TRANSCRIPT
The report conducted by the Climate Council shows the immense impacts of global climate change on our oceans.
A group of Australian and international scientists found the amount of climate-change induced heat currently being absorbed by the world’s oceans is equivalent to boiling the Sydney Harbour every eight minutes.
The report was based on a survey of 30 leading ocean scientists across five continents.
Report author and Climate Council’s Research Director Dr Simon Bradshaw says our oceans are in deep trouble.
"The Climate Council's new report: Code blue our oceans in crisis... brings together all the latest science on our oceans and climate change. And it shows us that our oceans are in very serious trouble due to climate change driven by the burning of coal, oil and gas. We're seeing record high ocean temperatures and acceleration in the melting of sea ice, enormous damage to critical ecosystems including the Great Barrier Reef."
Overwhelmingly, these scientists agreed ‘rapidly phasing out fossil fuels’ is the single most important action governments could take to address ocean warming.
Marine ecologist from the University of New South Wales Dr Marwan Majzoub says the excess heat energy will create devastating impacts on the marine environment.
"Could lead to even almost wiped out of what we actually see now on the water in terms of plants and the reason why I'm stressing on plants is because they are sort of the essential to sort of the marine life because they house a lot of smaller animals in which they feed on them. They graze on them, as well as they have bacteria in which they sit on top of them. So they sort of thought to be sort of the essential and this also applies for corals as well."
Scientists around the world are increasingly concerned about rapid and intensifying changes to our oceans.
Experts warn much of the worry for the summer ahead is quite rightly about the impact on the Great Barrier Reef with forecasts of unprecedented and 'off the charts' marine heat expected.
Dr Marwan Majzoub says the Great Barrier Reef is in urgent need of help.
"As an example here in Australia, the Great Barrier Reef... So if you look to back in 2005, and you look at it now, you see, almost masses of all sort of the under underwater, wildlife, it's being eradicated, to the point that you're almost don't see any of the diversity that you were seeing before and by diversity I mean that, you know the different plants, different animals, bacteria so from something very small to something very, very big."
Dr Simon Bradshaw says more government action is urgently needed.
"It's our actions right now, this year and through these critical years ahead, that can make all the difference. What the science is telling us is we need to get emissions down globally. And of course in Australia as fast as we can meet, first of all, leaving our fossil fuels in the ground, accelerating that shift to clean energy. And there's some important steps that our government here can take right now. The first of which is to update our very outdated National Environment laws which at the moment don't even consider impacts on climate of new projects, is one reason why we've seen new coal and gas projects greenlit even now in 2023."
A spokeswoman for Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said he acknowledged the global impacts of climate change.
Earlier this year, the Albanese government reformed the 'Safeguard Mechanisms' policy to reduce more than 200 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions to 2030.
But experts from the scientific community warn that may be too late.
