Last weekend The Times newspaper carried various reports publicising The Times Cheltenham Science Festival. One of these focussed on the major threats to the world’s oceans including CO2 emissions, warming and acidification and carried a plea for immediate action. The report was accompanied by a nice graphic showing two versions of the seas in 2050 side-by-side. In the first of these, the major problems had been tackled and the oceans and the ecosystems they contain had “revived” and in the second, problems had not been solved and the oceans and ecosystems are “collapsed”. For each version of the oceans there are 15 or 16 points of note, either positive in the case of the “revived” seas or negative in the case of the collapsed” ones. The article is available online (The Times [06 June 2009]) and pleasingly, so is the colour graphic (either via the link in the article or directly via this link).
Tim O'Hare 