The nonsense intensifies this week with warnings that Fiji’s beaches and reefs are facing an ‘uncertain future’ under the seemingly imagined plight of ‘climate change’ and its imperceptible change in temperature.
Coral is one of the oldest and most versatile movable species that has been treading water through ice ages and global warming events over the last 500 million years, with sea levels shifting by hundreds of metres. Modern corals have been with us for 200 million years and have no issue migrating to match the Earth’s tempestuous moods.
Taking Australia as the example, marine experts admit ‘The Great Barrier Reef has declined, migrated, and rebounded many times before’ with our current reef being ‘less than 10,000 years old’. Research revealed at one point the reef kept pace with the rising waters during an interglacial period by growing 20 metres upwards every thousand years while also shifting sideways.
Sediment and pollution are known to be more harmful than climate fluctuations, but addressing that sort of thing is annoying, expensive, unpopular among local island populations who do not like being fined for illegally dumping rubbish, and lacks lucrative international attention and guilt-based government donations. Prime Ministers aren’t going to toss half a billion dollars at the reef to pick discarded face masks out of the coral.
Forget that. We’re now meant to believe that the end is nigh unless scientists employ new technologies such as the curious ‘assisted evolution’ to keep these fragile (?) reefs alive.
Researchers are ‘zapping’ coral samples and interpreting the patterns in the reflected light to form a ‘fingerprint’ of health and behaviour as not all corals are alike. The purpose is to discover which coral is ‘heat resistant’ and populate barren areas of the reef with this special coral.
This is what they describe as ‘assisted evolution’ but it’s pretty much the same thing as gardening. Underwater gardening?
‘Nature’s choosing her winners, and we’re just helping them be more reproductively successful,’ said one of the researchers. ‘That’s helping to expedite the natural adaptation or process of the reef … adapting or getting used to warmer temperatures.’
How did the world’s coral reefs successfully move around without the loving embrace of human interference? No idea. Complete mystery.
There’s no harm in this sort of thing and we might even learn something useful while tinkering. Nature will either murder the relocated coral or it’ll thrive along with whatever coral naturally plants itself alongside the pet project. The net effect on coral migration and evolution around the world will be precisely zero.
While we are doing cute things like this, it would be better if our governments and major scientific bodies put up more of a fight against the true coral murders. Keeping China’s ravenous fishing nets out of Pacific waters is a more pressing issue. China’s lust for other people’s fish is a far greater problem for reef health, but Western governments are reluctant to tackle this in case China concretes over a few more coral atolls with another air base.
We’ve not heard much from the marine research community or the United Nations about the destruction of Pacific coral reefs in the name of these military bases which have dotted their way across the South China Sea. Everyone’s distressed about wildlife in Australian waters being annoyed by tourist boats, but the same bodies turn a blind eye to the erasure of entire marine ecosystems with the machinations of communist war-mongering.
It seems environmentalism has found a way to make peace with military aggression in the same way that no one mentions the carbon emissions of war zones before turning around and banning pizza ovens with a scowl.
To that end, environmentalism is also oddly calm about the Indigenous slaughter of endangered species. If we want to talk about ‘privilege’ and ‘closing the gap’, activists might want to start by making a grown-up, adult choice and stop the carnage against the world’s most fragile species like the dugong and sea turtle. There is no reason, other than childish pandering, to continue harming these animals. It’s certainly not for food.
Let’s not mention wind turbines slicing through birds and bats and leaving little feathered corpses over coastal breeding grounds. That sort of thing doesn’t look so good on the ‘Green Energy!!!’ poster at an election campaign.
True environmentalism would champion the preservation of these ecosystems without reference to tribal practice, CEO wallets, or sensitive dictatorships.
Coral reefs aren’t going to die from ‘climate change’. We know this. It is an established scientific fact that the world’s reefs survive everything from asteroid impacts to super-volcanoes.
They might just suffocate under human kindness, particularly if President Biden makes good on his threat to ‘save the planet’ by blocking out the sun and pumping aerosols into the stratosphere.
With the promise to ‘cool the planet significantly on a timescale of a few years’ it sounds like we’re going to have that ice age after all.
Flat White is written and edited by Alexandra Marshall.
