Scientists SLAM Abbott's Foreign Minister Re. GBR: "We Do Not Believe That It Is In Danger"

World-leading scientists say the Great Barrier Reef will be "slaughtered" this century as seas warm and become more acidic, dismissing comments by Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop that Australia's natural icon was not at risk. Ms Bishop told Sky News on Friday her office had sent the White House a briefing outlining the Australia's efforts to preserve the reef after US President Barack Obama's warning in Brisbane last weekend that its "incredible natural glory" was threatened by climate change. "Of course, the Great Barrier Reef will be conserved for generations to come. And we do not believe that it is in danger," Ms Bishop said.

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Mr Obama was "right on the money", Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the university's Global Change Institute, said. "He was stating a fact. "We have one of the jewels of the planet in our possession and we should care a lot about climate and he wasn't getting that from our leader [Prime Minister Tony Abbott]," Dr Hoegh-Guldberg said.

Peer-reviewed research published by Dr Hoegh-Guldberg in 2012 said the global agreement to limit CO₂ concentrations to 450 parts per million in a bid to keep global warming to under 2 degrees from pre-industrial times would not be enough to protect the reefs. Any increase above 1.5 degrees would be devastating, the research found. The reef has already shrunk by half in 30 years, he added, with climate change a factor in its retreat.

Charlie Veron, a former chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, went further, saying the Abbott government was downplaying the dire future facing the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs everywhere. "In the long term, that is the whole of this century, we are going to have the Great Barrier Reef slaughtered," Dr Veron, a world authority who has scientifically named about one-quarter of all known corals, said. "There's no doubt about that at all, if carbon-dioxide emissions keep on tracking as they are."

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http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/great-barrier-reef-will-be-slaughtered-scientists-dismiss-julie-bishops-claim-reef-not-at-risk-20141121-11r4a6.html