Kevin Hester on the Great Barrier Reef

Total Lack Of Urgency in Dealing with Climate Emergency

Kevin Hester,

11 May, 2016

‘Our climate change emergency is gaining momentum at a non linear, exponential pace, with the massive bleaching event unfolding on the Great Barrier Reef and the extraordinary fires burning in Alberta which have precipitated the evacuation of 80,000 + people from Fort McMurray, two of the latest ” Canary’s in the coal mine”.

There are no shortage of indicators that we have entered the dangerous phase of the great unraveling of our biosphere, when we are at approximately 1.5 degrees c above baseline tracking to and beyond the IPCC worst case scenario of 6C which incidentally will be unsurvivable for most if not all complex life on this planet. So much for 2C being the safe limit.

In the link below, renowned climate scientist Michael E Mann, the co author of the Hockey Stick Theory discusses the fires and the bleaching event on the GBR in incredibly measure tones,which I have personally dived extensively over an 800 mile sail after crossing  the Coral sea and sailing down the reef from north of Cairns to Brisbane. I detect no hint of an emergency

It takes about 15 years for a reef to recover from a bleaching event but it also requires the symptoms to abate first. The primary  drivers of this latest and third bleaching event in the last 100 yrs, all of which have happened in the last 8 yrs is carbonate saturation and warming waters.

Much of the blame has been attributed to the recent record El Nino which has undoubtedly been a factor but the overall causation is a combination of circumstances that are not going away and are in fact increasing.

I don’t casually criticise a scientist of Michael Mann’s calibre but as a yacht skipper I always default to the precautionary principle which is to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

The tone of the delivery of this information in no way conveys a planetary emergency which we are patently witnessing unraveling before our very eyes.
Climate scientists tend to be specialists in their field which can involve a narrow depth of experience which leaves them unable to extrapolate the overall consequences of simple ( sic) ice melt and sea level rise.

Conservation biologist Professor Guy McPherson, who will be coming back to NZ again in November to discuss our predicament, who has been studying climate change for over three decades believes that the combination of rising temperatures driven by our crack like addiction to carbon is driving us to extinction alongside the other 150 to 200 species that are going extinct very day on our beleaguered planet.

Here is a recent podcast with Guy McPherson speaking about species extinction from the 21:40minute mark here, ‘Rising Up With Sonali – May 4, 2016‘

Professor McPherson and myself believe we are in runaway abrupt climate change leading to near term human extinction in the not to distant future.  Mike Mann doesn’t seem particularly worried.

As I wrote here on the Collapse Of The Oceanic Reef Systems, you can decide for yourselves whose right and prepare accordingly.

As Thom Hartman says:  ‘Dr. Michael Mann, Earth System Science Center-Penn State University/Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change (2nd edition) joins Thom. The oceans are literally starving now. Plus the Fires in Canada – Is this a preview of what the future will look like if we don’t do something right now to stop climate change?‘  Further shared here, with video:  ‘Dr. Michael Mann on Dying Oceans & Intense Fires‘