George Brandis Says Climate Science Not Settled, But CSIRO Should Act As If It Is

The Guardian - Gareth Hutchens

Attorney general attacks 'illogic' of Labor's opposition to cuts and says taxpayers' money would be better spent elsewhere

George Brandis says Labor senators who think the science of climate change is settled should support the cuts to the CSIRO, not oppose them. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The attorney general, George Brandis, has mounted a bizarre defence of the Turnbull government's funding cuts to the CSIRO, saying there is no need to keep funding climate science if the science of climate change is settled – but adding that he personally doesn't believe it is settled.
Brandis said the science body's decision to cut funding for its scientists, who have produced vital climate science research – in response to the former Abbott government's cuts to the CSIRO in 2014 – is what it ought to do if it believes climate change is real.
He said Labor senators who think the science of climate change is settled should support the cuts, not oppose them.
"If the science is settled, why do we need research scientists to continue inquiring into the settled science?" Brandis said on Tuesday.
"Wouldn't it be a much more useful allocation of taxpayers' money and research capacity within CSIRO to allocate its resources to an area where the science isn't settled?"
The attorney general's argument is similar to that used by the CSIRO chief executive, Larry Marshall, who said in an email to staff in February that further work on climate change would be reduced because climate change had been established.
The CSIRO is currently cutting hundreds of jobs in its oceans and atmosphere division, and its land and water division, according to according to reports.
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and Marshall have been heavily criticised by global climate scientists for allowing those cuts to go ahead.
Brandis – who spent more than $15,000 of taxpayer's money to build a new bookshelf in his parliament house office in 2014 – said he did not believe that the science of climate change was settled but he knew how to follow a logical argument.
He said it would be a better use of taxpayers' money to divert climate science funding elsewhere.
"It doesn't seem to me that the science is settled at all but I'm not a scientist," he said. "I'm agnostic, really, on that question. But I can follow a logical argument.
"I am simply challenging the illogic of the proposition being advanced by the Labor party who say, on the one hand, that the science is settled but, on the other hand, say it is a disgraceful thing that we should make adjustments to our premier public sector scientific research agency that would reflect the fact that the science is settled."
The CSIRO has had budget cuts from successive governments, including $110m in the Abbott government's first budget in 2014.
Late last year, the heads of its divisions were told to find millions in savings to support its funding shortfall.

Links

• CSIRO chief executive 'evasive' before Senate committee, say Greens
• Why Malcolm Turnbull should reverse the destructive, clumsy and dumb CSIRO cuts
• CSIRO cuts were about taking focus off 'public-good research', emails show
• CSIRO's use of private email looks 'dubious', says Senate clerk
• Joe Hockey on CSIRO cuts: former treasurer's letter to the New York Times dissected
• CSIRO climate cuts 'a catastrophic failure of public policy', Senate told
• CSIRO chief says row over climate science cuts 'more like religion than science'
• Australia's chief scientist says he was not warned about CSIRO climate cuts
• CSIRO climate cuts attack a national treasure when we need it most

The Great Barrier Reef: 93% Hit By Coral Bleaching, Surveys Reveal

Fairfax - Tom Arup

Although bleaching of the reef has occurred before, this event is by far the biggest.

A diver checks out the bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. Photo: XL Catlin Seaview Survey

Scientists surveying the mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef say only 7 per cent of Australia's environmental icon has been left untouched by the event.
The final results of plane and helicopter surveys by scientists involved in the National Coral Bleaching Taskforce has found that of the 911 reefs they observed, just 68 had escaped any sign of bleaching.
The severity of the bleaching is mixed across the barrier reef, with the northern stretches hit the hardest.
Overall, severe bleaching of between 60 and 100 per cent of coral was recorded on 316 reefs, almost all of them in the northern half of the barrier reef. Reefs in central and southern regions of the 2300 kilometre Great Barrier Reef have experienced more moderate to mild affects.
The mass bleaching event has been driven by significantly higher than average sea temperatures as a result of the current El Nino event, coupled with a long-term warming of the oceans due to climate change.
While the barrier reef has experienced mass coral bleaching events in the past – notably in 1998 and 2002 – Professor Terry Hughes, convenor of the bleaching taskforce, said the current event was by far the biggest.

"We've never seen anything like this scale of bleaching before. In the northern Great Barrier Reef, it's like 10 cyclones have come ashore all at once," Professor Hughes said.
"Towards the southern end, most of the reefs have minor to moderate bleaching and should soon recover."
Professor Hughes said the aerial work had been backed up by in-water surveys, which are still under way, of about 150 to 200 reefs.
The presence of bleaching does not necessarily mean that coral will die, as they can recover when waters return to cooler temperatures.
Just how much of the bleached coral across the barrier reef will ultimately die off will take months to be known. Once dead it can take a decade or more for many species of coral to return.

Coral bleaching around Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. Photo: Eddie Jim.

Professor Andrew Baird, from the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said north of Port Douglas, "we're already measuring close to 50 per cent mortality of bleached corals".
"At some reefs, the final toll is likely to exceed 90 per cent."
But in the southern regions corals have largely escaped damaging levels of bleaching due to cooler sea temperatures, Professor Hughes said, and it is expected most will survive and regain their normal colour in coming months.
The damage on the barrier reef is part of a global mass bleaching event that has hit corals hard in many places including Hawai, Fiji and New Caledonia. It is only the third global event in recorded history, with the other two occurring in 1998 and 2010.
It is not just the Great Barrier Reef being hit in Australia. Coral bleaching is now also rolling out across western reefs.
Dr Verena Schoepf​, from the University of Western Australia, said the coastal area she was studying north of Broome was seeing up to 80 per cent of corals turning "snow white".
Coral bleaching has also been triggered as far south as Sydney Harbour, the first time in recorded history that has occurred.
Scientists and the conservation movement say the bleaching is stark evidence of the impact climate change is having on the Great Barrier Reef, which attracts approximately $5 billion in tourism each year.
Environment groups in particular have sought to link the bleaching event to the recent mining approvals by the Queensland government for the proposed Carmichael coal mine, which would be Australia's largest, saying the eventual burning of the mined coal would cause further damage to the barrier reef through its contribution to global warming.
In the taskforce's statement on its final survey results, released on Wednesday, the head of the Queensland Tourism Industry Council, Daniel Gschwind​, was also quoted as saying: "thankfully, many parts of the reef are still in excellent shape, but we can't just ignore coral bleaching and hope for a swift recovery."
"Short-term development policies have to be weighed up against long-term environmental damage, including impacts on the reef from climate change," he added.

Links

• Is this the end of the Great Barrier Reef?
• First coral bleaching in Sydney Harbour
• Sydney's corals now bleaching in 'pretty shocking' sign of warming waters
• Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching 'concerning' govt, week after mine approval
• Air pollution increases 69 per cent as coal named top polluter

Modelling Shows Move To 100% Renewable Energy Would Save Australia Money

The Guardian - Michael Slezak  |  Nick Evershed

Estimated cost of moving all electricity, industry and transport onto renewables by 2050 would be $800bn, a saving of $90bn

Three scenarios in which Australia moves to 100% renewable energy by 2050 show it would save money. Photograph: Carla Gottgens/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Transitioning Australia to 100% renewable energy by 2050 would cost less than continuing on the current path, according to a new report.
Building the infrastructure to supply renewable energy for all electricity, transport and industry would cost about $800bn between now and 2050, the report from the institute for sustainable futures at the University of Technology Sydney, found.
That's about $650bn more than continuing with the status quo. But by removing the need for fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil, it would save the economy up to $740bn, saving $90bn over the period to 2050, the report found.
Fuel cost savings would cover 110% of the capital investment needed to transition the economy.
The report is the first comprehensive modelling study to examine a scenario where not just electricity, but also all transport and heat used by industry, is transitioned to 100% renewable energy in Australia. It uses a model developed by the German Aerospace Agency and Greenpeace, which was relied on to help inform how Germany would implement its 80% renewable target for 2050, and by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for some of its scenario testing.
Commissioned by GetUp and Solar Citizens, it examines three scenarios for Australia's energy system.
The first is based on a continuation of current policies and government forecasts, in which coal, gas and other fossil fuels continue to be used. The second scenario sees electricity generation is almost completely transitioned to renewable energy by 2030, but gas and oil continue to be used for heat and transport.
In the third scenario electricity generation is completely transitioned to renewable energy by 2030, and all transport and heat used in industry are transitioned by 2050. Renewable synthetic fuels replace fossil fuels in some cases where electrification is difficult, such as air travel and long distance freight.

Since many of Australia's coal-fired power stations are ageing, the first scenario requires considerable infrastructure investment, with $150bn being spent by 2050. Almost half that would be spent on infrastructure for fossil fuel-based electricity generation.
The model suggests that both renewable scenarios become cheaper than the status quo as early as 2020.
In the modest renewable scenario, about $600bn would need to be spent to source all electricity from renewables. Most of that would need to be spent on wind and solar PV – $258.1bn and $167.9bn, respectively.
In that scenario, significant investment in solar thermal and geothermal would also be needed, since they can provide power on demand and fill any gaps when wind and solar are not producing much electricity – $97.8bn is spent on a combination of those in the scenario.


In the ambitious scenario, most transport is electrified, so that it can run on electricity from renewable sources. That increases the demand for electricity, requiring more investment in electricity generation.
But Australia currently spends more on oil for transport, than it does on all other forms of energy combined. By almost completely eliminating the need for any oil, the ambitious 100% renewable scenario emerges as the cheapest, overtaking the less ambitious renewable scenario by 2035.
By using a mix of different renewable energy sources, the scenarios all maintain an electricity network that is as reliable as the current one.
The authors consulted with the Clean Energy Council to ensure the scenarios grew the renewables industries at rates that would be feasible. It involves increasing wind installations by 2,600MW a year for 15 years, which is in line with what Germany did between 1999 and 2014. And solar PV would need to be installed at a rate of 4,500MW per year to 2030, which is about four times what was installed in Australia in some previous years.
Study author Sven Teske from the University of Technology Sydney, said work that combined energy for transport and electricity was needed, since electrifying cars would have a huge impact on the electricity network.
"This models across all sectors, which gives us a very good overview of different technologies and the interaction of those technologies," Teske said.
The modelling work doesn't examine what policies will be needed to achieve the scenarios, although it does assume in the renewable scenarios that current coal-fired power stations are phased out by 2035.
Miriam Lyons, a senior campaigner at GetUp, said the $800bn investment needed to transition the economy could be boon for the economy.
"If we decide to go all the way to 100% renewable energy, Australia can get an $800bn slice of the global renewable investment boom. That's something that Australia is sorely in need of right now," she said. "There is a great big gap that's been left by the end of the mining investment boom."
"It turns out we can get to 100% renewable energy quite fast, and it turns out it saves us money," Lyons said.
Olivia Kember from the Climate Institute told Guardian Australia: "This modelling adds to the growing body of evidence that Australia is completely capable of decarbonising its electricity system. But this won't happen without a comprehensive policy package to replace our high-carbon coal stations with clean energy."
Mark Diesendorf from the University of New South Wales said the report was a valuable study for examining possible renewable energy futures in Australia. But he pointed out it did not model how fast Australia could transition its workforce to cope with the energy transition. "The studies to explore possible timescales of the transition are still to be done," he said.

Links

• Australia's defence force could run on sugar cane and tyres under biofuel plan
• Have we reached the tipping point for investing in renewable energy?
• Australia's 'future' fund should not consider financing the energy projects of the past
• Victoria renewables target of 30% is achievable, modelling shows
• Surge in renewable energy stalls world greenhouse gas emissions
• Solar and wind energy backed by huge majority of Australians, poll shows
• New South Wales and Victoria 'going backwards on renewable energy'
• 10 steps to save the Great Barrier Reef
• While Didcot B burned, renewable energy powered on
• Reserving gas for domestic users would hurt the renewable energy industry
• Renewable energy won't rid us of the horrors of coal

Air Pollution Increases 69 Per Cent As Coal Named Top Polluter

Fairfax - Josh Dye

Air quality across Australia has deteriorated to alarming levels with the coal industry the nation's worst polluter, new data has shown.
The most concerning rise in air pollution is from PM10, a coarse pollution particle about the width of a human hair. Nationally, total PM10 emissions have increased 69 per cent in one year, and 194 per cent in five years.
The figures come from the National Pollutant Inventory's 2014-15 report which collects information about toxic pollution. Non-profit legal practice Environmental Justice Australia (EJA) spent the weekend analysing the figures, which were released on Friday.
EJA researcher Dr James Whelan said the findings raise serious questions about the future of Australia's air quality and called for tougher federal government regulation, an urgent transition from coal to renewable energy, and a National Air Pollution Control Act.
"Watching the continuing escalation of air pollution across Australia, particularly from coal mines and coal-fired power stations, is like seeing a car speed faster and faster with no police response."
Air pollution kills more than 3000 people in Australian every year, almost three times the annual road toll, and costs the nation more than $24 billion in health care costs each year.
Dr Whelan said reducing particle pollution is critical to avoiding a public health crisis in mining areas.
"Particle pollution accounts for more than 90 per cent of the total health impacts of air pollution in general."
Dr Whelan said just like smoking, there is no safe level of particle pollution.
"Any reduction has direct health benefits including preventing premature death," he said.
While PM10 emissions from the coal industry have fallen 8 per cent in 2014-15 to just under 400,000 tonnes, they have increased 84 per cent over the past five years.
Other findings from EJA's analysis include:

