Posts tagged as:

acidification

The cost of losing coral: no drop in the ocean

by Bryan Walker 21 October 2009

Perhaps it will register if it’s expressed in money terms. The latest issue of the New Scientist carries an article reporting an estimate of  the loss of the world’s coral reefs at $172 billion per year. The estimate comes from the work of Pavan Sukhdev and colleagues. He’s an economist with the United Nations Environment [...]

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Nine ways to stuff up a planet

by Gareth 6 October 2009

How is humanity stuffing up the planet — shall we count the ways? There are nine, according to new work by a multidisciplinary team lead by Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre — full paper and supporting materials (with videos of authors explaining key points) here. The diagram above (from Nature’s coverage) shows the [...]

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A solemn warning on coral reefs

by Bryan Walker 29 August 2009

Australian scientist and coral reef expert John Veron reckons there’s a “great big gorilla in the cupboard” — advancing ocean acidification. It cleans out reefs, leaving them “horrible places – dead, empty, slime-covered.” He paints this grim picture in a lecture given to the Royal Society in London last month. It’s available on line and [...]

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Carbon the copycat

by Gareth 14 July 2009

The Sunday Star Times recently carried an article by Keisha Castle-Hughes about her trip to the Cook Islands and the dangers of climate change. Terry Dunleavy, one of the prime movers in New Zealand’s Climate “Science” Coalition, duly rushed to offer the paper an alternate view. But they (wisely) turned him down… Hell hath no [...]

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Copenhagen 2: dangers ahead

by Bryan Walker 22 June 2009

The second section of the Copenhagen synthesis report, Social and Environmental Disruption, discusses the dangers of climate change relating to society and the environment, noting that scientific research provides a wealth of relevant information which is not receiving the attention one might expect.    
Considerable support has developed for containing the rise in global temperature to a [...]

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Missing the point by miles

by Gareth 20 May 2009

I have been steering clear of Wishart-related material for the last week or two (on the “wrestling with pigs” principle), but I can’t let this post at his blog pass without comment. It begins:

In the climate debate, we can choose to listen to truffle fanciers like Gareth at Hot Topic, journalists like myself or politicians [...]

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What’s a few tears to the ocean?

by Gareth 12 May 2009

New Zealand could be amongst the first places in the world to feel the effects of ocean acidification, according to a new “emerging issues” paper released today by the Royal Society of New Zealand. Surrounded by cold oceans which absorb CO2 faster than warm waters, and with a $300 million shellfish industry based on mussels, [...]

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