A late arvo Riddster/Lloydie of the Amazon special ...

 

It was the mention of that Dick spruiking the nuking of the country to save the planet that attracted the pond to Graham Readfearn's regular column Temperature Check in the Graudian ...

Reading below the dismissal of the Dick's thoughts, the pond came across an item that made the pond realise it had been neglecting its duties. 

The new format at the lizard Oz had led to the pond overlooking a vital bit of Riddster/Lloydie of the Amazon lore...

Resilient reef?
The Great Barrier Reef has just been through what many scientists fear will be its most widespread and severe mass coral bleaching event – and a fifth in just eight years – driven by the inevitable rise in ocean temperatures from burning fossil fuels.
After being hit by two cyclones and then plumes of sediment flowing out over near-shore corals after major floods in north Queensland, according to the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims), extreme levels of heat-driven bleaching covered for the first time all three regions of the reef this summer.
With all that, you would need to work pretty hard to find a way to suggest that there’s actually very little to worry about.
But the Australian newspaper managed that task at the weekend with an article claiming new government data showed the reef remained resilient, with near-record levels of coral cover.
It had been a good week for the reef, the story said, with Unesco deciding against recommending the natural wonder should be placed on a list of world heritage sites in danger, and then Aims publishing “final survey results” showing “hard coral cover has held steady at the record-breaking levels of the past two years across the entire reef system.”
The reef, wrote the paper’s environment editor, Graham Lloyd, “appears to be largely going about its business as usual”.
The story included five graphs, each marked with a 2024 end data point, appearing to show high levels of coral cover from five of 11 sectors of the reef covered by Aims.
But three of those five sectors were actually surveyed well before this summer’s bleaching event began.
The Capricorn sector in the southern region of the reef was surveyed between September and October 2023, the Lizard island sector in the north was surveyed between November 2023 and early February 2024, and Cairns, in the central region, was also surveyed in 2023, between August and September.
Reports of bleaching did not start to emerge until late February and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority did not officially declare a mass bleaching was taking place until 8 March.
Prof Tracy Ainsworth, a coral scientist at UNSW, said it can be weeks or months, depending on the species and the severity of heat stress, before the fate of corals after bleaching can be known.
“To determine mortality of corals associated with bleaching, surveys conducted in the weeks to months after the peak of heat stress are necessary to assess mortality from bleaching,” she said.

Apart from that link to the Graudian story about the bleaching event, Readfearn put in a link to his primary source at the lizard Oz.

But how could a keen herpetology student study the original text, the font of wisdom? 

After all, as the wiki for Primary source explains:

In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Similar definitions can be used in library science and other areas of scholarship, although different fields have somewhat different definitions.

In journalism, a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document written by such a person. 

The pond was mortified, caught out, derelict in duty, and knew that even though it was belated, it somehow had to remedy the situation.

Clearly the pond couldn't replicate the splendid interactive deployed by Lloydie of the Amazon...

But the pond could link to AIMS and its reef map without breaking its strict 'no links to Chairman Emeritus's shekels for stories' rule ... and the pond could provide the text for diligent study...

Needless to say, there were some splendid snaps of flourishing reefs and reef life ...

The plethora of snaps and the interactive meant that some of the gobbets, stripped bare and exposed, like coral to a Crown of Thorns starfish, looked a little underdone ...

But then Lloydie of the Amazon and the Riddster got into their stride ... Gina's man of the IPA was ready for action ...

The Riddster and Lloydie of the Amazon weren't going to wait for the namby-pamby mob to get around to publishing results in the never never. Not for them any of that feeble, timid, ineffectual nonsense.

They charged hard and fast ...

As foreshadowed by Readfearn, all is well in the Riddster's garden, as it always has been in the halls of Gina's IPA...

The pond was reminded of the Selfish Giant's winter-laden garden in that Oscar Wilde tale (Project Gutenberg), which was sublimely restored to paradise ...

...Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonder, and looked and looked. It certainly was a marvellous sight. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.

Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, “Who hath dared to wound thee?” For on the palms of the child’s hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.

“Who hath dared to wound thee?” cried the Giant; “tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.”

“Nay!” answered the child; “but these are the wounds of Love.”

“Who art thou?” said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.

And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, “You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.”

And a paradise it is, and the rush of good news continued unabated ...

Mention of Quigley reminded the pond of that second bit in the Readfearn piece ...

Just swap
Lloyd interviewed Dr Peter Ridd, a marine physicist who has long-claimed the reef is not facing a crisis and who has also signed a declaration that “CO2 is plant food” and that there is no climate emergency.
Ridd claimed research had shown that corals could deal with rising temperatures by swapping their symbiont algae for more tolerant versions. When corals bleach, they seperate from the algae that lives in their tissues and provides much of their nutrients and colour.
“It is the reason that, even if there is to be a large rise in temperature due to CO2, corals are one of the best able to adapt and survive – all they need to do is swap the symbionts,” Ridd claimed.
But Dr Kate Quigley, who was also interviewed by Lloyd and who has researched the switching phenomena, says only some corals studied had this ability.
She said: “So some corals can withstand a bit of heat now, but this will likely be swamped given increased warming. Those species without these mechanisms will suffer the most first.”
She said rather than corals being “one of the best able to adapt and survive”, she said the opposite was true.
Quigley, a molecular ecologist specialising in corals at James Cook University, said: “That is why we are seeing reefs suffer globally. They are the canaries in the coalmine because they already sit very close to their thermal limits naturally. Small increases in warming have already pushed reefs to the limit.”
Research of previous bleaching events on the reef had shown that large drops in coral cover occurred once the amount of corals bleached on individual reefs went beyond 30%.
When government scientists carried out aerial surveys of this summer’s bleaching, they found 792 of 1,080 reefs had bleached. Half of those affected reefs saw bleaching of at least 30% and some 39% had 60% or more of corals bleaching.
Quigley said: “Although the official reports of the extent of impact are not yet complete, this can not be described as the ingredients for business as usual.”

Of course that talk of canaries in coalmines is a form of heresy - as if there's anything wrong with dear, sweet innocent virginal Oz coal.

For Lloydie of the Amazon, the special skill is to work in a little cover, then revert to the Riddster for the climax, so that the right impression might be left at the end of the story ...

The pond does wish that people would avoid using the words "I believe in climate change." It's meaningless gibberish, akin to saying that you believe in the trinity, the holy ghost or transubstantiation ... especially when "believe"is followed by talk of recovery, as if there's some holy grail of recovery for the world's warming oceans.

Next thing you know you have gardens being turned into paradise by small children bearing stigmata.

The pond prefers the approach suggested by Jennifer Saltzman, asking Why do we believe in science?

How do you describe what you think of science? Do you use the word believe? Accept? Trust? Have faith? Word choice may be important depending on who you are talking to. I typically shy away from saying I believe in climate change or evolution because believe has other meanings.  I don’t want someone to misinterpret my way of using the word. 

I often stumble in my word choice, not because I question whether climate change or evolution are real. The scientific evidence supports them. When someone asks if I believe in climate change, I emphasize the way of knowing rather than faith. 

Well. yes, the scientific evidence supports the theories suggesting climate change, and these theories suggest with some vigour that there's sfa chance of a recovery in the immediate future ... 

Reading the pie in the sky in the bye and bye dreaming of Lloydie of the Amazon and the Riddster of the IPA is where mindless faith is required ... but the pond thinks you might be just as well off reading Oscar Wilde's fairy stories ...

And with that done students can relax with a few relaxing cartoons ...