• Coal companies reported almost 400,000 tonnes of PM10, an 84 per cent increase in the past five years
• Newcastle's three coal terminals account for 62 per cent of the city's PM10 emissions (295,000 kilograms this year)
• PM10 emissions from Maules Creek coal mine increased 187 per cent in 2014-15
• Emissions of toxic pollutants from coal mines including PM10, lead, arsenic and fluoride increased by 100-200 per cent during the last decade
• Australia's 20 most polluting coal mines are located in the Bowen Basin and the Hunter Valley
• Particle pollution emissions from Mackay's two coal terminals increased by 50 per cent in just one year and 254 per cent over five years.

Reporting pollution data is mandatory, but is not audited and data is often missing, inaccurate or blatantly false, Dr Whelan said.

Links

• Sydney's corals now bleaching in 'pretty shocking' sign of warming waters
• Is this the end for the Great Barrier Reef?
• Global temperature records tumble, including in Sydney

Fossil Fuels Could Be Phased Out Worldwide In A Decade, Says New Study

ScienceDaily - University of Sussex

The worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade, according to an article published by a major energy think tank.

Coal-fired power plant. Although this study suggests that the historical record can be instructive in shaping our understanding of macro and micro energy transitions, it need not be predictive, the authors say. Credit: © chungking / Fotolia

The worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade, according to an article published by a major energy think tank in the UK.

Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, believes that the next great energy revolution could take place in a fraction of the time of major changes in the past.
But it would take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar effort to get there, he warns. And that effort must learn from the trials and tribulations from previous energy systems and technology transitions.
In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Research & Social Science, Professor Sovacool analyses energy transitions throughout history and argues that only looking towards the past can often paint an overly bleak and unnecessary picture.
Moving from wood to coal in Europe, for example, took between 96 and 160 years, whereas electricity took 47 to 69 years to enter into mainstream use.
But this time the future could be different, he says -- the scarcity of resources, the threat of climate change and vastly improved technological learning and innovation could greatly accelerate a global shift to a cleaner energy future.
The study highlights numerous examples of speedier transitions that are often overlooked by analysts. For example, Ontario completed a shift away from coal between 2003 and 2014; a major household energy programme in Indonesia took just three years to move two-thirds of the population from kerosene stoves to LPG stoves; and France's nuclear power programme saw supply rocket from four per cent of the electricity supply market in 1970 to 40 per cent in 1982.
Each of these cases has in common strong government intervention coupled with shifts in consumer behaviour, often driven by incentives and pressure from stakeholders.
Professor Sovacool says: "The mainstream view of energy transitions as long, protracted affairs, often taking decades or centuries to occur, is not always supported by the evidence.
"Moving to a new, cleaner energy system would require significant shifts in technology, political regulations, tariffs and pricing regimes, and the behaviour of users and adopters.
"Left to evolve by itself -- as it has largely been in the past -- this can indeed take many decades. A lot of stars have to align all at once.
"But we have learnt a sufficient amount from previous transitions that I believe future transformations can happen much more rapidly."
In sum, although the study suggests that the historical record can be instructive in shaping our understanding of macro and micro energy transitions, it need not be predictive.

Links

• How Will Climate Policy Affect Energy Access Goals?
• Global Fossil-Fuel Emissions Predicted to Decline for 2015
• Closer Look Reveals True Cost of Coal
• Links in the Chain: Global Carbon Emissions and Consumption Difficult to Attribute
• Carbon capture analyst: 'Coal should stay in the ground'

March Was Earth's 11th-Straight Warmest Month on Record

Mashable Australia - Andrew Freedman

Image: Earth simulator 

NASA's March temperature data was released Friday, showing that it was the planet's second-most unusually mild month on record, only somewhat cooler than February 2016.
The NASA data shows the monthly global average temperature was 1.28 degrees Celsius, or 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, above the 20th century average.
According to NASA, six straight months from 2015 into 2016 have had a temperature anomaly of at least 1 degree Celsius. That had not happened in any month prior to this record warm stretch.
Data released on Thursday shows that March 2016 was the warmest March since at least 1891, making it the planet's 11th consecutive month to set a global temperature milestone.

Global average surface temperature anomalies for March 2016. Image: NASA

The data, from the Japan Meteorological Agency, as well as a separate analysis using computer model data, means that if April also sets a monthly record, the Earth will have had an astonishing 12 month string of record-shattering months.
Other agencies will soon weigh in with their own analysis of March's temperatures, including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the UK Met Office, and their figures may differ slightly in ranking the month compared to the historical record.
The cause of the record warmth, scientists say, is a combination of a record strong El Niño event in the tropical Pacific Ocean and the increasingly apparent effects of long-term human-caused global warming.
The world was already setting more and more warm temperature records without the El Niño's assistance, but what El Niño has done was dial up the already elevated temperatures to damaging levels.
Right now, scientists around the world are witnessing the effects of this global fever. These include the third and longest-lasting global coral bleaching event, which is harming — and in some cases, killing — reefs from the Great Barrier Reef to the Florida Keys.
In the Arctic, Greenland commenced its melt season more than one month early when a freak heat wave swept in earlier this week, sending temperatures skyrocketing into the low 60s Fahrenheit in southwest Greenland and breaking records all the way to the top of the ice sheet itself, more than 10,000 feet above sea level.
In addition, Arctic sea ice set a record for the lowest winter maximum extent, potentially setting the ice pack up for a summer melt season with a largely open Arctic Ocean, depending on transient weather conditions.

Global average surface temperature anomalies for March 2016, based on the Climate Forecast System (CFSR). Image: Weatherbell analytics

According to the JMA, the global average surface temperature in March was 0.62 degrees Celsius, or 1.16 degrees Fahrenheit, above the 1981-2010 average.
When measured against the 20th century average, though, the month looks even more unusual, at 1.07 degrees Celsius, or 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit, above average.
The record warm March follows the most two most unusually warm months on record, which occurred in January and February.
The El Niño event is now fading, with a climate forecast issued Thursday showing a likelihood of a La Niña episode in the tropical Pacific Ocean beginning in the late summer or fall.
La Niña events tend to temporarily dampen global average temperatures since they feature unusually chilly ocean waters across a large swath of the tropical Pacific. This likely means that the string of record-shattering months may soon come to a temporary end.
While March's record is noteworthy, for climate scientists it is the longer-term trends that matter most, not an arbitrarily defined calendar period.
Whether one looks at a 12-month running average, 5-year average, or 30-year trends, all show stark increases in global average surface temperatures, which scientists have concluded is largely attributable to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Link

• Heat wave in Greenland triggers record early start to ice melt season

Great Barrier Reef: The Scale Of Bleaching Has The Most Sober Scientists Worried

The Guardian - James Woodford*

Australia’s world heritage site is the largest living thing on Earth. But warm water driven by El Niño is bleaching the reef, and a recent report calls for it to be listed as in danger

A scuba diver encounters a sea turtle on the Great Barrier Reef, north Queensland. Photograph: Steffen Binke/Alamy

I pulled on my mask and dropped off the back of the boat into the warm water above Nursery Bommie, a dive site at Agincourt Reef more than 70km offshore from Port Douglas, in far-north Queensland, Australia. It is widely regarded as one of the most spectacular tourist reefs in the area.
As soon as I could start to make out the immense shadow of the bommie (an outcrop of coral reef) looming before me I could see that all around its flanks and on the summit, covered in just a metre of water in some places, were blemishes of white.
The closer I got, and the more I looked, it was clear there were white patches everywhere. The bleached colonies ranged from tiny plates, shaped like an upturned hand, to areas the size of a table top. Even more striking than the snow white corals was that all around them were other corals coloured in gaudy fluorescent hues that I had never before seen on such a scale. It was as if a masterpiece of nature had been repainted with a colour scheme more befitting a pound shop.
What I was seeing beneath me was evidence of an environmental disaster that has been unfolding over the past few months – the largest mass coral bleaching event ever recorded in this region. This bleaching is the result of a huge El Niño that has driven warm water into the western Pacific Ocean, smothering coral with temperatures beyond their tolerance.
I have dived hundreds of times, with different teams of scientists, along the reef. I have seen the aftermath of other mass coral bleaching episodes such as the most recent major event in 2002.

