Loss of coral reefs caused by rising sea temperatures could cost $1tn globally

The loss of coral reefs caused by rising sea temperatures could cost $1 trillion globally, a report from Australia’s Climate Council has projected, with the loss of Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef alone costing that region 1m visitors a year, imperilling 10,000 jobs and draining $1bn from the economy.

A report by Australia's Climate
Council about Australia's
Great Barrier Reef.

The longest global coral bleaching event on record, which began in 2014 and has affected some reefs in consecutive years, has given reefs little chance to recover, and should be a “wake-up call” to act to save the natural and economic assets, the Climate Council’s Lesley Hughes said.

“The extraordinary devastation being experienced on the Great Barrier Reef is due to the warming of our oceans, driven by the burning of coal, oil and gas,” Hughes said. “It would have been virtually impossible for this to have occurred without climate change.”

Read The Guardian story - “Loss of coral reefs caused by rising sea temperatures could cost $1tn globally.”

'Future Earth' rises into view, thanks to Lesley Hughes

“Future Earth” rose into view when mentioned just last week by Climate Councillor Professor Lesley Hughes.

Professor Hughes was speaking at the launch of the Climate Council’s latest report: “The silent killer: climate change the health impacts of extreme heat”.

Fellow speaker, Research Professor at the University Western Australia, a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne, a patron and founding director of the Telethon Kids Institute, and former Australian of the Year, Professor Fiona Stanley, said Future Earth was something new to her.

However, again illustrating her willingness to explore, Professor Stanley said she intended to get involved with Future Earth just as soon as she could.

Future Earth describes itself: “As a major international research platform providing the knowledge and support to accelerate our transformations to a sustainable world.

“Bringing together and in partnership with existing programmes on global environmental change*, Future Earth is an international hub to coordinate new, interdisciplinary approaches to research on three themes: Dynamic Planet, Global Sustainable Development and Transformations towards Sustainability.

“It also aims to be a platform for international engagement to ensure that knowledge is generated in partnership with society and users of science. It is open to scientists of all disciplines, natural and social, as well as engineering, the humanities and law,” it says.

The Climate Council’s latest report was launched last week at a special function in the Ella Latham Auditorium at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital.

Misunderstanding the 'critical decade' on national television

The idea that this is the “critical decade” in relation to combatting climate change is broadly misunderstood.

Prof Lesley Hughes.

Just last night (June 17), the co-director of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Kirsty Albion, appeared on national television and was asked that if was the “critical decade” how much had the climate worsened in that time.

What the questioner didn’t seem to understand that it is not so much about the actual worsening of our climate, rather how we should be using this “critical decade” to change our behaviours to slow the worsening effects of climate change.

The idea of the critical decade was discussed onThe Conversation  through an article headed: “Updating the state of Australia’s climate”.

Author, the head of department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University, Prof Lesley Huges, said: “It is the Critical Decade to get on with the job of tackling climate change.”

We should all take the time to study "The Critical Decade"

Prof Lesley Hughes.

Everyone, not just those who gather Beneath the Wisteria to consider their response to climate change, should take the time to absorb details in the latest report from Australia’s Climate Commission.

The report, entitled “The Critical Decade”, is predicting record heatwaves, bushfires and rising sea levels in New South Wales because of climate change.

Federal Climate Commissioner Professor Lesley Hughes says western Sydney is getting disproportionally hotter and drier than the rest of Sydney.

"If we compare western Sydney with the rest of Sydney, the number of hot days in western Sydney used to be three times as many as eastern Sydney, and now it's four times," she said.
"So what we are seeing is not only rising temperatures but some parts of the country are getting disproportionally hotter."
But a climate scientist with the University of Newcastle, Stewart Franks, says the report tends towards scare mongering.

Events of that “critical decade” are told in a story today on the ABC headed: Heatwaves, bushfires predicted to hammer NSW.