Reports of Barrier Reef's death exaggerated

Hot on the heels of the "frogs not being killed off by climate change" debacle (see here), The Australian reports that the barrier reef has the ability to adapt to changes in climate. Why this comes as a shock to anyone is beyond me, given that parts of the reef are millions of years old and would have gone through multiple ice ages, multiple interglacials, multiple climate optima and goodness knows what else, yet it's still there.

University of Queensland marine biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said yesterday that sea temperatures were likely to rise 2C over the next three decades, which would undoubtedly kill the reef.

But several of Professor Hoegh-Guldberg's colleagues have taken issue with his prognosis.

Andrew Baird, principal research fellow at the Australian Research Council's Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said there were "serious knowledge gaps" about the impact rising sea temperatures would have on coral.

"Ove is very dismissive of coral's ability to adapt, to respond in an evolutionary manner to climate change," Dr Baird said.

"I believe coral has an underappreciated capacity to evolve. It's one of the biological laws that, wherever you look, organisms have adapted to radical changes."

How many other scare stories about the ecology and environment of the planet being damaged "by climate change" are equally misguided? There are two points here:

• climate change happens, and has been happening since the dawn of time without any help from humans - get used to it;
• adaptation, not pointless "carbon reduction schemes", is the key - if coral can do it, so can we.
  

Read it here.