Did You Ever Wonder Why Corals Live in the Tropics?

It's because they like warm water, despite the hype that "global warming" is going to kill them. A new paper, cited at WUWT shows that coral growth rates slow during cool eras, and accelerate in warmer ones: One New Coral Reef Study Wipes Out Four Climate Alarm Narratives In One Fell Swoop

Corals thrive in multiple-degrees-warmer-than-today waters and their growth is stunted in cooler environments.

The warnings peddled by climate alarmists often characterize Earth’s 500 billion corals as critically endangered by modern global warming.

But the science itself says corals have been and continue thriving in the Current Warm Period – just as they have in past warm periods.

Within the span of a few pages, one study (Long et al., 2022) squelches at least 4 false climate alarm narratives.

 

Scientists have determined:

1. Coral reefs “develop rapidly in the warm period” (Roman, Medieval), and “coral reefs develop slowly in the cold period” (Little Ice Age, the Dark Ages Cold Period). Why? Because “warm periods are conducive to coral growth.”
2. Coral reef growth rates have rapidly accelerated in the last 300 years, or since the industrial revolution commenced.
3. Sea levels were 2 meters higher than they are today ~4,000 years ago, and still about 1 meter higher than today 1,000 years ago, or during the Medieval Warm Period. Lower sea levels produce a “decline in the coral reef development rate”.
4. The South China Sea surface temperatures were “3 to 6°C higher than today” from about 5,000 to 4,000 years ago; coral reefs developed rapidly in that warmth.

How much attention will an iconoclastic study like this receive? None, probably. Studies that don’t advance the climate alarm narrative are usually dismissed and ignored.

Of course, corals can be killed by a high enough temperature, or in some cases, shocked into expelling their algal symbionts, the classic "coral bleaching" event by a rapid warming event. But in most cases, the corals, after a brief setback, acquire new symbionts and simply go on building reefs.

The Wombat has a double stuffed Rule 5 Double Scoop Sunday: W*ng D*ng Sw**t P**nt*ng running at The Other McCain.