{"id":987,"date":"2019-08-15T09:48:50","date_gmt":"2019-08-15T13:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/?p=987"},"modified":"2019-08-15T09:54:49","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T13:54:49","slug":"trump-administration-throws-cold-water-on-climate-change-threat-to-coral-reefs-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/2019\/08\/15\/trump-administration-throws-cold-water-on-climate-change-threat-to-coral-reefs-in-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Administration throws cold water on climate change threat to coral reefs in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

https:\/\/www.orlandosentinel.com\/news\/environment\/os-ne-climate-change-coral-reefs-20190809-pikyllo7pbhyhc55n6nb2cfhei-story.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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WASHINGTON\n \u2014 When pollsters informed President Trump that he faces political \nexposure in the 2020 election with swing voters on environment policy, \nhe decided to respond with a White House address claiming stewardship of\n clean water, air and oceans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as some Trump aides were drafting that speech, others were casting doubt on the significance of a climate threat to a key battleground state: the degradation of coral reefs in Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weeks\n before, a senior intelligence analyst at the State Department had \nsubmitted a draft of planned testimony to Congress detailing the \nnational security implications of climate change for White House review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among\n the edits that the analyst, Rod Schoonover, received back from the \nWhite House was a novel argument. National Security Council officials \nissued a challenge to the scientific consensus that warming oceans pose \nan intensifying mortal threat to coral reef systems, home to a quarter \nof all marine life and a vital resource in the global food market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\n the past decade, 90-95% of coral on the Florida Reef have died or \nincurred severe damage, according to scientists with the National \nOceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which estimates the reef \nsustains roughly 70,000 jobs in South Florida and generates over $4.4 \nbillion in annual sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There\n is no evidence that coral bleaching is intensifying now or will in the \nfuture,” reads the comment, attributed to the NSC. Two sources said it \nwas written by William Happer, a prominent skeptic of climate change. \n“Coral reefs have bleached and usually recovered throughout their \nevolutionary history.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\n position has spooked government experts who have worked in marine \nbiology for decades, and who in recent years sounded alarm bells over \nthe consequences of mass die-offs along U.S. shorelines and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists\n say bleaching occurs when coral expel algae in response to an increase \nin sea temperatures. The algae give coral their color, and without it, \nthey are left bone white. But algae also provide coral with their \nprimary source of food and sustenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n more frequently bleaching events occur, the less time damaged coral \nhave to recover from the last event and the more likely they are to die \nfrom starvation or disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corals\n in Florida were hit by severe bleaching in both 2014 and 2015 the \nwarmest years on record and in 2015, Hawaii saw the worst bleaching and \ncoral mortality ever recorded. Guam and American Samoa have also \nexperienced repeat bleaching events over the past six years, according \nto Mark Eakin, coordinator of the NOAA Coral Reef Watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eakin questioned the scientific basis of the NSC commentary.”Clearly this is someone who either is not aware of the scientific literature that overwhelmingly shows that coral bleaching has increased and most certainly will continue to increase as the climate warms or they’re ignoring that literature,” Eakin said. “Normally, documents of this sort require vetting by experts within the administration, and those experts usually include people who are knowledgeable in the subject. We don’t know what was done in this case.”[<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schoonover’s\n leaked testimony, Eakin continued, “appears accurate and consistent \nwith a large amount of public literature, including the last four \nreports from an intergovernmental panel on climate change. And it is \nconsistent with what we have analyzed at NOAA and with what we have \npublished on coral bleaching multiple times.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n wide scope of climate-related threats facing Florida has convinced some\n of its leading Republican lawmakers to acknowledge humanity’s role in \nthe crisis. The state’s two GOP senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, \njoined Hawaii’s Democratic Sens. Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono last week\n in sponsoring the Restoring Resilient Reefs Act of 2019, a bill that \nwould restore federal assistance for coral protection and emphasizes \ntheir economic and ecological significance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\n bill attributes the challenges facing coral reefs to “human-accelerated\n changes, including increasing ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, \ncoral bleaching, coral diseases, and invasive species.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White\n House officials would not confirm the authenticity of the Schoonover \ndocument, first obtained by the Washington Post. Schoonover who resigned\n from the State Department over the NSC edits later ruffled feathers in \nthe administration by publishing an op-ed in the New York Times accusing\n the White House of politicizing climate science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We\n don’t comment on deliberative matters, where this appears to be a clear\n example someone in the U.S. bureaucracy believing their way is the only\n way, and trying to undermine the president by leaking internal \ndeliberative information,” a senior administration official told \nMcClatchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the degradation of coral reefs “is a problem,” the official continued. “We’re serious about it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We\n understand that coral reefs and their ecosystems offer benefits to \nhumankind, as sources of food, livelihood, recreation and shoreline \nprotection,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on the \nrecord. “Reefs are facing multiple threats including pollution, \nunsustainable destructive fishing practices, coastal development, and \nglobal threats such as ocean acidification and coral bleaching.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n official pointed to language in the International Coral Reef \nInitiative’s “call to action” in 1995, which claims that “reasons for \nthe decline in reef health are varied, complex, and often difficult to \naccurately determine.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the mid-1990s, reef systems around the globe have faced increasingly frequent mass bleaching events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the Florida and Caribbean reefs have been especially damaged, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef the most publicly recognizable system in the world has suffered from mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, leaving over a third of its coral stark white.[<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There’s\n denialism, and then there’s really fringe,” said one climate expert who\n has worked on interagency government review efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Coral\n bleaching has not typically fallen within denialist rhetoric,” the \nexpert continued. “Most people would not see this as a climate issue, \nand wouldn’t feel the need to deny it you could believe in warmer oceans\n without believing in climate change. But this goes well beyond that. \nThis says all marine biology is off.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(c)2019 McClatchy Washington Bureau<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visit the McClatchy Washington Bureau at <\/em>www.mcclatchydc.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.orlandosentinel.com\/news\/environment\/os-ne-climate-change-coral-reefs-20190809-pikyllo7pbhyhc55n6nb2cfhei-story.html WASHINGTON \u2014 When pollsters informed President Trump that he faces political exposure in the 2020 election with swing voters on environment policy, he decided to respond with a White House address claiming stewardship of clean water, air and oceans. But as some Trump aides were drafting that speech, others were casting doubt on the … Continue reading Trump Administration throws cold water on climate change threat to coral reefs in Florida<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":995,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions\/995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reefrelieffounders.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}