Trakar
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- Feb 28, 2011
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Study to shed light on climate change marine impact - ABC South West WA - Australian Broadcasting Corporation
That is probably one of the greatest problems with trying to address and implement adaptive measures, politicians can't reasonably fund the research needed to quantify the problems and prepare in advance to deal with issues as they arise, if they, or their constituents and electorate, don't recognize and accept the nature of the problem in the first place.
Climate change is slow, but its rate has currently surpassed politics. It may only be weather to many of us, but it would be horribly ironic if the main issue Barry has largely ignored and left off the table for the last four years, namely substantive Climate Change policy, turns out to be an issue to sway a close election in his favor.
A Western Australian-led study will be used to investigate exactly how extreme changes in the ocean's temperature affect fish, algae and other marine life.
Last year, parts of the Indian Ocean around WA reached temperatures not seen for more than a century, after a heatwave.
Researchers compared the effect on marine life at Hamelin and Jurien bays with data from the past seven years.
The University of WA's Dr Timothy Langlois says it is a world first.
"There have been similar events around the world where heatwaves have occurred but this is the first one where we've got this great monitoring data beforehand, so you can actually say with certainty that this heatwave caused these changes in the system," he said.
"There aren't many place where you can do that."
Dr Langlois says the results are invaluable.
"Well we know ... things are going to change in the future with projections of global warming, so what this study really does is allows us to work out how marine systems are likely to change and that allows us to manage things better in the future," he said.
That is probably one of the greatest problems with trying to address and implement adaptive measures, politicians can't reasonably fund the research needed to quantify the problems and prepare in advance to deal with issues as they arise, if they, or their constituents and electorate, don't recognize and accept the nature of the problem in the first place.
Climate change is slow, but its rate has currently surpassed politics. It may only be weather to many of us, but it would be horribly ironic if the main issue Barry has largely ignored and left off the table for the last four years, namely substantive Climate Change policy, turns out to be an issue to sway a close election in his favor.