The high temperatures sparking bush fires were wreaking havoc under the water as well
southern hemisphere’s summer, mercifully now at an end, Australia burned under a pitiless sun. Bush fires down the continent’s eastern flank consumed 46m acres of countryside, destroying homes, taking lives and driving rare animals towards extinction. To many Australians, the satellite pictures showing huge plumes of smoke drifting off to the east over the Great Barrier Reef seemed a portent of life in an age of man-made warming.
Coral bleaching takes place when sea temperatures spike, causing the coral polyps that make up reefs to eject the algae that generate their food via photosynthesis. Without the pigmented algae, coral soon dies, leaving the intricate colonies a ghostly white. Reefs can recover from occasional bleachings: the fastest-growing corals regenerate in a decade or so. But mass bleachings on the Great Barrier Reef are becoming ever more frequent. The first occurred only in 1998.
The biblical rains that recently extinguished the bush fires have also helped to lower water temperatures over the reef. The rains are proof to climate-change deniers—who are given a platform by Rupert Murdoch’s press and who are represented on the ruling coalition’s backbenches—that recent fires, droughts and floods are simply part of the natural cycle. They point with glee to the bush springing back to life.
The bush fires threw the prime minister, Scott Morrison, off balance. Holidaying in Hawaii made him look out of touch, while his Liberal Party’s cosy links to oil, gas, coal and iron-ore interests came under closer scrutiny. Among big economies Australia ranks behind only Saudi Arabia in terms of greenhouse-gas emissions per head—and that does not count the emissions when its exports of coal and gas are consumed elsewhere.
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