coral

The Climate Show #26: All the news that fits

by Gareth May 4, 2012

Aafter a busy month of harvesting (Gareth) and breakfast broadcasting (Glenn), the Climate Show returns with all the latest climate news: from the thinning of Antarctic ice shelves and the intensification of hydrological cycle (floods and drought, that is) to satellites capturing solar energy and beaming it down to earth, we’ve got it all. And [...]

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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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Warm oceans killing coral

by Bryan Walker December 1, 2010

This has not only been a bad year for the Amazon rainforest, it has also been a year in which coral reefs, the rainforests of the ocean as they are sometimes called, have suffered severe bleaching because of raised ocean temperatures. Not a matter likely to strike the public consciousness. A recent Yale University survey [...]

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The Climate Show #1 (Astral Express)

by Gareth November 4, 2010

The Climate Show comes out of beta testing today, with the release of the first full show, code-named Astral Express after the yacht that kiwi yachtsman Graeme Kendall sailed through the North West Passage in record time a couple of months ago. Graeme’s our star guest, but we’re also pleased to welcome to the programme [...]

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The Weather of the Future

by Bryan Walker September 16, 2010

Heidi Cullen takes readers forty years forward in her survey of what is likely to happen in several areas of the world if we continue to burn fossil fuels. Her book is The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet. It is a highly effective communication to [...]

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You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone

by Bryan Walker May 1, 2010

Biodiversity continues its steady decline. A team of scientists have this week published a study in Science confirming that fact.  Governments in 2002 at a summit on the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed to aim to halt biodiversity loss by the year 2010. When experts meet in Nairobi on May 10 it will be to [...]

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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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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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