Late last week on the TV news we saw Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong going for a look at a bit of a look at the Great Barrier Reef, and afterwards talking about how global warming will harm it.
I see from that famous newspaper, The Magnetic Times, that Rudd was told about more than global warming. It would appear that ocean acidification got a detailed mention too. From the above link:
Katharina Fabricius, a Principal Research Scientist from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), who, along with fellow Magnetic Islanders, Dr Glenn De'ath and spatial analyst Stuart Kininmonth, is involved in a soon-to-be released web-based atlas of the reef, told Magnetic Times, "Sheriden had three hours to brief the Prime Minister who then gave a twenty minute speech in the Council Chamber that showed he really got the message. It went really well.” ....Well, why on earth in the evening TV news grabs don't we hear the PM, Penny Wong and others talking specifically about ocean acidification as a vital issue if Australia wants to preserve its extensive coral reefs? They clearly know about it, yet for some reason it still gets little media attention.
Dr Fabricius described the serious effects of climate change on the reef which has prompted the making of the Atlas. “Climate change is already evident on the reef in two forms. One is water temperature which, from records which go back to the 1870s, shows that the ocean's water temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees C in the last hundred years. Corals have a low tolerance to only minor increases in water temperature, and hot water has led to the mass bleachings that have begun to happen in the last twenty years.”
“Of even greater concern is ocean acidification. The world's oceans absorb about half of the atmosphere's CO2. With increased CO2 in the sea water it becomes more acidic. Models predict that the pH (the measure of acidity and alkalinity) has already declined by 0.1 units which means that shellfish, crustaceans, corals and other marine creatures which utilise the carbonate in the water are less able to calcify.”
It also remains the issue that Andrew Bolt never mentions, I suspect because he can't find any credible ocean scientist type who can rebut the dire concerns other than by saying "it's all a conspiracy, everything will be alright, you just wait and see."
It's because the phrases 'global warming', 'climate change', and 'greenhouse effect' are used in a different sense by, on the one hand, practising scientists, and on the other, politicians, media sources, and special interest groups. One use of these terms is as a falsifiable scientific theory, the other, as an unfalsifiable generalisation being used to scare and bully the population by (more or less) any means necessary.
ReplyDeleteHence detailed and precise discussion of actual, verifiable, environmental problems and weather events is passed over by most people in favour of paranoid grumbling about the latest eco-catastrophe.
I'd imagine that the only real difference between Bolt and Blair and the rest of the mainstream media is that Bolt and Blair react against this mainstream media consensus. But the mainstream media definition of 'climate change' - well, they more or less hold that in common.