all worse off.

[American Patriot]

Now it's Methane under Antarctica....

Antarctic Methane Could Escape, Worsen Warming

As glaciers melt, gas could belch into atmosphere, study suggests.

A cutaway view of Antarctica shows its southern ice sheet.

Map from National Geographic


Rob Kunzig
National Geographic News
Published August 31, 2012


Swamp gas trapped under miles of Antarctic ice, a chemical souvenir of that continent's warmer days, may someday escape to warm the planet again, an international team of researchers report in Nature this week.
The researchers suggest that microbes isolated from the rest of the world since the ice closed over them, some 35 million years ago, have kept busy digesting organic matter and making methane—a much more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.


If global warming causes the ice sheets to retreat in the coming decades or centuries, the researchers warn, some of the methane could belch into the atmosphere, amplifying the warming.


Jemma Wadham of the University of Bristol, England, and her colleagues have not actually detected methane-producing microbes under the Antarctic ice sheet. They haven't detected methane either—though they are participating in drilling projects that could do so later this year. Yet a top journal has now published their analysis of the potential climate impact of those undiscovered microbes. That says a lot about the paradigm shift in microbiology in recent decades.


The presumption now is: Microbes are everywhere. In the seething water of an undersea volcano? Obviously. In the crushing pressure half a mile (0.8 kilometer) under the pitch-dark seafloor? Demonstrably. Under a mile or two of Antarctic ice? Why not?—there've been a few unconfirmed reports already—and why wouldn't some of those bugs be producing methane?


"You've got bugs, you've got organic carbon in sediments, and there's no oxygen because it's so far from the atmosphere," Wadham said. "When you put all those things together, it's perfect for the production of methane. It's like a huge wetland."
(Read "The Big Thaw" in National Geographic magazine.)


Antarctic Microbes Busy Under Ice
While waiting for a drill that could take her there, Wadham has done her best with a chain saw. For years she has marched up to the leading edge of glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland, and Canada and sawed off cubic-foot (0.03 cubic-meter) blocks from the base of the ice—blocks that include sediments picked up by the glaciers as they advanced. Wadham shoves the blocks into sterile bags, stows them in trunks full of Styrofoam, cheerfully pays extreme excess baggage fees, and prays she and her cargo can make it to her sub-zero freezer in Bristol in 24 hours.


In the lab she incubates small vials of melted ice and sediment for as long as two years, scrupulously avoiding contamination. The result: "Every glacier where we look," she said, "we find microbes in the sediments beneath the ice"—including microbes that are producing methane, albeit at slow rates.


Those measured rates are what Wadham and her colleagues used to estimate how much methane might have been produced on the scale of the Antarctic continent. (See Antarctica pictures.)


Antarctica has been at or near the South Pole for more than a hundred million of years, but for most of that time the planet was much warmer than today—because the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was much greater. Plant and pollen fossils confirm that the continent was covered by forests and tundra rather than ice—around 52 million years ago there were even palm trees. Fjords and large bays cut deep into its interior.


(Related: "Warm Snap Turned Antarctica Green Around the Edges.")


Deep stacks of sediment would have accumulated in those marine basins, as they do in coastal water today. Inevitably, methane-producing microbes would have been hard at work in that mud, digesting the organic matter—around 21 trillion tons of it, the researchers estimate. The microbes are still at it.


"Imagine being a microbe living in a sediment basin 35 million years ago," said Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who worked with Wadham. "Do you care if you get covered by a mile of ice? Nothing really changes for you."


"Really Rapid Change" Coming to Antarctica?

Except that the methane you're making can no longer escape. Thousands of feet down in the sediment, geothermal heat keeps things warm enough for the microbes to keep producing methane. As the gas diffuses upward, however, it enters a zone where it feels not only the pressure but also the cold of the overlying ice sheet. The combination transforms it into methane hydrate: a solid, ice-like substance in which each methane molecule is trapped in a cage of water.


Hydrate is strange, fragile stuff. If the pressure drops or the temperature rises enough to take it out of its comfort zone-for instance, because the ice above it melts-it falls apart. The methane escapes to the atmosphere.


That's the worry for the future. Climate scientists have long been concerned about the positive feedback that would result if global warming were to destabilize huge reservoirs of methane hydrate in the Arctic.


(Read about National Geographic Explorer Katey Walter Anthony's work on methane in the Arctic.)


Now they have the Antarctic to think about too. Wadham and her colleagues calculate there could be anywhere from 70 to 390 billion tons of carbon in hydrates under the East Antarctic ice sheet, and a few tens of billions of tons under West Antarctica. (The methane there may have been made by geothermal heating of sediments rather than microbes.) That's less than estimates for the Arctic but in the same ballpark.


