"it is still far from hopeless"

Sorry - it is hopeless. Earth is (as David Suzuki makes clear) akin to a test tube of a culture medium and we humans are the rapidly multiplying bacteria producing excrement.

And the driver behind it all? - the shareholders' dividend. Only when the last shareholder is poisoned off, will the destruction stop.

I can't help but feel depressed in reading this very well articulated article by Dr Veron ringing the alarm bells.

What's more depressing? The 'deniers' and 'naysayers' with their collective heads stuck in the mud and their collective minds entrenched in the past.

What else is dependent on the Great Barrier Reef? Think about it.

“Over the past decades there have been many stories in the media about the plight of the Great Barrier Reef.”

And the current scare campaign is just another of the “many stories” being put about. A marine scientist, this author admits that he was wrong in the past; he can just as easily be wrong this time, too.

However, right or wrong, he and the rest of us mere humans can do nothing about it – just continue to listen to guff and have politicians dig deeper into our pockets to pay for solutions that don’t exist.

The arrogance of some people who think that they can ‘remedy’ nature is mind-boggling.

The world has COOLED for the last 8 years. Even the IPCC has admitted this. They have even now rewritten their forecasts to say, cooling for 10 years.

The oceans have COOLED for the last 3 years, when serious measurement has been taken.

The AGWs must be getting worried that they are about to get kicked off the gravey train to have this sort of rubbish being pushed.

The IPCC has no idea , & this bloke has even less. Lets just hope the sinking gravey train does not pollute the reef, now we know that the nonexistrnt AGW won't.

"The arrogance of some people who think that they can ‘remedy’ nature is mind-boggling."

We cannot of course remedy the natural cycles in nature but of course we can remedy nature insofar as our impact apon it. If we have the capability of destroying we are also capable of saving it.

Just one very simple example: Sharks eat small fish, fish eat phytoplankton, phytoplankton absorbs CO2. If we kill too many sharks there are more small fish and less phytoplankton to absorb CO2. Human remedy is to adopt a sustainable fishing policy.

When will the anti-green lobby understand that the earth's resources are not finite and that we can have great influence, good and bad, over the environment we live in. Humans do not live in a vacuum separate from other living organisms.

Yes the jury is still out on AGW but we can't ignore the fact that we might are partly responsible even if we can't agree on the percentages.

Mr Right has said so, therefore it obviously must be right.

Veron makes a big point about the effects of acidification in the ocean as a result of carbon dioxide increasing too rapidly and not giving time for alkaline water to act as a buffer. i.e. He is shifting his concern from temperature threatening the GBR to what he understands as the immanent effects of acidification in the ocean. It is not difficult to see this as somewhat misleading and alarmist. With seawater having a pH of around 8.1, it would take a huge amount of CO2 to move it anywhere near a neutral pH of 7 let alone to get to acidic levels less than 7.

The natural buffers he speaks about may in fact respond rapidly. Recently in Science Express there is a report that may confirm this possibility. Here they show contrary to expectations, that one of the most common forms of plankton actually grows faster and bigger when more CO2 is pumped into the water. This confirms what we have always understood with CO2 on land with plants actually thriving and possibly the fact that says vegetation and sea life have been starved for atmospheric CO2.

Veron says "what is required is willingness and immediate action" and I agree but and because it points to a need for much greater scientific understanding and research ......... not emotional pseudo-scientific alarm which certainly succeeds is selling books .... i.e. fruitloop Flannery will attest to that one.

Forgive them Charlie Veron, for these are eco-vandals - ignorant men, who know not what they do.

Speaking of eco-vandals and the tactics that they use please check out Monsanto's Harvest of Fear.

Monsanto being one of the companies that fund the so called climate change "skeptics" and the propaganda hacks that tell us how wonderful G-M "foods" are for everybody, and that pigs will be flying soon too---dont you worry about that.

The IPA keeps very good company doesnt it?

Indeed they do Ho Hum.

I note that Monsanto, Dow Chemical et al got off recently when the US Court of Appeal found in their favour against the plaintiffs - members of some 3 million Vietnamese who were poisoned by the heinous Agent Orange (dioxin.)

Even today, the children and grandchildren of these people are born with hideous defects from exposure to Agent Orange.

These "Empire Building" cockroaches have changed forever, our eco-systems as we once knew them.

And in Australian waters, polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (PCDDs) emerge as the most noteworthy organochlorine contaminant bioaccumulated in dugong tissues.

Fat tissue samples from three dugong carcasses stranded at three sites along the Great Barrier Reef were analysed for PCDDs and dibenzofurans. The levels reported, 17 to 22 ng/kg of dioxins, are much higher than those found in other marine mammals in Australia.

So A/CO2 is not the only chemical contaminating the GBR and its marine life. Dioxins and PCBs (a legacy from Monsanto et al) have insidiously invaded our entire food chain, wreaking havoc on animal and human health.

And of course, the parasitic nasties emitted also with a gob full of A/CO2 from an industrial stack, can include dioxins, PCBs and heaps of carcinogenic hyrocarbons.

But don't you worry about that Ho Hum.

If the ignorant ones can't smell it, can't see it, can't hear it, can't taste it, it must be a pack of lies...lies and innuendo....goodness gracious me!