Bali Corals Shocked Back to Life After Cyanide Poisoning

"I was devastated. Basically, all the corals were dead. It was gravel and sand," Rani recalled.

But when German architect and marine scientist Wolf Hilbertz told her about a discovery he had made in the 1970s, the diver's ears pricked up. _Discovery

Discovery
The story talks about how corals were killed by cyanide poisoning and dynamite fishing. It also claims that warming oceans were just as bad as cyanide and dynamite! Anything for a holy cause, even deceitful reporting?

Hilbertz had sought to "grow" construction materials in the sea, and had done so by submerging a metallic structure and connecting it to an electric current with a weak and thus harmless voltage.

...When he tested out his invention in Louisiana in the United States, Hilbertz saw that after a few months oysters progressively covered the whole structure, and colonized the collected limestone.

More experiments were carried out and the same phenomenon was confirmed for corals.

"Corals grow 2-6 times faster. We are able to grow back reefs in a few years," Thomas J. Goreau, a Jamaican marine biologist and biogeochemist, told AFP.

Goreau began working with Hilbertz in the mid-1980s to develop Biorock technology, and he has continued their work since Hilbertz's death four years ago.

When Rani saw the discovery, it gave her an idea for how she might save "her" bay.

She decided to expand the project to 22 structures using her own money with the help of Taman Sari, the holiday resort in front of the coral restoration project.

...Today there are around sixty of these "cages" in Pemuteran bay, across a surface of two hectares, and the reef has not only been saved from near-death, it is flourishing better than ever before.

"Now we've got a better coral garden than we used to have," said Rani.

Biorock not only revives the corals but it makes them more resistant... _Discovery

Of course, cyanide and dynamite -- not to mention storms and tourists -- are quite hard on a reef. It is wonderful to find a mild remedy for a harsh problem.

But for reporters to claim that the fluctuating ocean temperatures are killing reefs -- reefs which evolved to survive in a wide range of temperatures and dissolved CO2 levels -- is pure dishonesty and political activism.

It is time for science reporters to come clean, and to report science news honestly and in a balanced fashion. The current crop of science journalists too often come across as just plain incompetent.

Clueless Clown, Hapless Harlequin, Zombie King

A combination of wishful thinking and abject stupidity has landed the US (and the world) in a toxic pit of hazard. It is bad enough having an inexperienced, incompetent, and ideologically blindered clown of a president in control. Unfortunately, the US Congress is led by a group of corrupt and unscrupulous quasi-criminals the likes of which has not been seen in well over a century of government corruption in the US. To top it off, everyone that Obama appoints to the executive and to the courts appears to share in these global Obama-style inadequacies and failure to lead responsibly. This will be a very rough 4 years. Even a radical rearrangement of the House of Representatives in 2010 will not be enough to reverse the destruction of Obama's first 6 months, let alone the next two years. Decades will be required to recover from this episode of failure by American voters and media.

Abandoning a Nuclear Deterrent Out of Wishful Thinking

Obama's War On Business

Obama's Recovery Plan Can Only Fail

Obama Prefers the UN to the US

Entering an Obama Dark Age

China's Support for Jihad in Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan



H/T Reverse Spins

And They Want Al Gore to Be President?

Al Gore has done another stupid thing. He is accepting a $100K speaker's fee to speak to a group of techies under the strict condition that no news media is present, and no video or audio recordings or photographs will be allowed!

Gore has demanded--as a condition of giving the keynote speech--that press be barred from the room. As Kim Zetter wrote for Wired.com: "Video recordings, broadcasts and photography are also prohibited."

Gore might have gotten away with it a decade ago. And, to be sure, he has the right to negotiate that requirement with RSA. But nowadays, when tech-savvy audience members, who each coughed up some $3,670 for registration, are outfitted with digital cameras and recording devices (including on mobile phones), any speaker who insists on this requirement is foolish or naive.

You decide which category Gore falls into.

This isn't the first time that Gore has insisted on a $100,000-or-so speaking contract that prohibited press from attending. He did it at a speech at Augustana College (billed as "free and open to the public"). He did it at a speech last year to the American Institute of Architects convention, which the San Antonio Express-News crashed and wrote up anyway.

...Does anyone really think Gore's Don't-Record-Me Ban will work at a conference of 17,000+ gadget-outfitted security geeks? Thought so. So here's my offer: A free News.com (or CNET, depending on what we have in stock) baseball cap or fleece--your choice--to the first person who e-mails me a link to the video of the astonishingly publicity-shy ex-veep at RSA next month.___Cnet

This does not reduce my opinion of Al Gore in the slightest. Nothing could do that, given that Gore negative-pegged my opinion-o-meter years ago, and it has not recovered since.

The astonishing thing is that top-ranked US Democratic Party political analysts and pundits are public wishing for Al Gore to come to the Democratic Party Convention this summer and rescue the DP from itself! As if Gore is capable of rescuing his pet poodle from a neighbor's cat, much less rescuing an entire political party.

The dumbing down of US schools is bearing fruit within the Democratic Party voting population. Already in possession of two hopeless candidates, the DP is trying to resurrect yet a third! Yep. Pegged it at the negative extreme. I paid good money for that meter, too.