The fragile ecology

We are endlessly informed how fragile the world is. Every time there is an oil spill we are shown pictures of dying birds and seals and told that the sludge on the beaches will never clear away and every time people fall for it and every time in a matter of a few years the sea and the rain have done their work.

We are also always made to feel guilty for even looking at the fragile coral reefs, lest our eyes alone might damage this most fragile of ecosystem. The rise of even 1 degree in sea temperature I remember reading would kill whole reefs. The trouble is that "SOME corals are again flourishing on Bikini Atoll, the Pacific site of the largest American atom bomb ever exploded". That's Bikini Atoll and coral is reappearing, now do you believe that a 1 degree increase in the temperature of the sea will kill coral reefs? It's called scaremongering and it's what the eco-movement specialise in.



An aside, the report has a rather odd grasp of physics:

"The 15 mega-tonne bomb was a thousand times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima in Japan in WWII.

It vapourised three islands, raised water temperatures to 55,000 degrees, shook islands 200km away and left a crater 2km wide and 73m deep."

I have my doubts that the "water temperature" reached 55,000 degrees; I would have thought the water would have vaporised around 54,900 degrees below that.