[Coral-List] Negative Press following ICES J Marine Science Issue on 'Ocean Acidification'

Richard Dunne RichardPDunne at aol.com
Fri Mar 4 05:58:50 EST 2016


This week an influential British newspaper, The London Times, published 
two critical viewpoints of coral ocean acidification research.

This stemmed from the publication of the Special Issue on 'Towards a 
Broader Perspective on Ocean Acidification' in ICES J Marine Science 
(https://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/current ).

I have long felt that we have been guilty of 'over egging' this aspect 
of the global warming debate in the face of very little hard evidence. 
This 'bad press' is a salutary lesson that we need to be more careful 
and critical at all stages of these scientific endeavours. Ultimately we 
have to 'sell' our work to the general public and this illustrates that 
so far we have not done very well. It has consequences for the general 
message that coral reefs are under threat.

The two articles and snippets from them are (I hope the links work):

Scientists ‘are exaggerating carbon threat to marine life’
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/article4702412.ece?shareToken=dd25504126871fc69affa29067a8d764
"Claims that coral reefs are doomed because human emissions are making 
the oceans more acidic have been exaggerated, a review of the science 
has found".

Science is turning back to the dark ages
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4705093.ece?shareToken=1c72c372c736752e9b4fce2fd232bab6
"Overplaying the threat to coral reefs is just the latest example of 
ideology distorting research"


Richard Dunne

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