acidification

Earle: everything in the oceans at risk

by Bryan Walker March 19, 2011

“We are committed to developing deepwater energy supplies offshore.” Those blunt words from the US Administration were put to oceanographer Sylvia Earle by Stephen Sackur late in a captivating BBC Hardtalk interview I watched a few days ago. What chance, he asked, did her message about the plight of the oceans stand in the face [...]

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The Climate Show #9: Barry Brook, hot spots and melting ice

by Gareth March 18, 2011

With the terrible events in Japan uppermost in everyone’s mind, this week’s Climate Show goes nuclear, examining the prospects for the future of nuclear energy with Professor Barry Brook from the University of Adelaide. John Cook looks at what the tropical troposphere hot spot really means, and Gareth and Glenn look at mass loss from [...]

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An immediate halt to CO2 emissions is an absolute necessity…

by Gareth February 8, 2011

…if we are to maintain the health of ocean ecosystems, says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in this video presentation, given to a symposium at the recent Our Changing Oceans conference in Washington DC. It’s sobering viewing. Here are the primary messages from the symposium: There [...]

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Every little bit hurts

by Bryan Walker December 8, 2010

“Coral reefs… once survived in a world where CO2 from volcanoes and methane was much higher than anything predicted today.”  That sounds like good news from John Veron, a world authority on coral. Not if you read on: “But that was over 40 million years ago, and the increase took place over millions of years, [...]

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The thing we need to fix is ourselves

by Gareth May 20, 2010

If you have 18 minutes to spare, spend them watching coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson’s recent TED talk about the ways in which humanity is wrecking the world’s oceans. Climate change is only one of the factors driving the massive changes being seen in the global ocean, and if we’re to have any hope of [...]

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The cost of losing coral: no drop in the ocean

by Bryan Walker October 21, 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 Programme, [...]

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Nine ways to stuff up a planet

by Gareth October 6, 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 August 29, 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 July 14, 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 June 22, 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 [...]

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