You might think the Antarctic methane would be secure under such a thick ice cap. But the Antarctic has been losing a lot of ice lately. (Related: pictures of modern Antarctic warming.)


And it's precisely the glaciers covering former marine basins that are receding the fastest because their leading edges are being eaten away by a warming sea. It's conceivable that before the century is out those glaciers could recede enough to release whatever hydrates they've been covering.


"The longer I'm in this glaciology business," said Tulaczyk, "the more I'm willing to accept scenarios for really rapid change."

[American Patriot]

Remember everyone telling you how they "ONLY eat ORGANIC FOODS"? Well.... lol

Metastudy: No Nutritional Advantage In Organic Foods

by Thom Forbes, 66 minutes ago






“Something is pulling us toward those organic veggies that are grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilizers,” blog NPR’s Allison Aubrey and Dan Charles this morning. But a new metastudy out of Stanford University suggests that whatever it is, it’s not based on scientific proof that organic produce –- a flourishing $12.4 billion slice of the food marketing industry –- is any more nutritious than conventionally grown crops.


The researchers did find that there was less pesticide residue on organic foods –- an average of 7% vs. 38% -- and that consuming them may reduce exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The analysis of four decades of research, which is published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine but released to the press in advance, examined 237 studies over a four-year period.


“When we began this project, we thought that there would likely be some findings that would support the superiority of organics over conventional food,” Dr. Dena Bravata, a senior affiliate with Stanford’s Center for Health Policy and an author of the paper, tells the New York Times’ Kenneth Chang. “I think we were definitely surprised.”


The researchers “concluded that fruits and vegetables labeled organic were, on average, no more nutritious than their conventional counterparts, which tend to be far less expensive. Nor were they any less likely to be contaminated by dangerous bacteria like E. coli,” Chang reports.


A smaller study done in 2009 by Alan Dangour at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with a European emphasis reached similar conclusions, Elizabeth Weise reports in USA Today. But Consumers Union scientist Urvashi Rangan reminds Weise that organic farming started as a movement designed to be better for the environment and for farmers.


"The health benefits really ended up being almost inadvertent, a nice fringe benefit" of farming in a sustainable way,” she says. "Is it in some ways healthier to have less pesticides in your body, especially if you're a kid? Absolutely," she maintains.


But the study also concluded that “the vast majority of conventionally grown food did not exceed allowable limits of pesticide residue set by federal regulations,” NPR’s Aubrey and Charles point out. As for why there is any pesticide residue on organic foods at all, “sometimes chemicals drift over from nearby crops, or produce is handled in the same warehouse as organic produce,” Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group, tells CNN’s William Hudson.


“Specialists long have said that, organic or not, the chances of bacterial contamination of food are the same, and Monday's analysis agreed,” writes the AP’s Lauran Neergaard. “But when bacteria did lurk in chicken or pork, germs in the non-organic meats had a 33% higher risk of being resistant to multiple antibiotics,” according to the researchers.


Farmers say feeding animals antibiotics is “necessary to meet demand for cheap meat,” observes Neergaard. “Public health advocates say it's one contributor to the nation's growing problem with increasingly hard-to-treat germs.”


Meat is a comparatively small portion of the organic market -- $538 million in 2011, according to the Organic Trade Association, but it is also the fastest-growing sector, up 13% last year.


NPR’s Aubrey and Charles also suggest that, somewhere down the road, vegetables might be marketed based on their nutritional content, including “signs in the supermarket that advertise, for instance, iron-rich beans. Maybe they'd be organic, or maybe not.”


The Stanford study is making news across the globe this morning, but the debate is not likely to put it to rest. “Critics say the work is inconclusive and call for more studies,” reports the BBC. The Soil Association in the U.K., for example, says "studies that treat crop trials as if they were clinical trials of medicines, like this one, exaggerate the variation between studies, and drown out the real differences." It points to a U.K. review paper that “found that most of the differences in nutrient levels between organic and non-organic fruit and vegetables seen in this U.S. study are actually highly significant."


In any event, anti-produce zealots are not being given permission to wave the findings in your face, demanding more hot dogs and potato chips in place of tomatoes, bean sprouts and Anjou pears. Crystal Smith-Spangler, a primary care doctor at Stanford University and lead author on the study, tells USA Today’s Weise, “There is overwhelming evidence that eating produce improves health -- so whatever you choose to buy, load up on fruits and veggies.”

