2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #12

A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 17 through Sat, Mar 23, 2019

Editor's Pick

Tim Flannery: people are shocked about climate change but they should be angry

The author and scientist, who has returned to his roots at the Australian Museum, says the world is about to see a major shift towards climate action

Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery: ‘We’re in a different world now, a world where people are living with climate change consequences’ Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

Tim Flannery laments that young Australians today will never be able to experience in the same way the natural wonders he enjoyed in his youth.

He grew up in Melbourne on remnants of the sandplain flora, “one of the great floristic gems of Australia,” he says. Once smothered in flowers in springtime, it has now largely been lost through development and altered burning regimes. Flannery, 63, spent his youth swimming and scuba diving in northern Port Phillip bay, which he says is now also gravely deteriorated.

He further points to the Great Barrier Reef, which suffered unprecedented mass bleaching in 2016 and 2017 and the “serious questions” about whether it can now be saved. “Something like 70% of the reef that was there a century ago is now dead,” he says.

But without detailed records on species distributions, it’s impossible to map the losses due to climate change, explains Flannery, who recently returned to the 192-year-old Australian Museum in Sydney, where he was principal mammalogist from 1984–1999.

Rather than being “a fusty old relic” the museum is playing a vital role in this, he says. “The collections that say where things were, and when, are here – and that’s the most important asset we’ve got to understand the response of biodiversity to climate change … The people of New South Wales need to understand what a valuable asset they have.”

Tim Flannery: People are shocked about climate change but they should be angry, Interview by John Pickrell, Environment, Guardian, Mar 20, 2019 

Links posted on Facebook

Sun Mar 17, 2019

Mon Mar 18, 2019

Tue Mar 19, 2019

Wed Mar 20, 2019

Thu Mar 21, 2019

Fri Mar 22, 2019

Sat Mar 23, 2019

Posted by John Hartz on Saturday, 23 March, 2019

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