Good to see the babble of a panic merchant refuted so quickly.

Another excellent article - excellent because it talks the issue and not the politics.

Currently Charlie has been on an exemplary crusade to raise awareness of the effects of AGW on the reefs, and I hope that continues. When you hear him talk he paints a very convincing picture - which I guess is to be expect ed given his expertise in the area. The problem I have is that he is on a political mission, so that picture has an inherent bias. It is impossible for an ordinary person like myself to know how big or small that bias is.

In my experience there nothing better than a public between the experts to give the peanut gallery a feel for what the disputed points are, and how much dispute there is. Thus I hope to see a response to the article in the same style from Charlie or some other climate scientist on the issues Walter raised.

And to Charlie - there is nothing but good can come from this. In your crusade to raise public awareness about the plight of the reef, all publicity is good publicity. Walters response has once again drawn my and a lot of other OLO readers attention to the issue you seek to publicise. Yet more stimulating articles on the same topic will keep it there.

It is really refreshing to read something on AGW that is so clear, sensible, & free of hype.

It is interesting to read comments about this article, but they should be directed at my book "A Reef in Time: the Great Barrier Reef from Beginning to End" (J.E.N. Veron: Harvard University Press, 2008 – see www.coralreefresearch.org) which is what the article is based on. To clarify: I did not at any stage set out to write a book about the effects of climate change on the GBR. The book is about the 'big picture' of the GBR over time. We are now concentrating on part of that picture, as well we might.

I have not followed the climate change chat. I read scientific articles and books - around 3,000 of the best scientific publications the world has to offer to write this book and I had the privilege of debating key issues with top scientists in relevant fields. This became horrifying. I turned to some 'climate change sceptics' to get their point of view (Bob Carter is acknowledged but there were many others), searching for any fault in the science. All that looked genuine I followed to the end. The final product - the book - was ruthlessly refereed. It has no intended spin, rather is an distillation of a lifetime of research on corals and reefs in combination with the best relevant science about all else. I wrote it on a clean slate for the layperson because I found myself in a unique position to do so.

Am I now on a public crusade? How can I not be? I left a top-level job at AIMS, tenured for life, to be free to do what I must do. Let’s keep an eye on the ball. The playing field is science, not unsupported personal opinion. Promoting public awareness is not promoting gloom. A decade from now we will all look back and wonder about how well informed when we needed to make decisions. There will always be details to debate, but right now we need to understand what science is unambiguously saying, and move on. ‘Charlie’ Veron

Looking at the "big picture" does indeed change the perspective. Most of the time over the past 2 million odd years the Great Barrier Reef didn't exist. During the two dozen or so glacial periods that prevailed during 90% of that time lower sea levels and colder climate turned most of what is now the reef into a coastal plain with any remaining coral reduced to a fringe along the shore of the northern portion. Unless global warming "saves" the reef by preventing the next glacial cycle the GBR will almost certainly be again reduced to a vestige. How soon this might happen is unclear. Most warm interglacial periods only appear to last about 10,000 years, which is now the age of the current one.

Dr Starck

Your article has me perplexed. Do you speak in your capacity as a marine biologist or are you qualified to speak as an economist when you state?:

"The biggest problem we face is not an unquantifiable risk of climate change at some unknown future time. It is keeping the economy functioning until energy alternatives are a functional reality."

I must disagree with your apparent suggestion that for the time being we continue on with “business as usual.”

The WA EPA Act under Part V 49 (5) states: “A person who emits an unreasonable emission from any premises; or causes an unreasonable emission to be emitted from any premises, commits an offence.”

Clearly the EPA Act is breached 24/7 when analytical reports from polluting companies reveal that their hazardous emissions far exceed the maximum allowable limits.

Regulations in this country rarely enforce the implementation of pollutant prevention control for industrial stacks. That technology is available now – not in the distant future and immediate enforcement under the “polluter pays” principle would see a massive reduction in CO2 emissions without any devastating impact on profits. Why should responsible companies incur the expense of PPC when others remain free to pollute with relish?

Returning to the topic, I advise that I, with limited knowledge, have been a devotee of paleontologist, Dewey McLean whose hypothesis, way back in the early 90s, on the K-T mass extinctions, covers the CO2 emissions from the Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions. Dewey reported:

“I have concentrated on the Deccan Traps volcanism involvement in the K-T extinctions because such huge and long-duration volcanic events release prodigious amounts of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, onto earth's surface.”

“Part of my work on ancient extinctions is to lay foundations for assessing how a modern greenhouse climate change might affect our civilization. Today, our burning of the fossil fuels coal, oil, and gas is like a human volcano that is releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Contd.

B/F

“Many scientists fear that the carbon dioxide build up in the atmosphere will trigger a modern greenhouse climate change. Others welcome a modern greenhouse, claiming that it will benefit our civilization.

"Those latter people do not seem aware that the reproductive systems of modern mammals—including humans—are easily damaged by environmental heat. Today, the heat of normally hot summer days is already destroying vast numbers of mammalian embryos on a global scale. Any additional heat load imposed by a greenhouse can only kill increasing numbers of embryos.”

Eminent paleontologist, Michael J Benton on the Permian Mass Extinction said:

“It took about 50 million years for life on land to fully recover its biodiversity, with the rise of many species of dinosaurs. Nothing resembling a coral reef shows up until 10 million years after the Permian extinction, and full recovery of marine life took about 100 million years.”

Benton and others argue that the rise of carbon in the atmosphere at this time is only explicable if there was also a catastrophic release of methane from gas hydrates under the ocean.

However, past catastrophic events occurred without the aid of humans and humans today emit 150 times more CO2 than volcanoes.

So what has this to do with the GBR? Everything if you, like I, believe that all things are bound together - all things connect.

The hypotheses above may be proven incorrect, however humans have been extremely efficient at trashing Earth's eco-systems which are seriously polluted, predominantly from carbon based chemicals.

Pollution cares not whether we have a warming or an ice age and the quantity of the anthropogenic pollution on this planet is unprecedented.

Your veiled suggestion that we should continue trashing this planet with fossil fuel emissions and your indecent haste in refuting the contents of an affiliate's article, leads me to believe that your own hypothesis is bereft of any real substance.

Walter/Charlie,

Dialogue between you guys is important to observe for the layperson. I hope you keep it up in the public domain for a little longer.