[MinutemanCO]

As glaciers melt, gas could belch into atmosphere, study suggests.

I'm sorry, this should read gas could fart into atmosphere. Get it right, liberal scum.

[American Patriot]

hahahaha

[American Patriot]

Man, those coral reefs will all but bare soon if this keeps up... /sigh

Coral has been around for millions of years. I don't think it is going anywhere.

Report: 'Time is running out' for Caribbean coral
(AP) – 2 hours ago


SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — An international conservation organization is painting a grim picture of the Caribbean's iconic coral reefs.


The International Union for Conservation of Nature says the Caribbean's reefs are in sharp decline, with live coral coverage down to an average of just 8 percent. That's down from 50 percent in the 1970s. The non-governmental organization released a report Friday at an international environmental conference in Korea.


The causes include overfishing, pollution, disease and bleaching caused by rising global temperatures. The group says the situation is somewhat better in some places, including the Dutch islands of the southern Caribbean and the British territory of the Cayman Islands, with up to 30 percent cover in places.


But the union concludes that "time is running out" and new safeguards are urgently needed.

[American Patriot]

Funny, last time I was there coral reefs were everywhere, living and eating. I snorkeled them. I saw the fish. I saw the little animals living there. Coral isn't dead, real science is dead.


Caribbean Coral Reefs Mostly Dead, IUCN Says

Posted by Christine Dell'Amore of National Geographic News in News From Nature+ on September 6, 2012

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The Caribbean’s coral reefs have collapsed, mostly due to overfishing and climate change, according to a new report released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
In the most comprehensive study yet of Caribbean coral reefs, scientists have discovered that the 50 to 60 percent coral cover present in the 1970s has plummeted to less than 10 percent.
“I’m sad to tell you it’s a dire picture,” Carl Gustaf Lundin, director of IUCN’s Global Marine and Polar Programme, said at a news briefing Friday at the World Conservation Congress in Jeju Island, South Korea.
Called “Nature’s Olympics,” the conference will explore five environmental themes over five days. Today’s theme is Nature+ Climate, which focuses on how to combat global warming.

A healthy Caribbean Sea reef off Belize. Photograph by Mazyar Jalayer, My Shot

Much of the decline is caused by a massive die-off of sea urchins in the 1970s—possibly due to disease. Without these reef grazers—the “cows in the field” that keep vegetation in check—the number of algae and grasses have skyrocketed, dominating reefs and pushing corals aside, Lundin said.
What’s more, overfishing of grazer species such as parrotfish or surgeonfish is allowing more algae to take over and outcompete the coral, said Ameer Abdulla, IUCN senior advisor on Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Science.
“Coral reef communities are just like human communities—there are different roles that are fundamental to keeping the system going,” Abdulla said.
For example, if all the engineers were taken out of a human society, that would affect how the society functions.
The same phenomenon is happening with the loss of the Caribbean’s grazers, he said.

Parrotfish are like the cows of the sea, keeping algae in check. Photograph by Chriskraska Kraska, My Shot

Global Warming Also at Play
The scientists also said that warmer water—often caused by hurricanes blowing through—have harmed reefs. When the water gets too hot, algae that live inside coral, called zooxanthellae—abandon their hosts, causing the coral themselves to bleach and eventually die.
Though some reefs can bounce back from such periods of warmer water, notably in the Indian Ocean, ”We have heating happening with much higher frequency and for longer duration,” Lundin told National Geographic News.
For instance, some 500-to-a-thousand-year-old corals in the Indian Ocean have died due to warmer water.
“We know with some certainty we haven’t had this happen for a thousand years, that’s a clear indication that something’s afoot,” Lundin said.
“For those that are very skeptical of what’s happening with climate change, I would say reality is not in their favor.”
Caribbean Collapse a First—Others May Follow

Corals are vital for many reasons, from boosting tourism dollars to local communities and even buffeting islands themselves from powerful storm surges, Lundin said.
The good news is that there are ways to protect the remaining 10 percent of Caribbean corals.
“The urgency of improving management is certainly there—our message is we need to encourage the people who are the custodians of the resources to take charge. We do know a lot about what one can do,” said Lundin.
For instance, putting in place marine protected areas can reduce the pressure of overfishing. Governments can also work with local fishers to maintain their livelihoods, for instance by raising the value of individual fish so that the fishers catch fewer animals.
The bottom line, Abdulla said, is that “the Caribbean system is one of first systems to experience collapse—it’s something that will happen across the globe if human use of coral reefs continues as it is.”
Christine Dell’Amore, environment writer-editor for National Geographic News, is reporting from the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Jeju Island, South Korea.