Bleached corals at Agincourt Reef. Photograph: James Woodford

In my past experiences of bleached corals, the effect is patchy and, while one area is devastated, another will be mysteriously untouched. Yet the scale of this bleaching event has even the most sober and senior coral reef scientists worried. If the rhetoric from marine biologists is to be believed, then the Great Barrier Reef is now in the grip of a “bommie apocalypse”.
As I continued to dive the Nursery Bommie, the fluorescent pinks, blues, purples and greens became more abundant. While these colours might look striking, they signify that the symbiotic relationship between corals and their zooxanthellae, the photosynthetic algae, has broken down.
The fluorescent colours are always there but in healthy coral colonies the colours of the algae overwhelm those of the host coral, giving them their more typical reddish and brown hue. It is true that not all corals fluoresce, but if they have to survive for too long without the algae then bleaching becomes a death sentence.

Put simply, the majority of the corals on this bommie – bleached or fluorescent – were clearly dead or dying. And it was not only the hard corals. All around were soft corals, still swaying like spaghetti in the ebb and flow of the ocean, that were white and ghostly. Most striking was that the bleaching was not just near the surface, where the water is warmest, but at depths of tens of metres where huge colonies of coral were white as well.
I swam towards a wall of reef off the stern of the boat. As I approached I saw that the seafloor was covered in fragile staghorn corals. Such a patch would normally have been the highlight of any dive to this area but now, bleached white, it was merely more evidence that a catastrophe was under way. Dismayed, I swam back to the boat.
On board was an eclectic collection of reef stakeholders including Imogen Zethoven, the director of the Great Barrier Reef campaign for the Australian Marine Conservation Society, who had also made the dive.
“I was shocked,” she said. “I had expected some patches of bleaching surrounded by mainly healthy, colourful corals. I saw the opposite.
“For decades, scientists and conservationists have been warning that climate change is an existential threat to the Great Barrier Reef and all the world’s corals. We know what needs to be done: a rapid transition to 100% renewable energy; an end to fossil fuel subsidies; the phasing out of coal-fired power stations; and keeping coal in the ground.”
While the mass bleaching is caused directly by an El Niño, which pushes warm water to the east Australian coastline, many scientists believe climate change is making the El Niño worse and more frequent, and this is coupled with a general rise in sea temperatures caused by global warming.
Also on board the dive boat was the chief executive of the Queensland Tourism Industry Council, Daniel Gschwind. The reaction of his organisation to the current bleaching requires a balancing act – on one hand, highlighting the need to protect the enormous value of the reef to the Australian economy, worth a conservative AU$6bn (about £3.25bn) a year, while on the other, making sure that tourists are not scared off by alarming news. “The Great Barrier Reef is Australia’s most important tourism asset,” he said.
We dived at a second site at Agincourt Reef that day, at Castle Rock. Again, the underwater seascape was devastated by bleaching, and the scale of the devastation was beginning to sink in.
Scientists report that the same scenes are being replicated along a 1,000km section of the reef, more than a third of its total expanse. Of 500 reefs between Cairns and Papua New Guinea surveyed during this current episode, 95% have experienced significant coral bleaching – only four reefs showed no impact.
Prof David Booth, head of the Australian Coral Reef Society, the world’s oldest coral reef society, and representing some of the nation’s most respected marine biologists, said he had never seen scientists so worried.
“The visual is shocking but so is the disconnect between the severity of the bleaching and the decisions by governments to approve coalmines and coal infrastructure,” he said. “Australia is like a drug dealer for climate change – selling all this coal, but all the while knowing the harm we are doing.”
This particular bleaching event will end once the waters begin to cool. What scientists don’t know yet is how many of the corals will die, quickly being covered in a brown algae that tourists will not want to pay to see.
But there is still room for optimism. These areas can and will recover as long as the scale and frequency of bleaching does not increase. And some other areas that have been devastated in the past decade by destructive threats – such as cyclones and crown-of-thorns starfish – are now recovering well. The reef is always a mosaic of damaged, recovering and stable areas that are constantly changing with environmental conditions.
Coral has evolved to deal with attacks from nature. The question is: can it survive all the cumulative assaults from humans?

*James Woodford is the author of The Great Barrier Reef (Pan Macmillan). His trip was funded as part of a partnership between the Australian Marine Conservation Society and Oris

Links

• Mass coral bleaching now affecting half of Australia's Great Barrier Reef
• Great Barrier Reef: aerial survey reveals extent of coral bleaching