Environmental groups yesterday urged greater action on climate change after the Australian government declared the highest alert level over an epidemic of coral bleaching in the pristine northern reaches of the nation’s Great Barrier Reef.
The Australian government on Sunday said that corals had turned white and grey in parts of the World Heritage-listed marine park, with the bleaching “severe” in northern areas.
Environmental group the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) said large sections of coral near Lizard Island were drained of all color and fighting for survival.
Photo: Reuters
“The reef can recover, but we must speed up the shift to clean, renewable energy and we must build reef resilience by reducing runoff pollution from farms and land clearing,” WWF spokesperson Richard Leck said. Bleaching occurs when abnormal environmental conditions, such as warmer sea temperatures, cause corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, draining them of their color.
Corals can recover if the water temperature drops and the algae are able to recolonize them.
“The pictures we are seeing coming out of the northern Great Barrier Reef are devastating,” said Shani Tager of Greenpeace Australia Pacific. “The Queensland and federal governments must see this as a red alert and act accordingly.”
Tager called on the government to reconsider coal mining, saying the burning of the fuel is “driving climate change, warming our waters and bleaching the life and color out of our reef.”
Australian Minister of the Environment Greg Hunt, who inspected the area by air on Sunday, said three-quarters of the reef is experiencing “minor to moderate bleaching.”
He said that while the bleaching is nowhere near as bad as in 1998 or 2002, in the top quarter, north of Lizard Island, it was severe.
Jodie Rummer, a senior research fellow at James Cook University, said after spending 40 or so days at Lizard Island that the situation is “not good at all.”
Rummer said that while the northern parts of the reef are among its most beautiful and pristine, they have also been hard hit by cyclones in recent years, which have caused structural damage to the coral.
“Certain areas that are typically 100 percent coral cover — which is a really healthy reef — are almost 100 percent bleached now; so it is quite disturbing,” she said. “It is quite sobering to think that this is the wake up call that we are getting to take better care of our environment.”
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS