Author Topic: Peter Ridd: New evidence that coral bleaching is nothing new  (Read 172 times)

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Peter Ridd: New evidence that coral bleaching is nothing new

    Date: 29/06/21
    Dr Peter Ridd

Reef-scientists often claim that coral bleaching is a new phenomenon that only started in the 1970’s due to climate change. But a remarkable new paper published by Tomas Cedhagen, of Aarhus University in Denmark has uncovered a very early lithograph showing bleaching in 1862.

But back to bleaching. There are actually many other early observations of bleaching, including by Sir Maurice Yonge in the first major science expedition to the Great Barrier Reef in 1929 (if you don’t count Captain James Cook’s scientific exploration of the reef in 1770). But Eugen von Ransonnet’s remarkable lithograph, taken from an incredibly crude diving bell, seems to be the earliest picture.

People arguing that bleaching is new might argue that the important point is that there was no MASS coral bleaching before the 1970/80’s. Von Ransonnet’s lithograph is evidence only of bleaching on a small scale.This argument is incredibly weak for the following reasons.

https://www.thegwpf.com/peter-ridd-new-evidence-that-coral-bleaching-is-not-new/