This article from the Spring 2020 edition of the IPA Review is written by IPA Adjunct Fellow, Matthew Lesh. Environmental catchcries of the early 21st century are apocalyptic: “Billions of people are going to die,” “life on Earth is dying,” and “Governments aren’t addressing it”. Religious undertones are abundant. It is good and evil. The end is nigh. Human […]
Late last year, I went on an expedition in search of a type of very old coral known as massive Porites. Stuart, Shaun and I dived five very different coral reefs between Cairns and Townsville. The first was an inshore fringing coral reef to the leeward side of High Island. High Island is close to […]
IPA Senior Fellow Dr Jennifer Marohasy and Dr Peter Ridd joined IPA Members for an IPA Town Hall Talk earlier this month to discuss how the Great Barrier Reef is much healthier than recent media reports say, and to report on their own recent expeditions to the reef. They also talk about the IPA’s book […]
Are walruses the new polar bears – a heartrending icon of the devastation wrought by climate change on the arctic life? The Netflix documentary, Our Planet, would have us believe so. However, evolutionary biologist Dr Susan Crockford reveals how polar bears and walruses are in reality thriving in the Arctic – much against popular belief […]
It is often reported that the Great Barrier Reef is half dead, specifically that the corals are bleached, and the water quality is degraded with pesticides and plastics. If I didn’t know better, I might never want to visit a coral reef, lest I be forced to confront this reality – apparently all our fault. […]
Fundamental to science is measurement. It is a way of objectively assessing something, anything, even the state of a coral reef, even of an individual coral. Historically coral growth rates were measured by coring the really old massive Porites. Like tree rings in temperate forests, the massive old Porites can be cored to see the […]
IPA Senior Fellow Dr Jennifer Marohasy speaks to Alan Jones on Sky News about her new book Climate Change: The Facts 2020.
The word ‘unprecedented’ is often applied to destructive climate-related events, as though they could not have been predicted, and have never happened before. Last summer’s bushfires were no different. But were they really unprecedented? This narrative creates anxiety because it follows that there really is a climate emergency and that we have pushed nature out […]
A new scientific paper, received with great fanfare among international media and Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC, claims half the corals of the Great Barrier Reef are dead. The paper is by academics at James Cook University’s ARC Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. It is a scary headline. But is it true? This […]
Saturday night, I was eating chocolates at Catherine’s (remember my friend who tutors kids in maths), when Rowan phoned. Not any Rowan. The Rowan Dean from Sky Television. He was working late. We had just been talking about him at dinner, because I was meant to be on his Sky TV ‘Outsiders’ program the next morning, […]