Cabot office weekly roundup – 3 August 2012

What has been interesting to me this week is a real shift in people’s perceptions of environmental risk, global environment change and resilience.  It is like the world has finally woken up.  Only this week climate sceptics have changed their minds and now believe climate change is man-made.  Also we are definitely facing 2 degrees of warming and reversing it is now looking highly unlikely.  By analysing current events held on the subject of climate change, it is clear that they are no longer asking what can we do to prevent it?  Climate change is happening and it is too late.  What everyone wants to know now is, how can we adapt to climate change and how can we be resilient to the global environmental and social changes which will result from at least 2 degrees of warming.

This year we have some exciting speakers talking about resilience, so I know at least the Cabot community will be prepared!  The Cabot events are:

 Jonathan Bamber in Glaciology, has had a paper published in Science entitled ‘Aerial Photographs Reveal Late–20th-Century Dynamic Ice Loss in Northwestern Greenland’.  Read more about his findings.

Our Cabot Fellow, Dr Steve Simpson, joined an expert panel to brief the world’s media on sustaining fish populations at the Coral Reef Symposium in Australia.  He said that recent research has shown that fish larvae have highly developed senses, included smell and hearing, and can actively swim back to their home reefs.  But that means the reef habitat and adult fish populations need to be intact for them to find their way home.  That’s exactly what Marine Protection Areas can provide, with spillover benefits for neighbouring reefs.  Steve said “This research is the strongest support for management strategies that adopt marine protected areas as a fundamental tool for sustaining fish populations”.